Lowering your 'bad' cholesterol (LDL) reduces your risk of heart attacks and heart-related deaths — for people who’ve never had heart disease, each big drop in LDL lowers risk by about 1.5%, but for those who already had a heart problem, the same drop cuts risk by nearly 5%.

The lower your 'bad' cholesterol (LDL-C) goes, the less likely you are to have a heart attack or die from heart disease—and this benefit is even bigger if you’ve already had a heart problem before.

Lowering your 'bad' cholesterol by just a little bit—about 1 mmol/L—can cut your risk of serious heart problems like heart attacks or strokes by roughly 22%, and this has been seen again and again in big studies with hundreds of thousands of people.

If you lower your 'bad' cholesterol by about 1 point (from around 3.16 to 2.16), you cut your risk of heart attacks, strokes, or needing heart surgery by roughly a quarter—no matter if you use statins or other drugs that work the same way.

Middle-aged adults who feel fine but have very high 'bad' cholesterol might be more likely to have hidden heart plaque, even if they don’t have symptoms.

People with higher levels of 'bad' cholesterol in their blood are more likely to have heart attacks or other heart problems.