Cholesterol and heart disease are often some of the most worrisome topics people discuss with their doctors and loved ones.
Accurate and appropriate information and recommendations however, are not always easy to find.
During February – Heart Health Awareness Month – Functional Wellness participated in the “All You Need Is Heart” Event to bring this information about Lipoprotein Particle Size and not just Total Cholesterol, as a more comprehensive way to evaluate your cholesterol status and possible heart disease risk.
In March the Vail Daily was supposed to include my article in the Tuesday Health Section, but instead hid it on a Monday without any images to help draw attention to this important concept – The Complexities of Cholesterol
One way to help describe how particle size matters is to utilize the idea of passengers traveling in various types of vehicles – To illustrate, think of the large-sized molecules like a bus, the smaller-sized ones like a car, and cholesterol as a passenger. As an example: if your LDL cholesterol measurement is 125mg/dL – you might have 5 large busses carrying 25 cholesterol-passengers each, or 125 cars carrying one cholesterol-passenger each. The number and size of the vehicles on the road determines whether there is increased risk of a traffic jam, not the number of people traveling in the vehicles. The higher the count of small-sized lipoprotein particles (cars), the higher the risk of cardiovascular disease. Since each type of lipoprotein responds differently to various “treatments”, understanding your lipoprotein status is essential for determining both your risk as well as the most appropriate, targeted intervention for your body.
Chris Kresser explains this information very clearly in his article – The Diet-Heart Myth: Why Everyone Should Know Their LDL Particle Number
At Functional Wellness we can help you identify your cardiovascular risk factors including inflammation, blood sugar, detoxification function, cholesterol particle size and count and help you create lifestyle and nutrition modifications that are meet you where are you today, and get you where you want go, comfortably, safely and with individualized programs and personalized attention.
Call us today. We can help you.