How are stress and bad cholesterol related?

QUESTION: How are stress and bad cholesterol related? How does stress affect bad cholesterol metabolism?


ANSWER: Hi there,

Stress can negatively affect not only the cholesterol metabolism, but it damages all the metabolic process executed in the organism.

Because of this, it is quite important for everyone who is having high blood pressure, diabetes or elevation of the LDL cholesterol level to minimize the stress.

However, the connection between the LDL “bad” cholesterol and stress is found at hormonal level. During stress, your body prepares to fight, due to archetypal instincts.

This causes increased secretion of adrenalin, noradrenalin, cortisol and aldosterone, hormones which also known as stress hormones. These hormones are making the organism to start accumulating molecules which are providing energy - glucose, cholesterol and fat acids, because the probably future fight requires a lot of energy.

The accumulation of these molecules is executed in the liver, but these molecules have to be transported to the muscles, brain, heart and other important organs.

As you probably know the molecules, which are transporting the cholesterol from the liver to the other tissues are the LDL molecules. Because of the accumulation of cholesterol in the liver, the organism is increasing the synthesis of LDL molecules respectively.

As you can see, this is leading to an elevation of the LDL cholesterol, which goes directly to the blood stream.
However, during the common stress you are not fighting people, which mean that you are not using the energy stored in the LDL cholesterol molecules. This is causing elevation of the LDL cholesterol concentration in the blood.

In addition, when these molecules are staying in the blood for a long time, they can be easily damaged by the speed of the blood flow, or by the free radicals, which are circulating in your body.

When these molecules are damaged once, they are becoming gummy and they can easily glue to the wall of the blood vessels - the start of the atherosclerosis development.

It is very important for everyone to control himself, especially those who are under a lot of stress. Pay attention that because of the mechanism mentioned above, a lot of people, who are experiencing too much stress, are suffering from cardio-vascular disease (CVD’s).

My advice for you is to find a way for relaxation.

Hope it helped!

Dr.Alba