The state-of-the-art test for cholesterol, as of this writing, is the NMR particle test, also known as the NMR Lipo-Profile. This test doesn’t just tell you how much “HDL” and “LDL” you have, it tells you what kind of LDL you have, and, most importantly, how many boats are in the water carrying around cholesterol cargo. These boats—the lipoproteins—are technically called particles, and the NMR test tells you your total number of them. Now that’s important. The total number of particles predicts heart disease many times better than simply knowing how much LDL you have.
