Cardiovascular Health & High Cholesterol: Statins More Important Than "Low Fat" Diet

Maintaining a healthy cholesterol level is important to your health, especially your cardiovascular health. For many adults, eating a healthy and well balanced diet will provide the best opportunity for avoiding high cholesterol.

For some individuals, however, the risks associated with high cholesterol often come after the cardiovascular event takes place. Subjecting the body to the complications of a cardiac event, it is then that a healthy diet and exercise become focus, in an effort to lower the cholesterol levels.

If you are like millions of adults who are at risk for developing coronary heart disease (CHD), your focus should be on lowering any abnormally high cholesterol levels you may be experiencing. After consulting a healthcare professional, information regarding diet, exercise and even cholesterol lowering medications are usually provided.

However, as a cardiac patient, unless you suffer from a significantly high cholesterol level, these changes in diet and exercise may not significantly reduce your risk for a subsequent cardiovascular complication. In fact, patients who experience a cardiovascular complication of a significant magnitude, with an extremely high cholesterol level, are believed to be at the greatest benefit for these lifestyle changes.

This is not to say you should not make the necessary diet, exercise and medication changes as a patient with mildly high cholesterol but, if you desire a major change in your cardiovascular risks, it may not come to the degree that it would in a patient with a severe cardiovascular risk.

Going on step further, many patients who suffer from a high cholesterol level will only experience a mild decrease in that cholesterol level with the change to a "no-fat" diet. To obtain optimal therapeutic benefit, the dietary change can also be avoided and, instead, you can obtain a greater health impact and improvement from the use of statin medications.