Your Cholesterol Matters: What Your Numbers Mean and How You Can Improve Them

A must-read for those on cholesterol lowering medication and those with stents in their hearts

When it comes to our health, what we don't know can harm us most. Eighty-five percent of people over the age of fifty have significant blockage in the arteries of their hearts without any symptoms. Two-thirds of the time, the initial symptom is a full-blown heart attack. Doctors tell patients to watch their diet, get regular exercise, and lose weight--but they also increasingly prescribe "cholesterol lowering" drugs that patients will take every day for the rest of their lives. The problem is that a daily pill only addresses one small part of the cholesterol problem.

Dr. Furman wants readers to understand what their cholesterol numbers mean, how best to change levels of both the "lethal" LDL cholesterol and "hero" HDL cholesterol, and how to adjust their lifestyles in order to stay off of expensive medications that don't address the whole problem (and often have negative health-impacting side effects). Not only will Dr. Furman's advice make them healthier in the short term, it will also enable them to have more control over the aging process, allowing them to live longer, better lives.

Richard Furman, MD, FACS, spent more than 30 years as a vascular surgeon. The author of Prescription for Life, Winning Your Blood Sugar Battle, and A Healthy Brain for Life, Furman is past president of the North Carolina Chapter of the American College of Surgeons, past president of the North Carolina Surgical Society, and a two-term governor of the American College of Surgeons. He is cofounder of World Medical Mission, the medical arm of Samaritan's Purse, and is a member of the board of Samaritan's Purse. He lives in North Carolina.