Everyone has heard that there is bad cholesterol and good cholesterol. Good cholesterol is not called cholesterol itself, but rather special particles that float in the blood and have a complex composition. There are proteins in them, and all sorts of useful enzymes. They help to collect the cholesterol scattered throughout our body and drag it to the liver for processing. We have already discussed this idea in the story about absorbable atherosclerotic plaques.
There, the trick was that immune cells can not only eat cholesterol, get fat and damage blood vessels, but also, if desired, burp cholesterol back, and then clean up all the mess. So particles with good cholesterol help immune cells to empty themselves of excess cholesterol.
It is generally accepted that if there is little good cholesterol in the blood, then there will be more heart attacks with strokes. And if there is a lot of good cholesterol, then there will be fewer heart attacks with strokes. Feedback.
At some point, the idea came up to increase the level of good cholesterol in the blood. There are special tools for this. But nothing happened. There were no fewer heart attacks and strokes. It turns out that low levels of good cholesterol are more like a marker that indicates the development of atherosclerosis. It's like a warning light that indicates a problem. It makes no sense to unscrew the signal light when a problem occurs, because this will not affect the problem.
High levels of good cholesterol
It happens that the level of good cholesterol is noticeably higher than normal. This happens with problems with the thyroid gland, from alcohol, various drugs, from insulin, which is used to treat diabetes. Therefore, for people on insulin, good cholesterol does not have the same meaning as for everyone else. Women also have higher levels of good cholesterol due to estrogen.
We decided that it would be considered elevated if it is more than 1.6 millimoles per liter. It would seem that this is good, and usually it is really good, and heart attacks with strokes in such people will occur less frequently. But sometimes it's bad.
It's all about cholesterol. That is, for the convenience of laboratory tests, cholesterol is considered in these same "good" high-density lipoproteins. But the benefit to our health is not in the cholesterol itself, but in the correct composition of these particles. Sometimes the particles are defective. They have a lot of cholesterol, and the rest of the components do not work properly. It turns out stupidly high cholesterol levels without any benefit, and rather even with some harm.
So do not rejoice ahead of time. This is especially true for women.
