How High Blood Sugar Makes Your Good Cholesterol Turn Bad

Think of cholesterol particles as boats carrying fat through your bloodstream. High blood sugar can turn these helpful boats into troublemakers. Let’s understand how this happens.

Understanding the Cholesterol Carriers

HDL: The Good Cholesterol

HDL is like a cleaning crew. It:

• Picks up excess cholesterol from your body
• Takes it back to your liver for disposal
• Fights inflammation
• Protects blood vessels

LDL: The Other Carrier

LDL comes in two main sizes:

• Large, fluffy particles (better)
• Small, dense particles (worse)

Think of large LDL as beach balls and small LDL as BBs. Which would hurt more if thrown at a wall?

How High Blood Sugar Causes Trouble

The Sugar Coating Problem

When blood sugar stays high, it starts coating proteins with sugar.

Scientists call this glycation. It’s like dipping your proteins in caramel – they no longer work!

What Happens to HDL

High blood sugar damages HDL by:

1. Making it less effective at cleanup
2. Turning it inflammatory
3. Reducing its protective powers
4. Making it dump cholesterol in the wrong places

Dysfunctional HDL can dump cholesterol into arteries. Let me explain this process in more detail:

Normal HDL (Good HDL):

1. Picks up excess cholesterol from arteries
2. Takes it to the liver for disposal
3. The liver removes it through bile

Dysfunctional HDL (Bad HDL):

1. It still picks up cholesterol
2. But instead of taking it to the liver:
   • Dumps it back into arteries
   • Deposits it in arterial walls
   • Can leave it in inflamed areas

What makes this worse:

• It creates a vicious cycle!
• More inflammation occurs!
• Attracts more immune cells!
• Speeds up plaque formation
• Can make existing unstable plaques
• Heart attacks and strokes

That’s what happens with repeated high blood sugar

The Process (in simple terms):

1. High blood sugar damages HDL
2. Damaged HDL loses its GPS (can’t find liver)
3. It gets confused and drops its load into arteries
4. Particularly dumps in already inflamed areas
5. This causes more inflammation
6. Cycle repeats

It’s like turning your cleaning crew into litterbugs.

What Happens to LDL?

Review:

• Large, fluffy particles (better)
• Small, dense particles (worse)

High blood sugar changes LDL by:

1. Making large particles smaller
2. Creating more small, dense particles
3. Making them stick to blood vessels easier
4. Making them more likely to cause plaque

It’s like turning beach balls into bullets.

Why This Matters

These changes lead to:

• More heart disease risk
• It is harder to treat cholesterol problems
• Need for different medications
• More inflammation

Prevention and Solutions

To protect your cholesterol particles:

1. Keep blood sugar in check
2. Exercise regularly
3. Eat less refined carbs
4. Get enough sleep
5. Manage stress

• 102 Easy Ways to Lower Post-Prandial Blood Sugar Without Meds
• Comprehensive Guide to the Permanent Reversal of Insulin Resistance

Warning Signs

Watch for:

• Rising blood sugar monitor after meals—AUVON Blood Glucose Monitor Kit with 100 Glucometer Strips, 100 30G Lancets, and Lancing Device
• Increasing triglycerides—keep it below 150 mg/dl
• Falling HDL levels. Healthy HDL should be
  • Women > 50mg/dL
  • Men > 40mg/dL
• Heart disease in the family
• Weight gain around the middle. Target waist circumference
  • Women < 35 inches (88.9cm)
  • Men <40 inches (101.6cm)  

What To Do

Simple steps help:

• Check blood sugar regularly
• Get cholesterol particle tests
• Exercise 30 minutes daily
• Eat more fiber
• Limit sugary foods

When to See Your Doctor

Get checked if you have:

• Family history of heart disease
• High blood sugar
• Belly fat- waist circumference higher than the goals stated above
• High blood pressure
• Low HDL levels

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References

1. Ferderbar S, et al. (2007). Cholesterol oxides and glycation in diabetes and atherosclerosis. J Clin Lipidol. 1(3):177-184.
2. Rabbani N, Thornalley PJ. (2011). Glycation of LDL by methylglyoxal increases arterial atherogenicity. Diabetes. 60(7):1973-1980.
3. Kontush A, Chapman MJ. (2008). HDL: Close to our memories during troublesome times. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 28(8):1418-1420.
4. Verges B. (2009). Lipid modification in type 2 diabetes: the role of LDL and HDL. Fundam Clin Pharmacol. 23(6):681-685.
5. Moren X, et al. (2019). HDL dysfunction: The effects of diabetes mellitus. Curr Pharm Des. 25(21):2353-2363.
6. Soran H, et al. (2015). HDL functionality. Curr Opin Lipidol. 26(2):127-132.
7. Fisher EA. (2016). HDL function, dysfunction, and reverse cholesterol transport. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 36(12):2168-2173.
8. Diffenderfer MR, Schaefer EJ. (2014). The composition and metabolism of large and small LDL. Curr Opin Lipidol. 25(3):221-226.
9. Ståhlman M, et al. (2013). Dyslipidemia, but not hyperglycemia and insulin resistance, is associated with marked alterations in the HDL lipidome in type 2 diabetes mellitus. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 33(7):1635-1642.
10. Kresge N, et al. (2016). Metabolic effects of dysfunctional HDL in type 2 diabetes mellitus. Nat Rev Endocrinol. 12(5):257-263.

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