Science evolved. But your annual physical might still be stuck in 1995.

My dad had a heart attack at 62.

Before it happened, his cholesterol was "perfect." His LDL was low, his HDL was high, and on paper, he looked like the picture of health.

But the paper was wrong. He died.

The autopsy revealed severe plaque buildup that his standard lab results never predicted.

Today, we know why this happens. It's often driven by small, dense LDL particles—a hidden risk factor that standard cholesterol tests simply can't see.

His cholesterol weight was low, but his cholesterol particle count was sky-high.

It's like saying a truck weighs less than a car because it's carrying feathers instead of bricks.

Feathers might weigh less, but a truck full of feathers will still crash through your garage.

That was 20 years ago. Medicine has evolved since then. But your annual physical probably hasn't.

When your doctor checks your cholesterol, they're measuring LDL—the "bad" cholesterol.

But LDL is actually just a weight, not a particle count. Two people can have identical LDL numbers and wildly different particle counts.

That's where ApoB comes in.

ApoB (Apolipoprotein B) is the actual number of cholesterol particles in your bloodstream.

It's like the difference between weighing a bag of marbles and counting the marbles.

The weight might be the same, but one bag could have a thousand marbles and another could have a hundred.

Here's why this matters for your heart: plaque builds up in your arteries one particle at a time.

The more particles you have, the more opportunities for plaque to form.

A person with low LDL but high particle count is like someone with a small fire-starting device... who still has a ton of kindling around.

Studies now show that ApoB is a better predictor of heart disease than LDL alone. It's especially true for people with metabolic issues, diabetes, or those on certain medications.

The American College of Cardiology now recommends checking ApoB alongside LDL for anyone at risk.

But here's the catch: most annual physicals still don't include it.

A cardiologist friend told me she sees this pattern constantly. Someone comes in with a "perfect" cholesterol panel and a family history of heart disease. She adds ApoB to their next test, and... surprise. Particle count is through the roof. Suddenly the risk makes sense.

You can ask your doctor for an ApoB test. If you have a specific family history or risk factors, insurance might cover it.

If not, you might have to pay out of pocket, or fight the claim later.

Or, you can just make it part of your routine.

Function Health includes ApoB (along with Lp(a) and small-dense LDL size) in every single membership.

They don't wait for you to have a heart attack scare to check it; they check it because it's the gold standard of modern heart health.

By using Function, you're essentially upgrading your annual physical from the 1995 version to today’s version.

You get the data, you own it, and you can bring it to your doctor to create a prevention plan that is actually based on your specific risk, not just population averages.

Learn more about Function Health here

The best time to catch heart disease risk isn't when you're having a heart attack. It's when the data finally shows the truth.