If you have high cholesterol but no other cardiac disease risks, ask your doctor about the High Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein (HS-CRP) test.
The HS-CRP test is an important predictor of heart disease risk. Actually, as explained in Why You Should Ask For Advanced Lipid Testing, if you are concerned about heart disease risk, you might want to ask your doctor about three key tests: HS-CRP, ApoB and LDL Pattern Type. (While they’re separate tests, all are included in one single Advanced Lipid Panel blood test.)
The HS-CRP test in particular predicts heart disease risk by measuring inflammation in the blood vessels.
Controversies in Cardiovascular Medicine is the intriguing title of a 2009 article in the American Heart Association’s Circulation publication.
Stop laughing – cholesterol research can be intriguing! I’d label the situation frustrating more than intriguing, but here’s what is going on.
The controversy is essentially that advanced lipid testing (explained in Cholesterol Tests Your Doctor Hasn’t Told You About) has been around for 50 years and is a better predictor of cardiovascular disease risk than standard cholesterol blood tests, and yet these ‘advanced’ tests are still not widely prescribed.
In fact, the ‘standard’ cholesterol blood panels (total cholesterol,
So I finally bucked up and got my cholesterol tested in November and the results were surprising. First of all, my cholesterol – after a year of reasonably careful eating and a lot more exercise, but no Metamucil or Fish Oil pills – actually moved in the right direction.
Details in a second.
Not only that, my new cardiologist (again, more in a sec on why I needed to finally see a cardiologist) actually called my cholesterol results “enviable.”
Enviable, people.
This shocked me. Especially because I gave up on the fish oil pills which apparently now,
Did you know that any old person (and by ‘any old’ I mean a regular, non-doctor person, not any OLD person!) can purchase the American Heart Association’s “guidelines pocket cards” meant to keep doctors up to date on latest treatment protocols/recommendations?
On the American Heart Association website, these pocket cards are described as:
“These quick reference tools provide instant access to current AHA/ASA and ACCF/AHA guidelines in a clear, concise format – available in print and in the Guideline Central Mobile app for iPhone, iPad and Android.”
For months, I have been wondering whether there have been any updates or changes to the November 2013 Cholesterol Guidelines –
The American Heart Association and the America College of Cardiology released completely new, totally different guidelines for the treatment of high blood cholesterol back in November 2013.
As explained in my post, The NEW Guidelines For Cholesterol-Lowering Statin Meds, in broad strokes the new guidelines state that if you are in one of the following four groups you have elevated heart disease risk and should take statins:
those who already have cardiovascular disease
anyone with LDL (bad) cholesterol of 190 mg/dL or higher
anyone between 40 and 75 years of age who has Type 2 diabetes
people between 40 and 75 who have an estimated 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease of 7.5 percent or higher.
