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Why Your Heart Wants You to Pay Attention to Your Cholesterol

Cholesterol can be a tricky thing to understand, especially when you're not exactly sure what your levels mean and how they can affect the various aspects of your body - including your heart.

So, what is cholesterol? What does it have to do with heart disease? Simply put, cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance found in your blood. It is essential to certain cell functions in your body, such as digesting foods, producing hormones, converting vitamin D in the skin and creating new cells. Your liver makes cholesterol for your body, but you also get cholesterol from eating certain foods, such as meat, poultry and full-fat dairy. Cholesterol travels through the bloodstream in "packages" called lipoproteins. There are two kinds:

Low-density lipoproteins (LDLs), also known as "bad" cholesterol, join with other substances to form a thick, hard deposit, called plaque on the walls of your arteries.
High-density lipoproteins (HDLs), also known as "good" cholesterol, remove cholesterol from the bloodstream and the artery walls.

If the total amount of cholesterol in your blood is too high, more plaque builds up over time, eventually limiting the flow of oxygen-rich blood to your heart. This can cause coronary heart disease (CHD) to develop, which can lead to even more serious health issues, like blood clots, heart attack or a stroke.

Most of the time, you can control your cholesterol levels through a healthy diet and lifestyle, which will lower your risk of cardiovascular health issues. For a small percentage of people, however, high cholesterol is sometimes caused by genetically inherited cholesterol-related disorders that cannot be controlled with diet or other lifestyle changes. That's why it's so important to know your numbers and monitor them on an ongoing basis.

Talk to your doctor about what HDL and LDL levels are healthy, and what can be done to lower risks. Routine blood tests can show your cholesterol levels. To learn about what other factors may be affecting your risk for cardiovascular disease, take our free heart health assessment.

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Why Choose Us?

When you put your heart in our hands, you get the benefit of more than 30 years of experience in cardiac care, the commitment that brought the first open heart surgery to our communities and skills that can stop a heart attack in progress.

Located on the campus of ShorePoint Health Port Charlotte, ShorePoint Heart Center is Charlotte County's largest heart center and the only accredited Chest Pain Center with Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) from the American College of Cardiology (ACC). Hospitals that earn this accreditation have proven exceptional competency in treating patients with heart attack symptoms and have primary PCI available 24/7 every day of the year.

ShorePoint Heart Center Features:

Private patient rooms
10-bed cardiac intensive care unit
9-bed cardiac-vascular surgery unit
16-bed post-interventional cardiac unit
8-bed pre/post-interventional cardiac holding unit
Two open heart surgery suites
Four cath labs, including a designated electrophysiology lab
Charlotte County's only hybrid operating room, a space which integrates a surgical operating room and an X-ray imaging system to enable clinicians to work more efficiently by reducing preparation and procedure time.

Our Services

Interventional cardiology: We offer a variety of catheter-assisted techniques to treat heart disease, including cardiac catheterization, atherectomy (rotoblater), balloon angioplasty and stenting.

Open heart surgery: When open heart surgery becomes the best treatment solution, our team performs procedures such as coronary artery bypass surgery, coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG), congenital heart disease repair and valve repair and replacement.

Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR): ShorePoint Health performed the first TAVR procedure in Charlotte County on Friday, July 12, 2019. Since then, more than 200 patients have benefitted from this life saving, minimally-invasive procedure.

Heart rhythm disorder management and treatment: We provide arrhythmia treatment from lifestyle-modification assistance to complex surgical treatment, including ablation for atrial fibrillation (AF), implantable devices including cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) and pacemakers, and radiofrequency ablation. For patients with atrial fibrillation who are unable to continue long term anticoagulation therapy, we offer left atrial appendage closure. We performed our first procedure in 2018.

Heart Healthy Resources

A Woman’s Risk for Heart Disease is Different: Here’s What You Need to Know

Heart disease is a big issue in the United States for both men and women alike. But some risk factors are more unique to women.
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What Do Doctors Have To Say About Your Heart?

Is High Blood Pressure Considered Heart Disease?

Finding out you have high blood pressure can be worrisome if you aren’t sure what your numbers mean or what to do about them. Discover how high blood pressure affects your heart.
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How Does Smoking Affect Your Heart?

Smoking’s impact reaches far beyond your lungs, harming nearly every other organ in the body. Get the specifics on how smoking can influence your heart’s health.
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Why Your Heart Wants You to Pay Attention to Your Cholesterol

Your liver makes cholesterol in your body, but you also get cholesterol from eating certain foods. Find out how the wrong kind of cholesterol can impact your heart.
Read more »