What Are Hdl Ldl And Vldl
HDL, LDL, and VLDL are lipoproteins. They are a combination of fat and protein. The lipids need to be attached to the proteins so they can move through the blood. Different types of lipoproteins have different purposes:
- HDL stands for high-density lipoprotein. It is sometimes called good cholesterol because it carries cholesterol from other parts of your body back to your liver. Your liver then removes the cholesterol from your body.
- LDL stands for low-density lipoprotein. It is sometimes called bad cholesterol because a high LDL level leads to the buildup of plaque in your arteries.
- VLDL stands for very low-density lipoprotein. Some people also call VLDL a bad cholesterol because it too contributes to the buildup of plaque in your arteries. But VLDL and LDL are different VLDL mainly carries triglycerides and LDL mainly carries cholesterol.
Family History And Cardiovascular Disease Risk
A personâs family history of disease can increase their tendency to develop:
- Diabetes.
- A particular body shape.
Although having a family history of CVD is a risk factor you canât change, it does not mean that you will develop it. However, if you do have a family history of CVD, it is important to reduce or remove other risk factors. For example, adopting healthy eating patterns, do not smoke, and lead an active, healthy lifestyle.
Heart Attacks And High Blood Cholesterol
A heart attack occurs when your heart muscle is starved off oxygen. It mainly arises as a consequence of coronary artery disease. The heart muscle needs a constant supply of blood laden with oxygen to continue functioning. This blood reaches the heart muscle through the coronary arteries.
With high blood cholesterol, you are more likely to develop a condition known as atherosclerosis. This is where fatty plaques develop in the artery wall thereby narrowing it. Atherosclerosis is more likely to occur in people who suffer from high blood cholesterol and high blood pressure .
The coronary artery narrows gradually over months and years. Eventually the fatty plaque may rupture and a blood clot forms at the site. This can instantly block the already narrowed coronary artery. The blood supply to the heart muscle is cut off which means that not enough oxygen is reaching the heart muscle. Eventually the affected portion of the muscle dies .
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Foods High In Fiber Low In Saturated Fat Can Lower Cholesterol
While saturated fat and dietary cholesterol both play a role in your cholesterol level, experts stress that the most important dietary change you can make to lower your cholesterol numbers is to adjust the overall pattern of your diet. Best is a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, fish, and whole grains. This helps in two ways. First, the more of these healthful foods you eat, the less you generally consume of foods that are high in saturated fat and highly refined carbohydrates, which both damage the cardiovascular system. Second, high-fiber foods help reduce your cholesterol level by making unhealthy dietary fats harder to absorb from the gut.
This doesn’t work for everyone, however. For people at high risk of heart disease, dietary efforts don’t come close to lowering cholesterol enough. Other people are genetically predisposed to having high blood cholesterol regardless of what they eat.
What Is Dangerously High Cholesterol
You may be diagnosed with borderline-high or high cholesterol if your blood test results show:
- Total cholesterol higher than 200 milligrams per deciliter
- LDL cholesterol higher than 100 mg/dL
- Triglycerides over 150 mg/dL
- HDL cholesterol lower than 40 mg/dL
But what do these numbers really mean for your health?
While having high cholesterol isnt something youll notice day to day, it does mean youre at risk for or may already have heart disease, the leading cause of death for both women and men in the United States.
Want to know more? Here are answers to 11 frequently asked questions about high cholesterol.
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Myth : Diabetes Won’t Cause Heart Disease If You Take Diabetes Medication
Diabetes medication helps lower blood sugar levels. Maintaining normal blood sugar levels is important for preventing complications that affect the smaller blood vessels , such as kidney disease, loss of vision, erectile dysfunction, and nerve damage.
But blood sugar control has less effect on the large blood vessels that become inflamed and diseased, increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke. “These vessels benefit more from lowering cholesterol and blood pressure,” says Dr. Alan Malabanan, a diabetes specialist at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
What you can do: Take your diabetes medication to prevent microvascular complications. Also do everything you can to lower high cholesterol and high blood pressure, stop smoking and drop extra weight. These measures will reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke.
Heart Disease: 12 Warning Signs That Appear On Your Skin
Warning signs can appear on your skin and nails, which is why your dermatologist may be the first doctor to notice that you have heart disease. If you know what to look for, you can also find warning signs of heart disease on your skin and nails. The following pictures show you what to look for.
Swelling in your feet and lower legsWhat it may be telling you: Your heart isnt working properly.Many diseases of the heart cause fluid to build up in your feet and lower legs. As the fluid builds up, you may see swelling, which can extend as far as the upper legs and groin.Medical name: Edema
Blue or purple color on your skinWhat it may be telling you: You have a blockage in a blood vessel.When youre extremely cold, your skin can turn blue . If an area of your skin is blue when youre warm, thats can be a sign your blood isnt getting enough oxygen. The patient in this photo has a condition known as blue toe syndrome, which happens when one or more blood vessels are blocked.Without treatment, the lack of oxygen can cause the skin and underlying tissue to eventually die.Medical name: Cyanosis
Nails curve downward and the ends of your fingers are swollenWhat it may be telling you: You may have a heart infection, heart disease, or lung problem.For many people, these signs are harmless. That said, if your fingers and nails look like this, its best to find out if you may have a medical condition, such as lung disease or a heart problem.Medical name: Clubbing
References
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Cholesterol And Heart Disease: Whats The Evidence
Posted on 2nd July 2018 by Sasha Lawson-Frost
The idea that high cholesterol causes heart disease is so widespread youd have thought it was pretty much an established fact by now. High cholesterol is listed as one of the five main risk factors for heart disease by the British Heart Foundation , and the NHS public guidelines on cholesterol claim that your risk of developing coronary heart disease rises as your bloods cholesterol level increases . In supermarkets, youll find a significant array of spreads, yoghurts and cereals which claim to improve your cholesterol levels and decrease your risk of heart disease.
But what actually is the evidence that having high cholesterol, or high LDL levels, increases your chance getting heart disease? You may be surprised to learn that the studies available to us do not all point towards a causal connection between high cholesterol and heart disease. Different studies point towards a number of conflicting conclusions, and ultimately the picture is a lot more complicated than most media on the topic would suggest.
Smoking And Cardiovascular Disease Risk
As well as causing cancer, smoking affects the arteries that supply blood to your heart and other parts of your body. It reduces the amount of oxygen in your blood and damages your artery walls.
Smoking increases your risk of heart attack, stroke and peripheral vascular disease â which can lead to gangrene and limb amputation).
Smoking makes your blood âstickierâ, causing blood cells to clump together. This slows blood flow through your arteries and makes blockages more common. Blockages may cause heart attack and stroke.
Smoking also makes your artery walls sticky, causing them to become clogged with fatty material called plaque or atheroma. Smokers often have cold hands or feet as a result of clogged arteries, which may also lead to serious problems such as gangrene.
If your coronary artery becomes clogged, it can cause angina. If a blood clot forms in the narrowed coronary artery and completely blocks the blood supply to a part of your heart, it can cause a heart attack.
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Study Says Theres No Link Between Cholesterol And Heart Disease
20 June, 2016By NT Contributor
Controversial report claims theres no link between bad cholesterol and heart disease, the Daily Mail reports, while The Times states: Bad cholesterol helps you live longer,.
Controversial report claims theres no link between bad cholesterol and heart disease, the Daily Mail reports, while The Times states: Bad cholesterol helps you live longer,.
The headlines are based on a new review which aimed to gather evidence from previous observational studies on whether LDLcholesterol was linked with mortality in older adults aged over 60. The conventional view is that having high LDL cholesterol levels increases your risk of dying of cardiovascular diseases, such as heart disease.
Researchers chose 30 studies in total to analyse. 28 studies looked at the link with death from any cause. Twelve found no link between LDL and mortality, but 16 actually found that lower LDL was linked with higher mortality risk the opposite to what was expected.
Only nine studies looked at cardiovascular mortality link specifically seven found no link and two found the opposite link to what was expected.
However, there are many important limitations to this review. This includes the possibility that the search methods may have missed relevant studies, not looking at levels of other blood fats , and the possibility that other health and lifestyle factors are influencing the link.
Can Smoking Cannabis Cause A Heart Attack
Studies on the effects of cannabis use on the body are generally short-term studies, so more research is needed for scientists to be able to make recommendations for patients with cardiovascular disease. In addition to that, the focus is also on potential interactions between cannabis and other medications like blood thinners, antidepressants, antipsychotics, antiarrhythmics, and statin drugs that lower cholesterol levels.
When talking about the connection between cannabis use and the potential of a heart attack, the AHA , will need more research in order to give a recommendation in regards to cannabis. Still, the AHA states that cannabis may influence heart health, and the CDCs position is that weed can affect the cardiovascular system as well as the heart rate and blood pressure.
One study done in 2001 by the Institute for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at Harvard Medical School in Boston found that smoking cannabis can result in an increased risk of a heart attack a few hours after cannabis use since it elevates the heart rate and blood pressure. The study states that cannabis use is a rare trigger of myocardial infarction. Other studies have also focussed on researching this subject, although as legalization laws increase, theres no doubt that more research will be done in the future.
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Living With High Cholesterol
If you have high cholesterol, you are twice as likely to develop heart disease. That is why it is important to have your cholesterol levels checked, especially if you have a family history of heart disease. Reducing your LDL bad cholesterol through good diet, exercise, and medicine can make a positive impact on your overall health.
Most Heart Attack Patients’ Cholesterol Levels Did Not Indicate Cardiac Risk
- Date:
- University of California – Los Angeles
- Summary:
- A new national study has shown that nearly 75 percent of patients hospitalized for a heart attack had cholesterol levels that would indicate they were not at high risk for a cardiovascular event, according to current national cholesterol guidelines.
A new national study has shown that nearly 75 percent of patients hospitalized for a heart attack had cholesterol levels that would indicate they were not at high risk for a cardiovascular event, based on current national cholesterol guidelines.
Specifically, these patients had low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels that met current guidelines, and close to half had LDL levels classified in guidelines as optimal .
“Almost 75 percent of heart attack patients fell within recommended targets for LDL cholesterol, demonstrating that the current guidelines may not be low enough to cut heart attack risk in most who could benefit,” said Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow, Eliot Corday Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Science at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study’s principal investigator.
Researchers also found that more than half of patients hospitalized for a heart attack had high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels characterized as poor by the national guidelines.
“The study gives us new insight and intervention ideas to help reduce the number of heart attacks,” said Fonarow, who is also director of the AhmansonUCLA Cardiomyopathy Center.
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Myth : You Can Lower Your Risk Of Heart Disease With Vitamins And Supplements
The antioxidant vitamins E, C, and beta carotene factor into lowering heart disease risk. However, clinical trials of supplementation with these vitamins have either failed to confirm benefit or were conducted in such a way that no conclusion could be drawn. The American Heart Association has stated that there is no scientific evidence to justify using these vitamins to prevent or treat cardiovascular disease.
What you can do: For reasons not yet understood, the body absorbs and utilizes vitamins and minerals best when they are acquired through foods. To ensure you get the vitamins and minerals you need, skip store-bought supplements and eat a wide variety of nutritious foods of every color of the rainbow.
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A Closer Look At Cholesterol
One issue at play here, says Susan Besser, MD, a primary care and family medicine doctor with Mercy Personal Physicians in Overlea, Maryland, is that your total cholesterol number isn’t the only number that matters.
“One can have normal total cholesterol but high ‘bad’ cholesterol and low ‘good’ cholesterol,” she says. “The excess bad cholesterol can cause plaque buildup and, over time, might cause blocked arteries.”
Inside the body, the low-density lipoprotein cholesterol is the one that can build up on the walls of the blood vessels and form plaque, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HDL cholesterol, on the other hand, is the one that can absorb harmful cholesterol and carry it to the liver, where it then gets flushed from the body. This is why it’s not only important to have normal or low total cholesterol levels, but also healthy ranges of both HDL and LDL cholesterol.
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I Am A Healthy Weight So I Cant Have High Cholesterol
Oh, yes you can! according to Dr. Greenfield. Cholesterol balance is really a function of what we eat but also our genetics. For example, a person can be born with a genetic tendency to not process cholesterol efficiently.
Because its genetic, he explained, it has been called familial hypercholesterolemia, and it might be as common as 1 in 200 people. Weight is more a function of your inherited metabolism and the balance between calories consumed and calories expended.
Dr. Paz concurred: Even if you have a healthy weight, your cholesterol can be abnormal. Other factors that impact your cholesterol are the foods you eat, your exercise habits, whether you smoke, and how much alcohol you drink.
Additionally, as Dr. Lajoie told us, people who have a healthy weight might have high cholesterol levels, while some people who have overweight may not have high cholesterol. Cholesterol levels are affected by genetics, thyroid function, medications, exercise, sleep, and diet, she explained.
There are also factors that you cannot modify and which can contribute to high cholesterol, like your age and your genetics, she continued.
How Does Smoking Marijuana Affect Cardiovascular Health
Even though all the health implications that come from cannabis use havent been fully researched, an article in the Harvard Heart letter gives an elaborate review of how cannabis affects cardiovascular health. Scientists have discovered that marijuana use in people who have established heart disease may experience chest pain, a higher risk of atrial fibrillation or ischemic stroke, an increased heart rate that results in dilating blood vessels which make the heart pump harder, as well as increasing the risk of heart attacks.
On the other hand, an article in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology states that more than two million Americans that have a history of heart disease have used or currently use cannabis. So, can the use of marijuana worsen their heart problems?
Since cannabis is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance that has no medical use by the Drug Enforcement Agency , there arent that many studies that focus on researching it and uncovering all its potential. For that reason, the American Heart Association published a study reviewing the use of recreational cannabis and possible cardiovascular health effects and suggested that the DEA remove the Schedule I substance classification.
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If I Eat Lots Of Cholesterol I Will Have High Cholesterol Levels
This topic is a little more complex than one might expect. The cholesterol one consumes does not necessarily directly correlate with cholesterol levels, Dr. Lajoie explained. Eating sugars, simple carbohydrates, can result in higher cholesterol levels, even if someone doesnt eat much cholesterol.
She also explained, People who exercise are less likely to see elevations in cholesterol from eating cholesterol compared with sedentary people.
According to Dr. Greenfield, if we consume more cholesterol, we will most likely increase cholesterol. He explained why:
You dont go to the store and buy a package of cholesterol, but you do buy red meat, cheeses, and eggs. Red meat contains saturated fat and cholesterol. Cholesterol is an animal product, so items that contain saturated fat will not only increase cholesterol but increase specifically the bad, or LDL, cholesterol, which then gets deposited in the arterial wall of our blood vessels.
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