Assessing Your Risk of Cardiovascular Disease (Video)

[Introduction]

Today, we’ll talk about the health of the vital blood vessels that feed your heart muscle. Since the word “vascular” refers to “blood vessels” and “cardio” refers to your heart, another name for today’s topic is cardiovascular health.

[Quiz Kick-off]

We’ll start with a short quiz. Suppose your blood test results include measurements of Total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and Triglycerides. Which two numbers tell most about your risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD)? Is it

1. LDL cholesterol and HDL cholesterol
2. LDL cholesterol and total cholesterol
3. Triglycerides and LDL cholesterol

or

1. Triglycerides and HDL cholesterol?

[Answer Reveal]

The correct answer is D) Triglycerides and HDL cholesterol.
Surprising, right? We often hear about the danger of high “total cholesterol” and “bad” LDL cholesterol, but recent research tells a different story.

[Debunking Myths]

The popular belief is that high total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol are the villains that create havoc in our arteries. But as we see so often in the field of health and the human body, “popular” is not the same as “true.”

[Research Insights]

Research over the past two decades has thrown a curveball – it looks like people with high cholesterol levels are not necessarily at a higher risk for cardiovascular disease. And here’s another one: a high LDL level isn’t necessarily associated with a higher risk either. In fact, for those over 60 years of age, having a low LDL level seems to be correlated with higher risk of death. Now, that’s a plot twist!

[The Real Culprits]

• So, if total cholesterol isn’t the villain of this story, and LDL isn’t, what is? It turns out to be not one villain acting alone, but a gang of health conditions that often occur together.  These include
• Abdominal obesity
• Raised blood pressure
• High blood sugar
• High triglycerides
• and
• Low levels of HDL cholesterol

[Metabolic Syndrome]

A collection of symptoms like these is generally referred to as a syndrome.  And since These particular five are all closely related to chemical processes that occur in your body’s cells—this it, to your body’s metabolism, the name of this gang is metabolic syndrome.

What we know now is that when a person has at least three of the five conditions of the metabolic, they are at higher risk of cardiovascular diseases, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.

[The good news]

That’s the bad news.  But there’s also good news: every one of the five conditions of metabolic can be improved by your own choices and actions—what and when you eat, how much and how regularly you sleep, and how much exercise you get.  And with these health choices, there are no side effects, unless you want to call heightened energy levels and a strengthened immune system side effects.

[Conclusion]

In a good detective story, the criminal often turns out not to be the character that at first appears to be guilty.  And as you seek to discover the truth about health, it’s often the case that you should look beyond the things that “everybody knows”.  After all, if everybody did know the truth, it seems like we would have nation full of healthy people.

If you liked what you learned in this video, we hope you’ll give it a thumbs up, and consider becoming a subscriber.