Rare Disease Hyperlipidemia
You call it high cholesterol. Your doctor refers to it as hyperlipidemia. Regardless, it's a common issue.
The term refers to a group of disorders that cause excess fats, or lipids, in your blood. You can influence some of the causes, but not all of them.
Hyperlipidemia can be treated, but it is often a chronic condition. You'll need to watch your diet and exercise regularly.You may also need to take a prescribed medication. The goal is to reduce harmful cholesterol levels. This lowers your risk of heart disease, heart attack, stroke, and other problems.
Causes
Cholesterol, a waxy substance, is a type of fat that your body produces. It can also result from what you eat.
Foods containing cholesterol, saturated fat, and trans fats can raise your blood cholesterol levels. These include cheese and egg yolks.
• Fried and processed food.
• Ice cream • Pastries • Red meat.
Symptoms & Risks
Most people suffering from hyperlipidemia are unaware of their condition at first. It's not something you can feel, but you'll notice the effects eventually. Cholesterol, along with triglycerides and other fats, can accumulate inside your arteries. This narrows the blood vessels, making it more difficult for blood to pass through. Your blood pressure could increase. The buildup can also result in a blood clot. A heart attack occurs when a blood clot breaks off and travels to the heart. If it travels to your brain, it can result in a stroke.
How Is It Diagnosed?
Your doctor should regularly monitor your lipid levels.
It requires a blood test called a lipoprotein panel. The findings reveal the levels of:
LDL cholesterol is the "bad" cholesterol that builds up in your arteries.
HDL cholesterol is the "good" cholesterol that reduces your risk of heart disease.
Triglycerides are another type of fat in your bloodstream.
Total cholesterol: The sum of the other three numbers.
Total cholesterol levels of 200 mg/dL or higher are outside of the normal range. Your doctor will consider factors such as your age, smoking status, and whether a close family member has heart problems when determining whether your specific test numbers are high and what to do about them.
Treatment
A healthy diet, weight loss, and exercise are all examples of lifestyle changes that can help lower cholesterol. To avoid trans fats, choose foods with low amounts.
• Consume fiber-rich foods like oatmeal, apples, bananas, pears, prunes, kidney beans, chickpeas, lentils and lima beans. • Eat fish twice a week.
Limit your alcohol consumption, too. That means a maximum of one drink per day for women and two for men.
Improve your exercise habits. On most days of the week, aim for 30 minutes of moderate-intensity activity, such as a brisk walk.
You don't have to do everything at once. Even just 10 to 15 minutes can make a difference.
Medications
Some people may find that making dietary and lifestyle changes is sufficient to lower their cholesterol levels. Other people may require more assistance.
Statins are drugs that inhibit your liver's ability to produce cholesterol. They are a popular choice for lowering cholesterol levels in the blood.
Nicotinic acid also influences how your liver produces fat. It lowers LDL cholesterol and triglycerides while increasing HDL cholesterol. Fibrates are another type of drug that affects your liver. They lower triglycerides and may increase HDL, but they are less effective at lowering LDL.
A newer type of drug prevents ingested cholesterol from being absorbed by your intestine. The drug is known as a selective cholesterol absorption inhibitor.
Dietary factors that affect lipid levels include nutritional component modification, specific food consumption, the use of food additives and supplements, and major dietary approaches.
The most beneficial changes come from reducing saturated and trans fats, increasing polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, fortifying foods with plant stanols or sterols, isocalorically adding tree nuts to the diet, consuming one or two alcoholic drinks per day, and following a Portfolio, Mediterranean, low-carbohydrate, or low-fat diet. Reducing dietary cholesterol, increasing soluble fibre and soy protein consumption, and eating fatty marine fish or taking marine-derived omega-3 fatty acid supplements all have smaller but still beneficial effects. Red yeast rice supplements have similar effects to statin medications and are more well tolerated in some patients.
Regular aerobic exercise has a positive effect on lipid levels, especially if done for at least 120 minutes per week.
Brief physician counselling will have little effect on unselected patients, so efforts should be focused on those who are motivated and willing to make lifestyle changes.
Hyperlipidemia is a major risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease. For the past decade, the National Cholesterol Education Program's Adult Treatment Panel III (ATP III) has recommended nonpharmacologic treatment as the first line of treatment for the majority of hyperlipidemia patients.1 The Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes (TLC) approach was based on a 1999 panel review of the available evidence, which concluded that diet and exercise can improve serum levels of total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, and triglycerides.
The TLC diet recommends getting 25 to 35 percent of your daily calories from fats, limiting saturated fats to less than 7% of total calories, and keeping cholesterol to less than 200 mg per day.
However, physicians and patients are frequently unaware of how much change in blood lipid levels can be expected when the TLC diet is prescribed, and they wonder which lifestyle changes have the greatest impact. This article aims to shed light on these questions by reviewing recent literature that was not available at the time of the ATPIII analysis. Because of the volume of published evidence in these areas, we will focus on meta-analyses, structured reviews, and randomised controlled trials (RCTs) that report findings on serum lipid levels.
