Inside your arteries there’s a battle going on. LDLs are the enemy force, and HDLs the defenders. If your ratio of “enemies” to “defenders” is favorable, you win—plaque will not form. Here’s how it plays out. VLDLs, produced in the liver,...
Lovely Tangier Island off the coast of Virginia offers a glimpse of a simpler life, where golf carts are the preferred mode of travel, residents speak with a unique Old English dialect, three-quarters of the population share one of four last...
You don’t really need to remember all of the nitty-gritty details on the various types of cholesterol, just the bottom line: If your cholesterol levels are out of whack, you’re heart disease risk is increased. Exactly how cholesterol wreaks havoc is...
Generally, your doctor will order a cholesterol test as part of your routine health exam. You should fast for 9 to 12 hours before the test. If you’ve recently had a stroke, surgery, infection, weight loss, pregnancy, or a change in...
Eat too much and you gain weight, It’s one of the simplest facts in medicine, But the repercussions of gluttony go beyond weight gain. When you eat more calories than you need, your body converts them into a form of fat...
As if HDL, LDL, and VLDL weren’t enough to track, researchers are discovering other types of lipoproteins that play a role in your CHD risk. Again, the standard cholesterol test doesn’t measure them, but most are included in a complete lipid...
Like so many things, cholesterol isn’t bad for you unless there’s too much of it, at which point it begins to cause trouble. The story isn’t quite that simple, however. As you probably already know, there are different kinds of cholesterol—some...
Although cholesterol has gotten a bad rap over the years, it’s not, by itself, a badthing. Cholesterol is a soft, faintly yellow, naturally occurring waxy substance found it cell walls and membranes throughout your body, including your brain, nerves, muscles, skin,...
Myth: Cholesterol is inherently bad.Reality: All mammals need cholesterol to survive.Myth: High cholesterol is dangerous.Reality: High cholesterol is not a problem by itself. But an unfavorable ratio of “good” to “bad” cholesterol, along with factors such as your weight, the amount...
We all walk around with lots of numbers in our head, and for many of us, in the last 10 years or so our “cholesterol number” became one of them. Because as almost everyone knows, too much cholesterol gums up the...
