What Is High Cholesterol
What is high cholesterol? To understand what high cholesterol is, we first need to know what cholesterol is.
Cholesterol is fat-like, waxy stuff that is found in all the cells of your body. Your body needs a healthy amount of cholesterol to make Vitamin D, hormones and other chemicals required to help you digest foods.
Blood in contrast has the characteristic of being watery. Water and oil don’t mix, and neither does blood and cholesterol. To get cholesterol to flow in the blood stream, it is carried in lipoproteins.
High Cholesterol Information
There are two different types of lipoproteins:
- Low Density Lipoprotein or LDL for short. This is the bad type of cholesterol. To much of it will build up in arteries, much like slug will build up in slow points of a stream. The real problems result from this LDL buildup occurring to the point where it completely blocks arteries or if pieces break off and cause blockages to smaller vessels. The end result is heart and stroke conditions.
- High Density Lipoprotein or HDL for short. This type of cholesterol has the job of carrying cholesterol from other parts of your body back to your liver. The liver then removes the cholesterol from your body. The higher your HDL levels are, the lower your chances of contracting heart disease.
High Cholesterol Cause
High cholesterol causes are mainly linked to a high-fat diet, an underactive kidney, thyroid or liver disease or it could simply be heredity.
- Hereditary high cholesterol - Your genes determine how high your LDL level is by affecting how fast LDL is made and removed from the blood.
- High in cholesterol foods - Excess weight because of eating to much foods that are high-fat and a lack of exercise will moderately increase your LDL levels.
For the layperson, we seek to have high HDL cholesterol which is the good cholesterol and not high ldl cholesterol which is the high bad cholesterol. It’s easy to confuse the two, so this article, for me at least, is a good reminder of which is bad high cholesterol.
High Cholesterol Risks
Don’t kid yourself, high cholesterol is a silent and deadly killer. I’ve seen the devastation within my own family. Heart attack and stroke are serious conditions that can take away you or a loved one forever. Before routine cholesterol screening, we didn’t know the reason why things like my grandfather passing away at 54. He also had a minor stroke in his mid 40’s. Now we know.
How To Lower High Cholesterol
Looking at the above causes for high cholesterol, prevention falls into three categories:
- Proper diet and exercise. This tag team seems to be the cure for many minor and serious problems. For you it maybe the cure. I would recommend consulting your physician for more advice.
- Body malfunction. Your doctor would be the source for diagnosis and treatment recommendation.
- Hereditary. Thanks to your genes, you may have high cholesterol like myself. Sometimes, diet and exercise can make a difference, and sometimes you will have to consider a drug therapy plan that will control your cholesterol levels. It’s a little difficult to get into, simply because when you have high cholesterol, you feel perfectly fine. Don’t kid yourself though. The alternative is much worse.
This information does not replace the advice of your local physician. I will not be held responsible for errors or omissions.
Please feel free to add in your comments and questions below! I welcome them.
