Hi Saul,
Your right. I do have a very good cardiologist who is trying to figure me out. I had normal cholesterol, normal triglycerides, normal weight, and I ended up with four bypasses at age 51. Statistically, according to my primary, I had a 3% chance of trouble, yet there I was. I blame my teenagers :o) No trouble 3 years since. I will check with my cardiologist.
For outliers like me, they want us to do everything possible: statins, regular exercise, and my guess is that I will be on this medication soon too.
I do know that elevated cholesterol is anything above 200 mg/dl total cholesterol and elevated triglycerides is anything above 150. So here’s some stats I was able to dig up.
*33% of older Americans have are reported to have high triglycerides (> 150 mg/dl).
https://consumer.healthday.com/circulatory-system-informatio…
*37% of Americans had high cholesterol in 2012 (I can’t imagine that improving since then)
https://www.cdc.gov/cholesterol/facts.htm
What I can’t find is the overlap of these two populations. The other thing that I have seen is that high triglycerides in the absence of high cholesterol can be due to genetics or metabolic syndrome - which I think is a pre-diabetic condition. Sadly, these conditions are growing more prevalent.
Because the percentages of high cholesterol and high triglycerides are so high, I have to believe there is significant overlap.
Best,
bulwnkl