Eyelids & Health Risks

They say the eyes are windows to the soul, but can your eyelids be windows to your heart health?

It's amazing how much information about our health you can get by looking at certain body clues and now it looks like an eyelid condition might be a hint that our heart health isn't doing too well.

Yellow markings on the upper of lower eyelids are known as Xanthelasma. These are basically yellow "pockets" that appear on the eyelids and are mostly made up of cholesterol. A new study out of the British Medical Journal has found that these eyelid fatty deposits also end up being a sign of an increased risk of someone having a heart attack. The researchers involved in this study followed people both with and without these eyelid deposits since the 1970s. They found that over the last 33 years, those with the eyelid deposits also ended up having more heart attacks than those without them. Part of the reason could be that these fatty cholesterol deposits also mean higher cholesterol in the body. That higher cholesterol leads to more heart attacks over the years.

These researchers hope more patients will start to look for these eyelid deposits and bring them to the attention of their doctors so they can use that as a sign to check for high cholesterol and heart problems.