Description
- We are all becoming more aware of high cholesterol problems and often only discover that we are at risk when having a general health check. In this book Dr Tom Smith describes in his easily accessible style the causes of high cholesterol, the associated problems, the complications and the risks involved if your high cholesterol goes untreated
- Dr Tom Smith details the treatments available together with possible side effects. He also gives information on diet and lifestyle changes which may be needed to help reduce your cholesterol levels and reduce the risks to your overall health
Book contains
- Your least-known organ — The endothelium
- Cholesterol and other blood lipids
- The evidence for lowering cholesterol
- Making the diagnosis
- Putting things right — A complete approach
- Why you mustn't smoke — and how to stop if you do
- Drug treatments
- Other treatments and controversies
- Some familiar stories
- Lowering the risks — Your total risk management programme
- Blood pressure
- Diabetes
- Women and heart disease
- Aspirin and other drugs
Introduction
It seems a long time since we were all exhorted to 'go to work on an egg' and to 'drink a pint of milk a day.' These two messages, so popular in the 1960s, fell out of favour in the 1970s. That was when cholesterol raised its ugly head, and eggs and dairy products were transformed into foods that would harm, rather than help, your heart. The messages changed to 'eat only three eggs a week' and 'have the odd drink of semi-skimmed milk from time to time.' We were all encouraged to have our blood cholesterol levels checked regularly, and to eat foods that would keep them down, or at least to reasonable levels.
Why did these messages change so drastically? Were the people who changed the messages right? What is cholesterol, anyway? Should we be worried about it, and its level in our blood? Does changing what we eat really make much difference? Does bringing down blood cholesterol really lower our risk of a heart attack or stroke? Do the drugs so many of us take really make a difference? Are there other things we should be doing as well, to make an even bigger difference to our chances of having a heart attack or stroke?
This book aims to answer these questions and more. It is about cholesterol and the related fatty substances, called lipids, which have been identified as important in causing heart disease and strokes. It explains why we have lipids in our bloodstream and tissues, what they do, why sometimes we need to take notice of them, and what we can do — by eating wisely, exercising and making other lifestyle changes — to lessen the havoc they may wreak on our blood vessels. If we can do that we stand a better chance of avoiding an early death from heart attack or stroke.
Other Causes of Heart Attacks and Strokes
Cholesterol and the other blood lipids are only a small part of the story of heart disease, however. On its own, a higher-than-normal level of cholesterol in your blood doesn't normally pose much of a risk. There are exceptions: a very few men and women inherit a tendency to develop extremely high cholesterol levels. For them it is vital that everything should be done, including permanently taking drugs, to lower these levels, and we shall discuss this later in the book. For the vast majority, however, what is called for is a broader approach to a healthier life and to lowering their risks of heart attack and strokes, which may or may not involve drugs.
Doctors have known for at least 20 years that there are three main 'risk factors' promoting heart attacks and strokes:
1. Uncontrolled high blood pressure, or hypertension.
2. Smoking
3. A high blood lipid level.
The medical term for a high blood fat (lipid) level is hyperlipidaemia, but it is so closely linked to blood cholesterol levels in the popular press that it is usually referred to as 'a high cholesterol'.
There are two other 'secondary' risk factors that promote heart attacks and strokes:
4. Obesity
5. A sedentary lifestyle
Obviously these last two are linked: People who take little exercise tend to be overweight. But the two are not always found together. There are slim couch potatoes, presumably because they don't eat much (although these people are rare). And there are people who take plenty of exercise but also eat a lot. Weight-lifters and sumo wrestlers come to mind.
There is one more risk factor which applies to more and more men and women in their middle years and beyond. That is maturity-onset diabetes. The recent figures for this illness are worrying: it affects more than two million people in Britain, and the numbers are rising steeply, year on year.
This book, therefore, not only covers cholesterol but has specific chapters on high blood pressure, smoking, exercise, body shape and diabetes. They all matter to men and women who have been told they have a high cholesterol.
It cannot be emphasised enough that you mustn't look at your cholesterol levels in isolation: they are part of a whole series of problems. There is a chapter on the drugs used to treat high cholesterol levels, but please don't buy the book just to read about them. If you do, and you ignore the rest of the lifestyle advice, you will be doing yourself a disservice.
I'm not in favour of buzz words like 'holistic' in medicine. I believe that all general practitioners like myself, who take pride in their work, treat the 'whole patient'. We practised holistically before the word was hijacked by complementary and alternative practitioners. But if the word holistic has any meaning at all, it is in the treatment of people with a high cholesterol level. You ignore a high cholesterol at your peril, but if you do the opposite, and concentrate on it alone, you are making just as big a mistake. Take all the advice in this book together, as a complete guide to your future good health.
About the author
- Dr Tom Smith Having graduated from Birmingham Medical School Dr Tom Smith spent two years in hospital house positions before entering general practice, first in Birmingham and then South Ayrshire. He then became medical adviser and later medical director of a major pharmaceutical company where he organised and helped to publish clinical trials of new drugs and took the Diploma in Pharmaceutical Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
- Dr Tom Smith has been a full time writer since 1977 with many popular medical books to his credit together with weekly medical columns in several regional newspapers. He also finds time to practice as a locum for the family doctors in his home area of Girvan. Ayrshire, South West Scotland
- Tom is married with two children
