Cholesterol

High blood cholesterol levels are an important risk factor for developing heart disease and unlike inherited you can do something about it.

You need cholesterol

Cholesterol is not some evil stuff that you have to flush out of your system at all costs. Cholesterol is important for your body to function. It forms part of the walls of the cells in the body. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on your point of view), your body makes enough cholesterol for all needs so you don’t actually need to eat much of it. So what happens to all that extra fat that you eat? Over time it’s laid down in the walls of your arteries including those that supply blood to your heart, brain and kidneys. (It’s also laid down around your middle, amongst other places, as fat but I’m sure you know that already.)

As the arteries get narrower and narrower, they may eventually get blocked. No blood gets through and this leads to an ischaemic stroke if it’s in the brain and a heart attack if it happens in the heart.

Cholesterol levels

Cholesterol travels around the blood combined with substances called lipoproteins:

1. Low density lipoproteins (LDL or bad cholesterol) – this carries most of the cholesterol in the body.
2. High density lipoproteins (HDH or good cholestrol) – this removes cholesterol from the blood so that it’s not deposited on the walls of the arteries.
3. Another type of fat you need to look out for are triglycerides.

This means that you want lots of HDL and as little LDL as possible.

Cholesterol levels vary in women according to their age:

1. below age 45 cholesterol in women is lower than in men
2. between age 45 and 55, cholesterol levels begin to be higher than in men
3. above 55 the gap in cholesterol levels increase even more with levels in women rising even more.