Cholesterol and The Hardening of The Arteries

Cholesterol and The Hardening of The Arteries

There is a truth in a saying “You are as old as your blood vessels” because blood vessels are the lifelines to all of the tissues in our body. Any defect in our blood vessels or in the heart has great effect on the body.

Hardening of the arteries is commonly known as atherosclerosis, this is a condition behind high blood pressure, strokes, heart attacks and circulatory problems. Hardening of the arteries and high blood pressure usually exist as team, they go hand in hand.

The development typically starts with building up of cholesterol on the inner wall of the arteries thus, narrowing the channel through which the blood flows. What happened now is there is a reduction of blood flow to the tissues, to resolve the problem the heart pumps more often to raise the blood pressure for an adequate supply of blood to the tissues. The muscle layer of the narrowed arteries due to cholesterol build up usually hardens preventing the wall to  move or function properly thus, raising the blood pressure more.

Hardening of coronary arteries reduces the blood supply to the heart muscles resulting to the condition called coronary heart disease. Stroke is usually caused either by hardening of the arteries supplying the brain or hypertension or both. Reduction of blood supply to the limbs, especially the legs and feet due to hardening of arteries or atherosclerosis may result to death of tissues, this circulatory problem is called gangrene.

Since we now know what started it all– our wrong choices of food particularly cholesterol rich, saturated  fat rich and, or trans fats rich foods, we should now cut down and if possible eliminate those fat sources of food for us to stay healthy and young. Remember you have much better sources of fats—the polyunsaturated fats and the unsaturated fats. But, we must bear in mind that though they are good sources of fats still, we should take in polyunsaturated and unsaturated fat food in moderation. Five or more servings of fruits and variety of vegetables in your diet everyday help lower bad cholesterol level. Moderate exercise and exposure to sunlight, and water therapy has an impact also in lowering the blood cholesterol level.

Tags: atherosclerosis, bad cholesterol, bad cholesterol level, blood cholesterol level, blood pressure, blood vessels, cholesterol, circulatory problem, Exercise, exposure to sunlight, gangrene, hardening of the arteries, healthy, heart, heart attack, high blood pressure, polyunsaturated fats, Saturated fat, stroke, sunlight, trans fat, unsaturated fats, water, water therapy

You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.