Are You Worried About A Family History of High Cholesterol?
Although many people are told that they have familial hypercholesterolaemia (high cholesterol running in families), the reality is that this condition is rare and affects a tiny percentage of the population. People with FH will have cholesterol levels of over 400 mg/dl. However, studies have shown that, even in these people, there is no link between their high cholesterol and heart disease.
Dr Eric Sijbrands and his co-workers from various health departments in Amsterdam carried out a study of tracing back the lineage of people identified with FH going back 200 years. He found the risk of heart disease to be slightly higher than the general public. This is because people with FH tend to have other forms of heart disease, like valve diseases, that have nothing to do with high cholesterol. Interestingly, Dr Eric Sijbrands found something else – that those with a family history of cholesterol had a much lower risk of dying of other diseases than the general public. He concluded that cholesterol protected the body against diseases.
Why Is My Blood Cholesterol High?
Cholesterol is like a marker of inflammation as it increases when inflammation does. Scientists believe that this is because its function is to protect the body. Given that inflammation is the underlying cause of most diseases, cholesterol level will increase whenever we are sick. So, a rising cholesterol level is an indication that the body is unhealthy and a prompt to a medical professional to look for the underlying cause of the disease and treat it.
Reducing cholesterol levels runs contrary to what the body is trying to do, which is to heal itself. Cholesterol increases to protect the body against diseases and is the body’s natural medicine against disease.