Understanding Cholesterol Levels

More than half of the world today has high cholesterol. What this means is that every other person that you see walking down the street is at risk for some sort of heart disease. The average person doesn’t even know how their cholesterol stands because you can’t see high cholesterol. However, the stats stand for themselves when it comes to your cholesterol; you need to understand it in order to be able to deal with it. Once you get past the code, it is very easy to understand.

There are actually five different ways that you can use in order to get a complete reading on your own cholesterol levels and they are: total cholesterol levels, HDL, LDL, total/HDL ratio, LDL/HDL ratio. These measurements are actually written down to be what is desirable and what is not desirable. Measurement units for checking your cholesterol are conducted as milligrams per deciliter. It is extremely confusing if you try to look at these separately. You can talk to your doctor if you really want to understand your cholesterol levels and what, if anything, you need to do about them or how to maintain them properly.

I am going to give you the actual numbers that are involved when it comes to your cholesterol. Your overall desired level should be below 200 mg/dL, 200 to 240 for a borderline level and total risk above level 240. This is just for your overall levels. When it comes to breaking it down to each individual level, your doctor can best explain those to you.

Explaining HDL Cholesterol

When you think of your cholesterol, chances are all you care about is that it is low, but HDL levels are not the same as general cholesterol levels. It is actually just a section of your overall cholesterol when it comes to your HDL levels you actually want it to be high. HDL is not the same as cholesterol in any way. In fact your HDL levels are high density lipoproteins. We need lots of these. Their role in our body is to carry cholesterol away from the body as soon as LDL has brought it.

There are several different ways that you will want to achieve this. On the list are the excessive smoking, alcohol, body weight, exercise and medications. Let's look at the actual numbers on this. You have to remember that the smallest changes in HDL levels are significant. It would be going too far to say it is exponential, but a 1 mg/dL increase in your HDL cholesterol levels means as much as a 2 to 4 percent reduction in risk of heart disease and cardiac problems in general.

Knowing that your HDL levels need to be high is one thing. Here are the actual figures to explain. Your numbers are too low if they are at 37 mg/dL for men and at 47 mg/dL for women. The normal range for men to have is about 40 to 50 mg/dL, and for women 50 to 60 mg/dL. This is a concern as many people get these levels backward. It helps if you try to see a reasonable goal which would be to increase your HDL cholesterol levels by 10 mg/dL from whatever it is now since most of us need  ore than what we have.