Which Cholesterol Type Is REALLY Good and Bad?

Scientists have long distinguished between LDL and HDL cholesterol, with the former assumed to be unhealthy and the latter to be healthy.

Drugs have been sold in the billions to lower the unhealthy and boost the healthy.

But a new study published in the journal Lipids and Health Disease reveals that this may have been oversimplified. And to clear out cholesterol plaque, you must take a different approach.

An increasingly large body of research has emerged that showed that people with high HDL cholesterol were actually very unhealthy and that their blood vessels were seriously damaged.

So, is HDL cholesterol really so healthy?

That is not a question that can be answered by grouping all HDL cholesterol together, as researchers are increasingly discovering, because there are approximately 70 different types of HDL cholesterol, differentiated by their different chemical compositions, sizes, and densities.

This means that the types of HDL cholesterol would have to be studied separately.

To begin this mammoth task, scientists have recently concluded in several studies that it is HDL-C, and not all HDL cholesterol, that is healthy.

But HDL-C is still a huge category that includes almost all HDL cholesterol.

To become more specific, scientists have just written an article in the journal Lipids and Health Disease that distinguished between HDL2-C and HDL3-C.

HDL2-C are the largest HDL particles, while HDL3-C include the small and medium-sized ones.

These scientists compared these two types to see which was the healthiest.

They recruited 1,447 participants and measured their HDL levels and types over almost five years.

They also measured their arterial stiffness as a signifier of heart health.

They measured the latter via arterial pulse rates, with the valid assumption being that the stiffer the arteries, the slower the blood will be pumped through them.

They found that the participants with the highest levels of HDL3-C had the most flexible arteries, while high HDL2-C seemed not to make any difference to arterial stiffness at all.

So, it seems like the small and medium-sized HDL-C cholesterol particles are the healthiest ones.

This is only the beginning of a large research task, and the study would have been more enlightening if it examined the participants’ diets to see what the people with the high HDL3-C actually ate.

But there is another type of cholesterol that’s actually the ONLY type that clogs up your arteries. Fortunately, it can be removed by cutting out ONE food ingredient you didn’t even know you were consuming: read on here…