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Cholesterol & Heart Disease Part 3
Is their higher level of testosterone the reason men have an increased risk of heart disease compared to women? For many years doctors have thought so. This belief seems to have grown largely out of the fact that women generally tend to have lower risk of cardiovascular disease than men (at least until after menopause). Because estrogen has a significant anti-inflammatory effect in the blood vessels, and because we think of testosterone as the opposite of estrogen, for a long time the medical community presumed that testosterone must increase the inflammation that can lead to heart disease.
We now know that, like estrogen, testosterone also has a potent anti-inflammatory effect in the arteries. Testosterone isn’t part of the problem – but it can be part of the solution.
Cholesterol & Heart Disease Part 2
In our last blog we talked about Cholesterol and Heart Disease. We discussed how the dangerous build-up of plaque is a result of low-density lipoprotein, or LDL cholesterol, becoming damaged or oxidized in the bloodstream. The body treats this oxidized LDL as a threat, and sends white blood cells to attack the cholesterol. In order to reduce the threat of heart disease, we have to prevent plaque from forming. There are three major ways to accomplish this.
The first way to reduce plaque build-up is to reduce the amount of LDL cholesterol available to be oxidized in the first place. Reducing cholesterol is the focus of most of our traditional efforts at preventing heart disease. Cholesterol reduction is the primary reason so many millions are on statin drugs like Lipitor.