Q. Goals of Dietary Treatment for dyslipidemia?
The goals of dietary management (alone or conjunction with exercise or with lipid lowering drugs) are to reduce the total fat, saturated fat and cholesterol intake. This is an attempt to reduce total cholesterol, LDL and triglyceride levels, thus also reducing the risk of atherosclerosis and modifying its progression in subjects with the disease.
We read in the section above that there are several environmental factors apart from genetic attributes that increase the probability of developing dyslipidemia. For example, obesity is a high risk factor and one of the important causes of this is the diet. We know that when we take more food than what we it is accumulated as fat in our body. This raises the lipid levels in the blood, which deposits in the arteries and the excess calories are converted to fat in the body, which results in excess weight a very important cause of obesity. This when compounded by wrong lifestyles (physically inactive, smoking, intake of alcohol, stress etc.) worsens the already harmful effects of imbalanced food. The fats in the food, as we already know, give twice as much calorie (9 Kcal/g of fat) as proteins and carbohydrates (4 Kcal/g of proteins and carbohydrates). So very rich foods containing excess fat are the first culprits and then other nutrients as well could be involved. We will learn about these also. So let us start with dietary fats.