September 24th is Familial Hypercholesterolemia (FH) Awareness Day!
Let’s take a closer look at FH, and how we can help make this day productive for the FH — and rare disease — community!
What is FH?
Familial hypercholesterolemia is a rare, inherited form of very high cholesterol. FH is often resistant to standard treatment practices for high cholesterol (such as statins) and usually results in a much higher cholesterol level in the blood stream.
Cholesterol is a naturally occurring substance created by the body when digesting animal-based foods. It helps the body create specific hormones, build cell membranes, and digest fat. However, too much cholesterol can cause problems, so there are receptors in the bloodstream to help remove excess cholesterol.
But in FH, there are either too few receptors or the receptors don’t work properly to remove cholesterol from the blood.
To read more about FH, click here.
The FH Foundation
The FH Foundation is a patient-centered nonprofit organization dedicated to research, advocacy, and education of FH. Their mission is to raise awareness of FH in order to increase the rate of early diagnosis and encouraging proactive treatment.
The FH Foundation has plenty of social media resources available to spread the word about awareness day — posters, flow charts, graphs, twitter/facebook banners, brochures and more.
Click here to take a look — and download/post to get FH Awareness day trending!
