Preventing Your Body From Absorbing Cholesterol From the Food You Eat

Scientists estimate that 25 percent of the total cholesterol present in our bodies is derived from the food we eat. Cholesterol is present in many foods -- particularly fatty foods. For example, just like us, animals have cholesterol, and when we eat animal meat -- along with animal fat, we ingest their cholesterol on top of ours.

Therefore, it makes sense that in order to lower our total cholesterol we should reduce the amount of cholesterol ingested by our bodies from the food we eat.

Meet Your Cholesterol Transportation Department

After we eat, the food eventually arrives in the small intestine -- which is the place in the body where most food components are absorbed into the blood stream. Our body has special transport systems embedded in the inner layers of the intestinal tissue that looks for various and specific ingredients found in the food.

One of the ingredients this system looks for is cholesterol -- after all, your body needs cholesterol to build new cells, insulate nerves, and produce hormones.

Channel Proteins -- All Brawn, No Brains

This cholesterol transport function is performed by proteins called "channel proteins." Once channel proteins recognize cholesterol in our gut, the cholesterol is transported by the channel proteins across the intestinal barrier where the cholesterol can be absorbed into the bloodstream.

Even though channel proteins are very efficient workers -- they're not that smart and can be fooled into spending their time transporting what they "think" is real cholesterol while the real cholesterol they should be transporting is passed through the intestines and out of the body. Fooling these proteins is the job of the second mechanism of Bios Life.

The Second Mechanism of Bios Life -- Preventing the Cholesterol from Food from Being Absorbed

The second mechanism fools the channel proteins through the use of "phytosterols." Phytosterols are an ingredient in Bios Life. They're a chemical found in plants. Technically speaking, phytosterols are cholesterol analogs, which means they have similar functions but different origins.

How Phytosterols Work

Cholesterol is found in animals and humans while phytosterols occur only in plants. Cholesterol is a very important molecule in animals and humans, serving as a vital constituent of cell membranes and a precursor to various biomolecules. Phytosterols serve similar functions in plants.

Cholesterol and phytosterols are so similar that they only differ in one position on the chemical structure. A small difference that has large consequences, since when we eat the phytosterols, our body will not absorb them as it would absorb cholesterol.

In fact, phytosterols are so similar to cholesterol that if they're present in the gut along with cholesterol, channel proteins can't tell the difference between the two. As a result some of the phytosterols are picked up by the channel proteins instead of cholesterol, which allows the cholesterol to be passed out of the body and not absorbed into the bloodstream.

This is why we recommend that you take Bios Life 10 to 20 minutes before each meal -- in order to position the phytosterols in the small intestine before the cholesterol from your food arrives.

The Results of Including Phytosterols in Bios Life

There have been many studies done in relation to the cholesterol lowering potential of phytosterols. Many of these studies were performed by manufacturers of phytosterol-enriched margarine spread. Typically the studies show a reduction of LDL (the bad type of cholesterol) in the 5 to 20 percent range over periods of 8 weeks to one year.