Longevity expert and founder shares the three important heart numbers nobody talks about

Dr. Nickhil Jakatdar, a longevity and preventive health researcher, says most adults know their LDL cholesterol number but have never heard of the three others that the 2026 cardiology guidelines now say matter just as much.

LDL was never the whole picture

For years, a cholesterol test just meant LDL, or the so-called bad cholesterol. And doctors built entire treatment plans around getting that one figure down. But the new 2026 ACC/AHA dyslipidemia guideline, released this year by a coalition including the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology, makes something uncomfortable clear: LDL alone misses a chunk of people who are still at real risk. Dr. Jakatdar, in a post shared on his Instagram account, put it simply: there are three other numbers worth asking for at your next checkup, and most people have never heard of at least two of them.

Non-HDL and ApoB catch what LDL misses

The first is non-HDL cholesterol. Dr. Jakatdar says it captures a wider set of harmful particles than LDL alone, especially in people dealing with diabetes, obesity or high triglycerides. The new guideline officially restores non-HDL-C as a co-primary treatment target alongside LDL, with its own goals based on risk level.

Then there's ApoB, the second number, which Dr. Jakatdar describes as counting the actual trucks on the highway instead of estimating cargo weight. It counts the number of harmful particles floating in your blood, not just how much cholesterol they're hauling. According to the guideline itself, ApoB testing becomes especially useful once LDL and non-HDL goals are technically met but triglycerides are still high, or in people with diabetes or unusually low LDL who still feel something's off.

That's exactly the blind spot ApoB is built to expose.

Lp(a) is the one genetics decides, not diet

Lp(a) is the one almost nobody has tested. It's largely inherited, statins don't touch it, and neither does diet or exercise, no matter how disciplined you are. Roughly one in five people worldwide carry elevated levels, according to research on the marker's genetics. And the guideline now gives it a Class I recommendation, meaning every adult should get it checked at least once in their life, with levels above 125 nmol/L flagged as a meaningful risk enhancer.

Why South Asians should pay closer attention

This is where it gets personal for a huge chunk of the world's population. Research on South Asian cohorts has found elevated Lp(a) shows up in about 25 percent of that population, compared with lower rates in East Asian and European groups, and it's one reason South Asians tend to develop coronary artery disease close to a decade earlier than other ethnicities. So if you're of South Asian descent and your family has a history of early heart attacks that never quite made sense given otherwise normal cholesterol, this might be the missing piece.

Dr. Jakatdar's advice is blunt: most labs already calculate non-HDL automatically, but ApoB and Lp(a) usually need to be requested. This necessitates the emergence of precision health and preventive care platforms like MiraOne that aim to interpret DNA, drug response, and blood test results together, because the same blood test value can mean different things in different individuals. So next time you look forward to routine bloodwork make an informed decision. Watch the video here: