Most people understand that diet and exercise affect heart health, but stress and sleep are just as important. Chronic stress and poor sleep patterns can increase the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, and inflammation. If you’ve ever felt your heart race after a stressful situation or experienced fatigue after a restless night, your body is signaling that something isn’t right.

Understanding how stress and sleep impact the heart can help you make healthier choices and reduce long-term risks.

For decades, cholesterol has been labeled the enemy of heart health, with warnings about avoiding high-cholesterol foods and taking medication to lower it. But research shows that cholesterol is far more complex than just “good” and “bad.”

In reality, cholesterol is essential for life, and blindly lowering it without addressing the real causes of heart disease may do more harm than good.

For decades, conventional medicine has pointed to high cholesterol as the primary culprit behind heart disease. But emerging research—and what we see in functional medicine—tells a more complex story. Heart disease is not just a cholesterol problem; it’s an inflammation, metabolic, and lifestyle problem.

If you or a loved one are concerned about cardiovascular health, it’s time to shift the conversation from simply lowering cholesterol to addressing the root causes of heart disease.