Recognising High Cholesterol Symptoms: Guide to Causes and Treatment

Having too much cholesterol in your blood can lead to severe risks of heart attack, stroke, or other heart conditions. Understanding and recognising high cholesterol symptoms is crucial for improving your overall heart health.

In this blog, you can discover the causes, types, and early signs of high cholesterol. This can help you navigate effective diagnosis, prevention, and treatment methods for your high cholesterol.

An Overview of High Cholesterol

Cholesterol is a natural fatty substance occurring in your body. It is essential for many of your body functions. Your body manufactures vitamin D and other hormones with the help of cholesterol. It also plays a role in your digestive functions.

However, you experience high cholesterol when your liver produces excessive cholesterol, more than your body needs. High cholesterol is usually painless with not many prominent symptoms. You may encounter its consequences when you ultimately suffer from heart problems.

Causes of High Cholesterol

A number of risk factors may be responsible for your high cholesterol symptoms. Among the key causes of high cholesterol, you need to know:

Heredity

You are more likely to develop high cholesterol if you already have a family history of high cholesterol and underlying heart problems. This is, however, a rare condition.

Familial hypercholesterolaemia (inherited high cholesterol as a hereditary problem) leads to elevated levels of LDL from a very young age in individuals. You may encounter serious heart complications and coronary artery disease if you do not treat your high cholesterol in a timely manner.

Age

Your risk of developing high cholesterol intensifies with advancing age. Metabolic changes with increasing age enhance the capacity of the liver to remove LDL from the blood.

Gender

Gender also causes significant differentiation in your cholesterol levels. A male body generally consists of higher levels of HDL than in females. On the other hand, symptoms of high cholesterol in females are usually lower after 55 years of age. This is because women tend to have lower LDL than men during their menopausal or post-menopausal stage.

Ethnic Background

Another crucial factor determining the likelihood of high cholesterol is your ethnic background, the region, and culture you belong to.

Diet

Your dietary choices often function as major factors contributing to high cholesterol levels. Consumption of food items rich in saturated fats, trans fats, or cholesterol largely triggers your cholesterol levels.

Physical Activity

You require adequate physical activity throughout the day to maintain a balanced cholesterol level. Lack of sufficient physical activity may lead to an increase in LDL and reduced HDL levels.

Tobacco Use

Smoking habits and consumption of tobacco may lead to the build-up of tar or plaque in your arteries. This enables LDL to easily adhere to the arterial walls, causing arterial and cardiac blockage.

Obesity

If your BMI is over 30, you are experiencing obesity. At this stage, your body consists of high HDL, LDL, and triglyceride levels. However, you may develop high cholesterol if you have a lower BMI as well.

Diabetes

Your metabolism rate and lifestyle factors often lead to Type 2 diabetes. This condition causes increasing LDL levels and reducing HDL levels in your blood. As a result, these factors contribute to high cholesterol.

Liver or Kidney Disease

Disturbances in your kidney function often generate changes in your body’s handling of cholesterol. Malfunctioning of the liver may also enhance your risks of high cholesterol. This is because your liver produces good cholesterol to manage your bad cholesterol.

Types of Cholesterol: Explained

The combination of your cholesterol with proteins produces lipoproteins.

• HDL (high-density lipoprotein) is the good cholesterol that helps your body function by removing LDL.
• LDL (low-density lipoprotein) is the bad cholesterol that exerts harmful effects on your body.
• Non-HDL (non-high-density lipoprotein) causes fatty deposits, constricting your blood vessels.

Triglycerides are a special type of fat in your blood, leading to narrowing arteries or arterial blockage.

Signs and Symptoms of High Cholesterol

High cholesterol does not generally exhibit any specific symptoms. It directly leads to medical emergencies in severe conditions.

However, hereditary high cholesterol may produce the following signs:

• Swelling at your knees, knuckles of hands, or tendons at the back of your ankles
• Signs of yellow-coloured tiny lumps of cholesterol at the corners of the eyes
• Occurrence of a pale white ring around your iris

Besides high cholesterol symptoms, you may experience complications like plaque build-up in your arteries, arterial blockage, stroke, heart attack, and heart failure.

Diagnosing High Cholesterol

The best and only way to find out if you have high cholesterol is through a lipid profile test. This is a simple blood test requiring you to fast for 8 to 12 hours before undergoing the test.

Doctors use this blood sample to measure your HDL, LDL, and triglyceride levels. These values are essential for evaluating your overall cholesterol level. In some private GPs, you may have to undergo a finger-prick cholesterol test.

The desirable levels of different forms of cholesterol in your body are:

• Less than 100 mg/dL LDL Cholesterol
• More than 60 mg/dL HDL Cholesterol
• Less than 150 mg/dL triglycerides
• Less than 200 mg/dL overall cholesterol

Prevention of High Cholesterol Symptoms

You can reduce your risk of high cholesterol through simple changes in your dietary choices and lifestyle. Prevention of high cholesterol symptoms can mainly be of two types:

Primary Prevention

This strategy includes taking preventive measures before developing heart problems. Primary prevention mainly focuses on improving your lifestyle patterns like food habits and physical activities.

You need to cut down on consuming animal fat, solid oils at room temperature, or full-fat dairy products to control your cholesterol levels. Reducing saturated fats in your diet is the best method to lower your cholesterol. Instead, you should consume whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and other cholesterol-lowering foods for better results.

Adequate regular physical activity is necessary for the production of more HDL in your blood. If you do not get sufficient physical activity, you are more prone to risks of lower HDL levels. This automatically makes it difficult to clear off LDL in your arteries. Your body needs moderate to intense physical activity daily for better HDL levels and lowering LDL in your blood.

Avoiding tobacco also safeguards your body from high cholesterol problems and underlying heart diseases.

Secondary Prevention

This process includes taking preventive actions after you develop heart conditions, such as after a cardiac attack, stroke, or other heart complications. This includes better eating, exercising, and prescribed medications.

How to Lower Cholesterol

Following are five major tips on how to lower cholesterol in your blood:

• You must avoid foods rich in sugar and saturated fats. For example, you should cease eating fatty dairy products, fatty meats, processed foods, and oils. You should also strictly limit intake of white flour, low-fibre cereals, pasta, pastries, sweets, junk foods, and sugary drinks.
  
  
• Instead, you can plan your diet around several cholesterol-lowering foods. Switch to foods with unsaturated fats like skimmed milk, vegetable oil, natural yoghurt, red meat, or lentils. Foods rich in fibre like green vegetables, fresh fruits, unsalted nuts, pulses, and wholegrain cereals can also be effective solutions for your diet.
  
  
• You can also improve your physical activity by choosing stairs instead of lifts, taking a brisk walk, practising yoga, or engaging in moderate exercise regularly. These would provide better solutions to your high cholesterol levels.
  
  
• By quitting smoking, you can reduce the production of bad cholesterol or LDL in your body. Conversely, avoiding tobacco consumption can also improve your levels of HDL or good cholesterol.
  
  
• Consumption of alcohol causes serious damage to the liver. This degrades your liver function, leading to conditions of high cholesterol. You can improve this condition by cutting down on your alcohol intake, which can effectively improve your HDL levels.

High Cholesterol Treatment

For high cholesterol treatment, you must use drugs or medications as prescribed by your doctor. Certain groups of drugs help in preventing the formation of cholesterol (both HDL and LDL) in the liver. However, you must consult your doctor before taking any medication, especially in cases of heart conditions or pregnancy.

Key Takeaways

Recognising your high cholesterol symptoms is crucial to preventing cardiovascular diseases and ensuring good heart health.

Md.co.uk presents an analysis of the major causes and signs of high cholesterol to help you navigate effective diagnostic and preventive methods. It offers an array of treatment options and lifestyle recommendations for managing high cholesterol.