[amy-petrik-214]

This is all true. And of course let us remember cholesterol is essential. Many hormones are made from it (cortisol, vitaminD, testosterone, estrogen). Being essential (not intending the meaning of "essential vitamin" which means the body cannot synthsize - as a vitamin it would be non-essential) - but being essential for physiology rather than diet, the body can synthesize cholesterol. So there is this axis of people who have low cholesterol super healthy diets.. and their body just makes lots of cholesterol anyway, so now they have high cholesterol and are taking statin drugs for it, because biology and population variation.

The other thing cholesterol is used to make, also quite nice to have, is bile. Used for fat digestion and such. A lot of bile. From a lot of cholesterol. Seems like a waste though, to excrete all that finely synthesized bodily chemical. BUt aha, the body realizes this and so resorbs it. THus there is a cycle and recycle of cholesterol and bile. Aha! What if we can trick the body to not resorb it and just release it. Such a drug has been developed. Well, hard to call it a drug. There is no fanciness, no elegant molecular binding to an esoteric receptor, no, nothing of the sort. It's called metamucil, and as the name tells us, it mostly works by being a big chonky mucinous blob of very impressively thick goop. The "magic" of how it works is literally the bile gets trapped in the thick goop and excreted. And thus we've bled off some bile from the cholesterol recycling loop, and thus, cholesterol. And that's why this weird blobby old person fiber supplement is cholesterol magic.

[jkolio]

Kind of sucks for your guts, though, don't it? Bile is corrosive, that's why reflux is an issue and digestive tablets that contain ox bile shouldn't be taken on an empty stomach. Not fun when it reaches your bowels, either.