Cholesterol is a soft substance, almost like wax found among the lipids (fats) in the bloodstream and in all the cells of your body. Although the word cholesterol has come to have negative connotations, the fact is that is essential to health. Despite all of the bad publicity it gets, the fact is that you need cholesterol, because your body uses it to form cell membranes, manufacture hormones, and maintain health in general. However, a high cholesterol in the blood—hypercholesterolemia— is a major risk factor for coronary heart disease, which leads to heart attack. At Pinewood, we have strategies for helping you deal with this problem, which can become an escalating risk to your health.

The Sources of Cholesterol

Your body has two ways of getting cholesterol. The liver produces about 1,000 milligrams a day when it is healthy. But when you eat too many foods high in saturated fats, your body starts overproducing this waxy substance. Foods that are high in cholesterol are egg yolks, meat, poultry, seafood and dairy products.

Cholesterol is removed from your body through the liver, but if your liver is working overtime, then it loses the capacity to process all of the cholesterol that you consume every day. The cholesterol combines with other substances in your body and forms plaque that hardens on your artery walls. This narrows the arteries and makes it harder for your heart to pump blood through the circulatory system and the result is that your blood pressure goes ups. This makes you heart work a lot harder than it should have to. Plaque can also break off into the bloodstream and cause a heart attack or stroke.

That is why a naturopath prescribed detox plus program of weight loss can help lower your cholesterol. The intention of naturopathy can be to clean out your liver so that it works more efficiently and so that any fatty deposits that are in your liver can be eliminated. This in turn, helps your body process the cholesterol that you take in every day.

Good and Bad Cholesterol

Inside your body there is both good and bad cholesterol and like most things to do with health, it is all about balancing one off against the other.

Good cholesterol, also known as HDL cholesterol, the ability to pick mop up cholesterol deposits and carry it back to the liver so that it can pass out of the body. This slows the growth of plaque on your arteries and prevents against stroke or heart attack.

It is the bad cholesterol also known as LDL cholesterol that sticks to your artery walls and causes atherosclerosis, a condition where the plaque build up on your walls.

At the Pinewood Health Institute we can help you cleanse and restore your liver as well as give you a great diet that helps you choose just the right foods to lower the levels of bad LDL cholesterol in your body.

For more information or to book a consultation about our restorative diet and weight loss programs visit the Pinewood Natural Health Clinic website that has a list of full services and products at or call our Toronto Office at (416)-656- 8100. We also have an office in Pickering, Ontario at (905)-427-0057. You can also email us at and we would be happy to answer any question that you have about our holistic health services.

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