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When it’s high cholesterol
For people who were told their cholesterol is high, people holding a lab report they cannot read, and the people beside them. This page passes on, by name, what the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) says: what the numbers on a lipid panel mean, how often to be tested, the habits and the kinds of medicine that bring it down, what NHLBI says about statin side effects and staying safe on a statin, food, what raises it, and what to know when it runs in the family. It builds the questions to ask at a visit. Take only what you need today.
A word with a dotted line under it, like this, opens its official definition, quoted from a U.S. government glossary.
Right now
- Call 911 if you think that you are, or someone else is, having symptoms of a heart attack or a stroke. NHLBI’s words: every minute matters.
- Not sure what the symptoms are? When it might be a heart attack and When it might be a stroke each open with what to do right now.
- High cholesterol itself is not an emergency. NHLBI says it usually does not cause symptoms, and most people learn of it from a routine blood test.
- On a statin? NHLBI says you should not stop taking it on your own. Ask your provider first.
- Thinking about ending your life? Call or text 988, at any hour.
More help
- It might be a heart attack or a stroke: When it might be a heart attack and When it might be a stroke.
- Keeping track: My medicines and My emergency card.
- Before a visit: Get ready for your appointment.
- No insurance, a medicine or a bill you can’t pay: When you need a doctor and can’t pay, When you can’t afford your medicine and When a medical bill is too much.
- What often comes with it: When it’s high blood pressure, When blood sugar goes too low or too high and When it’s your kidneys.
- Food, smoking and sleep: When you need food, When you want to quit smoking and Can’t sleep?
- Looking after someone: When you’re caring for someone.
- All our free tools.
This page and its wording were written with AI (Claude) for Scarlet Beast (our AI policy). No doctor, nurse, pharmacist or person living with high cholesterol has reviewed it. The facts were read on October 8, 2026 on the websites of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health (nhlbi.nih.gov: its blood cholesterol pages on what it is, dated April 17, 2024; symptoms and diagnosis, dated April 18, 2024; and causes and risk factors, treatment, and living with high cholesterol, dated April 19, 2024). Changed on October 9, 2026: this page used to pass on two more articles, from a publisher that does not allow its text to be reused this way. We stopped relying on them, and took out what we could not find in the sources we do use: general target numbers for LDL, HDL, total cholesterol and triglycerides, the LDL level at which medicine is more likely, a list of tips for the store and the stove, when to be tested more often, three other tests, other names for high cholesterol, and a few added causes. The page says whose words it is passing on, and what is marked “ours” is our own. What we left out or did not read: every medicine brand and amount, the names of the individual medicines NHLBI lists (we name only the kinds), the supplement NHLBI mentions alongside one of them, the symptoms of a heart attack or a stroke (the cholesterol pages do not list them; our two guides on those do, from their own sources), the scoring table on NHLBI’s diagnosis page, where to get a free or low-cost test, prices, and anything about what Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance pay for. We did not read the pages NHLBI links to: its booklet on Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes, its DASH eating plan, its brochure on what cholesterol numbers mean, or the risk calculator it names. The testing schedule and the goal are NHLBI’s general ones, and your provider’s numbers come first. We called no number. It saves nothing and loads no tracking.