National Cholesterol Month – simple changes to keep your heart healthy

Posted: 29/10/2024

The charity Heart UK has named October as National Cholesterol Month. The organisation aims to prevent early disease and deaths in the UK from cholesterol and other blood fat conditions, and the focus of National Cholesterol Month is to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining a healthy cholesterol level.

What is cholesterol?

Cholesterol is a waxy substance found in your blood. Your body needs cholesterol to build healthy cells, but high levels of it can increase your risk of heart disease and stroke. Having high cholesterol does not usually cause any symptoms, and because of this, Heart UK recommends that everyone should have a cholesterol check.

What is a healthy cholesterol level?

The NHS advises the following guide for healthy levels of cholesterol for healthy adults:

• Total cholesterol – below 5mmol/L.
• HDL cholesterol (good cholesterol) - above 1.0mmol/L for a man, or above 1.2mmol/L for a woman.
• Non-HDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol) – below 4mmol/L.

If you have a raised cholesterol reading, depending on your particular situation, your doctor may advise that it can be controlled by diet, or that you need medication (statins) to help reduce it.

Heart UK estimates that nearly half of adults in the UK have high cholesterol, though many may not be aware of this. Recent research on over 225,000 people enrolled in the Our Future Health research project (which is funded by government, charity and private sectors with the aim of recruiting up to 5 million volunteers from across the UK to help researchers discover new ways to prevent, detect and treat diseases) confirms this estimate, with 54% having high cholesterol. This supports estimates that millions of people in the UK may be living with undetected raised cholesterol, which can put them at significant risk of a heart attack.

The Heart UK website provides advice for heart healthy living, the emphasis being that making simple changes to your lifestyle in diet, exercise and habits can help keep your cholesterol level and your heart healthy.

Elizabeth Maloney, associate in the clinical negligence team at Penningtons Manches Cooper, comments: “National Cholesterol Month is a great way to raise awareness of the importance of being aware of one’s cholesterol levels and how simple changes to diet, exercise and lifestyle habits can help to keep cholesterol at a healthy level and reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke.”

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