The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Marksissons and is narrated by Brock Armstrong.

The definitive guide to cholesterol.

With all the talk of fighting, battling, combating, and beating cholesterol into submission,

you'd think it had a black plastic body suit and James Earl Jones voice.

Big Pharma has dutifully created quite an arsenal for our supposed defense,

and the medical community has been a willing faction,

delivering the rhetoric that

would incite us all to pick up arms. Now, if only we could put down the Big Macs, and the

ding-dongs, ho-hoes, twinkies, and, well, you get the point. But the insidious rogue,

that menacing villain, isn't to be found at the helm of the Death Star.

Turns out, there's an enemy within, and it's not even cholesterol.

Before you fall to your knees, rip your shirt off, and gnash your teeth,

you might want to consider news you don't hear often enough.

The much-aligned compound in question is absolutely essential to your physical,

psychological, and cognitive functioning. Yes, the message these days seems to be that no number

is too low when it comes to cholesterol, except HDL, but we'll get into that later.

I'd like to offer a deeper look into the issue.

User-friendly enough, but more complex and contentious than you'll get from the commercial soundbites telling you to talk to your doctor about blah, blah, blah.

Consider it one of Mark's Daily Apple's definitive guides that we are happy to serve up for our gregarious and always thoughtful community.

Excuse me. Have you met cholesterol?

Cholesterol is a waxy, charming lipid gracing every cell's membrane and our blood plasma.

Its jobs, which are many, include insulating neurons, building and maintaining

...