the ever-growing number of foam cells begin to sort of ooze together into a mass of lipids, like the liquefying contents of a pile of trash bags that have been dumped on the front lawn. This is what becomes the core of our atherosclerotic plaque. And this is the point where breaking and entering tilts over into full-scale looting. In an attempt to control the damage, the “smooth muscle” cells in the artery wall then migrate to this toxic waste site and secrete a kind of matrix in an attempt to build a kind of barrier around it, like a scar. This matrix ends up as the fibrous cap on your
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