Why Your Heart Wants You to Pay Attention to Your Cholesterol

Cholesterol can be a tricky thing to understand, especially when you're not exactly sure what your levels mean and how they can affect the various aspects of your body - including your heart.

So, what is cholesterol? What does it have to do with heart disease? Simply put, cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance found in your blood. It is essential to certain cell functions in your body, such as digesting foods, producing hormones, converting vitamin D in the skin and creating new cells. Your liver makes cholesterol for your body, but you also get cholesterol from eating certain foods, such as meat, poultry and full-fat dairy. Cholesterol travels through the bloodstream in "packages" called lipoproteins. There are two kinds:

  • Low-density lipoproteins (LDLs), also known as "bad" cholesterol, join with other substances to form a thick, hard deposit, called plaque on the walls of your arteries.
  • High-density lipoproteins (HDLs), also known as "good" cholesterol, remove cholesterol from the bloodstream and the artery walls.

If the total amount of cholesterol in your blood is too high, more plaque builds up over time, eventually limiting the flow of oxygen-rich blood to your heart. This can cause coronary heart disease (CHD) to develop, which can lead to even more serious health issues, like blood clots, heart attack or a stroke.

Most of the time, you can control your cholesterol levels through a healthy diet and lifestyle, which will lower your risk of cardiovascular health issues. For a small percentage of people, however, high cholesterol is sometimes caused by genetically inherited cholesterol-related disorders that cannot be controlled with diet or other lifestyle changes. That's why it's so important to know your numbers and monitor them on an ongoing basis.

Talk to your doctor about what HDL and LDL levels are healthy, and what can be done to lower risks. Routine blood tests can show your cholesterol levels. To learn about what other factors may be affecting your risk for cardiovascular disease, take our free heart health assessment.

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Why Choose Us?

Merit Health Wesley provides a complete spectrum of cardiac services, including emergency care, diagnostic and interventional cardiology, cardiac surgery and rehabilitation. 

Merit Health Wesley is an accredited Cardiovascular Center of Excellence awarded by the American College of Cardiology and a Comprehensive Cardiac Center awarded by The Joint Commission. Additionally, we are an accredited Chest Pain Center with PCI, we were awarded Atrial Fibrillation accreditation and became the first hospital in south Mississippi to be awarded Heart Failure accreditation - all awarded by the American College of Cardiology.

Our Services Include:

  • Advanced diagnostic and imaging technology to find heart disease early, when it's most treatable
  • Open heart surgery
  • Comprehensive heart failure care
  • Specialized treatment for heart rhythm disorders (AFib)
  • Specialized treatment of complex vascular conditions, including critical limb ischemia, peripheral chronic total occlusions and peripheral arterial disease
  • Heart and vascular rehabilitation that combines education, support and exercise therapy

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