Cholesterol: Beyond the hype
Cholesterol numbers: You'd think there was nothing more important in the world of health.
Let me tell you, this is a classic example of hype. Mainstream medicine and its lapdog, the mainstream press, have latched onto cholesterol like it's the last life raft on the Titanic.
Here's what any doctor worth his salt will tell you: Knowing your cholesterol number is all well and good—and a waste of your time. When you consider that nearly half of heart attacks occur in the patients who were told their numbers were "normal," it's an outrage to think that's all a patient needs to know.
Instead of focusing on simply LDL "bad" cholesterol number (which seems to have mesmerized docs and laymen alike), you should focus more of your attention on the HDL "good" cholesterol triglycerides numbers. The relationships and ratios between these numbers—such as the Total Cholesterol to HDL, LDL to HDL and triglyceride to HDL ratios—supply valuable additional information beyond the LDL number alone.
Another example: A triglyceride level under 100 mg/deciliter suggests a larger, safer buoyant LDL particle type, a fact known by few primary care doctors. Your doctor should be able to explain these various relationships in these terms and simply limit his or her discussion to a few top line numbers.
The standard cholesterol test gives you a limited picture of what's really going on with your blood lipids. Ask your doctor for a VAP test or lipid sub-fraction test (which will supply an expanded lipid profile) that tells you what kind of HDL and LDL you have. This information is especially important if you have significant risk factors for heart disease, such as diabetes, high blood pressure or a family history of heart disease, which always indicate some degree of inherited risk. More detailed lipid testing is available from Atherotec (www.thevaptest.com), Berkeley Heart Labs (www.bhlinc.com) and Spectracell (www.spectracell.com). All of them are excellent labs. I use Spectracell in my own practice.
