When you gain an excessive amount of weight, you put your wellbeing at risk to a whole host of health complications, one of which is hypercholesterolemia. This happens when your cholesterol levels are too high. Cholesterol is actually important to your wellness, and your weight, as your body uses it to produce certain hormones, vitamin D, and bile acids that help to digest fat. However, if you have too much cholesterol in your blood, it builds up in arteries, leading to coronary heart disease and many other serious conditions.
You can inherit hypercholesterolemia as a genetic disorder, but the most common form of it is non-familial (non-inherited) hypercholesterolemia. Though you often get it when you have a susceptible genotype, hypercholesterolemia occurs when this genotype is aggravated by an excessive intake of saturated fats and cholesterol.
Some of the predisposing factors for high cholesterol levels (hypercholesterolemia) are your family history of the condition, your high-cholesterol and high-saturated fats diet, liver disease, an under-active thyroid, poorly controlled diabetes, an overactive pituitary gland, nephrotic syndrome, anorexia nervosa, obesity, smoking, lack or low levels of physical activity, polycystic ovarian syndrome, insulin resistance, drinking alcohol, kidney failure, stress, pregnancy, lupus, multiple myeloma and lymphoma.
However, some of the most important risk factors related to high cholesterol can be lowered with lifestyle changes. You can lose weight, reduce the saturated fat and trans fatty acids in your diet and add fibre, increase your physical inactivity, reduce stress, and stop smoking. The other most important factors are living in an industrialised country, which you might not be able to do much about, and an under-active thyroid, diabetes and polycystic ovary syndrome, which you can consult your doctor about.
Consulting a doctor is wise if you think you might have high cholesterol, as if it goes untreated a number of complications may occur. Heart disease is one of these, and if your cholesterol levels are elevated this more than doubles the risk of heart attack. You can also be at a higher risk to stroke, and insulin resistance, which often develops into diabetes. However, hypercholesterolemia is often an asymptomatic condition and is usually discovered during routine screening, so make sure you get regular check ups, especially if there’s a history of stroke, heart attack or sudden death in your immediate family.
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