CHO-LES-TER-OL, this 4 syllable word was not well known about 20-25 years ago.  Whereas nowadays whenever 3 to 5 people get together, they mostly talk about cholesterol.  Unfortunately people who have a cholesterol problem  as well as hipertension and diabetes have increased.

So what is cholesterol? Is it really that harmful to us? Did it not exist before? Why are we talking about it as if it is a very important illness today?  In actual fact, it is an essential fat that exists in every cell of our body and is necessary for life.  Life cannot carry on without cholesterol.  But what we talk about being harmful is having high cholesterol.  World Health Organisation says that the cholesterol levels in blood should not exeed 200%mgs.   The higher the HDL levels, which is what we call good cholesterol, the better.  For example, if it is less than 35% it is bad.  If this is 70-80% or higher than this is very good.  What we term as bad cholesterol- LDL- should be as low as possible. It must definitely be lower than 130%.

HDL cleans up the cholesterol in our arteries like a vacuum cleaner and takes it to our liver for breaking down.  In a way it washes out our arteries.  In that case, the higher it's levels in the blood the better.  LDL, on the other hand, takes the cholesterol from the liver to our arteries.  So it is harmful.  The lower it's levels in the blood, the healthier our cardiovascular system.

So what does the blood levels of cholesterol depend on? If we watch our diet would our cholesterol levels be normal?  Before we answer these questions, let us look at which foods contain cholesterol.  Firstly, the ability to synthesize cholesterol only exists in humans and animals.  So plants cannot make it. Therefore none of the vegetable foods we eat contain cholesterol.  On the other hand, all animal-origin foods contain cholesterol.  So if we want to consume cholesterol-free foods we must choose foods that grow on the ground.

Let us have a look at our breakfast table.  What do we have? Olives, cheese, jam, sausage, salami, bread.  Wonder which ones don't have cholesterol.  If we carry out basic logic, than anything that grew on the ground we could eat without worry.  Which means that olives, jam and bread do not contain cholesterol, whereas cheese, sausage and salami, because they are of animal origin, do contain cholesterol.  Certain foods of animal-origin are very rich in terms of cholesterol.  Some of these are brain, offal, liver, red meat, and cream.  Fish since being  a white meat contains less cholesterol but calamari that we love to eat is rich in cholesterol.

So is blood cholesterol levels only vary according  on our diet? Unfortunately no.  I recall talking to a vegetarian friend( who does not eat any food of animal-origin).  I had found out that she never got her cholesterol checked as she believed that because of her diet her cholesterol should be normal or even low.  When i convinced her to have it tested, firstly she did now want to believe the results.  Her cholesterol levels were 400%, that is, very high.  She believed the results were wrong and got a second lab to re-do the test.   The results were unfortunatley the same.  She then told me that her father had a sudden heart attack in his 30s and had died.  Her father too, probably had  high cholesterol.  He was a smoker, and the risk of having a heart attack in men is higher, this, coupled with a high cholesterol level, had resulted in her father's death from a heart attack.   Hence, we do need to advice on taking medication to lower such people's cholesterol levels.  Most of our patients are worried about taking cholesterol medication. They worry about it's  harmful effect on their liver. Yes it is true that they have an effect on the liver but there is no harm of having these medication under your doctor's control.  Because we also require you to routinely have liver tests.  If liver functions are affected, we either stop you from taking the drug or move you to a different group of drugs.  Therefore, if you doctor has advised you to take cholesterol medication you must definitely take them.

Another way of reducing your cholesterol is to exercise.  We must all make room for sports in our lives.  Even if we don't walk every day, 20 minutes of walking 3 days a week is enough.  Swimming or other forms of exercise could also be carried out.

To put it shortly, we need to love and protect our bodies.  Twice yearly medical checks, healthy eating and exercise will have a positive effect on our lives, and help us to live a quality life.

Wishing you healthy days,

Dr. Sibel Siber