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Why Cholesterol Matters
Key facts
- Keeping cholesterol low ensures better blood circulation (and healthy sexual functioning).
- High cholesterol clogs arteries and increases risk of stroke, heart disease, and vascular disease.
- Cholesterol can be lowered.
- Heart disease is the number one killer in the United States.
Cholesterol: We turn 40 and our doctors tell us to have our levels checked every year. Everyone from our primary care physician to the U.S. Surgeon General tells us to keep track of LDL and HDL cholesterol. Why is it such an urgent issue?
For starters, cholesterol is one of the two fats carried in the bloodstream (the other is triglycerides) that are most strongly associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases, including heart disease and stroke. Because of this crucial link, cholesterol needs to be measured in everyone, starting in their late teens. Knowing your cholesterol levels in midlife can pay various health benefits. Perhaps the most crucial advantage of tracking cholesterol is that you can make quick changes should you be nearing, or already living with, high-risk levels. What's more, curbing cholesterol also helps cut your chances of developing heart disease and stroke. Getting a healthy handle on cholesterol now also reduces your risk of health complications from long-term hypertension or blood vessel damage.
Having cholesterol checked is particularly important if there is a family history of heart disease or predisposition to high cholesterol levels. As heart disease is the number one killer of Americans, learning to control high cholesterol through diet, exercise, and other lifestyle habits can prolong, or even save, your life.
Why you need cholesterol
A glistening, white soapy substance, cholesterol is used to build cells throughout the body. Most of our cholesterol is made in the liver, a multi-tasking organ that processes and filters chemicals. Cholesterol is also the substance around which our steroid hormones, including estrogen and testosterone, are formed. And, it's essential for normal functioning of bile acids and vitamin D, which helps your body absorb bone-building calcium.
Types of cholesterol
People over the age of 40 should have a full blood cholesterol test taken at least every other year, says Steven Hirsch, M.D., a staff physician at Structure House, a Durham, North Carolina, residential weight loss facility that specializes in healthy diet and lifestyle management. This measures overall cholesterol, triglycerides, and the level of High Density Lipoprotein (HDL), the good, health-protecting cholesterol. It also assesses LDL or Low Density Lipoprotein, which is the health-damaging, "bad" cholesterol.
When LDL oxidizes and burrows into the walls of already damaged arteries, it clogs those arteries even more. Although researchers can't explain why, high HDL levels somehow protect your arteries and inhibit some of the damage LDL can do. As for triglycerides, these are fats carried in the bloodstream via very low-density lipoproteins, or VLDL. "Although researchers are still unraveling the mysteries of VLDL levels, triglycerides are known to be bad for damaged arteries as well," says Art Hister, M.D., a Vancouver, British Columbia, physician and author of Midlife Man, (Douglas & McIntyre, Limited, 2000).
Know your score
After you get your cholesterol scores, the crucial points to remember are: High HDL means good news for your cardiovascular system; High LDL means you're at increased risk for heart disease and stroke. You want your HDL to be as high as possible, at least in the 40 to 50 range. Keep your LDL as low as possible--at 130 or below--unless you have diabetes or heart disease. In that case, the American Diabetes Association's new guidelines call for LDL of 100 or less. Total cholesterol should be at 200 or less.
Since high cholesterol does not produce any symptoms, you can still be slender and have dangerous cholesterol levels. What's more, if your family has a history of high cholesterol or heart disease, and you've never had your cholesterol checked, you may have already experienced damage. (You can have high cholesterol and high blood pressure even in your early 20s.) "What you don't know about cholesterol can hurt you," says Dr. Hirsch. "A person who has dangerous levels of total cholesterol, particularly high levels of LDL, and is not aware of the situation, is courting serious illness and risk of death by heart disease and stroke."
Key terms
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