"Serum cholesterol" refers to the level of cholesterol found in the liquid part of your blood. Cholesterol is a fat-like substance that is present in your body and is used for various functions. However, if the level of cholesterol in your blood is too high, it can lead to health problems like heart disease. Monitoring your
serum cholesterol helps doctors understand your risk of developing these conditions and can guide them in providing appropriate treatment.
Full definition
The official advice to lower
serum cholesterol levels has brought about numerous supplements with the attached claim that consuming them will lower cholesterol.
Early investigations of the relationship between food and heart disease linked high levels
of serum cholesterol to increased intake of saturated fat, and subsequently, an increased rate of coronary heart disease.
Now, a new study has found that eating more eggs is not associated with
higher serum cholesterol in adolescents, regardless of how much physical activity they do.
Over 40 years, the study found that the risk and rates of heart attack and stroke was related to the level of
total serum cholesterol.
Since insulin is known to promote cholesterol synthesis in the liver, a reduction in the absorption of glucose after meals through the consumption of fiber can help to
control serum cholesterol levels.
This cholesterol lowering effect is highly significant since each 1 % drop in
serum cholesterol translates to a 2 % decrease in the risk of developing heart disease.
The research team has shown that specifically increasing levels of this protein
reduces serum cholesterol levels and weight gain in mice.
More concerning, those who had the greater reduction
in serum cholesterol had a higher rate of death.
While dietary intake of cholesterol fat has been exonerated as the cause of
elevated serum cholesterol — red meat and eggs are NOT off the hook.
We used logistic regression to examine the association
between serum cholesterol concentration and the presence of at least one autopsy confirmed myocardial infarct.
So the cord
blood serum cholesterol of 70.3 mg / dl is really sampling fetal cholesterol — the blood of babies who have never eaten and never breathed.
After adjustment for intake of meat, beer, potatoes, root crops, and vegetables the associations were weakened, but significant inverse associations remained between 15:0 in
serum cholesterol esters and body weight and BMI (data not shown).
Based on this increase in dietary linoleic acid alone, the Keys equation predicts that the control diet would lower
average serum cholesterol compared with baseline (fig 3 ⇑ and table 2 ⇑).
The published report suggested that individuals with cholesterol levels over 250 mg / dl would experience a «significant» reduction of seven to twenty percent in levels of
serum cholesterol if they substituted soy protein for animal protein.
We have been told for decades there is incontrovertible proof that eating saturated fat and cholesterol raises cholesterol in the blood, and that in turn,
excess serum cholesterol causes heart disease.
Flynn MA, Nolph GB, Flynn TC, Kahrs R, Krause G. Effect of dietary egg on
human serum cholesterol and triglycerides.
The control diet, which increased dietary linoleic acid by 38 % but did not alter saturated fat, produced a modest but significant reduction in
serum cholesterol compared with baseline (− 5 mg / dL (SD 30 mg / dL); − 1.0 % (SD 14.5 %); P < 0.001)(fig 3 ⇑ and table 2 ⇑).
(16) The highest mortality was found at the lowest total cholesterol of 160 mg / dl, and lowest mortality
at serum cholesterol around 240 mg / ml, exactly the opposite one would expect if cholesterol lowering was beneficial for health.
For example, when Frantz and Carey (1961) fed an additional 810 kcal / day fat supplement for a whole month to males with high
normal serum cholesterol levels, there was no significant difference from the original levels even though the fat supplement was hydrogenated coconut oil.
Mean serum cholesterol levels in France for example are almost identical to that of Americans, yet their heart disease risk is but a fifth of what America endures.
However, there are others who accumulate cholesterol in the blood, resulting in high
serum cholesterol counts that lead to atherosclerosis, which is plaque deposits of cholesterol, fats, and other remains in the walls of medium - sized and large arteries.
For our main analysis, we used Cox regressions for death as a function of continuous time
varying serum cholesterol (up to 12 repeated measures on each participant) and adjusted for clustering within hospital.
The mean change in
serum cholesterol during follow - up was − 17.9 % in the intervention group and − 1.3 % in the control group.
Similar to this study, «Westlake» et al. found that in apparently healthy
individuals serum cholesterol may increase by 11 % in the presence of a strong mental or emotional stress.
Much more impressive evidence also was published to show that the early stages of heart disease, atherosclerosis, and its
predictive serum cholesterol marker, were increased much more by dietary protein than by dietary fat, especially the protein in animal - based foods.»
Whether statins have additional properties to reduce risk, in addition to lowering
serum cholesterol remain under study.
Phrases with «serum cholesterol»