While diet and lifestyle play a significant role in determining your cholesterol levels, they are not the only factors. For many people, a predisposition to high cholesterol is written into their genetic blueprint. Understanding your family’s health history is a critical step in assessing your own personal risk for cardiovascular disease.
If your parents, grandparents, or siblings have had high cholesterol or experienced a heart attack or stroke at an early age (before 55 for men, 65 for women), your own risk is substantially increased. This is because you may have inherited genes that affect how your body produces and clears cholesterol from the blood.
A specific genetic disorder called Familial Hypercholesterolemia (FH) causes very high levels of LDL cholesterol from birth. People with FH can have LDL levels two to four times higher than the general population. Without early diagnosis and aggressive treatment, they are at an extremely high risk of developing heart disease in their 20s, 30s, or 40s.
However, even if you don’t have a specific disorder like FH, genetics can still play a powerful role. Certain gene variations can lead to the ‘atherogenic dyslipidaemia’ pattern—a combination of high triglycerides and low HDL—which is a major risk factor for early coronary disease.
This is why it’s so important to share your family health history with your doctor. It provides crucial context for your own cholesterol numbers and can prompt earlier and more frequent screenings. While you can’t change your genes, knowing you have a genetic risk empowers you to be extra vigilant with lifestyle choices and medical management to overcome your inherited predisposition.