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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.
Your heart, blood pressure, blood sugar, thyroid or blood, and not sure this is the right page? The pages on this site for a heart attack or stroke, blood pressure, AFib, heart failure, cholesterol, diabetes and prediabetes, the thyroid, anemia, sickle cell and menopause, on one list.
Other guides on this site that go with this page
Free to read. We chose these ourselves; no professional did. Each guide was written with AI and has not been reviewed by a professional. They are general information, not advice.
- Diabetes, heart disease, and stroke: what raises the risk, the warning signs, the ABCs, and the medicines: diabetes, heart disease and stroke: why diabetes raises the risk, what else adds to it, the warning signs of a heart attack and a stroke, how doctors check your heart, aspirin, statins and the medicines to ask about, and your diabetes ABCs.
- Changing your habits for better health: the four stages, the pros and cons, the roadblocks, and keeping it up: changing your habits for better health (eating better, moving more): the four stages of change, the pros and cons, the common roadblocks and their solutions, small goals, setbacks, and keeping it up.
- Erectile dysfunction (ED): the causes, the tests, and the treatment: erectile dysfunction (ED, trouble getting or keeping an erection): what it is and how common, the causes (medicines included), the visit and the tests, the treatment choices, and what helps prevent it.
- Food portions: portions and servings, how much is enough for you, reading the label, at home, eating out, and on a tight budget: food portions: the difference between a portion and a serving, servings per container, how much is enough for you, reading the Nutrition Facts label, and tips at home, eating out and when money is tight.
- Menopause, and the years around it: menopause and perimenopause: which bleeding to have checked, hot flashes, sleep and mood, dryness and bladder leaks, and hormone therapy.
- Help as you get older: one number that finds help near you, staying in your own home, help paying for Medicare, and scams.
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.