Aaron Hartman, MDFunctional Medicine Specialist | Clinical Researcher

90% of Your Cholesterol Is Made by Your Body — Not Eaten #shorts

27 May 2026 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

1:34

In this YouTube Short, Dr. Aaron Hartman explains that roughly 90% of the cholesterol found in the human body is produced internally, primarily by the liver, and that much of this production is a response to inflammation, serving as part of the innate immune system. He critiques the 1977 U.S. Dietary Goals that promoted low‑fat diets, noting that the resulting shift toward high‑carbohydrate, heavily processed foods coincided with a dramatic rise in obesity (from 15% in 1980 to 30% in 2000) and a tripling of diabetes rates over the same period. Hartman shares a personal anecdote about a respected cardiology professor who dismissed diet’s importance while smoking, illustrating how even top experts can hold fundamental misconceptions. He urges viewers to recognize these “blind spots,” connect the dots between policy, nutrition, and health outcomes, and to seek further education on the topic, ending with a call to like, share, and subscribe for more content on misunderstood medical truths.

Chapters

90% of cholesterol is actually made in your body, not consumed in your diet. And of all that, your liver makes a significant portion of it. And a lot of it is your liver's response to inflammation. Cholesterol is a part of your body's innate immune system and helps fight off infections. So how do we get this cholesterol story so wrong? In 1977, Dietary Goals were recommended to the United States, recommending low-fat diets. Let's cut out the fats, replace it with what? Well, carbs. And that's when cereal foods exploded. That's also when a lot of processing and food was already going on, but it exploded as well. And the obesity rates doubled between that— between 1980, 15% in 1980 to 30% in 2000. So literally, over this short period of time, over 20 years, we doubled obesity in our country while diabetes rates tripled. Think about that for a second. Obesity doubled, diabetes tripled from a small change— cutting out healthy fats and putting lots of carbs in there. The question for, for Happy is this: are there other dietary recommendations that experts are giving you? Sometimes even your cardiologist— I remember when I was in medical school at the Medical College of Virginia, learned from the top cardiologist, that institution, one of the top on the East Coast, that diet didn't matter. And after school break, he'd go out and smoke his, his own cigar. Point is, even some of the smartest experts can get the most basic things wrong. How can you help yourself? How can you be safe, how you can help defend yourself from these. You have to learn about the blind spots, learn to connect the dots. That's one of the things we do. So if you wanna learn more about that, like, share, subscribe, and we'll keep on talking through blind spots, things that we got wrong that we should have got right.