Cholesterol is not one number. LDL carries cholesterol into artery walls, HDL carries it away, and triglycerides reflect recent diet and insulin resistance. High cholesterol produces no symptoms, so it is found on a blood test — and the triglyceride figure usually responds fastest to change.
Symptoms of high cholesterol
Symptoms vary, and few people have all of them. These are the ones most commonly reported.
2-minute check
Should you be testing your cholesterol?
Four questions. Your result appears immediately — we do not ask for an email.
When did you last have a lipid panel?
Any heart disease in your immediate family?
How often do you eat fried or bakery food?
Do you have diabetes, high blood pressure or abdominal weight?
Your answers suggest a lower risk profile
A lipid panel every two to three years is still worth doing, because there are no symptoms to rely on.
Your answers suggest testing is worth doing
Triglycerides in particular respond quickly to change, and are worth knowing.
Your answers suggest testing soon
This is not a diagnosis. A fasting lipid panel is inexpensive and there is no symptom that will tell you instead.
This check is an indication, not a diagnosis. It does not replace medical advice.
When to see a doctor
Arrange a medical appointment rather than waiting if you have:
- Chest pain or tightness, particularly on exertion
- Breathlessness that is new or worsening
- A family history of heart attack before 55
- Fatty deposits around the eyelids or tendons
What causes high cholesterol
Most circulating cholesterol is made by the liver rather than eaten. What you eat changes how much the liver makes and how the particles behave.
Most of what circulates is made internally, not absorbed from food.
Triglycerides rise, HDL falls, and LDL particles become smaller and denser.
Small dense LDL penetrates and lodges more readily than large particles.
Silently, which is why the first symptom is often a serious one.
Risk factors
- A family history of early heart disease
- Abdominal weight
- Type 2 diabetes or insulin resistance
- A diet high in fried and refined food
- Low physical activity
- Smoking
- An underactive thyroid
How high cholesterol is diagnosed
| Test | What it indicates |
|---|---|
| Total cholesterol | The headline figure, and the least informative alone |
| LDL cholesterol | The fraction that enters the artery wall |
| HDL cholesterol | The fraction that carries it away |
| Triglycerides | Most responsive to diet and insulin resistance |
| Non-HDL cholesterol | Often a better guide than LDL alone |
| Lipoprotein(a) | Largely inherited, and worth knowing once |
| TSH | An underactive thyroid raises cholesterol |
Not sure which of these you have had?The assessment asks, and tells you which are worth requesting.
Check my health parametersWhat happens if it is left untreated
Stated factually, because these risks are real and manageable rather than inevitable.
- Narrowing of the coronary arteries
- Heart attack
- Stroke
- Reduced circulation to the legs
- Pancreatitis, where triglycerides are very high
How Health Total treats high cholesterol
Our protocol runs alongside whatever your doctor has prescribed. We do not ask anyone to stop medication.
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1
Read the whole panel
Not total cholesterol alone. The ratio, the triglycerides and the thyroid are read together.
-
2
Change the fats, not just the quantity
Which fats, in what form, and how they are cooked matters more than a blanket reduction.
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3
Raise fibre deliberately
Soluble fibre changes how much cholesterol is reabsorbed, and it is easy to add to Indian meals.
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4
Treat the insulin resistance underneath
Where triglycerides are high and HDL low, the cause is usually metabolic rather than dietary fat.
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5
Re-test and maintain
A lipid panel at defined intervals, and a plan to hold the change.
What makes this different
A standard diet plan
- Cutting all fat and all oil
- Focusing only on total cholesterol
- Ignoring triglycerides
- Treating it as separate from blood sugar
How we do it
- Changing which fats, and how they are cooked
- Reading LDL, HDL, triglycerides and ratio
- Targeting the most responsive number first
- Treating the insulin resistance underneath
Nine questions. Two minutes.You will see your result before we ask for your name.
Start my free assessmentAudited results
Publication pending. Aggregate outcome figures for this condition — sample size, inclusion criteria, mean and median change, range and dropout rate — will appear here once the audited outcome report is complete and signed by a second clinician.
Under the ASCI Healthcare Guidelines, a success rate, timeline or efficacy claim requires peer-reviewed data or the organisation’s own audited outcome report. We would rather publish nothing here than publish a number we cannot substantiate.
Case studies
De-identified clinical records — the plan as delivered, the markers as measured, and adherence as it actually was. Each signed by the supervising clinician and verified by a second.
Case file 1
Awaiting the case production line — dependency D6.
Case file 2
Awaiting the case production line — dependency D6.
Case file 3
Awaiting the case production line — dependency D6.
The standard each case must meet before publication →
Published with specific, informed and withdrawable consent. Individual results vary.
Why Health Total for high cholesterol
Clinicians, named
Over 200 doctors and nutritionists. Every condition page here carries the name and credentials of the person who wrote it and the person who reviewed it.
Indian food, Indian bodies
Thirty years of treating Indian patients, with plans built from Indian kitchens and read against Asia-Pacific metabolic cut-offs.
Our own data
Outcomes come from audited internal records, not from studies conducted elsewhere on other populations.
Somewhere to walk in
Physical centres across India, which most app-based programmes cannot offer.
Recipes for high cholesterol
Methi thepla with curd
The same thepla, with a flour blend and a partner that flatten the glucose rise.
See the recipe →Sprouted moong salad
Eaten ten minutes before the rice, not with it. The sequence is the intervention.
See the recipe →Oats and methi chilla
Beta-glucan for cholesterol, in a savoury form an Indian household will keep eating.
See the recipe →Flaxseed chutney
Whole flaxseed passes through undigested. Ground into a podi, it becomes a daily habit.
See the recipe →Barley and vegetable khichdi
The same comfort food, with three times the fibre and a different afterwards.
See the recipe →Unsweetened breakfast options
Where the day’s sugar actually hides, and the three swaps that remove it.
See the recipe →Articles
Eight numbers worth understanding on your blood report
Most reports get read for what is flagged. The useful information is often elsewhere.
Read →Why your waist matters more than the scale
Where fat sits matters more than how much there is — and BMI misses it entirely.
Read →LDL is not the whole picture
A lipid profile holds more information than the one number most people read.
Read →Fatty liver is common, silent and largely reversible
Usually found by accident, usually dismissed — and among the more responsive findings on a report.
Read →Questions we are asked
Does eating eggs raise cholesterol?
For most people, far less than was once believed. Dietary cholesterol has a modest effect on blood cholesterol in the majority of people, because the liver adjusts its own production. Refined carbohydrate and fried food generally move the numbers more.
Will you take me off my statin?
No. We do not alter medication. If your panel improves, that is a discussion for your physician, and we will provide the readings to support it.
Which number matters most?
It depends on the person, but triglycerides and the HDL ratio usually respond fastest to diet, and non-HDL cholesterol is often a better guide to risk than LDL alone.
Can I fix this without giving up ghee?
In most cases, yes. Quantity, cooking temperature and what else is on the plate matter more than removing a traditional fat entirely.
Start with your own numbers.Free assessment, free first consultation, and no figure quoted that we cannot substantiate.
Start my free assessmentReferences
- Lipid Association of India. Expert consensus statement on management of dyslipidaemia in Indians.
- European Society of Cardiology/EAS Guidelines for the management of dyslipidaemias.
- [Further references to be completed by the medical review panel.]