Cholesterol

Cholesterol is essential for life. It helps form the membranes for cells in all organs and it is used to make hormones essential for development, growth and reproduction. It forms bile acids that are needed to absorb nutrients from food. Cholesterol comes both from what you eat and from your body’s own production of cholesterol, which takes place in the liver.
A small amount of your body’s cholesterol circulates in the blood in complex particles called “lipoproteins”. Some lipoproteins carry excess cholesterol away for disposal (e.g. HDL, good cholesterol) and some lipoproteins deposit cholesterol in tissues and organs (e.g. non-HDL, bad cholesterol). The test for cholesterol measures all cholesterol (good and bad). However, when you have a cholesterol test, your doctor would usually be looking to see if it is high, which most commonly is due to having too much bad non-HDL cholesterol.