The Importance of Lipids

Dr Vinaya Simha explains how lipids are crucial for managing heart health.

- Dr Vinaya Simha

Lipids explained

Lipids are a group of substances which have a common property of being insoluble in water. This includes cholesterol, triglycerides, cholesteryl esters and phospholipids. The common thing about these is that they are insoluble in water. This is what makes them important. In order to solubilise them, they are made into lipoproteins and which are then transported from one part of the body to another and that's when many problems occur. During the transport of these proteins, if there is a problem while processing, they may enter into the endothelium and may cause problems.

There are different types of lipids:

• Simple lipids

• Complex lipids

In the body, we have free fatty acids but otherwise, most of the lipids are actually components of lipoprotein (complex lipids and proteins). Depending upon the actual composition of the lipoproteins we further have chylomicrons, very low-density lipoproteins, low density lipoproteins and high density lipoproteins.

Lipid imbalance

Lipids play an important role in atherosclerotic (heart) diseases. It is primarily a problem with lipoprotein clearance. If there is a problem in clearing LDL particles then LDL cholesterol goes up and that is the strongest risk factor for the atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. A study 'Decreased Lipoprotein Clearance is Responsible for Increased Cholesterol in LDL Receptor Knockout Mice with Streptozotocin-induced Diabetes' published in the journal Diabetes in 2008 has shown that streptozotocin-induced diabetic, cholesterol-fed mice developed hyperlipidemia due to a non-LDL receptor defect in the clearance of circulating lipoproteins. If there are high triglyceride-containing particles then pancreatitis occurs. In some way, it also modulates the other LDL particles and that cause heart disease as well.