A good word to describe Christopher Lloyd's character Jim Ignatowski on the sitcom "Taxi" would be "disheveled."

More to the point, he's a mess — harmless when he's fixing taxis around the garage, just don't let him drive.

But when a hard-driving protein named Dishevelled (we're not kidding) meets up with cholesterol — that can add up to a pretty harmful collision.

It's been understood for some time that a high-fat lifestyle (poor nutrition and obesity) increases your risk for cancer of the esophagus, liver, gallbladder, pancreas, thyroid, ovaries, colon, kidneys, uterus, and breasts (in postmenopausal women)

That combination also increases your chances of gastric cardia, a cancer of the part of the stomach closest to the esophagus; meningioma, a usually benign type of brain tumor; and multiple myeloma, a blood cancer.

So if fending off a heart attack and stroke aren't enough of an incentive to keep tabs on your waist size and your LDL cholesterol level, here's another big one: Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago have published a study in Nature Communications that reveals Dishevelled's role in the activation of a cell-signaling pathway linked to cancer.

Your goal should be to keep your LDL less than 100 mg/dL.

How do you do that?

Avoid all added sugars and syrups, most sat and all trans fats, and any grain that isn't 100 percent whole); eat 5 to 9 servings of produce a day; walk 10,000 steps daily or the equivalent; and do two to three 30-minute strength-building sessions a week.

That should straighten you out.