Types of Cholesterol
There is both good and bad cholesterol which means that it is important to be able to distinguish between each type and knows how it affects a person’s health and knows the ways and means to lower it in case such is required. The different types of cholesterol are LDL and HDL and the former is a bad type because when there is excess of it in a person’s blood it will build up in the inner walls of his or her arteries which can end up causing the blocking of the arteries and thus causes atherosclerosis that is not a desirable condition.
HDL In High Quantities May Prevent Heart Attacks
However, the good form of cholesterol is HDL, which when present in high quantities may actually aid in preventing heart attacks, though when the level of HDL is low, it can put the person at risk of experiencing a heart attack. There is another aspect to cholesterol and that is triglyceride, which is a type of fat that is obtained from the food that you eat and which is also produced in the body, and when there is a high level of triglycerides, you are at risk of having high total cholesterol in which you can get high LDL as well as low HDL, which is bad for your health.
In order to test your cholesterol level, you may need to take a test that is aimed at measuring your lipoproteins which are sorted according to their density. In case of high density, the ratio of proteins compared to fat will be high and high density lipoproteins or HDL is the good cholesterol which does the work required to help unblock your arteries and which also helps in getting rid of unwanted fat from the body.
On the other hand, low density lipoproteins or LDL which along with very low density lipoproteins or VLDL and triglycerides make up the bad cholesterol, which in high numbers will cause your arteries to be clogged and results in a heart attack as well as other diseases related to the heart. Of course, bad as well as good cholesterol will vary from one person to another and the main factors that affect how much of it you may have are being overweight, diets with plenty of saturated fats as well as cholesterol and absence of sufficient exercises as well as hereditary conditions. Also, cholesterol will also go up as a person becomes older and to control the level of it in your body it is advised to eat healthy foods and take plenty of exercises.
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