Yeah but HDL of 7 is dangerous!!
damn you gotta rain on my parade huh
well the problem is that you can have HDL of 1 and not get any cardiovascular issues in 50 years ...
cholesterol itself actually only makes up a TINY part of the plaque deposits in your arteries that can cause strokes / heart attacks. i think it was even less than 5%.
let me explain to you how atherosclerosis that can lead to heart attack/stroke emerges
that shit happens from tiny ruptures in your arteries (or veins, forgot it right now) which can get clogged up, potentially causing harm
chronically high blood pressure massively increases the amount of tiny ruptures in your veins or arteries.
then some kind of cells rush to these tiny ruptures to "glue" them, basically fixing the tiny ruptures... cholesterol is also deposited there by HDL (which is actually only a transporter FOR cholesterol, not a "kind of cholesterol" itself), because thats what keeps your veins supple, its basically needed for a quick repair.
HDL basically transports cholesterol to the ruptures in order to fix them.
so high hdl = faster "healing" of these ruptures. other particles (i think especially VLDL cholesterol too) can be deposited there too and actually "clog" the rupture a bit (not good). remember, the blood rushes through and some shit just sticks to the proteins that "fix" the rupture.
these are triglycerides, WBCs, dead cells and oxidized proteins or some stuff. these can stick to the HDL / the cholesterol thats actually there to repair your veins that rupture.
finally this can cause a big clog in your arteries.
there was also some shit with a foam building up, increasing the size of the clog from the WBCs eating some particles up, forgot about that.
so let me sum that up:
high blood pressure = ruptures
too little hdl = healing of the ruptures takes longer (more time for bad shit to settle there)
too little hdl and high VLDL = bad cuz more shit that can settle there
too little hdl and high triglycerides = triglycerides can also settle there so also bad
ANOTHER risk factor is chronically high blood sugar
which leads to high systemic inflammation
high inflammation means the tiny ruptures also inflame and increase in size, increasing the risk for the shit to clog up
high blood pressure, too little hdl, high vldl, high triglycerides, high blood sugar = u dead son
no high blood pressure to begin with and no high blood sugar = very unlikely that anything is gonna happen
because no inflammation = no bigger ruptures
and no big ruptures = no clogs
(these ruptures do appear without high BP too i guess, but much less)
that was my noobie explanation from the back of my head. dont quote me on that though. just read quite a few books on that topic
