Why there's no good or bad cholesterol

we should really never say good cholesterol and bad cholesterol because it's highly inaccurate and it only reflects a lack of understanding of what one is talking about which is why it certainly would be a red flag if a doctor ever said that what set of words trigger you more when you are asked which diet is best or what is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol God I don't know those are those are those are those are pretty upsetting questions let's start with the second you made a YouTube video about this but I do think it's an important subject because not only is there a misunderstanding of this with patients but also the amount of doctors out there who I think still use good bad cholesterol do just want to give a rundown why there is no such thing as good and bad cholesterol yeah so the the term originates from the differentiation between lowdensity lipoprotein LDL and highdensity lipopro H HDL so um let's start with where there's a grain of Truth here so LDL or lowdensity lipoprotein which is not cholesterol LDL is the carrier molecule it's the lowdensity lipoprotein it's the boat or the submarine that carries cholesterol ldls are bad and hdl's highdensity lipo proteins are good but HDL and LDL are not laboratory measurements there's those thing as an LDL or an HDL that you can check at a lab you can measure the content of cholest cherol within the LDL that's called ldlc and similarly you can measure the content of cholesterol within the HDL that's called hdlc so when you have a basic lipid panel and it says your HDL is 50 well if you read the fine print what it's actually saying is your HDL cholesterol concentration is 50 milligrams per deciliter so don't say that your LDL is 120 say that your LDL cholesterol is 120 Mig per deciliter it's very important I think to be accurate in our nomenclature so the reason that saying there's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol is nonsensical is because cholesterol is cholesterol is cholesterol the same molecule of cholesterol inside the HDL is present inside the LDL what's bad about the LDL is that the LDL traffics that cholesterol into the artery wall where it will get retained and oxidized and lead to the process of atherosclerosis whereas the HDL will not do that um that's the fundamental difference so we should really never say good cholesterol and bad cholesterol because it's it's highly inaccurate and it only reflects a lack of understanding of what one is talking about which is why it's um it certainly would be a red flag if a doctor ever said [Music] that

Channel: Peter Attia MD

Views: 29,514

Keywords: Peter Attia MD, Dr. Peter Attia, Early Medical, The Drive Podcast, The Drive, Longevity, Zone 2

Id: cUBxuKNrhds

Length: 2min 56sec (176 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 21 2023