What Causes High Cholesterol?

Unlike what others think, cholesterol is not at all bad. It is in fact present in the body’s membranes, like in the brain, muscles, liver, nerves, heart, skin, and intestines. It is a waxy substance needed by the body to function properly by producing vitamin D, bile and different hormones. But it does not take much cholesterol to generate these. If you have excess cholesterol in your blood, it piles up in the arteries which eventually lead to blockages. This becomes the start of having a heard disease. The narrowing of the coronary heart arteries due to high cholesterol results to the reduction or even cut of the blood supply, which carries oxygen for the heart. Such condition relates to various heart diseases which can be life-threatening. But what can bring about high cholesterol? To explain more of this, below are some of the identified causes.

1. Your genes contribute in having high cholesterol. The rate of how immediate can your body remove the cholesterol in your blood and make them into useful forms is influenced by heredity.
2. Another cause of rising levels of bad cholesterol is weight. Being obese or overweight contributes to this increase. Required weight is dependent on your height and if your weight is excessively higher than the requirement, losing weight will definitely help increase good cholesterol and decrease bad cholesterol levels.
3. Age and sex also play a role in cholesterol levels. It rises as both men and women ages. But before menopausal stage, women generally have lower levels of cholesterol compared to men of the same age. At 50 years and above, men usually have lower cholesterol levels than women of the same age.
4. Not having regular exercise or having a stagnant lifestyle can cause high cholesterol. Engaging into physical activities regularly helps in lowering it, plus increasing good cholesterol.
5. Based on studies, stress can also contribute in increasing the cholesterol in the blood. This may be due to the things you do when you are under stress. For example, a number of people choose to eat unhealthy fatty foods which greatly affect the levels of cholesterol.
6. Research findings say that drinking alcohol, about 1 to 2 bottles, daily can raise the levels of good cholesterol. Unfortunately, this does not equate to the decrease of bad cholesterol in the blood. It is a fact that excessive drinking of alcohol can affect the functioning of the liver and the heart. Such can result to high blood pressure, thus rise in bad cholesterol levels.