What is cholesterol?

Cholesterol are the oily deposits found in our blood.  Your body needs adequate amount of cholesterol to produce hormones, vitamins, bile and more. Similarly, cholesterol is important to regulate the health of your cell membranes. The cholesterol is already made by your body. The amount of cholesterol you need is naturally present in foods like egg yolk, cheddar cheese and meat etc.

If you have the high quantity of cholesterol in your blood, then it might deposit in the form of plaque in your blood. If the plaque keeps on building, it will cover the inner surface of your blood vessels. As a result, a condition called atherosclerosis might occur. This can also result in coronary artery problems, where the vessels leading to or going away from your heart become bound or even hindered because of the plaque. A combination of many factors might raise your danger for high cholesterol:

  1. Age – Your cholesterol levels usually increase as you age. Even active people including youngsters and adolescents, can also have high cholesterol levels.
  2. Hereditary factor. High blood cholesterol can run in families.
  3. Being overweight or obese can increase the risk of high cholesterol level.
  4. Certain races may have an all-inclusive danger of raised cholesterol. For instance, African Americans usually have higher cholesterol levels than other races.

Main causes of high cholesterol

The main causes of high cholesterol are usually from your daily life activities and habits without you knowing them, such as:

  • Unhealthy dietary models, for example, eating large amounts of processed and ultra-processed fats. Another sort, trans fat, is in some consumed and organized food sources. Eating these fats can raise your LDL (or bad) cholesterol.
  • Lack of genuine work, with loads of sitting and little exercise. This chops down your HDL (good) cholesterol.
  • Smoking, which chops down HDL cholesterol, particularly in ladies. Reduced HDL means unchecked LDL or bad cholesterol.
  • Inborn attributes may besides make individuals have raised cholesterol. For instance, familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) is an acquired kind of raised cholesterol. Various disease and certain medications may correspondingly cause raised cholesterol.

How do I cut down my cholesterol?

You can reduce your cholesterol through making small lifestyle changes. These include regular exercise, dynamic work routine, diet rich in fibers and proteins and reducing fatty food intake.

If these small changes alone aren’t helpful in bringing down your cholesterol to a normal level, you may additionally have to take medications. There two or three kinds of cholesterol managing medications, including statins. Natural foods such as grapefruits contains high amounts of statins, drinking fresh grapefruit juice might also help in preventing cholesterol.

The people who are affected by the FH condition might get a special therapy named as lipoprotein aprehesis. This treatment works by breaking down LDL cholesterol present in your blood stream when the blood passes through a machine. Then the cleaned-up blood is again pumped back into the body.

Why healthy levels of cholesterol are good for your health?

  • In our body cholesterol is important for our cell membranes. It maintains and replenishes the health of our cell membranes. The basic function of which is to give protection to the cell.
  • It is also used to make bile, which helps you digest the fatty foods.
  • Steroidal hormones needed by the body are also made by cholesterol.
  • Cholesterol is also useful in making Vitamin D which maintains your bone health. [1]

Kinds of cholesterol

Cholesterol is carried by the lipoproteins in the blood throughout the body.  Lipoproteins can be of high density or low density. The low-density lipoprotein or LDL is the basic lipoprotein also known as bad cholesterol. High-density lipoprotein (HDL) is the other lipoprotein also known as good cholesterol.  VLDL or very low-density lipoprotein carry oily substances in the blood.

You should check your cholesterol level after every five years after the age of 20. After regular checking you are able to know that how much cholesterol is present in your circulatory system. The lab test performed to measure the levels of cholesterol in your blood is known as lipid profile. The results of a lipid profile contain following things.

  • Full quantity of cholesterol.
  • Levels of low-density lipoprotein.
  • Levels of high-density lipoprotein.
  • Oily substances and level of very low-density lipoprotein.
  • Cholesterol with non-high-density lipoprotein.
  • The proportional between cholesterol and high-density cholesterol.

How is raised cholesterol treated?

There are several different ways to deal with high blood cholesterol (complete cholesterol), including the lifestyle changes or medical treatment, or both. Your doctor will work with you to figure out which treatment (or a mix of drugs) is best for you. Doctors usually prefer non-medicated treatment options in case they do not work, only then you’re switched to medicines. You’ll be asked to:

  • Avoid tobacco. On the off chance that you do smoke, quit. Smoking is frightful for you from various perspectives, and reducing your degree of good cholesterol is one of them.
  • Change your diet. Cutoff the amount of trans fats and saturated fats. Eat healthy food like vegetables, poultry, fish, and entire grains. Avoid excessive consumption of red meat, sweet things, and dairy things made with entire milk.
  • Maintain healthy weight.
  • Reduce the amount of stress in your daily life. Avoid negative feelings because in general they affect your blood cholesterol levels. [2]

Medications

There are several kinds of medications that are used to treat raised cholesterol levels. Statins are conceivably the most important class of medicines in this regard. Statins work by diminishing the extent of cholesterol made by the liver.

Bile reducing sequestrates are another class of prescription drug that are used to treat raised cholesterol levels. On the other hand, fiber medications is one of the best ways to cut down your bad cholesterol.

 

[1] https://www.healthline.com/health/high-cholesterol/why-is-cholesterol-needed

[2] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/11920-cholesterol-numbers-what-do-they-mean