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"How Phytosterols Lower Cholesterol"
The ability of phytosterols in plant foods to reduce cholesterol levels was first reported more than 80
years ago. The same trash-picker analogy used to explain the effects of fiber on cholesterol can help us
understand how phytosterols and phytostanols work. Just like phytoestrogens in plants have an anti-
estrogenic effect by fooling your body into using them instead of our own estrogen - which is a
thousand times stronger, phytosterols are plant-based cholesterol look-alikes found predominetly in nuts and seeds.
Here's what cholesterol looks like. Here's what a phytosterol looks like. Can YOU see the difference?
When we eat nuts and seeds, and phytosterols find their way into our ever-flowing waste stream, our trash-
picking enterocytes in our gut lining throw them in their bins along with the actual cholesterol.
Their bins can only hold so much, though, before they have to go empty them into our body...
before coming back to the banks of our fecal flow. And so, if there's cholesterol in the waste stream,
that's what loads up the bin. But if there's phytosterols too, half the bin may be filled up with cholesterol
and half with phytosterols, leaving the other half's worth of cholesterol to flush out to sea.
Meanwhile, our body gets those phytosterols absorbed and says, "What am I supposed to do with these
plant molecules?" And chucks them back down the trash chute where trash pickers further down the line
may accidentlly pick them back up again and repeat the process. So in the end, or out the end, because
we swallowed all these phytosterols into our gut, less excess cholesterol gets reabsorbed and it ends up
getting dumped. This shows the increased fecal excretion of both dietary and
endogenous cholesterol when one eats a phytosterol-rich diet.