People born before 1980: do you remember the first time you had your cholesterol tested?

Yes. 2012. Numbers were spectacularly good.

I was 43 (1990).

It was 130, and the nurse said that was good.

Sometime in my 20s. I have no idea why it was that young. But my numbers were good.

I got my first numbers in the early 1990s, when I was in my thirties. My total was around 240.

I’ll answer my own question.

I was 16, so 1984, and it was high, 270ish, and I was sent to talk to the nutritionist.

Never had it tested, no problems.

@Inspired_2write Are you being sarcastic about the “no problems?”

Late thirties. High triglycerides. I was on medication for that for about 15 years. My current doctor, of about 4 years, didn’t think the medication was necessary as my levels weren’t high enough to warrant medication.

I have taken meds for under active thyroid for as long. I still take that, but not the other med for high triglycerides.

No problems thus far.

Anyone above.

Is there any chance you were tested before the age you listed, and you just didn’t know it?

It doesn’t surprise me that I was tested young, because I think the military does some tests the private sector doesn’t, or starts doing tests before the private doctors make it a standard.

We always felt like guinea pigs.

@anniereborn Why do you think that’s young? Were you told that’s a young age to test? Was that back in the 80’s?

I know exactly when it was. It was 1987 and it was a test as stastical variance when I was in school. I found out I was WAY to the right and dangerously high. 10 years later I started taking statins and it’s now normal.

No, I have no idea when it was or what prompted it. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t alarmed, probably because there was too much else going on.

@JLeslie 20s seems young to me for a totally healthy person. I dunno, what is the usual age for it now? I was in my 20s in the 1990s.

Around 1987 was the first time it was checked
Around my twentieth.

@anniereborn I have no idea what is typical, or what was typical back then.

I know mine was done when I was 16, and I was thin and healthy at the time. It was good it was done so young, because I did make better food choices throughout my life. I would never say I ate anywhere close to how I should have, but definitely better than I would have had I not known.

In college, I don’t think one of my friends my age knew their cholesterol number, but I’m not sure.

I was in military health care when I was a teen, so it wouldn’t be odd to me that I had tests done that my peers outside of the military system didn’t have done. The military is ahead sometimes, or has different guidelines.

I thought maybe with your comment your doctor told you you were young to be tested, and that might have clued me in to the medical attitude at the time.

@Caravanfan So, your physician wasn’t the one giving you/recommending the test, is that right? Do you remember what the age recommendation was in the late ‘80’s? What about now? Maybe it varies by state a little.

Sometime in my 20s before donating blood for the first time at a blood center outside of Seattle. I have no idea why they checked.
They said it was fine.

@canidmajor Maybe it was a way to lure people in to donating blood? Free cholesterol check. Did you know they were going to check it?

I didn’t know and didn’t care. I have O negative blood, so I’ve been donating as long as I’ve been allowed to. Nobody I knew my age at the time cared about cholesterol, and I don’t think anywhere else I’ve donated has tested for it.

I was about 30, it was 1996. I just got hired full time by my present employer and I had great and free health insurance (which was free until very recently, a great benefit).

My cholesterol has always been great. It hovers around 140–160. I take no meds for it, it’s just great on its own. I attribute it to the fact that I don’t eat a whole lot of meat and rarely eat eggs. It might also be genetic.

I never even heard of “cholesterol” until I was in my 20s, in the 80s. Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention. All I remember being concerned about was getting fat and having halitosis and dandruff. And alligator hands.

@Dutchess_III So, you heard about it in the 80’s, and the first time you had it tested was 2012? What were your doctors doing? Maybe you were tested and didn’t know it, because your numbers were good. Doctors didn’t used to hand over test results like they do today.

@JLeslie Not, sarcastic
. Just the truth.

https://www.acc.org/~/media/Non-Clinical/Files-PDFs-Excel-MS-Word-etc/Guidelines/2018/Guidelines-Made-Simple-Tool-2018-Cholesterol.pdf

@Inspired_2write It made no sense to me. How do you know you have no problem if it’s never been tested?

@JLeslie Because I am healthy.Until a problem becomes apparent no need to get checked.

@Caravanfan After flipping through that very fast, it looks like they don’t really test much under the age of 18.

@Inspired_2write It’s not like high cholesterol has symptoms. Your first clue could be a heart attack at 48. You might be completely fine, and have fabulous cholesterol numbers. I’m just saying no way to know without the test. If your parents both have low cholesterol you probably are lucky in the gene pool.

@JLeslie
Doctors use different guidelines to decide when a person should have a cholesterol test. Your doctor might suggest a test based on your age or your risk factors for heart disease.
As my doctor has NOT suggested it nor do I have risk factors,it wasn’t ordered.

My yearly exam is done and IF I need it , the doctor will tell me.

^^That’s what I said, if your parents (family) doesn’t get heart disease then you have a good gene pool.

Although, I would think a cholesterol test gets run at least once before the age of 40 in everybody. I don’t know.

I don’t have a history in my family for an electrolyte imbalance, diabetes, kidney disease, yet still I had had a CBC and CMP run before I was 40. No symptoms of urinary problems, but some doctors did a yearly urine test (a waste in my opinion).

Guidelines from the N.I.H. on when females and males should have their cholesterol checked:

https://medlineplus.gov/magazine/issues/winter07/articles/winter07pg17a.html

@Inspired_2write: How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?

@jca2 Wow. That is what I was interested in. I’m shocked it’s so late, although they do start at age 20 with family history, maybe if history is unknown also.

I almost never went to the doctors when I was younger @JLeslie. When I did it was for a specific purpose like, I’m gonna have a baby. I never went in to just have random tests run.
When I went, they took my BP as a matter of course, and that’s about it. Why would they check for diabetes and cholesterol and all that stuff for no reason?

I’ve never had a mammogram,either. My choice.

@Dutchess_III Certainly you can make any choice you want, I have no argument there. I didn’t do mammograms every year from ages 40–50, my choice. I didn’t do dental xrays every year, my choice. I had access, sometimes for free, but I did not want the radiation. I plan to do them more often, now that I am over 50. I have been getting colonscopies since my early 30’s but I don’t do them as often as prescribed, my choice, specifically because now that I have done a few I have a pattern of how slowly a polyp shows up in my body. As I age maybe I will change my routine. It has nothing to do with anyone else, that isn’t medical advice.

I went regularly to the GYN as an adult, not to a primary doctor. When I first had the cholesterol test I was going to an adolescent doctor, she ran the test. I think some of my GYN’s were willing to run the test or ran it without me asking, that I don’t remember clearly. I didn’t have my cholesterol tested regularly, but I would ask to have it tested when I did see a doctor here and there. I had a history though, and I was trying to figure out what caused mine to up or down, so my situation is very specific, and does not apply to everyone.

Once I was diagnosed with hypothyroid, I was in my late 30’s, my endocrinologist would test my cholesterol when I asked.

It also was tested when I applied for life insurance, maybe another random times I am not thinking of.

Your cholesterol is low, and probably will never be high, so it sounds like you are good on that front, assuming your ratio isn’t as some bizarre number, which I think is probably extremely unlikely and I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you, I wouldn’t care about checking my cholesterol again.

I just didn’t / don’t worry about stuff unless there are some symptoms. I went to the gyno pretty regularly, especially after I had kids, but that’s really all. Most regular girl stuff I figured out a way to take care at home.

I was not also one to rush my kids into the ER for every cough and sniffle. Chris got run in kind of often, but only because he was always bleeding everywhere and I hadn’t taken wound stitching lessons yet, so I couldn’t sew him up myself, or I would have.

I’m not one to take my daughter to the ER for everything, either. She hurt her ankle the other day and I sent her to school, but then the school nurse called and then I had no choice. Otherwise, I knew it wasn’t broken. She tells me she hurt herself and unless I see swelling or something indicating a problem, I don’t worry about it.

For myself, the first time I had a real physical, in other words not just a gyn or not due to some issue like a dermatological one or broken bone, I was 30. I had no symptoms of anything. My thyroid levels were creeping up but even when they were high-high, I never had any of the typical symptoms, at least nothing that made me bedridden or hair falling out or anything alarming. Nothing.

People with high blood pressure might feel ok, or they might be so used to feeling a certain way that to them, it’s not a bad feeling, it’s just what they’re used to. High cholesterol, same thing. Arteries are clogging but they feel ok. People with 90% artery blockage might feel ok and then all of a sudden, boom, heart attack or stroke.

Smoking or drinking exacerbates things.

My doctor talked to me about the importance of a good Vitamin D level (from blood work). He said people often don’t know they have a low D level until their backs start breaking and their bones break, and then it’s too late. Sure enough, I just saw a good friend of mine last week. She’s in her late 50’s. She told me last year she was doing a lot of yard work and stuff, and her back started hurting. She went to the doctor and found out her back (vertebrae) was broken. She has low D and osteoporosis. That’s another example of how you don’t realize you have a problem until it’s too late.

I think the importance of regular physicals can’t be stressed enough, even for people who think they feel ok.

@Dutchess_III Me too, I never rush to the doctor or ER. Most things I figure out on my own, or it heals on it’s own. Some things are silent killers though, like heart disease, and I have the genes. Also, cervical cancer, and thank goodness my doctor ran tests for B12 and D, but that didn’t happen until I was in my very late 30’s and 40’s respectively. We all know it was a good thing LuckyGuy asked for his PSA to be tested, wound up he did have cancer.

As we age, more illnesses become more likely, so it makes sense to check for some things. Doctors and people themselves, dismiss symptoms when it is really something. Women are told they are aging, not getting enough exercise, not getting enough sleep, not eating well, depressed, when it is actually their thyroid. People complain about muscle cramps and trying eating more bananas and drinking more water, when they are actually very deficient in vitamin D. Sometimes self treatment isn’t enough, and it can drag on unnecessarily.

At the same time, sometimes people do go to the doctor, and it still drags on, because the doctor didn’t test for the thing that is causing the problem. Nothing is perfect.

I don’t run tests just to run them. I run them for a reason. Thank goodness I asked for my kidneys to be tested, Luckily, my doctor went a long. My kidney function went below normal on my ne BP drug. I think it was from that.

The first time I took my self to the ER was for what turned out to be an ectopic pregnancy when I was about 33. It was about to rupture. Even though it hurt, before I knew what it was, I kept putting off going. I had a houseful of kids I’d have to rehome for while, for one thing. Finally I gave in and drove myself to the ER. Almost died.
Thank God I had state health insurance at the time or, knowing me, I might not have bitten the bullet and gone in at all.

I do not like doctors and I know a lot of them because my brother is one. I do get a mammo but that is about it. I might have high blood pressure or more things going on but my weight is fine and i try to eat healthy and i do exercise. When my time comes hopefully the good Lord will just take me to the heavenly realms. I know too many quack doctors not in it for the patient but for the greedy people they are.

Probably around my teen years for birth control/ lady visit.

When I was around 19, I was send to a general physician since my cholesterol was a little high, which runs in my family. They allowed me to be without medication until around age 35.

How did I feel? I didn’t like having to find a new doctor other than the clinic, but as far as being concerned, they said there wasn’t anything i could really do about it. I wasn’t fat, I wasn’t eating poorly, it was my genes, so I was ‘slightly’ concerned, I suppose. Mainly because I hate pills and didn’t want to have to take any.

@KNOWITALL Part of why I wondered how people felt was because I think back in the 80’s and before, there wasn’t much awareness about cholesterol and the whole connection to heart disease. That’s how I remember it anyway. It might have been just that I was so young that I was fairly unaware.

There was a huge big thing about it (cholesterol) in the early 70s (I remember from college classes) and eggs were demonized.

Seems like the “more aware” we become about our diet, diabetes, cholesterol, acid reflux, RLS and on and on and on, the fatter and more unhealthy we become.

@canidmajor Yes, eggs were one of the things I cut out, it was pointed out to me they had a lot of cholesterol, and then I tested my cholesterol again, and it dropped 50 points in a few weeks. My entire adult life I haven’t eaten the eggs that I want.

Now, newer information is postulating that the vitamin K in yolks is important to get calcium in the right place (your bone) and when it doesn’t get into the bone it blocks up and stiffens your arteries. Can’t win! LOL. I am not talking about the information that eggs don’t raise your cholesterol, I know for a fact they do mine. Cholesterol raises my cholesterol. The question is, if I consume cholesterol, is it possibly fairly healthy for me to have an egg, because of the other benefits, and skip cheese and steak. My cholesterol will be the same in my experience, and I only mean my experience with my genes.

The thing is one egg is the cholesterol of two steaks, and how often would just one egg be enough? Although, one whole and one white tastes just as good to me as two whole eggs now.

Also, the nutritionist told me the soda I was drinking daily was probably pushing up my triglyceride number, which was high also. I remember asking her if I should drink juice instead, and she said no, same problem, same amount of sugar. I reduce my soda a little, and I cut out sugar in other place, and the number was back to normal.

After the follow up with the nutritionist where I had showed a lot of improvement, they never had me see her again. I did too well maybe? I think it would have been good to see her once or twice a year.

@JLeslie I was born in 73 (RvW actually) so mine would have been 1989–1992 probably.

If they say it’s genetics and not diet, there’s really nothing we can do anyway except take a pill right?
A doc also said there are more thin people with high blood pressure than fat people, because fat people tend to be happier…lol It’s all crazy.

I know that many people who are on medication for cholesterol will still think that the can eat bacon and all sorts of awful stuff. It’s still not good for your body, even if your cholesterol numbers come down.

Is it the fat in the bacon that causes problems? Can’t you just fry it up nice and crispy and get rid of all the fat? Or is it the pork itself? Do lean pork chops cause high cholesterol?

I just cut and pasted this from a site: The American Heart Association recommends limiting saturated fat to less than 7% of your total calories (that’s less than 16 daily grams of saturated fat for someone eating 2,000 calories a day). So under those guidelines, it might seem sensible to occasionally enjoy a small amount of bacon, or switch to turkey bacon, which is lower in fat and cholesterol.

But here’s the bad news: When it comes to increasing the risk for certain cancers, things get downright scary for bacon lovers. Not only is bacon considered a red meat, it’s also a member of the dreaded “processed meat” group (even turkey bacon falls into this category. And NO amount of processed meat is considered safe to eat, according to the American Institute for Cancer Research.

Processed meat is usually red meat preserved via smoking, curing, or salting and it includes many favorite American foods in addition to bacon:

Ham
Sausage
Hot dogs
Bologna
Salami
Pepperoni
Pastrami

Thanks. I knew there was a reason other than calories that I mostly avoid that stuff.

@jca2 Yep, it’s basically cutting out all bad fats and limiting good fats.

The whole goal is to reduce the cholesterol build up in your arteries, which is even worse if you have high blood pressure, which narrows the arteries. And triple worse if you smoke, which constricts arteries.

Basically, imo, unless you are just super focused on your health and what you put into your body, you’re going to die from a heart attack or cancer at this point….lol, so be happy.

That will have been when mummy served me my very first ever chucky egg.
I knew as I dipped my bread fingers into that delicious runny yolk there had to be some form of payback & by gum, was I right…spilt some on my rupert bear vest & was a bugger to wash out.

@KNOWITALL Not in my case. If I cut the cholesterol I eat, my cholesterol does go down a lot. Like I said, I can easily get it to go down 50 points in a few weeks. I’m never in the normal range though. I don’t stick with the low cholesterol diet for months on end either.

Most people either are tested 2 months later, meaning the doctor gives them a blood test two months after the first bad test, and/or people think they are eating low cholesterol when they aren’t. Most people don’t do a strict diet 2 months straight, so they don’t really know what happens when they are strict. If they are clueless about cholesterol they’ll mess it up too. People need to actually look up the cholesterol in what they eat and count the milligrams.

You only need a list of about 10 things in the average American diet. Numbers are rounded and estimated.

There is ZERO cholesterol in veggies, fruits, and grains. Cholesterol only occurs in animals.

1 Egg yolk 272 mg
1 Chicken breast 140 mg
6 oz hamburger 140mg
12 oz steak 280 mg
3 strips bacon 50 mg
6 oz Pork chop 150 mg
6 oz Snapper 80 mg
4 large Shrimp 177 mg

A lot of cheeses are about 20 mg per slice as an average.

Everything that is packaged you can calculate from the package.

You make your own list for regular foods you eat, and then you start to know those things backwards and forwards. If you put an egg in your veggie fried rice, and you eat half the dish, you easily figure how much cholesterol.

When I cut my cholesterol I go down to 300mg a week. It might be 30 mg one day, zero another, 100 another. I think the recommendation from the government is don’t exceed 300 mg a day! It might have changed.

@JLeslie Are you on cholesterol meds? And how often do you check it if you’re not?

Gonna go eat me a processed sausage in a little bit! Man they are addicting…

@KNOWITALL I tried them 6 months ago. I tried Zetia, which is not a statin. Just a few weeks later I started BP meds also. You might remember I had a lot of trouble with the BP drugs. I had to stop and start, and switch to another, and then another. During that time I also stop and started the Zetia not knowing what was going on. Then I stopped everything. So, I have never really been consistently in cholesterol lowering drugs. I am going to try them again after my next blood tests regarding my kidneys. It seemed the BP meds were harming my kidneys. Now that my BP is pretty good, I can try the Zetia again.

Doctors have wanted me on Statins for years and I refused. My cardiologist was ok with it, because my ratio was good, and I had normal BP, sugar, never smoked, don’t drink, and I exercised. But, now I’m older, the cholesterol has been higher than ever at times, and my BP is a little whacky.

I in no way am an example of what you should do regarding drugs, I have a specific reason I’m afraid of statins, specifically because of my muscle trouble I already have. I still might try them, I’m not sure. I’m afraid, especially now that I had a kidney problem with the other drug. A doctor would have to let me test one week after starting the drug, and then again in a month or I wouldn’t take it.

Previously, I checked my cholesterol about once a year, or once more if the number was very high, to make sure I could still lower it by eating better.

There were years I didn’t test it for two or three years when I was a young adult. There have been years I tested it 4 times close together, trying to test what food did what. My own experiments basically.

I was tested in my late teens, probably mid 1990s. My LDL has always been borderline. I take a cod liver oil supplement that raises my HDL from about 10 to around 50. I’m also recently vegan again so we’ll see what that does to my LDL. I get tested every year and have never taken statins.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Do you have a family history of high cholesterol or heart disease?

Which cod liver oil supplement do you use?

@JLeslie: I think there are apps and sites like “My Fitness Pal” where you can put in that you are interested in cholesterol (as opposed to wanting to track calories) and then you put in each thing you eat and it calculates the daily cholesterol for you, instead of consulting a book and writing it on paper.

@jca2 A long time ago I tried an app and I want happy with it, but they are probably much better now. As far as cholesterol, when I’m doing what I should, which I wish was more often, cholesterol is fairly easy to track, because I eat so little of it. I’d like to track my sodium, I’m trying to figure out if it affects my pressure or not. Sodium and potassium.

Granddads, one a stroke the other heart disease. My dad takes a statin. I exercise and eat right.
I take this I know it works, when I’m not diligent in taking it my HDL numbers suck.
I also take a baby aspirin, I have a low risk for bleeding and a genetic predisposition to clotting.

^^My ratio is pretty good, so I never looked into raising my HDL’s. I also have genetic predisposition to clotting, and I have heart disease on all sides of my family. Most recently, I’m afraid I might have A-fib, or a new arrhythmia anyway, so I’m considering an Apple Watch, or something similar. I take an aspirin, but I’m not consistent. I gave regular dose right now in the house, so each pill is probably good for a few days.

Not exactly, but recent blood tests have not raised any alarm with my doctor.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I just read the nutritional label in your supplement, and it’s interesting to me it contains cholesterol.

It’s fish oil so yeah, it contains some. Not sure why it works. I started it to raise my vitamin D and the HDL was another benefit.

It’s quite a lot of cholesterol for that tiny bit in a pill, but yes it makes sense. I guess I was thinking the pill would only have the specific properties of the oil like the D and whatever helps the HDL. That it was somehow altered, removing only what was needed. Liver always has a ton of cholesterol, all types of liver. D would be very helpful for me too. I remember a British friend of mine as a child was given a spoonful or cod liver oil by her mom. She hated it. Makes sense with the frequent grey skies in that part of the world. This is many years ago 50–60 years ago, I doubt that is still done today, but they might take the pills.

My husband’s late best friend has / had a wife who was know it ALL, but she wasn’t very bright. Her husband developed some cholesterol problems at one point and she instantly became an expert in cholesterol. At one point she told us, “The good cholesterol is called HDL, and the bad cholesterol is called LOL.” Lord, I LOLd when we got out to the car!!

It was sometime in the early nineties. I was in my 40s. The numbers were good, so I didn’t worry. Over the past decade the numbers came up slightly and my doc put me on a low dose statin.