What Is Bad Cholesterol?

We all now know the importance of trying to reduce cholesterol and many of us actively take actions to achieve normal cholesterol levels in our blood. The questions oftenly asked: “Is there bad cholesterol? And what is it? What the difference with good cholesterol?”

Cholesterol circulates in our blood attached to a protein called a lipoprotein. There are two types of lipoprotein mostly mentioned while discussing cholesterol: high density lipoprotein (HDL) and low density lipoprotein (LDL). HDL is usually labeled as “good cholesterol” because the molecule is mostly protein and does not carry a high quantity of free fat along with it. Meanwhile LDL is often referred to as “bad cholesterol“. LDL is a molecule that only has a small amount of protein and for the most part is made of freely available and very easily dissolved cholesterol fat.

If you have a lot of good cholesterol or HDL in your system then your heart will be quite well protected from the effects of fat. If you have a lot of LDL – or bad cholesterol - then you will be at greater risk of heart disease such as heart attack or stroke. If you are having a cholesterol check or cholesterol blood test, the doctor will look at your blood test result and check the level of the Total Cholesterol count. He or she will then examine the count for the level of the good cholesterol or HDL. The ratio of the total cholesterol divided by the HDL level is thought to be a reflection of the “true cholesterol level” in your blood and as such is a good predictor of future heart attack or stroke problems.

For example – for UK values, a total cholesterol count of 6.0 and an HDL count of 1.5 will give a ratio of 4.0. If you have high cholesterol count (higher than those numbers), it’s time to get focused to get lower cholesterol and take steps to change your lifestyle now.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 2nd, 2012 at 8:10 am and is filed under LDL cholesterol. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.