I just received my cholesterol profile and wonder if I should be overly concerned. I'm a 57 yo female. My parents both had high cholesterol, lived into their early 80's and had no heart problems. My test results are as follows:

Total Cholesterol - 289
Triglycerides - 113
HDL - 87
LDL - 179
VLDL - 23
Chol/HDL ratio - 3.3

Soooo, do I rush for the magic pill... or chill. I'm reluctant to take cholesterol lowering drugs as every drug my doctor has ever put me on has eventually been taken off the market.

Your numbers are high, but not so high that many people couldn't get them down with just lifestyle changes. It is hard to say if any one individual can do so, though, and it certainly depends upon your starting point. Are you close to your ideal weight? Do you get regular exercise? And what about that all-important diet? If you are already eating a low-saturated fat, low-trans-fat diet, eating lots of leafy greens and other vegetables and fruits and avoiding refined sugars and other refined foods, the chances of making major changes in your blood lipid profile are not great. But if your diet leaves much to be desired, you have a much better chance of improving the picture without medication.

My numbers were about comparable to yours. I got them down quite a bit with diet alone. (Good-bye ice cream and soda pop, hello oatmeal and salmon.) Unfortunately, I'm just not willing to exercise regularly enough, or I might have been able to avoid medication. I finally opted to take an OTC niacin, though, rather than go the statin route. I built up gradually to 750 mg. Endur-acin (a sustained release niacin), which got my TC down to 190 and LDL to 101. (The usual therapeutic dose is 1000-2000 mg. niacin.) A reminder, though, for anyone reading this and considering niacin. It is just as important to have regular liver enzyme tests on niacin as it is on a statin.