Why you need LDL cholesterol

For years, you've been told your body has an enemy -- and its name is LDL cholesterol. 

They've even taken to calling it "bad" cholesterol, as if something your body NEEDS could ever actually be bad. 

Now, a new study confirms what I've told you all along: LDL cholesterol isn't the bad guy after all. 

Researchers from Texas A&M University put 52 non-exercising people between the ages of 60 and 69 through a rigorous workout, and found that those who gained the most muscle mass afterwards had the highest levels of LDL cholesterol. 

Nevermind that you don't need a rigorous workout to stay fit (or any workout at all, for that matter)... the study is a perfect illustration of the relationship between LDL cholesterol and muscle function. 

The researchers didn't make the obvious connection, so I will: This is precisely why people who take cholesterol-lowering drugs like statins suffer from muscle pain and even muscle disintegration as their LDL levels plummet to supposedly healthy levels. 

The researchers also wrote in the Journal of Gerontology that LDL serves another crucial function: as a warning of problems elsewhere in the body. 

And once again, this is a page right out of my Douglass Report newsletter -- because I've been telling you for years that high cholesterol levels are a symptom... not a disease on their own. 

But while your doc will hit the panic button when LDL hits 160, all I care about is your total cholesterol: Keep it between 200 and 300, and you're golden. 

Higher than that, and you've got a problem -- but a cholesterol med won't solve it anymore than an ice bath will cure the infection behind a high fever. 

You need a doc who can figure out -- and correct -- the cause of that rise. 

Turning bad into good, 

William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.