The Blog
Your Cholesterol Numbers Changed at Menopause. Your Risk Assessment Probably Did Not.
LDL up forty points, total cholesterol across a line it never approached in twenty years, and nothing about how she eats or what she weighs has meaningfully changed. The note says watch your diet, recheck in a year. That advice skips the actual question — whether her risk category has changed, and whether the calculator used to answer that even knows she's in menopause.
Why Men in Their 40s and 50s Avoid the Doctor and Why That Has to Change
He finally schedules the appointment. Gets 12 minutes with a physician he's never met, walks out with a lab order and a referral, and never mentions the thing he actually came in for. He files the experience away as confirmation that going to the doctor isn't worth the effort — and doesn't go back. That story is common enough to be a pattern, and the pattern has real clinical consequences.