Good Cholesterol Ratio

You must have heard your doctor referring to your cholesterol levels every time you go for a check up. Every time you hear the word 'cholesterol', you can't help but assume that you're going to now get a huge lecture from your health care practitioner on your dietary habits and what to eat and what not to eat. However, cholesterol isn't always bad for you. In fact, there are two main types of cholesterol - good cholesterol and bad cholesterol.

Good cholesterol is High-density lipoprotein or HDL whereas, bad cholesterol is low-density lipoprotein or LDL. There also exists very low-density lipoprotein or VLDL. To ensure that you maintain your ideal cholesterol levels, you need to ensure that you strike a balance between the two, that is, you need to maintain a good cholesterol ratio to be in the prime of health. But what is a good cholesterol ratio? Let's find out...

Cholesterol Levels

Before we go on to discuss the ideal levels of cholesterol that are desirable and indicative of a person being in the prime of health, let's take a look at the desirable cholesterol levels that one must possess. This is important because, irrespective of the cholesterol ratio of a person, one must always try to maintain an LDL cholesterol level of no more than 130-150 to keep heart diseases and other such conditions at bay. The following cholesterol levels chart will give you an idea of what different values of each type of cholesterol indicates.

Blood Cholesterol Type	Desirable	Borderline High	High Risk
Total Blood Cholesterol	< 200	200-240	> 240
LDL Cholesterol	< 130	130-160	> 240
HDL Cholesterol	> 50	50-35	< 35
Triglycerides	< 150	150-500	> 500

What is Ideal Cholesterol Ratio?

There are two types of ratios that are taken into consideration when formulating a cholesterol ratio; one is the HDL LDL ratio and the other is the ratio of LDL to HDL. The ratio of LDL/HDL is a pure ratio and acts as an excellent pointer and indicator of the overall health of an individual. This is a better way of gauging the health and cholesterol levels of an individual as against the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL. This is because this ratio only calculates the LDL, that is, the bad cholesterol to HDL, which is good cholesterol. On the other hand, total cholesterol includes HDL, LDL and VLDL, and since the individual amounts of each may vary, the end ratio could be misleading.

Level of Risk	HDL/LDL Ratio	LDL/HDL Ratio
Low risk	0.22 - 0.30	3.3 - 4.4
Average risk	0.14 - 0.22	4.5 - 7.0
Moderate risk	0.09 - 0.14	7.1 - 11.0
High risk	0.09	11.0

From the table, it may be inferred that a high total cholesterol and low HDL cholesterol tends to increase the ratio, and is bad for health. On the other hand, a high HDL cholesterol level and a low total or LDL cholesterol level tends to lower the ratio, which is indicative of healthy levels of cholesterol and triglycerides in the body, in other words, is closer to a good cholesterol ratio.

When it comes to the ratio of total cholesterol levels to HDL, then according to the American Heart Association, one should try and maintain a cholesterol ratio of around or below 5:1. The ideal good cholesterol levels ratio of total cholesterol levels to HDL is somewhere around 3.5:1.

The reason why maintaining a good cholesterol ratio is of paramount importance is because this acts as a very valuable indicator of the risk of the individual to develop atherosclerosis symptoms. Every person should strive to maintain good cholesterol levels, more so if he has other prevalent risk factors for heart diseases, like diabetes, high blood pressure or obesity.