The Newest Cholesterol Guidelines Make More Sense

Some new guidelines for High Cholesterol Levels are being embraced by some who don't see cholesterol as being the huge cardiac risk factor that Conventional Medicine sees it as. Some see the newest studies that have come out as better and more common sense guidelines for treating cholesterol than the "lower is better" crowd that give out the cholesterol lowering statin drugs to everyone with a cholesterol level over 150.

Essentially, for the past decade, we have been taught that cholesterol is bad and have been encouraged to get it as low as possible for health and to not eat cholesterol laden foods like shrimp lest it make our cholesterol levels go up even a smidge.

But there are those on the other side of this issue who question the 'lower is better' theory. They see cholesterol as the precursor for every single hormone in the body, a requirement in order to make Vitamin D from sunlight and as a required component in every cell wall of the body. Not to mention the spurious connection of cholesterol to heart disease and the fact that our bodies make cholesterol non stop, day in and day out whether or not we eat cholesterol.

So a new study is finally questioning these beliefs and is shedding new light on this debate. The study is summarized in an easy to use guideline at the link below: http://www.clinical-rounds.com/trigly.html

Essentially, they say to take your cholesterol levels and triglycerides and put it into a formula in order to find out your risk. You take your triglycerides and divide them by your HDL level. In other words, you do the following easy formula:

Triglycerides/HDL=___

Then use the following formula to find out your cardiovascular disease risk:

2 or less is considered ideal with the lower the number the better
2-4 = high risk
4-6 =very high risk

Check out this real life example of a 37 year old female (actually ME!). My:

Total Chol is 199
LDL is 127
HDL is 72
Trigly are 83
CRP less than 1

According to the (hopefully soon to be abolished) current thinking about cholesterol, it's likely that my doctor would have put me onto a statin drug (over my dead body) to lower my cholesterol level. But according to this new standard, I have very low risk with my Triglyceride/HDL ratio at 1.15 which is VERY low. My family history also agrees with this and I KNOW that I take care of myself VERY well so this article confirms what I already knew anyway- I love it when that happens!

Another study also showed that the C reactive protein, also called the CRP level- a marker of inflammation, is really a more important predictor of heart disease than cholesterol. So my CRP of less than 1 also agree with the conclusion that I am at low risk for cardiovascular disease.

These are much more common sense and livable guidelines for High Cholesterol Levels that seem to work in real life situations much better than the practically unachievable and possibly detrimental 'cholesterol level of 150 or less' that gets just about everyone who sees their doctor onto a cholesterol lowering statin drug.

nKerri Knox, RN- The Immune Queen

Functional Medicine Practitioner

Easy Immune Health.com