How to understand your cholesterol test
When you take a cholesterol test, several things are going on. It is important that you understand each of the components being considered in a cholesterol test. Increased understanding will lead to a better way of dealing with unhealthy cholesterol levels.
First, when taking a cholesterol test, your levels of LDL are being looked at. LDL is the bad cholesterol that's in your body. LDL comes through eating too much of certain kinds of food. Usually, animal products are the main cause of high LDL levels in people. If you take a cholesterol test, and your LDL levels are too high, it means you have been eating too much meat, butter, cheese, milk, and cream, too many eggs, too many fried and greasy foods, and too many processed foods such as crackers and cookies and doughnuts. This is the first thing to understand about a cholesterol test.
High LDL levels can mean terrible things for your body. Aside from depression, obesity, lack of energy, lack of focus, lack of sleep, and so on, high HDL levels can also mean stroke, heart attack, paralysis, and death.
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Another thing that you will want to understand about your cholesterol test is your level of triglycerides. When we eat food, triglycerides make up the chief kind of fat. Our liver processes triglycerides for us, expelling what we don't need and keeping what we do. When we eat too many calories, though, our body turns them into triglycerides and stores them as fat. Too many triglycerides causes heart disease and obesity.
When you take your cholesterol test, high levels of LDL and triglycerides means that fatty acids are storing up in your arteries and slowing down the process of blood circulation. Understanding what happens when blood is slowed down can often be a powerful motivation for change.
Think of your frying pan when you have finished frying potatoes and butter in it. If you leave it out, a hard, white gunk forms in the bottom, very greasy, which is difficult to clean even with hot water and soap. You would never eat the gunk with a spoon; that would be too obviously gross and unhealthy. Nevertheless, a diet too high in animal products and processed foods is exactly the same thing as eating the dried fatty substance in the bottom of a frying pan. Your arteries get choked with the stuff. The blood moves ever more slowly. If the blood is slowed down too much, it can hemorrhage or form into clots. Either of these activities could mean heart attack, stroke, paralysis, and death for you.
The next thing you'll want to understand about your cholesterol test is the level of HDL, or good cholesterol, in your system. High levels of HDL, and low levels of LDL and triglycerides, means that you have been doing something right. In general, that something is eating the right kinds of food and exercising regularly. The right kind of food is natural food - food that grows out of the earth - vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts, and certain types of oils such as olive and peanut oils. These foods are full of vitamins and nutrients that clean out your system and build it up ever stronger and stronger.
When you take your cholesterol test, your doctor will look at the results with you and help you to understand the numbers meaning HDL, LDL, and triglycerides. He or she can then help you come up with a plan to improve your numbers. A greater understanding of what is good for your body and what is bad for it is a key factor in lowering dangerous cholesterol levels. A cholesterol test is the first step; once you've taken it and understood its implications, you can begin a recovery process or, if you're in good shape already, you can rest a little easier and make small adjustments here and there to improve even more.
