Why Tracking Your Cholesterol Is So Important

Let’s start with some good news when it comes to heart health — a whopping 80% of cardiovascular disease, including heart disease, is preventable. Yet heart disease is still the leading cause of death in the United States, and one reason is that people are unaware of their heightened risks.

At LaSante Health Center, our multidisciplinary team, which includes cardiology specialists, prefers a preventive approach to cardiovascular disease. A good way to start is to track some all-important numbers, such as blood pressure and cholesterol (lipids).

Since September is Cholesterol Education Month in the US, we’re going to start there and review what these numbers mean and how you can better manage them.

Cholesterol — when there’s too much of a good thing

We first want to explain what cholesterol is and the important role it plays in your body. To start, some cholesterol is essential, because your body uses this waxy substance to make vitamins and hormones. 

To accomplish this, your liver produces all the cholesterol your body needs and flushes out any excess. Where you might run into problems is adding too much cholesterol through your diet. This dietary cholesterol comes from animal products, such as meats and dairy products. And foods containing saturated and trans fats increase cholesterol, too.

When you take in excess cholesterol from outside sources, the waxy substance can accumulate in your bloodstream and bind with other substances to create plaques that build up in your blood vessels. 

When this happens, your blood vessels can narrow, a condition called atherosclerosis, which places you at much higher risk for heart attack and stroke.

Understanding the different types of cholesterol

Making matters a little more complex, there are two types of cholesterol:

• Low-density lipoproteins (LDLs)
• High-density lipoproteins (HDLs)

In basic terms, LDLs inhabit your bloodstream, and HDLs cart off any excess LDLs. To strike the right balance, you want a lower number of LDLs and a higher number of HDLs. 

So a cholesterol problem isn’t necessarily one of too much cholesterol. You can have poor cholesterol if your HDL numbers are too low, even though your LDL numbers are within healthy ranges.

By the numbers, we want to see LDL below 100mg/dL and HDL above 60mg/dL. So any total reading under 200 is considered heart-healthy, 200-240 means you’re at higher risk for heart disease, and above 240 is dangerous territory.

Unfortunately, about 86 million adults in the US have total cholesterol numbers over 200.

Tracking and managing your cholesterol

To measure your cholesterol numbers, we draw some blood and send it to our lab for a lipid panel. This is a simple step that could save your life, since there are no outward signs of dangerous cholesterol levels. All too often a heart attack or stroke is the first indication.

Once we review your results and if we see problematic levels, we can take steps to manage and reverse your cholesterol numbers. The good news is that lifestyle and diet changes are often enough to wrangle cholesterol numbers to within healthy ranges. 

We can also prescribe medications that go a long way toward lowering dangerous cholesterol levels in your blood.

If you want to get on a heart-healthy path, managing your cholesterol is a good place to start, and we can help. To begin, book an appointment online or call us at our Brooklyn, New York, clinic at 718-395-5071. 

We also welcome walk-ins during our hours of operation.  Our team proudly serves the Flatbush and East Flatbush, Crown Heights, Park Slope, Little Haiti, Little Caribbean, and Prospect Lefferts Gardens communities.