High cholesterol is a systemic traveler, leaving a path of potential damage from your head to your toes. The atherosclerosis it causes is not confined to one area but can affect arteries throughout your body, leading to a diverse range of serious health problems. Let’s take a tour of its destructive journey.
The journey begins in the bloodstream, where excess LDL cholesterol circulates and begins to deposit in artery walls. The most well-known destinations are the coronary arteries of the heart. Here, plaque buildup can lead to coronary artery disease, causing chest pain and culminating in a heart attack.
Traveling upwards, the plaque can target the carotid arteries in your neck, which supply blood to the brain. Narrowing in these critical vessels, or clots breaking off from them, can cause a devastating ischemic stroke, leading to brain damage, long-term disability, or death.
The tour continues down the aorta, the body’s main artery, and branches out to the limbs. When plaque clogs the arteries in the legs and feet, it causes peripheral artery disease (PAD). This can result in severe pain when walking (claudication), non-healing ulcers, and in the worst cases, gangrene that necessitates amputation.
Finally, the journey can impact the renal arteries, which feed your kidneys. Blockages here can impair kidney function, contributing to high blood pressure and leading to chronic kidney disease. This illustrates that managing cholesterol isn’t just heart care; it’s whole-body care, protecting every part of you that relies on a healthy blood supply.