Throughout the United States, high cholesterol is a common issue. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, two in five American adults deal with the condition, putting them at increased risk of stroke and heart attack.
Cholesterol is a waxy substance that circulates in your blood. It isn’t necessarily dangerous on its own ― we need cholesterol to help us build cells and make hormones. But too much of it can cause problems. Excess cholesterol in the blood, for example, is the main factor in the creation of atherosclerosis, said Dr. Eleonora Avenatti, a preventive cardiologist at Houston Methodist Hospital, which is “the build-up of junk inside your vessels.”
“If you think about your vessel as pipes that have to bring blood to your internal organs — your heart, your brain, your kidneys — over time, [cholesterol] can create junk inside those pipes so that the blood flow is not as good as it should be. Then that can create situations such as heart attack