You’ve probably been led to believe that you’re healthy if you have a high level of good cholesterol (HDL) and a low level of bad cholesterol (LDL).

Well, now the experts are pulling a switcheroo on us.

It turns out that in certain circumstances a higher level of HDL may be bad for you.

According to University of Chicago researchers, good cholesterol can vary in its quality. So it’s not necessarily true that the more HDL in your blood, the better.

Bad quality HDL can present a health risk because you may not be protected from heart disease. So you need to ask your doctor to check if your HDL is of the good or bad variety.

The researchers concluded that people with chronic diseases such as diabetes, kidney disease, or rheumatoid arthritis had HDL that was of lesser quality than that found in healthy people.

Basically, their research showed that good HDL reduces inflammation, but bad HDL doesn’t.

So that may be one reason why some individuals have perfect levels of cholesterol, but they still get heart disease.