The Next Recommendation on Lowering Cholesterol May be to Start Earlier

The clinical work on lowering blood cholesterol that has taken place over recent years has demonstrated that if there is a lower limit beyond which low cholesterol levels become harmful, then that limit is very low indeed. Certainly below 10% of the normal human level. There are a number of uncommon mutations that produce individuals with up to half of the normal amount of blood cholesterol, people who exhibit significantly reduced risk of cardiovascular disease as a result of this difference from the norm. This is all quite interesting: why did we evolve to have the blood cholesterol that we do, if we need only a small fraction of it? The reason why lowering blood cholesterol lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease is that atherosclerosis is caused by the dysfunction of macrophage cells in an environment rich in oxidized lipids. Atherosclerosis is age-related because oxidative stress, and thus amounts of oxidized lipids, rise with age. A lesser degree of all blood lipids means a lesser degree of oxidized lipids in the blood stream, entering blood vessel walls to aggravate and kill macrophages. This in turn results in a slowed progression of atherosclerosis. Unfortunately it really doesn't help all that much to remove existing fatty lesions produced by the processe of atherosclerosis, and it doesn't do more than slow the progression of the condition. Lowered blood cholesterol only raises the odds of avoiding the consequences of atherosclerosis, meaning stroke and hea...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs