Health News and Information

The effect of lowering your cholesterolYou go to the doctor for a checkup. A blood test reveals a total cholesterol level of 260 mg/dl. You carefully and consistently adjust your diet and exercise. When your cholesterol is rechecked in 6 months, it is 208 mg/dl. Because that is a decrease of 20 percent, your predicted risk for the development of coronary disease has decreased by 40 percent if you maintain the improved level.Discouraging and encouraging facts about cholesterolApproximately 55 percent of American adults have a total cholesterol level of more than 200 mg/dl.If your total cholesterol is 300 mg/dl, the risk for development of coronary disease is double what it would be if your total cholesterol were 150 mg/dl.The risk of dying from coronary disease if your total cholesterol is 300 mg/dl is four times what it would be if your total cholesterol were 180 mg/dl. Dietary measures alone can usually reduce the average LDL cholesterol by about 15 percent or more. Dietary measures are less likely to be effective if the triglyceride level is normal, though.A 10 percent reduction in cholesterol level results in a 20 percent reduction in future coronary risk. A 1 mg/dl increase in HDL cholesterol reduces your risk of coronary disease by 2 to 3 percent. Aggressive life-style modification, including cholesterol reduction, can cause at least a little reversal of coronary artery blockage in about one of three people.*244\252\8*

From a health perspective, benefits are most obvious if you never begin smoking in the first place. If you do smoke, however, the gains from stopping are enormous. After you quit, the risk of heart disease from smoking drops dramatically within about 2 years. Although your risk probably will never be as low as if you had never smoked, it can certainly approach that level.Researchers have found that if you smoke two packs of cigarettes per day your risk of death from heart disease alone (not considering death from other causes or ill health not resulting in death) is double that if you never smoked. If you stop smoking (and do not resume), the risk of death from heart disease is reduced to 1.3 times what it would have been if you never smoked.Even among relatively older individuals, there is a dramatic advantage to discontinuing cigarette use. For example, if you are older than 50 and stop smoking, the chance of dying from any cause is reduced by one-half during the next 15 years. The risk of dying of heart disease decreases by about 30 percent. Recent studies have shown that smokers older than age 60 could add 5 to 7 years to their lives by quitting. It is never too late to quit.*235\252\8*