Plasma Oxidized Low-Density Lipoprotein, a Strong Predictor for Acute Coronary Heart Disease Events in Apparently Healthy, Middle-Aged Men
I frequently have patients come in with cholesterol that is just slightly elevated–maybe 210 or 220. There have been times that these patients have been doing everything else right and their cholesterol is just a little elevated. We need to remember that cholesterol does not do its damage until it gets damaged itself. This damage to LDL cholesterol creates a compound called an oxysterol and THIS is what does the damage.
High intakes of fruits and veggies with lots of antioxidants can protect this cholesterol from becoming oxidized. We can see from this current study that these oxidized cholesterols really do increase risk greatly (up to 4x the risk).