Say What? Explaining the New Guidelines for Managing High Cholesterol

Hey, ladies! We’ve got some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that heart disease is still the number 1 killer of women in the U.S. (We’d like to see that change, but it hasn’t — yet.) The good news is that the American College of Cardiology and The American Heart Association released new guidelines earlier this year that offer more personalized care for preventing heart attacks and strokes. “The 2026 ACC/AHA Multisociety Guideline on the Management of Dyslipidemia,” was developed with nine other medical organizations and focuses on detecting risk earlier and treating high cholesterol levels more aggressively.We’re here to help break down 5 important things for women to know about these new guidelines. PREVENT. Your chances of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) will now be assessed by your clinician using a risk calculator called PREVENT. The score can then be used by you and your clinician to help decide whether medication might be a good option for you, even if you don’t have symptoms or feel perfectly healthy. Lp(a). The new guidelines suggest that everyone get one lipoprotein(a), or Lp(a), blood test once in their lifetime. Lp(a) is an inherited type of lipoprote...