You have heard of LDL – the so-called “bad cholesterol”. And HDL – often called “good cholesterol”.
And then we, of course, have Triglycerides.
But there is a third type of cholesterol, one that you probably have never even heard of. And this type was found to be the most dangerous type by far.
Ironically, this third type of cholesterol is also the one easiest to eliminate.
This new discovery by the University of Illinois was presented at the 63rd Biophysical Society Annual Meeting.
The researchers divided their mice into two groups: one group that received a well-balanced diet and the other that received a diet based on the number of fats, carbohydrates, and proteins that can be found in a typical fast-food meal.
Unsurprisingly, researchers quickly observed a thickening of the arteries of the unhealthy eaters.
This damage did not occur only to the arterial walls, but all the way down to the individual cells that made up the arterial walls.
They then measured the amount of LDL cholesterol and oxidized cholesterol in the arteries of these mice so that they could inject the same amounts into human arterial cells in a laboratorial setting to see what would happen.
Just like oil that is placed on the shelf for too long and starts to smell, oxidized cholesterol is basically cholesterol that has become rancid.
After applying these to human cells, they observed the same as in the mice: a thickening and hardening of arterial membranes.
Like in the mice, the damage occurred all the way down to the individual cells from which the arteries were constituted.
The oxidized cholesterol did a lot more damage than the LDL cholesterol. Even scarier, it only took a tiny amount of oxidized cholesterol to do substantial damage.
1. Oxidized cholesterol is more harmful than LDL cholesterol.
2. The arterial damage that causes the thickening and hardening of arteries goes down to the cellular level.
3. When LDL and oxidized cholesterol appear together, the damage is the greatest.