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Hyperlipidemia (High Cholesterol)

 

What is hyperlipidemia?

Hyperlipidemia is the medical term for high cholesterol. It’s also called hypercholesterolemia. When you have high cholesterol, you have too much fat in your blood. The fatty deposits can build up, form plaque and cause a blockage in your artery. 

High cholesterol is closely linked to high blood pressure. Blockages narrow your blood vessels, putting more pressure on the artery walls as blood pumps through. Thus, hyperlipidemia is also closely related to other serious conditions like coronary artery disease, heart attack and stroke.

How do you end up with high cholesterol?

High cholesterol can run in the family. This form of the disease is known as mixed hyperlipidemia. Elevated levels occur naturally in the blood, sometimes as early as the teenage years. Hyperlipidemia, like hypertension, is also caused by a variety of lifestyle factors:

  • Unhealthy weight – If you’re overweight or obese, you’re at greater risk of developing high cholesterol.
  • Poor diet – Too much saturated or trans fat in your diet creates too much bad cholesterol in your blood. 
  • Lack of exercise – Without regular physical activity, your body fails to produce enough good cholesterol.
  • Drinking too much – Excess alcohol in your body raises your overall cholesterol numbers.
  • Tobacco products – Smoking and vaping affect your cholesterol in all the wrong ways, lowering the good while raising the bad.
  • Constant stress – When you're always under stress, your hormones change and produce more cholesterol.

Hyperlipidemia may also result from a variety of other diseases, like hypothyroidism, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, sleep apnea and lupus.

What are the signs of high cholesterol?

In the early stages of hyperlipidemia, there are no symptoms. You don’t feel any different than if you have normal cholesterol levels. As hyperlipidemia progresses into more serious diseases, you start to feel the effects of the blocked arteries and poor blood flow. You may experience chest pains, shortness of breath, jaw pain and other symptoms that may even be warning signs of a heart attack.

How is high cholesterol diagnosed?

The only way to know your cholesterol levels is through a lipid test. Lipids are the fats — or types of cholesterol — inside your blood. A lipid panel is a blood test that measures the amount of good and bad lipids in your body. Anything higher than 200 mg/dL is considered high total cholesterol.

It’s also important to know your whole lipid profile. This tells you the levels of the different types of cholesterol so you understand how each is contributing to your total cholesterol score. In your lipid panel, you want:

  • Less than 100 mg/dL of LDL, or bad cholesterol
  • At least 60 mg/dL of good cholesterol, or HDL
  • Less than 150 mg/dL of triglycerides

How do you treat high cholesterol?

Because your lifestyle factors so heavily into cholesterol levels, changing your habits is often the first line of treatment. You can do this through a combination of lifestyle changes like:

  • Quitting smoking or vaping
  • Getting the right amounts of sleep and exercise
  • Limiting your drinking
  • Managing stress
  • Eating a low-cholesterol diet or fewer fatty and processed foods

When lifestyle changes aren’t enough — or you have a family history or contributing condition — medication may be necessary to get your cholesterol under control. Statins are the most common cholesterol medicine and help by decreasing the bad cholesterol circulating in your blood.

Depending on your cholesterol numbers, family history, age and other personal risk factors, you may take statins, other medications or a combination. Some drugs are designed to lower bad cholesterol while others target triglycerides. 

When should I get help for managing my cholesterol?

The more risk factors you have, the greater the chance you develop hyperlipidemia. But even if you feel healthy, you should still have a regular lipid profile taken at your annual wellness exam. Your doctor may want to check your lipid profile annually or every other year, depending on your health. In general, you should get your cholesterol checked every five years — starting when you’re just age nine. For men over 45 and women above 55, every two years is recommended. And everyone age 65 and older should get a lipid panel done every year.

Cholesterol is something you have to control for life. Slip up in your healthy habits and your cholesterol profile can easily change. If you want help managing hyperlipidemia or preventing high cholesterol, meet with your Internal Medicine physician to check your cholesterol and come up with a plan.