High levels of cholesterol may gradually clog your arteries, which makes it more difficult for blood to flow. This increases the likelihood for high blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke if not controlled.
Having one risk factor for heart disease means you need to be careful. Having two means you need to make some significant changes in your life.
Scientists have found that when people have more than one risk factor, like high blood cholesterol and high blood pressure, these factors work together to make risk of heart disease much worse.
Even if your cholesterol and blood pressure levels are only mildly elevated, when they are both present in your body, they can interact with each other to more quickly damage your blood vessels and your heart. If not controlled, they eventually set the stage for heart attack and stroke, as well as other problems like kidney malfunction and vision loss.
If you’ve already been diagnosed with high blood cholesterol, watch those blood pressure numbers like a hawk! These two risk factors like to hang out together. But if you’re aware of what’s happening, you can win the battle for your health.
Understanding high cholesterol
If you’re diagnosed with high cholesterol, it means that the level of cholesterol in your blood is higher than what is believed to be healthy. Cholesterol is a type of fatty substance that your body uses to make certain hormones, produce vitamin D, and build healthy cells. We manufacture some of it in our bodies and get some of it from the foods we eat.
Too much cholesterol in your blood, though, may increase risk of cardiovascular disease, heart attack and stroke. The concern is that if your cholesterol is high, the excess oily stuff will stick to the walls of your arteries. Over time, this excess can create a fatty buildup, much like dirt and grime can build up inside a garden hose.
The fatty substance eventually hardens, forming a type of inflexible plaque that damages the arteries. They become stiff and narrowed, and your blood no longer flows through them as easily as it once did.
The ultimate danger is that your arteries will become so narrowed that a blood clot will block blood flow, causing a severe cardiovascular event.
What constitutes a high cholesterol level
Doctors use several numbers when determining the status of your cholesterol. According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, these are the current guidelines:
Total cholesterol:
| healthy | less than 200 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) |
| borderline high | 200 to 239 mg/dL |
| high | 240 mg/dL and above |
Low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or “bad” cholesterol — the type of cholesterol that builds up in arteries:
| healthy | less than 100 mg/DL |
| OK | 100 to 129 mg/DL |
| borderline high | 130 to 159 mg/DL |
| high | 160 to 189 mg/DL |
| very high | 190 mg/DL and above |
High-density liproprotein (HDL), or “good” cholesterol — the type that helps remove cholesterol from arteries:
| healthy | 60 mg/dL or higher |
| okay | 41 to 59 mg/dL |
| unhealthy | 40 mg/dL or lower |
As to what causes high cholesterol, a number of factors may be involved. Diet, weight, and physical activity can affect cholesterol levels, but so can genes, age, and gender.
How high cholesterol can lead to high blood pressure
If you’ve been diagnosed with high blood cholesterol, you may already be taking medications to control it, and you may have made some lifestyle changes to help lower your cholesterol levels naturally.
Meanwhile, it’s important to keep an eye on your blood pressure. People living with high blood cholesterol often end up dealing with high blood pressure as well.
Why would that be? First, let’s look at what high blood pressure is. The
Imagine that garden hose again. If you’re out watering your small plants, you may turn the water on at low pressure so you don’t damage the tender blooms. If you’re watering a line of shrubbery, though, you may turn up the water pressure to get the job done faster.
Now imagine that garden hose is several years old and full of grit and grime. It’s also a bit stiff with age. To get the water to come through at the pressure you’d like, you have to turn up the faucet to high. The higher pressure helps the water blast through all that gunk inside your hose so you can still use it to water your plants.
If you have high blood pressure, your heart and your arteries go through a similar scenario. Because the arteries are stiff or narrowed — perhaps because of high cholesterol buildup — your heart has to work harder to pump the blood through them.
It’s like your heart has to turn its faucet up to high and blast the blood through to get enough oxygen and nutrients out to all the body organs that need it.
High blood pressure and cholesterol work together to damage arteries
Over time, this high pressure damages your arteries and other blood vessels. They just aren’t built to manage a constant high-pressure blood flow. As a result, they start to suffer from tears and other types of damage.
Those tears make nice resting places for excess cholesterol. That means that the damage high blood pressure creates inside arteries and blood vessels can actually lead to even more plaque buildup and artery narrowing because of high blood cholesterol. In turn, your heart has to work even harder to pump blood, putting excess strain on your heart muscle.
The two conditions are like a team of villains working together to make things worse for your heart, arteries, and overall health. Indeed, over time, high blood pressure and cholesterol can cause problems in your eyes, kidneys, brain, and other organs as well.
Studies reveal an unhealthy partnership
Researchers have known for a while that high blood cholesterol can lead to high blood pressure. In 2002, they separated participants into three groups according to their cholesterol levels (low, medium, and high). They then tested blood pressure under various conditions of rest and exercise.
The results, which were published in the
A later study, published in the
In fact, it seems that the presence of high blood cholesterol may actually predict a future presence of high blood pressure. That’s what researchers reported in a 2005 study in
Results showed the following:
- Men with the highest total cholesterol had a 23
percent increased risk of developing hypertension compared to those with the
lowest total cholesterol. - Men who had the highest levels of total
cholesterol minus HDL cholesterol had a 39 percent increased risk of developing
hypertension. - Men who had the most unhealthy ratio of total
cholesterol to HDL cholesterol had a 54 percent increased risk of developing
hypertension. - Men who had the highest levels of HDL
cholesterol had a 32 percent lower risk of developing hypertension.
The same researchers did a similar test on women with a follow-up of about 11 years, and found comparable results. Their study was published in
Take steps to control both risk factors
The good news is that both of these risk factors are very manageable. Medications are available that are effective at keeping both high cholesterol and high blood pressure under control. The important thing is to stay in communication with your doctor, and to watch your numbers carefully.
You can also adopt lifestyle changes that can naturally fortify your heart and blood vessels and help you resist any damaging effects. Try these tips:
- Don’t smoke or quit smoking.
- Stay active — exercise at least 30 minutes a
day, and work some resistance training in two times a week. - Eat a healthy diet that includes lots of whole
grains, fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and healthy fats like those found in
fish and nuts. - Avoid excess cholesterol in food, excess fatty
foods, excess sodium, and excess sugar.