What is a safe range for my cholesterol level?
Cholesterol is one of the very important risk modifiable factors for coronary heart disease so it is important to know your cholesterol numbers, and then try make them as close to perfect as you can. The perfect cholesterol level, however, varies on the person and it depends on how much risk you're at generally. So, we think it is very important to see a healthcare provider and have them add together all the different potential risk factors you have. Do you smoke? Is your blood pressure high? What's your family history, your age, and your gender? Your health care provider will put all that information together and assess your risk. If you are at a low risk, which means you have less than two cardiovascular risk factors and neither of them is too high, then your LDL cholesterol (which is our goal because that is the bad cholesterol) can be up to 160; we like it to be lower but you don't really need to do anything aggressive about it at that level. If you have more than two risk factors, then we don't want it above 130 for sure. If you have coronary heart disease, or have enough risk that we would say you have a coronary disease risk equivalent (and that includes something as simple as just having diabetes) and you have no other risk factors, then we want your LDL cholesterol (the bad cholesterol) to be less than 100. If you have coronary disease and are at high risk, then in that case it's a therapeutic option. That is, your doctor may decide to bring your LDL cholesterol down to below 70. So, we look for lower levels than we used to and we think that's quite important in reducing the risk.
