Some questions come up in clinic almost every week. Here are the honest answers to the ones I hear most often.
“Do I need to be on a statin?” Usually this comes down to your overall cardiovascular risk, not your cholesterol number in isolation. Two people with identical cholesterol can have very different risk, depending on blood pressure, family history, smoking, and other factors. We calculate this properly rather than relying on a single figure.
“What actually happens during a stress test?” You walk or run on a treadmill, or occasionally have a chemical stress test if you can’t exercise, while we monitor your heart’s electrical activity and, sometimes, take images. It’s designed to see how your heart behaves under demand, not just at rest – which is often when problems first show themselves.
“My father had a heart attack in his fifties – does that mean I will too?” Family history matters, but it’s one factor among many, and it’s not a fixed sentence. Knowing it means we can be more proactive about the things you can influence: blood pressure, cholesterol, activity, and smoking.
“Is it stress, or is it my heart?” This is the hardest one to answer without seeing you, because the symptoms can genuinely overlap. As a general rule, chest pain that’s brought on by exertion and eases with rest deserves proper investigation. Pain that’s fleeting, related to specific movements, or clearly tied to anxiety is usually – though not always – less concerning. If you’re not sure, that uncertainty is itself a good reason to get checked.
None of this replaces a proper conversation in clinic. If a question is sitting with you, it’s worth asking directly.