Dear Anon,

Hypoglycaemia just means a low blood sugar, and is usually part of diabetes, where the interaction between sugar intake and medication may be unbalanced, resulting in temporary hypoglycaemia. In a non-diabetic, other causes could be poor food intake, or a tumour which produces insulin in excess.

A very high cholesterol means just that : his cholesterol level in the blood is much higher than it should be. This places him at high risk for heart attack and stroke and other conditions such as aortic aneurysm. Dietary control plus medication can be of great benefit here.

The heart murmur is more complex. Mostly, murmurs are due to one or more of the four heart valves not functioning properly. Valves can become narrowed or leaky, and this alters the blood flow through the valve, giving rise to specific types of murmurs which can be heard through a stethoscope. Structural valve problems usually require surgery to be fixed. In other cases, conditions such as thyroid disorders, anaemia etc can cause changes in the blood and in the general circulation, which then give rise to different types of murmurs.

Your Dad should be seen by a cardiologist for a full evaluation, as he has several risk factors at play. The sooner these are sorted out the better. I do not have any other information about him to go on, so I can’t tell you what the implications for him are. He needs to know the cause of the murmurs first of all, and then he must deal with the hypoglycaemia :in all of this the cardiologist will be able to help with.

Good luck.

HeartDoc