I was fifteen when I found out I’d inherited something from my mum that I couldn’t see or feel: familial hypercholesterolemia. FH, for short – my uncle and cousins had inherited it too.  My mum has coronary artery disease, and when the doctors traced it back, they found the FH gene variant — and then they found it in me too.

At 15, you don’t really process what “high cholesterol” means. I didn’t feel sick. I didn’t feel any different from my mates. But my parents sat me down and explained it plainly: because of FH, my body was going to keep building up cholesterol in my arteries, quietly, for years, whether I felt it or not. The damage happens long before the symptoms do. By the time you notice something’s wrong, the disease has usually had a decades-long head start.

I started on statins not long after, still in my teens. A tablet, once a day. That’s it. When I actually sat with what that trade-off meant — one small habit, every night before bed after brushing my teeth, versus waiting for my arteries do to me what they’d done to my mum — it wasn’t a hard decision. It felt more like common sense than sacrifice.

Right now, FH is basically invisible in my life. I’m 23, I finished uni, I train, I work, I feel completely normal. That’s exactly the point, and exactly the trap — it would be easy to feel fine and assume everything’s fine. But I know what’s happening underneath if I don’t stay ahead of it, because I’ve watched it play out in my mum. I don’t want to wait until FH stops being invisible. By then, the choice isn’t a tablet anymore — it’s a bigger diagnosis, a procedure, a much harder road.

What I’m most grateful for is the timing. I learned about this young, when it was still just prevention and not damage control. And I’m grateful that the medication to manage it is simple, well-studied, and safe — that staying ahead of a serious inherited condition — one that, left unchecked, leads to heart disease — can come down to one tablet a day.

If there’s one thing I’d want another young person in my position to hear, it’s this: finding out early isn’t scary, it’s a head start. The earlier you know, the smaller the fix.

— Jack