Most of the 'bad' particles in your blood that can lead to heart disease are LDL, not the other kind (VLDL), because there are way more LDL particles floating around—even if you have high triglycerides.

Heart disease risk from clogged arteries is more about how many bad cholesterol particles are in your blood — counted by a protein called apoB — than about how much cholesterol is inside them.

ApoB is a better blood test for predicting heart disease than standard cholesterol tests because it counts the actual particles that clog arteries, while cholesterol numbers can be misleading since each particle carries different amounts of cholesterol from person to person.

Some types of fat-carrying particles in the blood, besides the usual 'bad cholesterol,' are linked to plaque buildup in arteries that can cause heart disease.

Measuring apoB might give a better picture of heart disease risk than LDL cholesterol because it counts the actual number of harmful particles in your blood, not just how much cholesterol they carry.

Tiny, dense cholesterol particles stick around longer in the blood and slip more easily into artery walls, where they get damaged and trigger inflammation that leads to clogged arteries.