Dr Amir Khan

Well, cholesterol is a nutrient, essentially.

It comes from a family of nutrients, lipids or fat.

So it's a type of fat.

Now, when people hear the word cholesterol, usually in their head, they hear the like a bad noise, right?

It's in my head right now.

Because they think cholesterol, heart disease, bad strokes.

But actually, what's really important to say is that cholesterol and lipids or fats in general are essential to life.

You do need them in your body for really important things.

Cholesterol makes up almost everything.

every single one of your cell membranes or the outer lining of the cell.

It's very, very important for that.

It helps you with hormone production, particularly your sex hormones like testosterone and oestrogen.

It's important for vitamin D. It's really, really vital to life.

So you do need it.

The problem is when there's an imbalance of fats or lipids in your body and blood and cholesterol is part of that picture.

But it's only one type of fat.

There are lots of other types of fats as well.

But we focus in on cholesterol because we can measure it and we know about some of the outcomes if it's too high or too low.

It is made mainly in your liver.

So your liver is like the factory of cholesterol.