Some Women Clueless About Cholesterol

Making News:

In a survey conducted by the Society for Women’s Health Research, a Washington, DC–based advocacy organization, 79% of women knew how much they weighed in high school but fewer than one-third knew their current cholesterol levels. Of the women who’d recently had a cholesterol test, only 57% could recall the results.

GfK Custom Research North America conducted the telephone survey of 524 women
June 29–July 1 last year. Other results included the following:

1 in 3 women (32.9%) did not know that you can exercise regularly and maintain a healthy diet but still have dangerously high cholesterol levels.
More than one-third (36.3%) of the women were surprised to learn that high cholesterol has no symptoms.
Fewer than 4 in 10 (35%) women knew any of the four key numbers for monitoring cholesterol: total-cholesterol level, LDL level, HDL level and triglycerides (blood fat) level.
90% of women believed that some cholesterol was good, yet only a third (38%) correctly identified HDL as the “good” cholesterol. An equal number got it wrong.
Half of the participants surveyed (50.2%) knew that atherosclerosis was hardening of the arteries. One-third (33.9%) believed it was loss of bone density, and 24% thought it was curvature of the spine.