Monitoring your levels of good and bad cholesterol is useful on a daily basis to reduce the risk of disease and cardiovascular accidents, but researchers have recently discovered a new type of cholesterol to monitor to stay healthy.
We say it is good or bad depending on one of the 2 known forms that it takes in our body, but the cholesterol could also a 3rd form still little known today which would greatly impact our health. If our level of good cholesterol (also called HDL cholesterol) must be greater than 0.35 g/l during a blood test for this lipid to effectively protect us from cardiovascular disease, it becomes bad cholesterol as soon as it is in excess (LDL cholesterol). According to one recent scientific study the results of which were published in the review Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biologyhowever, we would neglect to monitor another form of cholesterol called residual cholesterolwhich would nevertheless represent a real risk for our heart health.
This form of cholesterol, produced from the metabolism of triglycerides from dietary fats and the body’s reserves of cholesterol particles. “Residual cholesterol has been confirmed as a significant risk factor for coronary heart disease, heart attack and stroke, the largest of our three studies showed. This indicates that the health risk posed by high CR is of greater concern than LDL cholesterol, which is our current focus for prevention and treatment.” specify the researchers who carried out the scientific study which analyzed the blood tests of nearly a million participants.
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Residual cholesterol: why is it worse for our cardiovascular health than bad cholesterol?
According to the results revealed by the medical journal, people who have high residual cholesterol levels are 1.5 times more likely to develop coronary heart disease, 1.6 times more likely to have a heart attack and 1. Twice the risk of having a stroke. In addition, this form of cholesterol would even explain the lack of improvement in health among people who have managed to regulate their levels of good and bad cholesterol, when it is very present in the body. “We have provided new evidence that CR (residual cholesterol) may be key to understanding the full picture of cardiovascular risk and why some people continue to have poor heart health despite achieving appropriate LDL levels. For the first time, we show that one of these risk factors could be CR”assure, in fact, the researchers.
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