This video covers the most common and important process for pulling LDL out of the artery wall. HDL. There is a brief review of other methods: autophagy and inflammation. Autophagy comes from the roots auto, meaning self, and phage, meaning to eat. Autophagy is really more important on the cellular level. It is a major contributor to health. If you're obese, you're not giving your body much chance to using autophagy.

Inflammation is another way the body attempts to get LDL out of the artery wall. Unfortunately, it is the most common cause of heart attack, stroke, and dementia. Immune cells release enzymes that digest and liquefy the fats. This liquified, or inflamed plaque, if it gets back into the bloodstream, causes clots. These clots are the cause of heart attack and stroke. Microscopic, constantly repetitive clots are not noticed - until the process continues for decades. This is the cause of dementia and heart failure.

HDL is the major healthy way of removing plaque from artery walls. As a practicing prevention doc, I see this all the time. You can see it easily, though. Go to the FRAMINGHAM or NHANES studies. They show clear data indicating this. For example, if your LDL is all the way up at 220, you can still have less heart attack and stroke risk than someone at an LDL of 100. How? if your HDL is 65 instead of 25. So, again, HDL is very cardio-protective. We'll talk in other videos about how to encourage HDL.