At Home Cholesterol Tests: When To Use Them

Doctors and large organizations like the Mayo Clinic warn against using home cholesterol test kits. Yet sometimes nothing else will do - perhaps your doctor isn't convenient to you, or you are homebound for some reason. Sometimes it's better to use a home test for cholesterol than nothing at all.

How Home Cholesterol Tests Work

There are three basic types of home cholesterol test kits. The most common home cholesterol test kits require a single drop of blood, and cost between $5 and $20. These tests are very simple compared to professional lab tests, and return a combined cholesterol value. If you know anything about cholesterol, you can see the problem with this: there is one type of good cholesterol you want more of. Without breaking cholesterol down into three components, you really don't know whether you have an unhealthy cholesterol number, only whether you have a lot of cholesterol.

The second type of home cholesterol test also requires only one drop of blood, but returns a compartmented cholesterol result telling you what your HDL, LDL, and triglyceride numbers are. This is much more valuable, as you can see whether your cholesterol level is high due to your healthy HDLs, or it is instead high because of your LDLs and your HDLs are nonexistent.

The third type of cholesterol self test isn't really a self test. Instead of getting your own results from a test strip, you take your blood sample and then send it off to a lab. The lab measures your cholesterol levels (either the simple single-cholesterol number or the more complex compartmented number) and sends you the results, usually with a simple-to-interpret chart helping you determine where you fall and whether you should talk to a doctor next.

Costs are the determining factor for what kind of a test to use. The simple cholesterol tests typically break down to less than $20 each. The more complex compartmented home cholesterol test costs around $100 each.

There is one other option: some blood donation companies will test your cholesterol for you and make the results available online for free. Search for them online, or call around in your area.

When To Use Home Cholesterol Testing

Despite its limitations, there are some very good reasons to use a home test for cholesterol. Perhaps you have an elderly parent who will not leave home to go to the doctor. Or maybe you don't have medical insurance and can't get a doctor to accept you without it. In one case, a man used his home cholesterol test kit to test his whole family in order to convince them to go for a more extensive cholesterol screening.

The best thing a home cholesterol test can do for you is give you a reason to improve your health by exercising, eating better, stopping bad habits, and/or going to the doctor to have your cholesterol tested more extensively. If it at least encourages you to improve your cholesterol numbers, it will have been worth what you spent on it.