It’s estimated that about one in four adults in the US has high LDL cholesterol, which can build up in your arteries over time, increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke.

But ‘bad’ cholesterol isn’t the only thing you need to look out for.

Other kinds of lipids and lipoproteins can also build up in your blood to abnormal levels, called dyslipidemia, which in turn can lead to atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD), the world’s leading cause of death and morbidity.

This year, experts in the US updated their official guidance on how to manage cholesterol and prevent dyslipidemia, overhauling the former 2018 guidelines.

The new guidelines are still very much about managing cholesterol, but they also take a broader perspective, focusing on taking action earlier to address blood fats that can harm people’s health.

“While we want to try to optimize healthy lifestyle habits as the first step to lower cholesterol, we realize that if lipid numbers aren’t within the desirable range after a period of lifestyle optimization, we should consider adding lipid-lowering medication earlier than we would have considered 10 years ago.”

In the new guidelines, written for doctors and clinicians, the main focus is to begin treating dyslipidemia earlier to reduce the lifelong risk associated with prolonged exposure to atherogenic lipoproteins.