THEORIES & MYTHS BUSTED AGAIN!

I SAW THIS ARTICLE ON MSN HEALTH...COMMENTS IN PARENTHESIS ARE MY OWN...

There's a paradox that has long puzzled doctors: Roughly half the people who have heart attacks have perfectly normal cholesterol levels. I had a patient once whose total cholesterol was just 145—well below the 200 threshold above which doctors recommend treatment. And yet he had suffered two heart attacks by the age of forty-eight. Another patient had cholesterol above 300. But at the age of seventy, she had no plaque in her coronary arteries. How could this be?
Doctors now have at least a partial explanation.
(**Hint Hint** For years all the cholesterol bashing has largely been based on “theory”)
While we've all been obsessed with our total cholesterol numbers, it turns out that the size of those cholesterol particles is equally important. Excess LDL, or "bad" cholesterol, ends up getting deposited in arterial walls and forming plaque, which causes arteries to stiffen and blood pressure to rise—and ultimately leads to heart attacks. But not all LDL particles are equally likely to do damage. If they're very small, they're like little darts that easily pierce the arterial lining and deposit plaque. If they're large, they bounce off harmlessly, like beach balls.

Most of us check our cholesterol levels every year and can readily recite our good and bad cholesterol numbers. But very few of us get tested for particle size, even though the tests have been available clinically since the mid-1990s—and widely available in the past five years. These tests are generally covered by insurance, so tell your doctor you want one. They're graded in different ways, but most tell you if your particle size is small, medium, or large.
If your doctor determines that too many of your particles are small, you can turn this around with lifestyle changes or medication—or a combination of the two. (**With all the side effects of statin drugs, how about giving the lifestyle changes alone a fair shot!!)
The healthier your diet and exercise, the more your LDL particles will resemble those big beach balls. And as your waist shrinks, your LDL particle size will grow. No wonder trimmer waists are associated with better heart health. (Notice they didn’t say the more medication you take)