About Cholesterol and Heart Disease
What is cholesterol? It’s a natural waxy substance present everywhere in the body, including the membranes, cell walls, skin, liver, muscles, nerves, brain and heart. Your heart needs cholesterol to function properly. So, in spite of what many people think, “cholesterol” doesn’t always mean “bad.”
This substance is irreplaceable in the production of vitamin D (originates in the body), metabolism of fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K), some kinds of hormones and bile acids that break up fat. When there is an excess of blood cholesterol, your body stores it in the heart arteries, which in the long term leads to their blockage. The blockage can then cause heart disease, as the vessels become narrower and the blood is pumped at a slower rate. So, there is a connection between cholesterol and heart disease.
• CHD (Coronary heart disease) is the condition when the heart arteries (coronary arteries) are narrowed because of the presence of cholesterol and fat deposits on the walls. Therefore, the delivery of oxygen and vital nutrients is affected. The narrowing gets hardened with time, and causes chest pain, called angina. If the narrowing hasn’t been calcified yet, unstable atherosclerotic plaques can be found inside. These can rupture, form clots, stop the blood flow and result in a heart attack.
Angina is a painful constriction or tightness somewhere in your body that results from the blood not being able to reach the heart.
Heart attack is a more serious case, as the blockage stops the flow of blood completely, and help should be immediate. An unstable plaque or a blood clot may be the reason of such a blockage.
• If you need to find out whether you have a high or low cholesterol level, there is a simple blood test designed for that. Your LDL (low-density lipoprotein), HDL (high-density lipoprotein), total cholesterol and triglycerides (fatty substance in the blood) will all be measured during this test. It’s generally recommended to every person to go through this test every five years. However, it’s not enough to learn how much cholesterol you have; you also need to know whether these are normal cholesterol levels.
National Institutes of Health came up with the National Cholesterol Education Program providing cholesterol guidelines, which are aimed at helping people and giving them reliable information about total cholesterol, their LDL, HDL, triglycerides, as well as their interdependence. The combination of all these numbers is called a lipoprotein profile, and the recommendations that you will be provided with (depending on this profile) will help you make modifications in your lifestyle and stay healthy.
So, what are the normal cholesterol levels? 200 mg/dL or lower is the total blood cholesterol level considered healthy. LDL should be 100 mg/dL (160 is too high), while HDL is supposed to be 40 mg/dL or higher, as the higher level you have, the lower your risk of suffering from heart disease is. When measuring cholesterol, any part of it contained in HDL particles is considered to be a protection to your cardiovascular health.
Nowadays many US citizens have really high levels of cholesterol affecting the heart. This happens because their diet contains high amounts of saturated fat, a lot of which is found in such products as cream, cheese, butter, animal fats, fatty meat, chocolate and others. Trans-fatty acids can be found in fast food and are known to significantly increase the levels of cholesterol in your blood. Dietary cholesterol can be found exclusively in foods from animal products. Heart attacks are caused by high levels of cholesterol, which is influenced by the kind of food you eat and how much of saturated fats it contains.
If you are willing to reduce your blood cholesterol levels, the best way to do it is to exclude the foods that contain bad cholesterol and saturated acids from your diet. However, it’s not only the food you eat; it’s also the genetic predisposition that can matter. More often, though, it’s a combination of both factors.
• It has been proved that high cholesterol levels are dangerous for your health.
It has been established after many studies that high blood cholesterol contributes to the probability of developing CHD. The risk increases proportionally to the level of cholesterol: the higher it is, the more likely you are to suffer from this condition.
The Lipid Research Clinics-Coronary Primary Prevention Trial also confirmed that CHD and high blood cholesterol are directly connected, so when the total amount of cholesterol and LDL is lowered, the risk reduces. Trials have been conducted to establish the benefits of low cholesterol level, and these include:
- Lower risk of having a heart attack
- Lower risk of dying of CHD-related conditions
- No need to have a surgery or angioplasty
Scientific research devoted to cholesterol levels established that people who do not suffer from heart disease can reduce the risk of ever developing it by keeping their levels of cholesterols under control.
• Is high cholesterol more common for some people?
In some countries people can have traditionally high or traditionally low levels of cholesterol. Japan is one of the countries with the lowest rates of heart disease, whereas people in Finland have very high cholesterol levels and the rate of heart disease is high. However, it is thought that this may have to do with a combination of factors, not all of which have been identified.
Speaking of age, women older than 55 and men younger than 55 are more susceptible to heart disease than other age groups.
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