How to read your cholesterol report

Almost daily I get a call or a msg from someone random because they have seen “high cholesterol“ in their report and are now scared. They freak out because the total cholesterol is marked either in red or in bold to signify that their heart health is at risk.

The video is an attempt to raise awareness on two topics close to my heart -
1. Numbers don’t tell the whole story.
2. Data without context is entirely useless

Before jumping the gun and deciding that something is fine or not fine with you, you must check on the habits with which you live daily. How a person lives matters a lot more than the numbers on their reports.

A confusion that people who exercise regularly often face is that their total cholesterol number is high-ish. But this is often because exercise directly impacts HDL/ high density lipoprotein , the cardio protective cholesterol. But this often comes with Triglycerides & VLDL (risk factors) being well under-check. This is the “athlete’s paradox”, the kind of report that recreational athletes (people who exercise regularly but don’t compete) see.

On the other hand, people who are not exercising may observe that all their numbers are “normal” but lack of exercise, poor sleep, irregular eating habits, will cost you in the long run.

The message is simple -
1. Don’t check numbers unless you have been specifically asked to.
2. Don’t forget that clinical correlations (not just with habits) but with other factors like HbA1c, TSH, Liver enzymes, BP, etc is critical before arriving at decisions.
3. If someone is just reading your report and telling you what to do without clinically examining you, you are likely to be misguided.

Normal cholesterol levels with low HDL and high TG remains a risk.

The thing is that it is impossible to cover all possible scenarios in this video. But here are two more that we routinely see -

1. People who have just started working out recently (3-12 months) see high LDL levels, along with high HDL levels and low TG levels. If HDL is high, TG is low in response to exercise, then LDL will drop too over a period of time.
2. People who have been exercising for years, having high HDL, and TG & LDL in double digits and well within range.

What I want to reiterate is just this - You need to look at all clinical correlations, and your health care provider must be able to spend at least20 mins with you before making any kind of assessment of risk factors.

The fact remains that it takes as little as -

No smoking, no drinking, no packaged food products
And sleeping on time, eating at home, exercising regularly
To see improvement in health

#cholesterol #hearthealth #bloodpressure #riskfactors