The Problem With Cholesterol Accumulation In Our Body.

We love to see accumulations in our bank accounts. Not so for our health accounts - accumulations usually spell trouble!

This piece is a continuation from It Ain’t Really Just The Cholesterol That Contributes To Heart Disease:

It Ain't Really Just The Cholesterol That Contributes To Heart Disease.

There are certain things in life that we would want to see increases in. Financially, we will always appreciate an increase in our bank accounts. Emotionally, we will always appreciate an increased outpouring of love from our loved ones. Mentally, we will always appreciate learning new content that is relevant to us.

Healthwise, we’re happy when we see increases in muscle mass — but not so happy when we see increases in fat mass, for instance.

Therefore, it leads us back to the idea of balancing.

Our bodies are open systems — there are always streams of mass and energy flowing in and out of our bodies. So is our bank account an open system — there is always an inflow of money (income) and an outflow of money (expenses).

Why We Don't Really Like Talking About Cholesterol At All

How do we make our bank accounts increase monetarily (accumulation)?

We’d have to ensure that our money inflow is greater than our money outflow. Isn’t that the case?

Unfortunately, a lot of people can’t grasp that concept just yet — financial illiteracy is still a big problem worldwide. How much more, then, can they understand the effects of their lifestyle on their health?

The concept of accumulation

The concept of accumulation is rather simple.

We can also consider our bodies to be analogically similar to a bank account.

Whatever we feed ourselves with (our inputs) will result in the production of an output.

For example, we drink water (input) and convert that into urine (output).

We consume food (input) and convert that into energy for movement (output) as well as fecal matter (output).

What we need is for our outputs to balance our inputs.

If our inputs are greater than our outputs, we would end up facing an accumulation of something in our bodies. And that wouldn’t be that great for health.

However, the output mechanisms aren’t that clear cut at times. Medical research also tends not to focus on these mechanisms, and that is a problem on its own.

Bearing that in mind, let’s look at the accumulation of cholesterol as an example.

The symptom of hypercholesterolemia (or high cholesterol) is something that most doctors do tend to warn their patients about, because of that additional associated risk of heart disease and heart attacks.

But what does “high cholesterol” really mean?

Doesn’t it just mean that one has an accumulation of cholesterol in their blood? Therefore, a blood test will show the doctor that a patient has a higher than “normal” level of cholesterol in their blood?