LDL particles; LDL stands for low-density lipoprotein. LDL
is often called “bad cholesterol,” but these particles are
actually not cholesterol molecules at all, and they’re
certainly not bad, at least when they’re first shipped out.
Instead, they are protein-based carriers that are essential to
helping fat-soluble particles like cholesterol and
triglycerides dissolve, or become solvent, in blood. As you
likely know, oil and water don’t mix, and blood is 92
percent water by volume. In other words, lipoproteins are
nature’s solution to the solvency problem.
What I’ve described is a very rudimentary model to
understand how cholesterol is made in the body. To begin to
understand the link between LDL and disease, you might
picture two highways: Highway A and Highway B. The
highways have one hundred people on each of them, all
commuting to work. On Highway A, those one hundred
people are in one hundred different cars. The one hundred
people on Highway B are carpooling in five buses. Highway
A will be more prone to accidents, pile-ups, and standstill
traffic—there are one hundred vehicles on it, after all.
Highway B only has those five vehicles—the buses. Which
highway would you rather take to work? Unless you’re a
masochist, sadist, or both, I’m guessing Highway B.
INTERPRETING YOUR NUMBERS
Your typical cholesterol test is akin to estimating road
conditions by weighing all of the vehicles on the road, but
one bus might have the same weight as five cars, and the