Medicine has generally been most concerned with excesses — overweight, fever, hypertension, elevated cholesterol, high blood sugar, and the like. In recent years, this preoccupation has increased with studies showing that even the previous acceptable levels of all those measurements were too high.

So healthy limits of cholesterol dropped from 230 to under 200, fasting blood sugar was lowered from 120 to 100 and systolic blood pressure compressed from 130 to 120.

Despite this focus of attention, patients often ask about the other end. How low can the cholesterol safely go? What about the diastolic blood pressure — the bottom number — should that be low too? Isn’t it dangerous if the blood sugar goes down too far?

Therefore, we will examine what bottom numbers mean and how concerned we should be about them.



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