WHY ARE THERE DIFFERENT WAYS OF CALCULATING YOUR TOTAL CHOLESTEROL?

Question by Sugar_Mama:
Why are there diverse methods of calculating your Total Cholesterol?
My sister states your total cholesterol should be your HDL + LDL. However, on my final blood check, my HDL + LDL was 10 points lower than my total cholesterol. So, I identified some net sites that have the following formula:

HDL + LDL + (Triglyceride * 20%) = Total Cholesterol

The formula above does operate to give me my total cholesterol provided the other #’s (HDL, LDL, and Triglycerides) on my last blood test final results. But, I want to know why my sister’s often come back as:

HDL + LDL = Total Cholesterol

Some net web sites state to calculate it one way and other people state the other way. Any person know why they would be distinct?

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Answer by Jacob S
effectively, I feel that one particular day some scientist found that if you get bored adequate you can locate distinct approaches to do issues. Like the Total Cholesterol. What it is, is that you take the typical ingredience in all food, then add it with each other. Each thing has the exact same base that you have to go off of in order to make what you want. Take for instance, chicken and hamburger. They both have some form of “fatty” acids (Folic acid). That is like the base. Then you discover the next widespread ingredience and you have your cholesterol.

Answer by Radagast97
Technically, there is no pure cholesterol in your bloodstream. Cholesterol is transported by lipoproteins. LDL (reduced-density lipoproteins) and HDL (high-density lipoprotiens) are the lipoprotiens utilised to transport cholesterol.

Tests can be run that really test for the cholesterol, which offers you the total cholesterol number (direct measurement). Or you can run a test for the HDL and LDL cholesterol complexes. You add these values to get a computed total cholesterol.

If you run a total cholesterol AND calculate it from summing the HDL and LDL cholesterols they need to be close, but will not concur exactly. Tests have a margin of error. This is why they will not match exactly.

Though triglyerides are typically transported by lipoproteins, I do not know why they would use it to calculate total cholesterol.

We employed to run total cholesterol then and HDL, computing the LDL as a distinction among the total and HDL.

A correction to the answer above this – folic acid is not a fatty acid.

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