(LifeWire) - First, congratulations on getting your cholesterol levels under control. By lowering your "bad cholesterol," or LDL levels, and hopefully by also raising your "good cholesterol," or HDL levels, you have decreased your risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), or coronary artery disease (CAD), by nearly 50%, studies have shown. That's a pretty amazing start.
But heart disease is still a risk.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD), the umbrella term under which cholesterol- and plaque-related heart diseases such as CHD fall, also includes peripheral artery disease (PAD) and stroke. Along with high cholesterol, researchers have identified several key risk factors you should actively seek to reduce to decrease all CVD risk. These include smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes, being overweight, or obese, and lack of exercise.
In fact, the Framingham Risk Calculator uses this CVD-risk information to help assess your possible chances of heart attack.
Many of the these risk factors are also implicated in a close cousin to CVD: the metabolic syndrome. This syndrome -- which estimators say affects as many as 50 million Americans -- is characterized by abdominal obesity, poor cholesterol and triglyceride profiles, elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance and two less obvious risks, a prothrombotic and/or proinflammatory state. (The latter involves elevated levels of fibrinogen, plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 and C-reactive protein in the blood.)
Folks with the metabolic syndrome have a higher risk of plaque-related diseases such as CHD, PAD and stroke, and type 2 diabetes.
But all of this can be seen as strangely good news. If you're working on your cholesterol levels, but haven't gotten them under control, you can still make impressive heart-healthy lifestyle changes. Increasing your level of exercise is just as important as upping your intake of fruits and vegetables. You might even want to throw in some meditation to bring down that blood pressure.
It all adds up to better health and an easier time for that muscle in your chest -- that is, your heart.
Sources:
"Cardiovascular Diseases." who.int. 2008. World Health Organization. 30 Oct. 2008.
<http://www.who.int/cardiovascular_diseases/en/?s=0009>.
"Cholesterol-Lowering Studies." americanheart.org. 2008. The American Heart Association. 23 Oct.2008. <http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4524>.
"Coronary Artery Disease." nhlbi.nih.gov. Jun 2008. National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. 30 Oct. 2008.
<http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/Cad/CAD_WhatIs.html>.
"Heart Attack/Coronary Heart Disease Risk Assessment." americanheart.org. 2008. The American Heart Association. 23 Oct. 2008. <http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3003499>.
"Metabolic Syndrome." americanheart.org. 2008. The American Heart Association. 23 Oct. 2008. <http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4756>.
