subject: Good Cholesterol, Bad Cholesterol And Your Heart [print this page] Unlike what many people think, cholesterol is not a form of fat. Cholesterol is a form of transporting fat. You see, if you mix fat with water it won't actually mix and the fat will all clog on top of the water. Imagine now this happening inside your blood - it would totally ruin it!
So Nature found a way of mixing fat with water, and that's by combining fat inside a big sphere of protein and a special kind of fat, which can form round particles that mix with water on one side and with fat on the other. This is what is called cholesterol
The different types of cholesterol vary on the proteins that are part of them and on the ratio of protein to fat.
HDL, the good cholesterol, has more protein than fat and is very small. HDL's function is to transport fat from around your body to your liver, to transform it into energy.
LDL, on the other hand, has more fat than protein and is somewhat large. Its function is to transport fat in order for it to be stored.
There are also other forms of cholesterol (VLDL, IDL and quilomicrons), but they are not nearly as important as HDL and LDL. And that's because LDL greatly increases cardiovascular disease, while HDL does the opposite.
You see, when there are loads of LDL particles in your blood, they get inside the walls of your arteries. The cells there don't like it and they begin fighting LDL as if it was a bacteria.
This leads to thickening of the walls and the formation of plaques, in a process known as atherogenesis. This is the path to atherosclerosis.
In your coronary arteries (which supply your heart), plaques will limit the flow of blood, which means that your heart won't have enough blood when it needs to do some extra work. The same happens with your brain and kidneys.
Atherosclerosis also increases your blood pressure, because the same blood must now circulate in smaller arteries.
There is also the danger that these plaques break apart and go through your arteries until they find one small enough to obstruct the passage of blood.
This can mean a stroke, a heart attack or the death of some other part of your body, like the eye or one foot.
For all these reasons, you really need to watch out for your cholesterol. Eat few saturated fats, prefer vegetable protein to animal protein, avoiding especially meat, and eat lots of fiber.
Exercise will be a big help too. Take a 30 minutes walk,join the gym ,are among the the best options.
It is entirely up to you to protect yourself from this risk factor and prevent yourself from heart disease.Take the right action!
