High blood pressure, high cholesterol early in life tied to heart problems later

Starting when participants were 53 years old on average, researchers tracked them to see who had heart attacks, strokes, or heart failure. By the time half of the people had been tracked for at least 17 years, participants who had high levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol before age 40 - that is, higher than about 129 milligrams per deciliter of blood - were 64% more likely to have had events like heart attacks compared to people with low LDL levels in early adulthood. The upper limit of normal blood pressure is 120/80.