Can You Have Too Much 'Good' (HDL) Cholesterol?

A couple of weeks ago, I had some basic blood work done for my routine physical. All the numbers looked pretty good, but my doctor and I were high-fiving each other about my HDL score, which was 88 mg/dL.

Just by way of a quick review, there are lots of different kinds of cholesterol in your blood, and HDL (which stands for high density lipoprotein) is the one we often refer to as the “good” cholesterol. We don’t want it to be too low because having an HDL level below 40 mg/dL puts you at increased risk for heart disease. And that’s why you’ll find several articles in the Nutrition Diva podcast with strategies for increasing your HDL

So, I was feeling pretty smug about having an HDL level that was almost twice that target. But then a couple of days later, a new study came out with some surprising findings.

Although low HDL levels are a risk factor for heart disease, this study found that very high HDL levels (such as mine) may not be cause for celebration. In this study, those with HDL levels higher than 60 also had an increased risk for heart attack or death due to heart disease.

My first call was to my friend and physician Dr. Sanaz Majd to ask her whether or not having high HDL levels is something we need to worry about.

If the name sounds familiar, Dr. Majd was formerly the host of the House Call Doctor podcast here on the Quick and dirty tips network and now has a YouTube channel called Majd MD.

The highlights of our conversation are below;  just click on the audio player at the top of the page to hear the entire thing.

Nutrition Diva: So, Sanaz, how worried do we need to be about high HDL levels?

Dr. Majd: Well, Monica, if you’re in trouble, then I’m in worse shape—my HDL is 108!

There are some other studies suggesting that very high HDL levels may increase your risk. And there are other studies that show the opposite! It’s not enough to really change our practice on cholesterol at this time, but it’s enough to get a conversation rolling on this.

We need further research on exactly how to tell if high HDL is “dysfunctional” HDL that might dispose us to increased heart disease risk. The question really is: Does...

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