Home Cholesterol Tests

This writer, who happened to grow up eating lots of Chex cereal, is pleased to see that at least one advertiser has chosen to assist the public with the interpretation of home cholesterol tests. In fact the ad which provides that assistance is one of this writer’s favorite ads. That is because it focuses on a conversation between a small boy and his grandfather. While book publishers now discourage use of that oft-repeated combination, apparently the ad creators do not. As a result, the Cheerios Company has hinted at the importance of home cholesterol tests in one of its recent TV commercials.A TV viewer typically sees a number of ads for cholesterol-lowering drugs, but seldom does an ad for home cholesterol tests appear on the small silver screen. For that reason many people remain unaware of the importance of home cholesterol tests. Moreover, many of those who eventually purchase such a test do not know how to interpret the results of that test.

Food manufacturers have made a point of emphasizing the ability of certain products to help with the lowering of an individual’s cholesterol level. Often such ads will even contain figures that are meant to demonstrate the cholesterol-lowering ability of the advertised food. Yet seldom will such an ad provide the viewer with information about one way to measure cholesterol. Seldom will such an ad provide information on home cholesterol tests.  

The fact that the public receives so little information about cholesterol tests that can be performed in the home runs counter to the trend that took place between 1980 and 1998. During that time, the cholesterol levels among Americans dropped steadily. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggested a possible connection between those falling cholesterol levels and the 8 to 17 % decline in the incidence of heart disease. The writer of that article clearly hoped that more people would choose to buy cholesterol tests.

Unfortunately, the writer of that article did not dwell on the need for more precise information about the most desirable result from any of the home cholesterol tests. The writer of that article did not address the fact that the public seemed to have a confused view of what was meant by a “normal” cholesterol level. The average cholesterol level in the U.S. in the late 1990s, 215 mg/dl, was above the level that physicians would like to consider as “normal.”

So how did physicians arrive at the figure that they felt represented a normal level? They looked at the level provided in the literature from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. According to the Institute, the cholesterol level in an adult male should be below 200 mg/dl of blood. For an adult female, the recommended cholesterol level was 210 mg/dl or blood. The cholesterol level in the average American was, therefore, at a point that the Institute had described as “borderline.”

In other words, a reading of 215 from any of the home cholesterol tests should not really be viewed as “normal.” Such a reading would signal a need for the person with that level to take steps to reduce the amount of cholesterol in his or her bloodstream. Such a person would want to eat a high fiber diet. Such a person might choose to introduce bran into his or her morning meal. Following a series of meals that contained cholesterol-lowering foods, that person would then want to repeat the procedure for taking a home cholesterol test.