How Early Should You Check Your Cholesterol?
3/24/202615 min
If you thought high cholesterol was something to worry about later in life, you’re not alone. But new advice has a lot of people wondering if they should be getting checked sooner. Dr. Sanjay Gupta breaks down the new guidelines, who should pay attention, and what it actually means for you.
Want to check your risk? Try the American Heart Association’s PREVENT calculator.
Producer: Kyra Dahring
Medical Writer: Andrea Kane
Showrunner: Amanda Sealy
Senior Producer: Dan Bloom
Technical Director: Dan Dzula
Learn more about your ad cho...
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSanjay Gupta· Host0:00
[on-hold music] Hey there. Welcome to Paging Dr. Gupta. Thank you so much for joining us. As you hopefully know by now, this is the show where we dig into the questions that you are sending in, that you are writing in from all over the country, frankly, all over the world. And these episodes are some of my favorites because I get to hear from you. I get to hear your questions. But so many of you share your stories as well, which I really appreciate, and things that you're trying to make sense of. And with that, our producer, Kira, is back with us. What do we have first?
Kira0:34
Hey, Sanjay. Okay, so first up, I'm actually gonna be asking one of my own questions. So I just saw these new cholesterol guidelines that came out, and we're hearing that millions more people could be told to start treatment earlier, like in their thirties. I'm almost thirty, so I had a mildly alarming thought, like, am I already supposed to be thinking about statins? I think a lot of people assume high cholesterol is something that you worry about later in life, but now we're hearing something a little bit different. So, Sanjay, what are these new recommendations actually telling us?
Sanjay Gupta· Host1:09
Okay, Kira. Well, first of all, I think a lot of people had the exact same reaction. I've been talking to people around the country, but also people in my own hospital, doctors trying to make sense of all this. And I think the headline here is, "Don't panic." These new recommendations are about catching risk earlier before bad cholesterol