If you have other risk factors, such as smoking, high blood pressure, obesity or a family history of heart disease, then your doctor might prescribe cholesterol-lowering medications. You'll need to get checked out again in a year or so to see how things are progressing. If you get a clean bill of health from your first cholesterol test, you'll need to keep living right and come back in five years for another check. Low cholesterol isn't a license to live in the fast lane. Take smoking, for example.
Smoking is increasingly popular among young adults.
It's easy to feel invulnerable at that age, particularly if you know your cholesterol is within desirable levels. Doctors in Korea and in Baltimore say having a healthy cholesterol level doesn't protect you from the dangers of smoking. The researchers studied a group of Korean men. In the United States, high cholesterol and smoking are often linked because of the high-fat diet that's so common here. But in Asia, diets are much lower in fat, and the general population tends to keep their cholesterol levels in the healthy range, even though a majority of Korean men smoke.