This articles covers issues about drug therapies designed to treat high cholesterol. It begins with a brief overview of cholesterol including what it is, and what its purpose in the body is. Then the three drug therapy classes are examined including what drugs belong to each class of drugs, what these drugs do, how they are able to reduce your cholesterol levels, and what drug interactions may occur. After reading this article you will have a better understanding of what drug treatments are available for various high cholesterol problems, and what their pros and cons are.
Introduction
Cholesterol is perhaps one of the most talked about health issue today. While the name "cholesterol" has been linked with bad health and targeted as something that should be eliminated, cholesterol actually serves a vital roll in the body's makeup and in your body's metabolism processes.
Cholesterol is used by the body to fuel cell growth and regeneration. To accomplish this the body harvests cholesterol from foods that are eaten, and from stores of cholesterol that the body produces in the liver. In general, the body really only needs a small amount of cholesterol to meet all of its cholesterol needs, however, because cholesterol is found in a wide variety of favorite foods, an excess of cholesterol is easy to attain. If too much cholesterol enters the bloodstream then a condition known as hypercholesterolemiahypercholesterolemia develops which increases the chances that a person will develop health threatening conditions such as heart disease, heart attack, or stroke.
There are three types of cholesterol: low-density lipoprotein (also referred to as LDLs), high-density lipoproteins (also referred to as HDLs), and triglycerides. As you probably have heard not all cholesterol is bad, and in fact high levels of the second kind of cholesterol, high-density lipoproteins, is actually a very good thing and it is a good way to prevent heart disease. On the other hand, the other two types of cholesterol, low-density lipoproteins and triglycerides are both hazardous to your health if they are found in high levels in your blood. High levels of LDLs in the blood increases your chances of developing heart disease, and high levels of triglyceride, which is stored in the body as fat, can also increase the chances that heart disease will develop.
High cholesterol is caused by a number of factors including heredity, diet, age, gender, other preexisting medical conditions, and the amount of exercise you get. To reduce the amount of bad cholesterol that is floating around and accumulating in your body you can adopt several different strategies. The first strategy is to change your diet by reducing the amount of cholesterol, calories, and saturated fat that make up your daily food intake. The second strategy is to increase the amount of exercise that you participate in each day. Exercise can be use to burn off, if you will, excess cholesterol and help you to reduce your bad cholesterol levels. If you have tried to lower your bad cholesterol levels through diet and exercise and you still are not seeing the kind of results that you want, you may need to treat your high cholesterol with drugs.