Heart Healthy Targets
LDL, HDL, Triglycerides…these numbers contain important information about your risk of heart disease. But the terms can be confusing.
According to the National Cholesterol Education Program (a program of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute) everyone over 20 years old should have a cholesterol screening at least every five years.
Here is a quick overview on the most commonly tracked heart health indicators and the NCEP recommended targets.
Total cholesterol
What is it? Total cholesterol is a combination of LDL, HDL, and other cholesterol molecules. Although not as precise as the other measurements listed below, your total cholesterol number can reveal whether further screening is necessary.
What range should I aim for? The NCEP considers a total cholesterol of less than 200mg/dL to be ideal.
LDL cholesterol
What is it? When it comes to cholesterol, LDL is considered the “bad” kind or the type you want to decrease. This type of cholesterol tends to form a thick plaque within the inner lining of your blood vessels making them less flexible and more difficult for blood to travel through. Atherosclerosis, or a build up of LDL within the vessels, puts you at major risk for a heart attack or stroke.
What range should I aim for? There is no one size fits all range for LDL cholesterol goals. It depends on what other risk factors you may have. Risk factors for heart disease include age, age, heredity, smoking, sedentary lifestyle, and excessive alcohol use.
In general, if you don’t have heart disease or diabetes and have few other risk factors for heart disease, the NCEP recommends that you aim for an LDL level of less than 160 mg/dL.If you don’t have heart disease or diabetes but have two or more risk factors for heart disease, the NCEP goal for LDL is less than 130 mg/dL. If you have heart disease or diabetes, the NCEP suggests that you keep your LDL levels less than 100 mg/dL.
HDL cholesterol
What is it? HDL cholesterol is the “good” type that is protective against cardiovascular diseases. Scientists believe that HDL carries cholesterol away from your arteries (preventing plaque from forming) and back to your liver where it is removed from the body.
What range should I aim for? The higher your HDL level, the better. According to the NCEP, women should aim for an HDL level of 50 mg/dL or higher and men should shoot for 40 mg/dL or higher.
Triglycerides
What are they? Triglycerides are the most common form of fats in the body. They circulate in the blood and are used for energy or stored in fat tissue if you take in more calories than your body needs. A diet heavy in refined carbohydrates and alcohol and/or a sedentary lifestyle contribute to high triglycerides.
What range should I aim for? The NCEP recommends that you aim for a level of less than 150 mg/dL or less.
Related Content:
Tips for lowering triglycerides
Ways to promote healthier cholesterol levels
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Posted by: Happy Heart | Dec 3, 2008 3:12:22 PM
…“Not long ago, scientist believed high cholesterol was the root of heart disease, and that consumption of high-fat, high cholesterol diet led to the plaque buildup on artery walls, setting the stage for heart attack. The truth is that cholesterol is NOT the deadly threat you think it is!
It is in fact, the most important molecule in your body. Cholesterol gives structure to every cell in the body much like the two by fours in a house. Aside from the fact that it is necessary for everything from the production of sex hormones to bile synthesis… it does not clog your arteries unless it has something to attach to; a tear, a rough surface, a ridge, a sharp turn.
Hypercholesterolemia is the health issue of the 21st century. It is actually an invented disease, a “problem” that emerged when health professionals learned how to measure cholesterol levels in the blood. High cholesterol exhibits no outward signs--unlike other conditions of the blood, such as diabetes or anemia, diseases that manifest telltale symptoms like thirst or weakness--hypercholesterolemia requires the services of a physician to detect its presence. Many people who feel perfectly healthy suffer from high cholesterol--in fact, feeling good is actually a symptom of high cholesterol!
Doctors who treat this new disease must first convince their patients that they are sick and need to take one or more expensive drugs for the rest of their lives, drugs that require regular checkups and blood tests. But such doctors do not work in a vacuum--their effort to convert healthy people into patients are bolstered by the full weight of the U.S. government, the media and the medical establishment, agencies, that have worked in concert to disseminate the cholesterol dogma and convince the population that high cholesterol is the forerunner of heart disease and possibly other diseases as well.
Who suffers from hypercholesterolemia? Peruse the medical literature of 25 or 30 years ago and you’ll get the following answer: any middle-aged man whose cholesterol is over 240 with other risk factors, such as smoking or overweight.
After the Cholesterol Consensus Conference in 1984, the parameters changed; anyone with cholesterol over 200 could receive the dreaded diagnosis and a prescription for pills. Recently that number has been moved down to 180. If you have had a heart attack, you get to take cholesterol-lowering medicines even if your cholesterol is already very low--after all, you have committed the sin of having a heart attach so your cholesterol must therefore be too high. The penance is a lifetime of cholesterol-lowering medications along with a boring low-fat diet. But why wait until you have a heart attack? Current edicts stipulate cholesterol testing and treatment for young adults and even children.
New research at leading medical centers, including Harvard, are now saying that cholesterol is guilty by association because more than 60% of heart attack victims actually have normal cholesterol levels and the majority of people with high cholesterol never suffer heart attacks. In fact, 50% of heart attack victims have none of the standard risk factors listed by the American Heart Association.
The cholesterol theory was brought into question when researchers discovered that one particular type of cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, actually has a protective effect on the heart; and that lipoprotein(a) (Lp(a)), a low-density lipoprotein (LDL), is a sticky protein, which adheres to artery walls, is actually the culprit.
We now know that cholesterol contributes to heart disease only when it is oxidized, or subjected to free radical damage. Cholesterol damaged by free radical is taken up by the white blood cells called macrophages and deposited in fatty streaks on the artery walls. This fosters plaque buildup in the arteries and is key in the development of the heart disease. If one can stop the oxidation process, then one can eliminate cholesterol from the picture.
Now here is the failing of our medical system more evident that in the wholesale acceptance of cholesterol reduction as a way to prevent disease. Have all these doctors forgotten what they learned in Biochemistry 101 about the many roles of cholesterol in the human biochemistry?
Every cell membrane in our body contains cholesterol because cholesterol is what makes our cells waterproof- without cholesterol we could not have a different biochemistry on the inside and the outside of the cell. When cholesterol levels are not adequate, the cell membrane becomes leaky or porous; a situation the body interprets as an emergency, releasing a flood of corticoid hormones that work by sequestering cholesterol from one part of the body and transporting it to areas where it is lacking. Cholesterol is the body’s repair substance: scar tissue contains high levels of cholesterol, including scar tissue in the arteries.
Cholesterol is the vital proper neurological function. It plays a key role in the formation of memory and the uptake of hormones in the brain, including serotonin, the body’s feel-good chemical. When cholesterol levels drop too low, the serotonin receptors cannot work. Cholesterol is the main organic molecule in the brain, constituting over half the dry weight of the cerebral cortex.
Finally, cholesterol is the precursor to all the hormones produced in the adrenal cortex including glucocorticoids, which regulate blood sugar levels, and mineralocorticoids, which regulate mineral balance. Corticoids are the cholesterol-based adrenal hormones that the body uses in response to stress of various types; it promotes healing and balances the tendency to inflammation. The adrenal cortex also produces sex hormones out of cholesterol, including testosterone, estrogen and progesterone. Thus, low cholesterol whether due to an innate error of metabolism or induced by cholesterol-lowering diets and drugs, can be expected to disrupt the production on adrenal hormones and lead to: blood sugar problems, edema, allergies, asthma, mineral deficiencies, reduced libido, chronic inflammation, infertility, difficulty in healing, and various reproductive problems.
In its natural stage cholesterol is waxy and doesn’t mix with your blood. It must combine with other proteins to form HDL (beneficial) and LDL (harmful). One of HDL’s functions is to scavenge LDL and transport it to the liver for breakdown. Your body can do this, but the process requires nutrients that are often missing from modern diets.
High cholesterol levels (consistently above 225 total) are considered a risk for heart disease. You need to reduce LDL and raise HDL levels so that your ratio of LDL to HDL is lower than 5:1. Your LDL is to be no more than 180mg/dl (ideally 160) and ideally, your HDL should be 60 mg/dl or greater. At a minimum, men should be at 35mg/dl and women at 45mg/dl or more. Research shows that the risk for coronary heart disease is 2.5 times greater when HDL cholesterol falls below 35 mg/dl.
Here is an interesting fact- the cholesterol in your diet has very little effect on the cholesterol in your blood. You could completely eliminate all cholesterol from your diet and your liver would just produce more. On the other hand, eating more cholesterol would cause your liver to reduce production to maintain consistent levels.
Natural remedies to lower LDL cholesterol while raising HDL cholesterol include: the Mediterranean diet, exercise (regular physical exercise raises “good” HDL), arginine, niacin, polycosanol, tocotrienols, omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids, flax and fiber, probiotics, coenzyme Q10, magnesium, vitamin E, lecithin, garlic, and DHEA; more about these natural therapies in Chapter 6.
I know many of you are asking yourself, but what about the drug I am taking to lower my cholesterol? We will discuss these drugs in depth in Chapter 5 of this book, but for now you might find it interesting to learn that in 1968, Dr. Kilmer McCully, Dean of Medicine at the University of New York, published a report saying that heart disease was caused by homocysteine, that cholesterol was not the crucial marker for heart disease that everyone thought it was, and that cholesterol drugs were not necessary. Well in 1968 the cholesterol drug industry was a 7 billion dollar a year industry, and let us not forget about the other 20 billion dollars spent on drugs to counteract the negative side effects of the cholesterol drugs. Just three weeks after his report was published he lost his tenure to teach, and shortly after that he lost his license to practice medicine. After all, whom did he think he was making such claims! It was not until 30 years later, in 1998, that he was finally vindicated. He was nominated for two Nobel prizes for his research, he was re-instated as Dean of Medicine at the University of New York, he was given his medical license back, and was given the task of teaching doctors that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease; more on Dr. McCully’s homocysteine theory and use of cholesterol drugs later in this book”…
Quoted from “Let’s stop the number one killer of Americans today” by Harry A. Elwart, N.D., Ph.D. Pages 57-62.
Posted by: Peggy Iba | Mar 21, 2009 10:29:11 AM
Try hulless barley for a healthy heart. It has twice the beta glucans as oats for lowering cholesterol and a low glycemic index to keep you feeling full longer. Plus it's 14-15% protein, rare for a grain. The rolled barley or barley flakes substitute straight across for oatmeal in any recipe. Barley flakes or “Boost’R Flakes” comes in quick or steel cut. The whole grain hulless barley comes straight from the field with no processing to remove a hull so after cleaned, it's ready to eat. (3g soluble fiber per oz.) Barley is the new rice! This barley, like dry beans, needs to be softened first - boil 5 minutes and put lid on and let sit one hour. I then freeze till I'm ready to use it. Check www.westerntrailsfood.com for recipes & nutrition
Posted by: emmabooth | Oct 8, 2009 12:57:03 AM
Hello
I read your article about Heart healthy targets and want to thank you for giving such a nice information.You have said really true thing that everyone over 20 years old should have a cholesterol screening at least every five years.
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