Cholesterol, although, is an important building block of cellular components, steroidal hormones & a high energy cellular fuel but, an elevated level of cholesterol in various tissues & in the blood defines degree and asperity of a cascade of disorders like cardiovascular diseases, Alzheimer's, cancer, vascular dementia & pregnancy complications etc. These flagitious disorders can be cured if they are identified before they kick-in.



Nowadays, people have gone quite conscious about dietary cholesterol levels and recent New York trans-fat elimination move was an apt indicator of this common knowledge. However, a lesser known part is that the cholesterol is not just taken in with the daily diet. There are some hereditary factors too that jumble up things & make them merry-go-round! All these divisors make regular body-diet cholesterol monitoring all the more important.

There are several ways by which you can monitor and control the cholesterol levels in your diet and body. This not only helps in the early diagnosis of diseases but also helps to live longer and healthier. Some of these methods are:

&bullLaser-eye Cholesterol Testing: It is one of those non-invasive methods which measure cholesterol by delivering a beam of light to a patient's eye. A correlation between the intensity of light scattered from the eye surface and the mobility of the scattered cellular protein is ascertained & is compared to a pre-defined control which helps in cholesterol level measurement.

&bullDigital Cholesterol testing systems: There are many portable Whole Blood Testing Systems with both single and panel testing capability for cholesterol screening. They are quite easy-to-use & provide accurate results in about a minute which can be stored & reviewed. They usually perform complete Lipid profiling including quantitative analysis of Total Cholesterol, HDL Cholesterol, Triglycerides and LDL Cholesterol results.

&bullThin-layer chromatography: Now, don't let the name scare you off! This is a very simple & a surprisingly cheap method performed in casual undergrad biochemistry classes which can be easily used for cholesterol analysis of foods & oils that you consume every other day.

High Cholesterol can be very dangerous and thus it is important to monitor what you eat and your cholesterol level. It's certainly better to consult your physician, chart out a cholesterol level target for a healthy body & monitor yourself periodically. Hence, the best thing to do is to combine better eating habits with the use of prescribed medication to decrease the cholesterol in your blood stream.