There has been a great deal of fuss raised over the danger of high cholesterol in our blood as a cause of heart attacks and strokes. Since most cholesterol is not derived from the diet, but is created in the liver, it would be helpful to know what the liver uses as a raw material. Surprisingly, it is not the fat in the diet, but it is manufactured from high blood glucose. The more extra blood glucose, the higher the level of cholesterol, especially the more undesirable form, known as Low Density Lipoprotein or LDL cholesterol. Here is why LDL cholesterol is so bad for you. Its protective protein coating is not dense enough to provide adequate protection from the damage caused by free radicals in the blood. With holes blown in the protein coat, the interior content of fatty acids of this LDL cholesterol is now exposed to the oxygen of the blood. In this condtion LDL cholesterol is quickly oxidized and becomes a free radical itself. This is very dangerous, and so the macrophages of the immune system try to gobble up as much oxidized LDL cholesterol as they can and get it out of the blood. It has now been found that the macrophages become swollen with this oxidized LDL cholesterol, they try to leave the blood, exiting through the arterial wall as they normally do. Unfortunately once in a while one will be too swollen with oxidized LDL cholesterol, and they can get stuck there. Then the oxidized LDL, acting as a free radical, damages the arterial wall. This injury creates a hole in the inner lining of the artery.As the muscle cells just under that lining go through their normal reproductive cycle, some of those muscle cells have been found to protrude up through the hole in that lining. Then fibrinogen responds and starts laying down a mesh of fibers over this protrusion trying to close it off. Next calcium starts filling in the holes in the mesh and it starts to harden. Finally cholesterol coats the top of this bulge and we now have an arterial plaque. Once started, a plaque tends to grow in size with more and more fiber, calcium and cholesterol added as time goes by. When these plaques are numerous and large enough, they can cut off the flow of blood to the heart or brain, and this results in a heart attack or stroke. Now the astonishing thing is this, half of those who die from a heart attack or stroke have normal cholesterol levels. This is because in addition to getting rid of excess glucose by making cholesterol, the liver has another favorite method, it turns it into fatty acids which then become triglycerides, also known as blood fat. At first, the body of most people will try and get rid of this triglyceride by storing it as body fat. As you can tell by looking around, some of these bodies are pretty good at that. However, in time, the body can not store it as fast as it is being produced and the blood triglyceride level rises higher and higher. There is a grave danger here, because tt is now scientifically acknowledged that high blood triglyceride levels are a far more accurate predictor of pending heart attacks and strokes than your cholesterol level.