But this kind of ignorance is anything but bliss. The reason: The artery clogging that makes heart disease the number-one killer of women late in life begins much earlier—in your 20s, 30s, and 40s—and that’s when your cholesterol numbers may be sounding alarms. So, are you ready to start paying attention? Here, the things all women need to know now.
1. High cholesterol is surprisingly common.
Researchers with the Framingham Heart Study recently delivered a nasty surprise: Nearly a quarter of women in the study who are in their early 30s have borderline-high levels of bad cholesterol, as do more than a third in their early 40s and more than half in their early 50s. A third of women in all three age groups have low levels of good cholesterol.
Bad cholesterol, also known as low-density lipoprotein (LDL), contributes to heart disease by laying down artery-clogging plaque; good cholesterol, or high-density lipoprotein (HDL), helps clear it away. “The double whammy of high LDL and low HDL is particularly dangerous,” says Framingham researcher Vasan Ramachandran, MD, of the Boston University School of Medicine.
