“It’s not just how high your cholesterol is now, but how long it has been high. All of the years exposed to high cholesterol are cumulative,” says Dr. Samia Mora, a cardiovascular specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
“This is a normal transition,” says Dr. Erin Michos, director of women’s cardiovascular health at Johns Hopkins, “but we need women to get screened and know their numbers.” “The quality of these particles changes as women transition through menopause,” adds Samar El Khoudary of the University of Pittsburgh.
Screening Beats Symptoms
“If you don’t check, you don’t know,” Mora says. “We can’t avoid aging, we cannot avoid our genetics, but we can change our lifestyle to counteract these effects.”
Lifestyle, and When You Still Need a Statin
“A little bit more exercise, a little bit more thoughtfulness about diet can really make a huge difference,” says Dr. Patricia Best of the Mayo Clinic Women’s Heart Clinic. “Your body is changing, so you have to adapt.” And: “It’s really important to understand that sometimes even if you do everything right, you’re still going to end up needing a medication.”
Dr. Neil Shah is a licensed physician practicing in Southern California. A prolific research scientist committed to both academic medicine and clinic medicine communities, Dr. Shah has received several awards from the start of his medical career including a full-ride merit scholarship to cover his tuition in medical school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he graduated in 2018.
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