As the health director of Ladies' Home Journal, I know a thing or two about cholesterol. But I was a little surprised by the response when our editor-in-chief, Sally Lee, took an informal poll during a recent staff meeting. "How many of you know your cholesterol numbers?" she asked the roomful of mostly women. About a third of the hands went up. Then I jumped in and asked, "How many of you really understand what those numbers mean or how to change them?" Every hand went down.
So, if a bunch of research-oriented journalists don't know what to do with all their data, we thought, how can we expect our readers to know? We asked our LHJ Facebook fans the same questions and they posted answers such as this one: "I never really understood the numbers and how they work. I just eat my Cheerios." In fact, only about 21 percent of women 18 to 44 know their total cholesterol level, according to a 2007 survey by the Society for Women's Health Research. And just under 14 percent know their LDL ("bad") cholesterol level, while only 12 percent know their HDL ("good") cholesterol number.
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