sunblock

If you're like me, then you can get a sunburn under flourescent lights at night.  I'm about as white as you can get without being a full albino.  Red hair, freckles, giant muscles, the works.  I sunburn easily, is what I'm getting at.

So I use sunscreen.  I always have.  It's either that or wear clothing from head to toe all the time.  Since I'm a shorts, t-shirt, and sandals kinda guy, that's not gonna happen.  Tevas rule my world.  My wife has a closet full of shoes of all descriptions.  I have a huge assortment of Teva sandals, some steel-toed boots, and some slip-on winter shoes.

Alright, I'm getting a little off subject here.  I was talking about sunscreen.

The normal sunscreen you buy in the store–the stuff that comes in a bottle–is either rubbed in or sprayed on.  In either case, if you look at the active ingredients list, you'll see things like "Avobenzone" and "Homosalate" and "Octocrylene."

In this part, we'll look at myths surrounding bad cholesterol, eggs, dairy products and sun-blocks.
 

Bad cholesterol is the cause of heart disease.

The TRUTH: Like fats, cholesterol may be damaged by exposure to heat, oxygen and free radicals. Both good and bad cholesterol are not immune to such exposure.

Free radicals are what's in the air and around food, that causes this oxidization; free radicals cause your freshly-cut apples to go brown (an obvious sign of oxidization). The free radicals make dairy products more "sticky" and tend to stick to the walls of arteries.  This sticky stuff is known as 'plaque'. You can see the plaque stuck in diseased hearts from post mortem-ed bodies of heart attack victims (my uncle was one, he was just 41 when he passed away and he ate a lot of meat in his heydays). 

The plaque found in diseased arteries and hearts can range from yellow to white - exactly the same colours of those found in cheese and milk (read more below!)

The oxidization of cholesterol (fats) is what contributes to the pathological buildup of plaque in the arteries. It's not whether good or bad cholesterol; it's whether the fat is oxidized.