When To Worry About Cholesterol

The big question is, when should you start worrying about your cholesterol? It's probably sooner than you'd think.

In the case of cholesterol you might think of it as "the younger, the better." Right now government guidelines call for 20-year-olds to have their cholesterol checked, then retested every five years. If it's high, especially LDL, the bad cholesterol, it gets treated. But if it's only borderline, it sometimes gets ignored by doctor and patients during young adulthood.

But new research is showing this could be a very unhealthy move. In a recent 20-year study, researchers found the collective effect of even modestly abnormal cholesterol levels over the years increased the risk of having signs of heart disease by the age of 45. Now experts are thinking the exposure your body gets to even slightly elevated levels of cholesterol during young adulthood does matter---and can lead to lasting damage to your heart and blood vessels in middle age.

Right now LDL levels are considered good if under 100. But researchers in this study found the magic number in young adults seemed to be 70. They think we, as doctors, need to be more aggressive with both children and young adults than we've done in the past, especially if their cholesterol is in that borderline range. But instead of starting off with medications, they do recommend diet and exercise as the first choice to try and get a young adults cholesterol down as low as possible.