High Cholesterol over a Long Period Increases Heart Disease Risk
High Cholesterol over a Long Period Increases Heart Disease Risk – It’s important to mind what you eat in your 30s and 40s, as long-term exposure to high cholesterol levels can increase the risk of heart disease later in life.
People aged 55 who had high cholesterol levels for 11 to 20 years had a 16.5% risk of heart disease, while those who did not have high cholesterol had a 4.4% risk, data from the Framingham Heart Study published on Circulation website. The longer you have had high cholesterol, the greater your risk.
Study author Dr. Ann Marie Navar-Boggan, a cardiology fellow at the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, N.C., says that for every 10 years that a person has high cholesterol, that person’s risk for heart disease increases by nearly 40%. The study defined high cholesterol as 130 mg/dL of “bad” LDL cholesterol, a level which the US National Institutes of Health considers as borderline high cholesterol.
Dr. Ann Marie recommends screening for people 30 years and older, and says that lifestyle changes such as exercise and a healthy diet should be the first treatment option rather than statin drugs.
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