Is low HDL a problem when you have low LDL?

No (except for the occasional cigar, probably a half-dozen times a year).
No.
No.

If you feel like expounding on this/linking studies, I’d appreciate it! I haven’t found/read much about the negative risk factors associated with high HDL, and my HDL went from being in the 70s for a couple years, to being 90 at last check, so I’m quite curious.

HDL is short for high-density lipoprotein cholesterol. It is a faction of the cholesterol composition. It is cholesterol with a high density of protein.

Gary “Wombat” Robson:

The ratio of your HDL to total cholesterol should be less than 1:4, and, ideally, 1:3. Your ratio is more than 1:5. That’s terrible. HDL does not take the “bad” cholesterol out of your blood. It does take fat out of your blood vessels, preventing them from being blocked by fatty deposits.

I don’t mean to be argumentative, since I started the thread looking for information, but what you’re telling me just seems to disagree with everything I can find.

First of all, my ratio is 4.47:1. According to every source I’ve found, from the Mayo Clinic (“According to the American Heart Association, the goal is to keep your cholesterol ratio 5-to-1 or lower.”) and Harvard University (“Reports from the Framingham Heart Study suggest that for men, a total cholesterol-to-HDL ratio of 5 signifies average risk for heart disease”) to sites like WebMD (“According to the American Heart Association (AHA), you should keep your cholesterol ratio at or below 5:1.”), it sounds like my ratio isn’t anything to write home about, but certainly isn’t terrible – or even bad.

Can you point me to some other studies that back up what you’re saying? Are you a medical professional yourself?

If you really want to read studies, the landmark study, the one that has set pretty much all the guidelines and goals when it comes to Cholesterol, then you need to read ATP III. If you just want a summary on what the numbers mean, then here is the quick “At a Glance” summary of the study.

This isn’t correct. Cholesterol is a molecule, as a fatty molecule it has a “low density”. It has many uses in the body, from being a vital component of cell membranes to being a precursor to most hormones. However, as a “fat” it doesn’t mix with water, so it needs a transport protein to move in the (mostly water) blood. What we measure when we take blood from a patient is the ratio of the different transport membranes, which is easy to do since all you have to do is centrifuge the blood. Cholesterol is mainly produced in the liver, and the small percentage you get from your diet is brought directly to the liver. The liver then sends out protein transport molecules full of cholesterol to the rest of the body, since it has so much cholesterol in it, it has a low density, or LDL. The LDL then deposits cholesterol in the tissues (or blood vessels). There are also protein molecules bringing cholesterol back to the liver to be recycled or used elsewhere, since it doesn’t carry as much cholesterol, it has a higher density, or HDL.

So, basically, LDL is taking cholesterol from the liver to the rest of your body. HDL is returning cholesterol from the body back to the liver. High levels of HDL is considered good because in most cases, it is returning the excess cholesterol that your body didn’t need, instead of having the LDL depositing it on the blood vessel walls where it wasn’t needed, or taking the excess on the walls back to be used elsewhere instead of producing more.

Thank you, Hirka T’Bawa. That clears it up for me a lot.

Thank you, Hirka T’Bawa. That clears it up for me a lot.

Perhaps I didn’t use the correct language when I said a “high density of protein,” but it does have a high density of protein when compared to LDL. HDL picks up fatty deposits from blood vessel walls which LDL had deposited. Although most of your cholesterol is produced in the liver, your liver produces more if your diet has a lot of fatty acids and carbs. Trans fats causes the liver to synthesize the most, and particularly increases the production of LDL. That is why the advertisement that a product has no cholesterol is meaningless if it contains items which cause your body to synthesize more. Not only is it not needed on the vessel walls, but the build-up causes artherosis.

Gary “Wombat” Robson, I am not a medical professional, but I have read much on this topic. Perhaps “terrible” is too harsh an adjective, but any ratio above 1:4 is not good and should be improved. Hirka T’Bawa gave a very thorough explanation.

I want to add that trans fats increase the synthesis of LDL but decreases the synthesis of HDL cholesterol: a double whammy. Unsaturated fats decrease LDL and increases HDL, but the poly- and mono- have different effects. The much publicized omega-3s are poly-. Refined carbs lower both: Fats and Cholesterol | The Nutrition Source | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health