The Importance of Understanding Your Cholesterol Level

It is important to understand your cholesterol level, for many reasons. One of the most primary reasons would be because having a high cholesterol level can make you extremely prone to such things as heart attacks and strokes.

Although obesity is one of the most obvious symptoms or reasons to high cholesterol, just because you are not overweight this does not mean that your cholesterol level is proper.

Understanding Your Cholesterol Level

There are many things that you need to take into consideration when you are trying to learn about and understand your cholesterol level.  For example, there are both good and bad types of cholesterol. There is HDL cholesterol, which is considered as being the good type of cholesterol, and then there is LDL cholesterol which is considered as being the bad form of cholesterol.

Basically you can be put into either one of three categories: desirable, borderline risk, or high risk. If your total cholesterol is less than 200mg/dL, then you are considered as being in the desirable category, and your risk of heart attack is relatively low, unless of course you have other risk factors that are involved.

If your cholesterol is in between 200 and 239mg/dL, then you are considered as being in the borderline risk category, and about a third of all people end up in this category. If you are in this category, you should have your cholesterol checked at least once a year, especially if your HDL is less than 40mg/dL and/or you don’t have other risk factors for heart disease.

Finally, if your cholesterol level is 240mg/dL or more, then you are considered as being in the high risk category and your risk of heart attack and stroke is incredibly heightened. As well, you have twice the risk of other coronary problems, and so you must take your situation incredibly seriously.

Basically the key point to remember here is that the lower your LDL cholesterol, the lower your total cholesterol level will be, and so you should take all of the possible measures that you can in order to keep your LDL cholesterol as low as you can. Then, if you find that you are not able to lower your cholesterol with these measures, medications may also be prescribed in order to assist you in this process.