Is cholesterol good for health?

If you are worried about high blood cholesterol levels and want to keep your heart healthy as you get older, don't rush to eat bacon and eggs. Because a recent study shows that they can benefit your body.

Researchers at Taxes A&M University have found that low cholesterol levels can reduce muscle growth when exercising. Steven Riechman, research leader and associate professor in health and motor studies, along with Simon Sheather, head of statistics, and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Center for Weight Gain Control and Medical University Northern Ontario, recently published new findings on the Journal of Gerontology.

The bottom line: before you eat the second cup of oatmeal porridge it is likely that cholesterol is not as harmful to health as we think it is.

Riechman explains: 'We do not expect and will achieve such results. We need to conduct further research in this area. But what we found can actually change our way of looking at cholesterol, especially as it relates to the period of intense physical training. '

The group conducted research on 55 men and women between the ages of 60 and 69, they did not smoke and were in good health and could perform fitness tests and training.

Participants in this study will do some exercise 3 days a week and last for 12 weeks. Exercises include: Stretching exercises, on-site cycling and weight lifting exercises with large volumes. Those who give up one or more rehearsals will be compensated to make sure that at the end of the study, everyone will do the same exercises. Besides, all attendees were also fed the same dishes.

When summarizing the study, the researchers found that there is a special link between food intake with cholesterol and a change in strength . In general, people who consume high cholesterol also get the highest muscle strength.

Riechman said cholesterol circulating in the blood also seems to contribute to muscle strength in people involved in the study.

He explained: 'A convincing explanation is to adopt the important role of cholesterol in inflammation. During exercise, your muscles may be in pain because they are regenerating muscle mass. If there is a lot of cholesterol, it can help the process to react more strongly to inflammation. We know that inflammation in some areas of the body like near the heart is not good for the body, but to regenerate muscles it has many benefits and cholesterol seems to have helped in this process. . '

Riechman said people who took cholesterol-lowering drugs while taking part in the experiment had lower total muscle mass than those who did not take the medicine.

He explained: 'There is no need to say these findings show that we do not need to worry about cholesterol. Through this experiment, we need to delve into a range of other problems, such as what happened to cholesterol when exercising? What we need to do is study the time when cholesterol entered the muscles. '

Riechman said that with exercise, cholesterol seems to play a role in helping muscle growth. The main problem here is to exercise because it doesn't mean you watch television all day and think you don't need to worry about blood cholesterol.

'Our findings suggest that limiting cholesterol levels during exercise seems to have a negative effect on muscle development. If this is true as our experiment, cholesterol may play an important role in muscle regeneration. We need to know exactly how that happens. And because cholesterol is negatively related to cardiovascular health, we need to study this issue further. It also shows that there are many things that we do not understand all about cholesterol. '