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- Physiology, Cholesterol - (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470561/)
- About Cholesterol - (https://www.cdc.gov/cholesterol/about.htm)
- Cholesterol - (https://medlineplus.gov/cholesterol.html)
- Diabetes, heart disease and stroke - (https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/diabetes/overview/preventing-problems/heart-disease-stroke )
- HDL- The “Good” cholesterol - (https://medlineplus.gov/hdlthegoodcholesterol.html )
- Raised Cholesterol - (https://www.who.int/data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr-details/3236)
- Prevalence and incidence of dyslipidaemia among adults in Africa: a systematic review and meta-analysis protocol. - (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4368904/ )
Cholesterol is an essential fatty substance found in your blood that is crucial for the production of cell membranes, certain hormones, and vitamin D(1✔). However, an imbalance in the types of cholesterol circulating in the blood, can contribute to the accumulation of plaques in the arteries, increasing the risk of heart diseases, including heart attacks and strokes.To use this cholesterol calculator for assessing heart disease risk, you will need to know some cholesterol numbers from a recent lab test called lipid profile test. It included - High density cholesterol (good cholesterol), low density cholesterol (LDL) and triglycerides (bad for you), and total cholesterol which is a combination of good and bad cholesterol in your blood. Simply put, a high total cholesterol number increases your risk for heart disease and stroke many fold.
Must Know Facts about Cholesterol
- Cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance that is made in the liver(2✔). You can also get cholesterol from meat, eggs, milk and other dairy products.
- A healthy cholesterol level helps the body produce sex hormones (progesterone, estrogen, and testosterone), serves as a building block for tissues and helps produce bile in the liver(1✔).
- Cholesterol levels are affected by age, gender and heredity. Other factors include diet, weight and physical activity(3✔).
- Increased LDL cholesterol and triglycerides raise the risk of heart disease and stroke(4✔).
- HDL cholesterol is considered good cholesterol because it helps in removing bad cholesterol from the blood and high HDL is shown to protect against stroke and heart attack(5✔).
- Worldwide a third of ischemic heart disease is attributed to high cholesterol(6✔).
- WHO estimates raised cholesterol levels as causing 2.6 million deaths and 29.7 million disability adjusted life years (DALY). One DALY roughly equals one lost year of healthy life(7✔).
Tips to lower your cholesterol
| ❖ | Avoid or limit food containing saturated fats like fatty and processed meats, deep-fried foods, cakes, biscuits and pastries. |
| ❖ | It is not necessary to avoid all your dairy foods. In fact, dairy foods play a vital role in supplying many essential nutrients to the body. |
| ❖ | Polyunsaturated oils like sunflower oil and safflower oil are known to reduce your cholesterol. It is found that oats and legumes reduce LDL cholesterol by 5 percent. |
| ❖ | Lifestyle changes can help increase your HDL cholesterol (good cholesterol) and lower your LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol) and Triglycerides. Recommended lifestyle changes include:
|
| ❖ | If you have elevated cholesterol due to the genetic factor, consult your physician to prescribe medications to bring down the cholesterol level. |
Hmm, evidently my triglycerides are "invalid" at only 48 mg/dl, so this calculator will not work for me. Also, this calculator is missing vLDL [AKA: sdLDL], which is a very important metric. Again, mine are very low (10 mg/dl) The idea that LDL cholesterol is somehow inherently evil, is like saying that chlorophyll is bad for plants. It is in EVERY cell wall of your body. Most cells can even produce it. LDL is only bad if it is oxidized (See: Seed oils, sugar, and other oxidative stressors). Oxidized LDL can either be determined by doing a particle count (very expensive, only a few labs can even do it), or you can infer it by just looking at the SD-LDL and Triglycerides to HDL RATIOS. So you don't need extremely high HDL levels, if your Trigs and sdLDL/vLDL are extremely low.