by Margaux Sky

Created on: May 02, 2009   Last Updated: May 11, 2009

Cholesterol is a two-edged sword. One edge will take you down and can kill you, while the other edge can give you strength and act as your savior. It's well known around the world that fatty foods like burgers, fries, milkshakes, fried chicken, and an entire army of foods will play havoc with your heart, blood pressure, arteries, and cause any number of related illnesses that will eventually cripple your body until they kill off your body.

Eating healthy is extremely important, especially in this day and age. Why now more than before? Because today our foods are riddled with pesticides, chemicals, preservatives, and even the soil in which food is grown is peppered with lead. We must be very careful about what we eat, where it comes from, and from which company it was produced. In days of old, people grew their own food, the soil wasn't poisoned, and foods weren't processed and dressed down in chemical additions, insect repellents, and additives. Those days of "real" food are gone. Today, most people do not grow their own food and we rely on corporations to distribute healthy food to put on our tables.

It's imperative, if possible, to eat organic foods. Organic foods are grown in healthy soil, have been treated with as little or no poison at all, and always provide much more nutrition and flavor than those foods that are un-organic. Organic foods foster the health of the body and a healthy body is stabilized in good (HDL) cholesterol.

What is cholesterol? We all hear how we need to encourage good cholesterol and run like the dickens from bad cholesterol (LDL). But just what is cholesterol? Cholesterol is fat, basically. It is the fatty material in food, a fatty substance that our food actually needs in order to contribute to a healthy body. Cholesterol is needed for the formation of cell membranes, for the creation of bile, and for the production of some of our hormones.

The bloodstream carries cholesterol throughout our bodies to all the organs and glands that require it. When the blood is carrying an onslaught of cholesterol, the overload gets distributed to the various organs that rely on cholesterol (heart, kidneys, arteries) for survival, but the assault is just too much, it's impacting, and so the cholesterol begins to build up and cling to the artery walls. This build-up is called plaque.

(It's much like the plaque that builds up on your teeth when you don't floss and brush; gum disease forms, teeth decay and fall out, sinus problems erupt, and any number

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