What is a “good” cholesterol level?

Three: Even with measures superior to calculated LDL, your doctor will pay more attention to HDL and triglycerides, both values that yield a wealth of information about your eating habits, genetics, and future potential for heart disease.

Four: Measures that go even further than the cholesterol panel, measured or calculated, will become mainstream. This may include measures of high-risk for heart disease like lipoprotein(a) and C-reactive protein and other indexes of hidden inflammation. Although all cholesterol panels are now drawn while you are fasting, there will be a time when we also examine blood patterns immediately after eating to study how you handle food digestive by-products. This, too, can shed light on heart disease risk.

Five: Examination of your risk factors will always be conducted in tandem with measures of the disease itself. In other words, risk factors will not be viewed in isolation, but as a part of an overall view of you and your risk by factoring in whether or not and how much atherosclerosis you may already have. This way, a person with advanced coronary atherosclerosis will be viewed differently (and treated more intensively) than someone with similar blood patterns but no disease whatsoever.

For some, the future is now, and these more advanced concepts are already underway. But mainstream preventive cardiology, I predict, will follow this blueprint for development over the next decade.

So if you and your doctor decide to adhere to the ATP-III guidelines for LDL cholesterol, fine. You can get some rough sense for what is desirable and what is not that way.

But if you want something better, it's time to starting being aware of all the additional ways to improve the power to predict and gain control over risk for heart disease.