Lab Values, part 12: Total Cholesterol & Triglycerides
Total cholesterol and triglycerides, including their function in the body, the expected ranges, and possible causes and risk factors associated with elevated levels.
Quiz Questions
The nurse educates a patient that a total cholesterol level above what indicates an increased risk for heart attack?
The nurse educates a patient that a total cholesterol level above what indicates an increased risk for heart attack?
Full Transcript: Lab Values, part 12: Total Cholesterol & Triglycerides
Full Transcript: Lab Values, part 12: Total Cholesterol & Triglycerides
Hi, I'm Meris, and in this video, I'm going to be talking to you about the lab values of total cholesterol and triglycerides. Let's go ahead and get started.
So first up, we're going to talk about cholesterol. And cholesterol is this kind of waxy, fat-like substance that exists in our body after we get it from eating food. And it is really important for a lot of different processes in your bodies, including vitamin D synthesis, making some hormones, and some other processes that go along with just being a person. But there is a side effect associated with cholesterol, which is that cholesterol can actually combine with some other substances in our body and create what is called a plaque. And a plaque is kind of just like a big, sticky, congealed conglomeration of cholesterol. And this plaque sits in our vessels and narrows the lumen, the inside of that vessel. It narrows them by existing inside that vessel. And when you narrow the lumen of the vessel, you increase the blood pressure in that area, and you also then put yourself at risk for different complications associated with that plaque, such as things like coronary artery disease and heart attacks and strokes.
So cholesterol is one of these lab values that's really important to monitor as part of a lipid panel. Typically, this is done annually at a primary care physician's appointment. But this is something that we want to keep an eye on, especially if we know already that your levels are elevated. Maybe you're somebody with a family or a personal history. This is something we want to keep an eye on because those elevated levels can be associated with heart disease and other risk factors that are going to negatively affect your patient. Now, your total cholesterol, by the way, it is going to incorporate your LDL and HDL along with your triglycerides. So we'll talk about LDL and HDL in another video, but we will talk about triglycerides later too in this video.
Okay. So what is my expected range here? So the expected range is going to be less than 200 milligrams per deciliter. So again, this is a really important thing to have cholesterol to be able to do these things your body needs. But this is one of those lab values where our emphasis is on keeping it low. I don't want a lot of cholesterol because I don't want it to combine with everything else that it can lead to causing plaques and further complicate my personal health history.
Now, what happens if we have a cholesterol level that is elevated? If we have a cholesterol level over 200, this puts us at an increased risk for several things. And like I told you, we're going to talk about them in relation to plaque. And when we talk about plaque buildup, we actually call this atherosclerosis. So atherosclerosis is definitely something that your patient is at risk for just by having too much total cholesterol. Now, again, it is going to elevate their heart disease risk, including things like coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction. But really, anything that goes along with narrowing the lumen of the vessel, such as hypertension and strokes, these are also possible for a patient with elevated cholesterol levels.
Now let's talk about triglycerides. Now, triglycerides, these are what happens when you eat a surplus of calories than your body needs. So if I take in more calories than my body needs in a given day, it says, "Hey, we got a little bit of extra energy. We should probably think about converting this into something else." And we're going to do that by turning this into fat cells, right? We're going to turn the extra calories into fat so we can hold onto it, save it for a day when perhaps we don't meet our caloric needs. But that's going to happen by way of turning these extra calories into triglycerides, and then they're going to be stored in fat cells after that point. So super important, definitely related to the metabolic balance going on in our body every day and our caloric surplus or deficit.
Now, the expected range here is a little bit tricky because it is different based on your sex assigned at birth. So if you are assigned female at birth, your normal level or expected range should be 35 to 135 milligrams per deciliter. And for patients assigned male at birth, the expected range is going to be 40 to 160 milligrams per deciliter. There's a lot of reasons for this, and a lot of that has to do with the actual makeup of our bodies, the percentage of fat versus muscle tissue and the kinds of activities that we do and how our bodies react because of our sex assigned at birth. So this is one of those tricky ones. But again, I kind of just want to call your attention to the point here that we again are looking for it to be on the lower end. I would love for it to be well towards the lower end of that expected range.
Now, what happens if we have elevated triglyceride levels? Again, this is going to elevate our risk for all of the same things. So possible risk for atherosclerosis, heart disease, and myocardial infarction or heart attack, along with hypertension and stroke, as I mentioned before. We do have a cool chicken hint here to help you remember about triglycerides and what you can do to lower them. So we say you should try to lower your triglycerides to prevent heart disease with exercise and a healthy lifestyle. So exercise, healthy lifestyle, all of these things are going to go into reducing my triglycerides to have a heart healthy chance here.
All right. I'm so glad you stayed until the end because I'm going to test your knowledge of key facts provided in this video with a quiz question.
The nurse educates a patient that a total cholesterol level above what indicates an increased risk for heart attack?
Above 200 milligrams per deciliter.
All right. That is it for this video. I do hope you found it useful. All right. Thanks so much and happy studying.