What are they and why are they important? You might not be familiar with the term, or know what it means, but you’ve almost certainly heard of some lipids, including cholesterol, fatty acids, and saturated fatty acids.
Lipids are essential to human health. In the body, they perform various functions including storing energy, signaling, serving as structural components of cell membranes, and helping in hormone production. While denigrated in modern society, fats are crucially important for health. Fat serves as body’s source of energy, and helps insulate the body against cold.
As we age, excessive levels of certain fats undergo chemical reactions, and are taken in by inflammatory cells, forming soft plaques that undergo calcification inside the arteries. This is what we call atherosclerosis.
A “lipid profile” is a measure of the fats in your blood to assess your risk of atherosclerosis in general and coronary artery disease in particular.
When you get a “Lipid Profile” at your doctor, you usually get the following breakdown:
TOTAL CHOLESTEROL
HDL
LDL
TRIGLICERIDES
The main culprit is the LDL (
HDL (high density lipoprotein) removes excess cholesterol from the arteries and moves it to the liver for elimination. THE HIGHER, THE BETTER. HDL is the only one for which this is true. Exercise increases HDL.
TRIGLICERIDES are different kind of fats circulating in the blood, mostly after meals and stored in body fat. If they are elevated (such as in diabetes or hyperlipidemias), they form fat conglomerate with LDL and facilitate the entry of LDL into the arterial wall. Avoiding sugar and grains (wheat, cereal, rice) helps lower triglycerides. There are numerous diets people can use to improve health, including a cardiac- prudent Paleo diet.
