High Cholesterol: A silent killer

High cholesterol can have the worst kind of symptoms of all - that is: no symptoms. Unless you have a cholesterol test and are sure that you have a normal cholesterol level in your bloodstream, you may be carrying what amounts to a silent killer inside your body.

Although high cholesterol by itself will usually not show any symptoms, the damage caused by the problem has many symptoms. When cholesterol deposits block the arteries and capillaries leading to the heart, blood flow to the heart becomes difficult. Patients experience differing degrees of chest pain, numbness in the arms, shoulders and jaws, and shortness of breath. These are not high cholesterol symptoms, these are symptoms of serious heart disease.

All healthy people have cholesterol in their bodies. Cholesterol is a fatty substance or lipid that is important to the body's digestive processes. The life-threatening problems begin when this complex substance gets out of balance in the bloodstream. This frequently occurs when the cholesterol manufactured inside the body is combined with an excess of cholesterol from food high in cholesterol. The body's cholesterol level is a measure of low density lipids (LDL) and high density lipids (HDL). The healthy body has a high level of HDL cholesterol - also called good cholesterol - and a low measurement of LDL cholesterol. The balance can be achieved through a combination of a low cholesterol diet featuring foods that lower cholesterol and cholesterol lowering drugs. Cholesterol medicine alone can't do the job if the patient continues to eat high cholesterol foods. There are many ways to lower cholesterol. You can lower cholesterol naturally by eating cholesterol lowering food and keeping up a regular exercise routine. You can also follow that up with regular doses of a doctor prescribed cholesterol lowering drug.

--M.A.D.