If you have risk factors for heart disease, you need to be tested regularly, especially as you get older. Besides high blood pressure and obesity, high cholesterol is one of the main risk factors for heart disease.

Learning what cholesterol is, the types of cholesterol, and how to lower it will significantly reduce your risk for secondary diseases. We’ll go over what cholesterol is, the different types of cholesterol, and testing to determine if your cholesterol is high.

What is Cholesterol

Cholesterol is a fat-like, waxy substance, naturally produced by your liver. It’s crucial for cell membrane formation, vitamin D, and some hormones. Because it is not dissolved in water, your liver produces lipoproteins to help transport it through the blood.

Lipoproteins are made from protein and fat and carry cholesterol and triglycerides (another lipid type) through your bloodstream. Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) are the two major forms of lipoproteins. A blood test will indicate If your blood contains too much LDL cholesterol. You have high cholesterol if your blood contains too much LDL cholesterol (cholesterol carried by low-density lipoprotein).

Types of Cholesterol

Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) is considered bad cholesterol. Levels of cholesterol that are too high can be carried to your arteries, where they build up on the walls. This build-up is called cholesterol plaque and can increase the likelihood of blood clot formation, narrow your arteries, and limit your blood flow. Over one-third of American adults have elevated levels of LDL cholesterol, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

High-density lipoprotein (HDL), also called good cholesterol, helps your liver remove LDL cholesterol from your body. This aids in preventing cholesterol plaque from collecting in your arteries.

There is another type of cholesterol called very low-density (VLDL) that transports triglycerides through your body. VLDL is another type of lipid that can increase the risk of heart disease when elevated.

Risk Factors for High Cholesterol

Some risk factors can be changed, others cannot. Your genetics, age, and sex are things you cannot control, but you can change your diet and how much exercise you get. 

Here are more risk factors to consider:

• Type II diabetes
• Smoking
• Family history of high cholesterol
• Lack of exercise
• Obesity
• Eating a diet high in saturated and trans fats

The risk of having high cholesterol increases with age due to changes in your metabolism, meaning you should be monitored closely and have regular testing by your doctor.

Testing for High Cholesterol

A blood test is the only way to tell if you have high cholesterol. This test is done with a lipid panel that measures the level of different blood fats from a blood sample. These blood fats are triglycerides, non-HDL cholesterol (including VLDL), HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and total cholesterol (the total amount of all types of cholesterol).

A reference range of values is used to determine whether the various levels are high or low. Abnormal is anything outside the reference value, and normal is anything between the high and low values. Your blood pressure is assessed along with your lipid levels to determine your ten-year risk of heart disease. Your age, weight, and sex are also factored into this assessment.

It is ultimately the relationship between the various values, high and low, that determine if your cholesterol levels are acceptable, if treatment is needed, or how well you are responding to treatment. In the United States, reference ranges in a lipid panel vary by age and sex. 

Examples of acceptable lipid panel readings for 19 and under:

• Normal LDL is under 100mg/dL 
• Normal HDL 45mg/dL or more
• Total cholesterol under 120mg/dL

Examples for acceptable lipid panel readings for females 20 and over:

• Normal LDL is under 100mg/dL
• Normal HDL 40mg/dL or more
• Total cholesterol between 125 to 200mg/dL

Examples for acceptable lipid panel readings for males 20 and over:

• Normal LDL is under 100mg/dL
• Normal HDL 50mg/dL or more
• Total cholesterol under 130mg/dL

How You Can Get Tested 

With all of these benefits in mind, it’s essential not to neglect an annual physical, as this is your chance to receive regular checkups and preventative care, saving you time, money, and potentially even your life.

Your health should feel important to you and your healthcare provider, and the personalized and attentive care provided by Direct Primary Care is the best way to ensure this. If you’re tired of dealing with brief, impersonal appointments where there’s not enough time to address all of your concerns adequately, you can put your trust in the hands of Assurance Healthcare & Counseling Center. 

Our simple membership plan gets you same-day appointments, unlimited visits, and medications and tests at a low, not-for-profit cost. Most importantly, you’ll get a provider who can make time for you and all of your concerns when you need their attention most. Membership with Assurance Healthcare & Counseling Center also includes a free annual physical blood panel, so members can be sure their cholesterol levels are in the healthy range. Contact our team now and learn more or to become a member.

With many businesses choosing to keep employees at home, at least for the foreseeable future, it draws the inevitable question: How will continued isolation affect our mental health in the long term? 

While some people find working from home a relief, others may struggle with feelings of isolation, loneliness, and other negative emotions resulting from a lack of regular human interaction. Maintaining your mental health while working from home is essential. Today, we will take a look at some self care tips that will help you manage your mental health while working from home.

Find a Routine

The lack of any actual routine can lead to boredom, stress, and even mild depression for many people. If you’re already suffering from depression, a lack of routine can make it worse.

When you work outside the home, you usually have some routine that tells you when to start and stop the day. But when you’re at home all the time, it can be easy to lose the structure that helps us stay focused and separates work time from personal time. 

Try getting up at the same time every day and make an effort to establish a routine to start your workday. Maybe you’ll shower, get dressed, and have coffee, just like you would if you were going out of the home to work. Make sure you set yourself an end of the workday routine, too, so your brain knows it’s time to put work away for the day and focus on personal time.

Set Up a Workspace

You don’t have to have a separate room for an office to create a workspace at home. Just pick a spot in your home and dedicate it to work. Having a dedicated workspace helps you with your routine, and it also enables you to distinguish between work and home time.

Take Screen Breaks

If your work involves lots of computer time, you can find yourself feeling tired and burned out more quickly. If you’re filling your free time with more screens (your phone, social media, television), it could affect your mental health and overall physical wellbeing.

Give yourself time throughout the day to get away from the screens. Take a walk outside, grab coffee or lunch, sneak in a quick workout, or just spend a few minutes out in your garden. These mini screen breaks help prevent fatigue and other issues that can arise from too sedentary a lifestyle.

Get Social

Just because you work from home doesn’t mean you have to give up socializing. While the pandemic has made it more difficult to socialize in person, there are still plenty of online options to help you maintain work relationships.

Utilize meeting apps to ‘meet up’ with coworkers for a virtual lunch date or pick up the phone and give them a call after work. Social interaction is an integral part of keeping mentally strong. It’s easier to cope with stress and overcome adversity if you have a solid social circle, so find ways to maintain those relationships when working from home.

Get Active

Physical activity isn’t just good for the body. It’s good for the mind, too. Make a point to get out and get active whenever you can, even if it’s just a quick walk or a few minutes spent dancing around your home.

Being active can help release endorphins that boost your mood and regulate your body’s normal functions. Plus, you’ll feel better mentally if you take care of your physical well-being, so look for small opportunities to be more active every day.

Try Not To Be Too Hard On Yourself

Working from home, especially if you live with others, can be challenging. Distractions abound, and it can be tempting to put off work to do other things. While this isn’t a good idea all the time, do be kind to yourself if you find yourself giving into distractions.

Modern life is filled with distractions, and even if you live alone, there will always be something more interesting than work vying for your attention. It may help to try and limit distractions by working in a location with fewer distractions. If you have children or pets that need your attention, you may have to resign yourself to the fact that some of your day will be taken up by their needs, and that’s okay.

It’s also okay to ask for help. Suppose you suddenly find yourself responsible for taking care of family members while working from home and managing your household. In that case, you may want to speak with your boss about decreasing your workload, at least temporarily, so that you don’t become overwhelmed. At the end of the day, no job is worth more than your mental health.

Your Mental Health Comes First With Assurance

Assurance Health & Counseling Center believes that you and your health are what matters. Our membership plan is simple – members get unlimited access to our medical providers for one low flat monthly fee.

No copays, no deductibles, no dealing with insurance requirements or regulations.

Membership includes unlimited office visits, same-day appointments when you’re sick or injured, and 24/7 telephone access to our providers. Labs, X-Rays and medications that are purchased through us are at OUR cost. We don’t sell them for profit – and you’ll be shocked to see how affordable healthcare can be.

We also offer counseling to all members – because we believe in taking care of the WHOLE person. Contact us today and learn how a membership can help you live a happier, healthier life.

Your immune system is the reason you are alive today. Even before you took that first breath, your immune system has been fighting off disease. Yes, those same diseases that have plagued mankind for centuries. Diseases that we have all read about in the annuls of history.  Diseases like cholera, polio, tetanus, diphtheria, the bubonic plague, and even the now infamous coronavirus (COVID-19). And no, they haven’t disappeared from the planet, and they won’t. You’ve just fought them off and you didn’t even know it was happening.  How is that for an amazing immune system? Maybe these diseases are around less with better sewer systems and running water, but these diseases are still around. Travel to Africa or Mexico and you’ll see.

So how does all this immunity work? Simply put, you have cells in your body (T-cells and B-cells as we’ve named them) that were created to identify foreign bodies like viruses and bacteria that shouldn’t be there. When these foreign germs appear, these special cells are designed to attack them by creating a specific antibody that destroys them. And since you haven’t had these diseases, your immune system obviously works very well. Thank God. Literally.

Modern medicine has then come along and attempted to help you by purposely taking these same germs and modifying them so that they are similar but not disease-causing and then injecting them into your body to initiate the same immune response ahead of usual exposure. This is called getting an immunization. Yes, we purposely expose you to polio so that you don’t get polio. Or so the theory goes.

We are not saying that this is always the best thing to do. There are risks and side-effects but admittedly they are rare, and far more people are helped by vaccines than are harmed.

At Assurance Healthcare & Counseling Center we allow each person to make that decision for themselves and for parents to make that decision for their children.

For questions or comments, reach out to us via our contact form.

I find myself noticing the irony of writing about connection in the midst of “social distancing” and “stay-at-home” regulations brought to us by COVID-19. We’re not really designed for this.

We are designed to thrive in a social environment. We are designed not just for social interaction, like you grow apples & I grow wheat so when we trade commodities we can both make delicious apple pie. Or, in light of recent events: Costco stocks 2-ply toilet paper and I NEED 2-ply toilet paper so I run to Costco and hoard 6 bulk packages of it.

We are designed for connection.
We are designed for connection with others, AND ourselves!

Connection is the rich soil where the seeds of mental health grow and flourish. When we connect with one another and with ourselves, we feel nourished and supported. When individuals connect with each other, there is an exchange of strength, safety, and understanding.

Connection happens best when we pay attention to each other and to our deeper selves. It is through connection that we understand that others are flawed, yet we can still hold them in high regard. Maybe we can even discover that while we, ourselves, are flawed, we can also hold ourselves in high regard (read more about this concept from marriage and family therapist, Terry Real).

As we soon emerge back into “normal” rhythms and schedules, plan for ways that you can experience connection. Here are a few ideas to get your own creative ideas going…

● Spend about one hour with ONE other person in a quiet, private setting; sit across from each other and make eye contact. Don’t check your phone for the entire hour!
● Cook a meal with another person; drink lots of wine (or water or apple juice or whatever) while you do!
● Go for a walk by yourself. Listen to the birds, the breeze, and the beauty.
● Read a book with someone; try to discuss the book chapter by chapter.

And in any of these connections, try asking the other person & YOURSELF questions like:

● How have you grown as a person in the last week?
● What are you intentionally working on in your other relationships?
● What do you tell yourself that you are afraid to say out loud?
● How are you becoming a stronger person this year?
● Is there any way that I can support you this week?

Other Resources:
READ:

1. Tribe by Sebastian Junge
2. https://estherperel.com/blog/letters-from-esther-7
3. https://www.terryreal.com/learning-to-live-a-non-violent-life/

WATCH:

1. Brene Brown on empathy
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw
2. Julian Treasure on listening
   https://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_5_ways_to_listen_better#t-458168

LISTEN:

1. Really Long Distance: ACT One on This American Life
   https://www.thisamericanlife.org/597/one-last-thing-before-i-go/act-one (warning, this is sad…but very powerful)
2. How’s Work with Esther Perel
   https://howswork.estherperel.com/episodes/episode-8

JOURNAL PROMPTS:

1. How would you describe the connections in your life right now? Who comes to mind? What emotions do you notice as you think of that person(s)?
2. What barriers get in the way of connecting in your life? How might you overcome this barrier just one time in the next week?