New medical guidelines aim to head off damage early with lifestyle changes, screening tests and medication.
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Adults should be screened and treated for high cholesterol starting at age 30, if not sooner, according to new clinical guidelines, lowering the age by at least a decade at a time when heart attacks are becoming more common in younger adults.
The goal is to shift to a more proactive approach to head off problems in younger years, rather than starting lifestyle changes and medical treatment in middle age when a patient may already have damage in their arteries, said Dr Roger Blumenthal, chair of the committee of cardiologists that wrote the new guidelines.
Growing research shows how much damage can be done when levels of LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol stay high in the blood for years, he said.
At the same time, more medicines have become available to lower cholesterol, along with screening tests and a new online tool that allows people 30 and older to calculate their risk of cardiovascular disease.
“We need to pay attention much earlier,” said Blumenthal, director of preventive cardiology at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
The guidelines, published Friday in two leading cardiology journals, were issued by 11 medical associations, including the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association.
These organisations set standards for medical professionals from family doctors to cardiologists.
Approximately 25% of U.S. adults—and 20% of adolescents—have high LDL cholesterol.
For adults, especially, that increases their risk of heart attacks and strokes because it causes plaque-forming particles to build up in their arteries over time, hardening and narrowing them.
Doctors are being urged to counsel children and adolescents on diet and exercise, avoiding tobacco and other healthy lifestyle habits.
More young people are being diagnosed with diabetes and other conditions that put them at higher risk of cardiovascular events.
“If we want to talk about eliminating heart disease and heart attacks, treating cholesterol is one of the most important things,” said Dr Sadiya Khan, professor of cardiovascular epidemiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She wasn’t involved in writing the recommendations.
The new guidelines offer a number of different ways doctors can determine whether a person’s at risk.
Everyone should get a blood test once to measure their levels of lipoprotein(a), another type of “bad” cholesterol linked to heart disease.
Researchers say Lp(a), which is genetic, significantly increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, and a test can identify risks for people who are otherwise healthy.
Testing for another protein, apolipoprotein B, can also be performed for those with high triglycerides, diabetes or other conditions, the guidelines say.
Research suggests it is a better predictor of heart disease risk than LDL cholesterol. undefined undefined Men aged 40 and older and women aged 45 and older with a borderline risk of heart attack or stroke may also get a coronary artery calcium scan to check for plaque buildup in arterial walls.
Children should be screened for cholesterol and other lipids once between ages 9 and 11, backing an existing recommendation by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
As part of the new guidelines, young adults should be screened beginning at age 19 and every five years after that.
People should be screened for their risk of cardiovascular disease starting at age 30, using an AHA online calculator called
Prevent that measures risk based on a person’s cholesterol, blood pressure, and other indicators. Screening was previously recommended beginning at age 40, using a different tool.
Young adults should be offered cholesterol-lowering medications if their LDL cholesterol is 160 milligrams per deciliter, according to the guidelines.
The same is true if they have a family history of atherosclerotic disease at an early age or a high risk of developing it over the next three decades as measured by the Prevent calculator.
Adults with genetically high cholesterol should also be put on medication. undefined undefined
While the end result of additional screening may mean more people end up on cholesterol-lowering drugs, younger people may be able to avoid high doses.
“If you identify someone at risk earlier in life, you may not need to treat them with as intensive a statin regimen because you have time on your side,” said Dr Steven Nissen, a preventive cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, who wasn’t involved in writing the new guidelines.
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Meta is betting on a human-first AI future, but growing legal battles and declining public trust are putting Mark Zuckerberg’s vision to the test.
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“Call us optimists. Call us dreamers. Call us whatever the hell you want, but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds. The future is for everyone.”
That ad copy is from the voice-over of a July Meta Platforms META -3.38%.
spot that’s been part of a public-relations blitz to position Meta as the humanist AI company. The message was undercut by the ad’s inclusion of David Bowie’s “Five Years,” a brooding 1972 song about an impending apocalypse. But this week CEO Mark Zuckerberg left no ambiguity, publishing a 6,500-word manifesto—about 10 times the length of this newsletter—with a title that echoed the ad: “The Future is for Everyone.”
That seems to be Meta’s new tagline. In light of sinking public opinion and the company’s thousands of lawsuits from states, school districts, parents, and users, Meta’s public relations have been defensive. This push represents a return to offense, with a chance to distinguish Meta’s approach to AI from other labs like OpenAI, Anthropic, or SpaceX SPCX +9.65%.
“It is surprising that the discourse from many developing AI is so filled with doom,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I do not understand why anyone who believes that AI will eliminate most jobs and much of humanity’s relevance would rush to build that future.”
Zuckerberg frames what sort of future we build with AI as the central issue of our time. “We believe that delivering superintelligence to everyone is the way to answer this question,” he says. “This has the potential to begin a new era of personal empowerment where individuals can use this powerful new capability to reach their full potential, pursue their interests, and improve their lives and the world more than ever before.”
The flood of words belies the situation on the ground in mid-2026. Americans, at least, have a love-hate affair with social media. A November Pew Research Center poll reported that 71% of U.S. adults used Facebook, and 51% used Instagram. Worldwide, 3.6 billion people use at least one Meta app every day.
But in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in July and August, 61% of respondents said they wanted more government oversight of social media, and two-thirds supported laws to keep children under 16 years old off the platforms. When it comes to Meta in particular, in the 2026 Axios Harris 100, an annual poll about corporate reputation, Meta placed 96th out of 100. It’s only above two other social media companies, Chinese ultracheap retailer Temu, and Spirit Airlines, a defunct air carrier. Regarding ethics, Meta came in last, and it was only ahead of TikTok in trust.
The steady drip of headlines in the teen social media trials isn’t helping. Last week, Meta lost a judgment in New Mexico state court that raised their liability in that relatively small jurisdiction to nearly $1 billion dollars. On Wednesday, jury selection began for a federal case with four states suing Meta over addictive product design, and false marketing that said its platforms were safe for teenagers. In July, Meta claimed that the states are asking for a total of $1.4 trillion in damages, in addition to design changes in the apps. This is part of a multidistrict litigation, where thousands of federal trials with social media defendants are coordinated in Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’ district courthouse in Oakland, Calif.
There is a separate such group of thousands of cases in California state court, mostly with individual plaintiffs. The steady drip of bad headlines from the courts will continue unless Meta decides to settle en masse.
Meanwhile, in the second quarter, Meta booked “$2.40 billion of charges related to legal proceedings,” according to its quarterly filing. That may be just the beginning.
Zuckerberg spent 6,500 words getting his utopian message out, but I can sum it up in two: Trust us. The evidence is that Meta has a long way to go to win back that trust.
