dyslipidemia

Dyslipidemia means the fats carried in your blood are out of healthy balance — too much of the harmful kind, too little of the protective kind, or both. Because these fats travel through the same arteries they can damage, an unfavourable mix quietly feeds the plaque that narrows vessels over decades, usually without any symptoms until trouble appears.

In practice it usually involves raised LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol, often with high triglycerides and low HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol. LDL particles can lodge in the artery wall and trigger inflammation, the core engine of atherosclerosis. Causes range from genetics and diet to diabetes, kidney disease, alcohol, certain drugs and an underactive thyroid, so finding the driver matters.

It is diagnosed with a simple blood lipid panel and treated by addressing the cause: diet and exercise first, and cholesterol-lowering drugs such as statins when risk warrants. A fair caveat is that the goal is not a perfect number but a lower overall risk of heart attack and stroke, judged alongside the rest of a person's risk profile.