Medical science has been talking about cholesterol and its links to heart disease for years. People who are at risk of heart failure are invariably prescribed medicines such as statins by medical doctors to lower the cholesterol levels in their blood, in the hope that they would be able to protect one’s body against heart attacks and/or strokes as well.
At the heart of cholesterol (pun intended) is a big fatty molecule. This fatty molecule is a necessary building block for cell membranes in our body. As each cell in our body contains a membrane, we can say that cells do require cholesterol for synthesis.
If cells do require cholesterol, then why is it that people can suffer from heart disease that is supposedly linked to this issue where their blood contains “too much” cholesterol?