There’s a Better Test For Heart Risk Than the LDL/Total Cholesterol Ratio

 We have all been to our Docs and had been told our LDL/Total Cholesterol ratio. LDL is the “bad cholesterol” and HDL is the “good” version. Your Doc calculates the ratio by dividing your total cholesterol by your high-density lipoprotein level (HDL). The optimal ratio your Doc is looking for is for it to be between 3.5 and 1. Your Doc will tell you that a  higher ratio can increase your risk of heart disease.

Well, there’s a new kid on the ratio block. This ratio is comparing your triglyceride level to your HDL level. The LDL is not part of the comparison. 

Using the old ratio can result in the wrong medicine being prescribed which is statins.

Kaiser Permanente came up with these new findings. What they did was to analyze the data from more than 100,000 healthy men and women between the age of 50 to 75 over about eight years. They were looking to see who developed heart disease, which was a narrowing of the arteries.

When they started doing comparisons they found that people with a high LDL level were 19% more likely to develop heart disease. That doesn’t sound good. Well, read the next sentence.

With the high triglyceride/HDL ratio, they found 68% of the people were more likely to develop heart disease, which was more than triple the risk compared to the LDL ratio!

When patients have a high LDL, docs will subscribe statins and as I said, it’s the wrong drug.

Let me explain. A high triglyceride/HDL ration means the person has the potential for insulin resistance. This means the body has difficulty metabolizing carbohydrates and sugars which stored as triglyceride fat. This type of fat causes inflammation and inflammation is a key cause of plaque buildup in the blood vessels.

This change of focus means a person would need to lose weight, increase their exercise and change their diet – not take a statin. This may explain why people on statins will lower their cholesterol level, but it doesn’t reduce the number of deaths that occur.

To figure out your ratio, take your triglyceride level which for this example I’ll assume is 150 and your HDL level is 50. You then divide 150/50 and you come up with a ratio of 3. While anything over 3 is a little concerning, a ratio of 2 is considered ideal. 

So…pull out your last blood test and see what your ratio is – I just did it and my personal ratio is 1.25…which means I’m better than ideal (at least on my ratio)! So…now it’s your turn to check out your ratio.
(Reported The Permanente Journal)