What is your personal health plan to prevent heart disease? Until recently, the best advice was to watch your cholesterol. High cholesterol is correlated with heart disease and stroke, leading causes of death in the U.S. But recent research highlights the importance of other risk factors that also contribute to heart disease, including hypertension, diabetes, and smoking. Luckily, these risk factors can be largely affected by a healthy lifestyle. While it makes sense to continue monitoring your cholesterol levels, other lab tests may provide key information about your risk for heart disease. You are encouraged to review the research documenting the relationships between inflammation or diabetes and heart disease. Whatever you choose for your personal health plan, be sure to include a healthy diet, exercise, and avoiding smoking.

ISSUE: Changing role of cholesterol among causes of heart disease

AHHA strives to maintain a neutral position on issues and views knowledge as power. For those interested in learning more about this month’s issue, the following related articles were selected to serve as a foundation for researching this matter.

PRO – treating for lowering levels of bad cholesterol to prevent heart disease

Cholesterol (11/13/17)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Raising ‘good’ cholesterol fails to protect against heart disease (11/15/17)
University of Oxford

Should you take statins? Guidelines offer different answers (1/1/18)
by Michael Nedelman
CNN

Four Common Cholesterol Misconceptions (12/22/17)
by Timothy O’Shea, PharmD
Pharmacy Times

CON – against treating cholesterol levels as prevention of heart disease

Is it time to retire cholesterol tests? (12/6/17)
by Mitch Leslie
Science

What We Learn When Two Ruthless Killers, Heart Disease and Cancer, Reveal a Common Root (9/27/17)
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
The New York Times Magazine

Cardiovascular Disease & Diabetes (12/5/17)
American Heart Association

Cholesterol Isn’t the Problem in Heart Disease; Inflammation Is (9/13/17)
by Dr. Mercola
Mercola

We encourage you to post your comments. You are also invited to share additional resources you have found relating to this issue.

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