Is High Cholesterol Really Bad for You? It Depends

Being told you have high cholesterol can feel like a verdict: start taking a statin or risk a heart attack or stroke. Recent studies, however, suggest that high cholesterol is not as uniformly harmful as once thought. However, the message has swung hard in the other direction on social media, where claims range from “high cholesterol might save your life” to “high cholesterol is the secret to living to 100-plus.” So, is high cholesterol really “good” or “bad”? The reality is more nuanced than either extreme suggests. The more useful question may not be whether high cholesterol is harmful, but...