Read an Excerpt

ONE
 
 
How to Use This Book
 
The word cholesterol has become almost as familiar as your next-door neighbor. You see it on many food labels in the local grocery store. The term often jumps out from newspaper headlines and advertisements. And increasingly you find friends and acquaintances saying, “This food has too much cholesterol,” or “My cholesterol level is a little too high.”
 
But even though many of us talk glibly about cholesterol, we often don’t understand exactly what it is and how it relates to our health and well-being. For example, many people think that if they have a certain cholesterol level in their blood, they can assume that they’re automatically safe from heart disease. Usually, this is a correct assumption. But, as we’ll see later, it is possible to have low blood cholesterol and still die from atherosclerosis, heart disease that takes the form of hardening of the arteries.
 
Also, when we talk of “hardening of the arteries,” many people just assume that’s a normal part of aging. But in fact, to say that you suffer from hardening of the arteries may be just another way of saying that you have serious problems with one or more risk factors for atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries. These risk factors may include cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, or high cholesterol levels—yet, for most people, all these risk factors can be eliminated or at least controlled.
 
Of course, it’s not surprising that there’s a considerable amount of confusion about cholesterol. Of several Nobel Prizes awarded for research into cholesterol in this century, one was a mistake! The scientist who received the award in 1928 described a chemical structure for cholesterol which was later proved to be incorrect. So you shouldn’t be disturbed if you don’t understand everything about the subject, because the way cholesterol works in your body isn’t so easy a concept to grasp.
 
On the other hand, it’s absolutely essential, both for your safety and for the healthy hearts and arteries of your family members, that you understand more about the implications of cholesterol for human health. To be sure, this substance, which is both manufactured by your body and introduced through your diet, is absolutely essential to your health. Among other things, you need cholesterol for membrane synthesis in your cells. Without it, the cells of the body couldn’t function; indeed, you couldn’t even stay alive. But when cholesterol isn’t handled properly, your life is in serious danger.
 
Cholesterol bears a large part of the responsibility for the sad and sickly condition of our arteries and hearts. Atherosclerosis of the coronary arteries and its consequence, coronary heart disease, is responsible for more than 550,000 deaths in the United States each year, according to the National Institutes of Health. That’s more deaths than are caused by all forms of cancer combined.
 
But death is only the last step in a disease process which affects millions of us. Specifically, more than 5.4 million Americans have symptoms of coronary heart disease, and a large but undetermined number of others harbor undiagnosed atherosclerotic disease.
 
Cholesterol—ordinarily an odorless, white, powdery, fatty substance—when dissolved in the blood, plays a major role in this terrifying scenario. It’s our partner in this dance of death. To put it bluntly, an elevated level of blood cholesterol is a major cause of the epidemic of coronary heart disease.
 
But death or debilitation isn’t inevitable! Preventive medicine does have an answer to this problem. Armed with sufficient knowledge and know-how, you can protect yourself from the deadly work of killer cholesterol. So I’ve written this book to let you know the latest, most important information and techniques available to help you fight this disease.
 
Specifically, you’ll learn:
 
The current thinking on what’s the best range for your blood cholesterol
How to evaluate the important forms in which cholesterol is carried in your blood
How to distinguish between “good” and “bad” cholesterol
The predictive value of the “cholesterol ratio”—and how you can compute it from your own blood values
Why up-to-date research suggests that triglycerides may be more important than scientists previously thought
How to set up the best diet to lower your cholesterol
New findings on the use of vitamin and drug treatments in lowering blood cholesterol
Some practical suggestions for including nutrients like fish oils and olive oil in your diet to lower your cholesterol
Why a seemingly slight imbalance in the fatty components in your blood may substantially increase your coronary risk
The latest thinking on the use of soluble fibers, such as oat bran, in controlling cholesterol
Information you need to have about the link between inherited family traits and cholesterol
The evidence that the deadly process of atherosclerosis—or hardening of the arteries—can be reversed
How to calculate your personal “cholesterol coronary risk”
New findings on the link between stress and cholesterol
 
Also, we’ll explore how you can make the best use of medical support systems as you move to put your cholesterol in balance. For example, you’ll learn how to cut through medical red tape and get no-hassle, relatively inexpensive blood tests. You need to have these blood tests, of course, to determine and monitor the cholesterol levels in your blood. In addition, there will be tips and suggested techniques for talking to your family doctor about how to achieve a proper balance of cholesterol in your body.
 
Despite all the “negative press” we hear about cholesterol, it’s important to understand that the substance isn’t all bad. In fact, as it travels about in the bloodstream, cholesterol often performs essential work in our bodies. For example, it promotes synthesis of the cells’ vital membranes and is a component of many of the key hormones produced in the body. It also aids digestion as an ingredient in the bile acids.
 
Unfortunately, however, not all the cholesterol gets processed in beneficial ways—and that’s where the danger begins. Excess cholesterol continues to circulate in the blood and may eventually be deposited in the walls of the arteries. Over a period of years, this excess cholesterol contributes to formation of a plaque on the interior walls of your arteries. As a result, your arteries become narrower and narrower, much like what happens with the sludge deposits in an old water pipe.
 
This clogging process is known in popular parlance as “hardening of the arteries,” or, in a more technical, medical sense, as atherosclerosis (or arteriosclerosis). In fact, the danger lies more in the narrowing than in the hardening of the arteries. You can get narrowing of the arteries at any age, by the way, whether you’re 30, 40, 50, or older. Youth provides no insurance against this disease. When one or more of the coronary arteries which feed blood to your heart become narrowed and roughened, a blood clot may form on the plaque and block the flow of the life-giving fluid. The result will be a heart attack: the tissues in the part of the heart supplied by the blocked artery will die; and, in some cases, you may die.
 
But this ominous series of events is not inevitable. An internal time bomb doesn’t have to explode in your system or in those of your loved ones—because there’s something you can do about it. You can act to prevent this attack on your health and your life. It’s just a matter of learning the facts about the causes of heart attacks, and using those facts in protecting your health and that of your family.
 
A very important part of preventing heart attacks is controlling your cholesterol—not eliminating it altogether. As I’ve mentioned, cholesterol is essential to life. Without it, you couldn’t function as a normal, healthy human being. On the other hand, if too much of it is present in your blood, you’re looking down the barrel of a cocked and loaded weapon—which is pointed directly at your heart.
 
So what can you do to strengthen your defenses against this killer?
 
You need two key things to mount an effective counterattack against out-of-control cholesterol: (1) sufficient knowledge about the deadly work of the substance; and (2) the means and motivation to act on that knowledge. In other words, you first must know something about the problem and about practical ways to apply your knowledge. Then, you’ll be more likely to do something about it to improve your prospects of a long and healthy life.