High Cholesterol Caused Conditions
Having a high level of cholesterol is never good news. It is a well-accepted fact that an elevated blood level of cholesterol is associated with several and serious cardiovascular diseases. This means that high cholesterol caused conditions mainly involve the heart and blood vessels but may sometimes extend to some other organs like the brain in the form of a thrombus.
The genes play a major role in determining the levels of cholesterol in the body and so does lifestyle and age. Initially, a high level of blood cholesterol makes the blood thicker. A thick blood is harder to transport, so a higher pressure is needed to distribute them throughout the body. Cholesterol also has a way of binding with cells, making the lipid bilayer stronger but less fluid under normal temperature. This contributes to the development of atherosclerosis.
LDL, the bad cholesterol, transports fat cells from the liver throughout the body. It is like a garbage truck roaming around our system. Only, it is not collecting garbage but is spreading them everywhere. However, the good guy, going by the name of HDL, collects these fats and puts them back to the liver to be turned into bile or discarded from the body. But this is only significantly beneficial to ones health if there is more HDL than there is LDL.
If the LDL is present in dangerous levels within the blood, fats are stored everywhere, especially in the blood vessels. This is the major cause of atherosclerosis and is one of the most common high cholesterol caused conditions. Atherosclerosis causes the blood vessel to harden through the formation of plaque, robbing it of its ability to dilate or constrict. This causes high blood pressure due to the narrowing of the passage.
Now, visualize that a plaque forms in a specific blood vessel and that the blood vessel is one of the arteries of your heart—congratulations, you now have a heart disease! Specifically, it is known as coronary artery disease (CAD). Now, imagine that the blockage caused by the atherosclerosis has become so advanced that it now hinders the passage of enough blood into your heart muscles. Your chest begins to hurt. It’s like someone put all the members of the Nutty Professor’s family over your chest. Breathing becomes labored. It burns and it feels like your chest is being squeezed. That is called angina.
Angina pectoris is caused by the lack of oxygen supplied to your heart and oftentimes it is caused by some form of blockage of the blood vessels, as in the case of atherosclerosis. Now, visualize that this has occurred several times to you already and that you didn’t even bother to get help or change what you eat and your overall lifestyle. For the next time you get chest pains, only this time it radiates to your jaw going to your shoulder, down to your arms or back. You run short of breath for no reason at all. You sweat like you’re melting and you feel like passing out. You don’t know what to do; you panic because the pain is longer and more intense than before. That is the real deal. You just had a heart attack due to a myocardial infarction.
Myocardial infarction is the death of some of the tissues of the heart. They can no longer be treated because they’re already dead. This is the next worst thing that could happen to you, next to being dead of course. But because of the advancement of medical science, high cholesterol caused conditions can now be treated with high success rates. But this doesn’t mean you’ll live forever. Even with a heart transplant, most recipients live an average life of 5 to 10 years, depending on how they take care of themselves.