Chewin' the fat...All about good, bad cholesterol (Click for more):
"The word cholesterol may sound harmless. After all, one dictionary defines it simply as a white substance found in animal tissue. In truth, cholesterol can be very dangerous and accounts for a growing number of heart disease cases in the United States, and it may be implicated in many of the 500,000 heart disease deaths here each year.That makes cholesterol a silent killer, said Dr. Elena Citkowitz, who runs the Cholesterol Management Center at the Hospital of St. Raphael in New Haven and is director of its Cardiac Rehabilitation Program.

Cholesterol is a fat that the body makes and it's important to the human make-up.

Of course, the public has become pretty savvy about the substance itself. We know there is a difference between the good cholesterol, or HDL, and the bad, or LDL.

Sadly, few people are doing enough to raise the good and lower the bad. They generally wait until their bad cholesterol levels are sky high and only then consider altering their diet as one possible corrective measure..."