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from the everything-eventually-kills-you dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
It has been accepted wisdom for many years that the more good cholesterol people have in their blood, the better. But the good cholesterol, also known as HDL, might not be as good as we think.
In any case, the results of a new study from the University of Copenhagen seriously contradict the assumption that high levels of HDL in the blood are only a good thing. The researchers have shown that people with extremely high levels of good cholesterol have a higher mortality rate than people with normal levels. For men with extremely high levels, the mortality rate was 106 per cent higher than for the normal group. For women with extremely high levels, the mortality rate was 68 per cent higher.
"These results radically change the way we understand 'good' cholesterol. Doctors like myself have been used to congratulating patients who had a very high level of HDL in their blood. But we should no longer do so, as this study shows a dramatically higher mortality rate," says Børge Nordestgaard, Professor at the Department of Clinical Medicine and one of the authors of the study.
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(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 24 2017, @09:20AM (1 child)
I am not an MD, but this is an attempt to reconstruct what could be happening in bloodsteam:
LDL is some sort of packaging for transporting oils/fats through bloodstream in a tidy manner. If you have too much of that, it may be because there is a construction going on (cell membranes need fats) or you are storing fat (gaining weight) or burning fat (loosing weight).
Excessive LDL is bad for your blood vessel walls (when it crystallizes while deposited on, or inside, them, they rupture).
It was explained to me that HDL acts as a sort of mop for used up LDL. Once HDL and LDL join, they are captured in the liver and destroyed. I don't understand why LDL can't be reused and has to be recycled instead.
If you have low HDL level and normal LDL level, that could mean that you are generating too much LDL and your normal HDL production is barely compensating that, in other words, you keep LDL level inside the limits, but only thanks to burning through too much HDL.
However, if you get too high HDL level, I suppose something is wrong in the process: either too much HDL is created, or for some reason it is not binding LDL anymore, or it is not being destroyed at usual rate.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday August 24 2017, @05:52PM
...or burning fat (loosing weight).
I usually cringe at that misspelling, but had to grin this time. Losing something is accidental, loosing something is on purpose ("Loose the hounds").
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience