Over time plaque can narrow the arteries and reduce blood flow. Once this plaque is build up under the endothelial cells of your arteries, it stays there forever.
Cholesterol is a fat-like substance made by your liver and also comes from the food you eat and is then packaged into particles called lipoproteins. Your body needs cholesterol to make:
Two lipoproteins that carry cholesterol are:
Increased HDL helps your body prevent this build-up in the first place. HDL helps remove excess cholesterol from your cell tissues and from plaque in your blood vessels. This is why HDL is called good cholesterol. HDL carries the excess cholesterol back to your liver, which removes it from your body.
Nitric Oxide helps to maintain a good balance between good cholesterol and bad cholesterol.
Dr J. L. Ignarro explains: One of the most common causes of a heart attack or a stroke is the development of arteriosclerosis which is nothing more then an inflammatory disease of the arteries and this comes about when you have cholesterol build up, in other words the ‘bad’ cholesterol.
This LDL cholesterol build up will actually cause a change in the structure of the arteries, the blood will begin to clod, there will be all kinds of derby clinging to one another and this constitutes the build up of plaque in the arterial wall which can obstruct blood flow.
Worse yet, if those plaques become disruptive, for any reason, they can travel to different parts of the body and travel to the brain you can have a stroke and if it travels to the heart you can have a heart attack.
The way the body protects naturally against the development of high cholesterol is through nitric oxide. Nitric oxide functions to keep the balance of the various lipids in the arterial system, so it helps to maintain the good cholesterol and the bad cholesterol at healthy levels."