Cholesterol and the Heart?

Please note that this article purposefully avoids greater detail, such as discussing the various forms of hyperlipidemia. This article is not intended to reach medical conclusions, rather to provide philosophical entertainment.

It is well documented, even in medical books of the last century, that the heart has a tremendous capacity to compensate for decreases in valve efficiency. As the body ages, the ability of the valves to fully close decrease. This leads to more blood flowing back into the heart and less fully ejecting from the heart. The heart will pump harder, beat faster, and use extra lung capacity to make up for deteriorating valves. Up to a point, the body is able to compensate.

What has not been so clear is the role of the liver and production of lipids. Does a thickening of the blood lead to hardening of the arteries and eventual heart failure? That is a common belief. What is interesting is that of all the compensations the body makes for deteriorating valves, it seems one of the easiest compensations to make is to thicken the blood. Why would the body not avail itself of such a straighforward compensating mechanism?

At first, this seems to run counter to the belief that hardening of the arteries is a long term side effect of high cholesterol. But, perhaps, high cholesterol is initially an "effect" of minor heart inefficiency....only to become a "cause" of long term vascular blockage. This would indicate that high lipids are both a compensating mechanism of the body, providing a relatively long term healing and, eventually, a causation of circulatory complications later in life.

So, is it possible that the body recognizes subtle loss in valve efficiency, then reacts by preferential uptake of cholesterols and/or increased lipid production by the liver? Can it be that this thickening of the blood provides several years of effective-increased valve efficiency...only to ultimately introduce undesired buildup and (bacterially?) deposited calcium in the arteries?

Of further interest is a major drug company's recent trial failure of a lipid lowering drug. The trials evidently indicated an increased risk of heart attacks. This may seem to support this dual-faceted hypothesis regarding the role of lipids in heart disease.