For almost two decades now, there’s been a straightforward prescription for lowering cholesterol: diet plus exercise, and if that didn’t do it, a statin like Lipitor or Crestor, one of the myriad cholesterol-lowering drugs. My cholesterol has always been slightly high — around 250 for a decade or more — and I’d been told not to worry about it. But the medical establishment now looks at cholesterol levels a little differently, and recently I was prescribed a statin. I balked, though, at taking yet another medication. That’s when I heard about Dan Rader, the cholesterol maven.

Dr. Dan has an unwieldy title: director of preventive cardiovascular medicine and the lipid clinic at Penn’s medical school. Unofficially, he’s the point guy for a new approach toward people with borderline high cholesterol. For the past decade, Rader has been giving a plant-derived supplement — available over the counter — to patients who need to lower their cholesterol by 10 percent. The results have been stunning.

First, though, Rader — who has the kinetic manner of a guy with way too much to do — gave me a refresher course on cholesterol: “It has two components: HDL, the good stuff, and LDL, the bad stuff” — high-density and low- density lipoproteins. “Think of them as two boats carrying a cargo of cholesterol. LDL is the huge freighter that drops off cholesterol in the tissues, particularly the arteries” — forming plaque, which can cause heart attacks or strokes — “and HDL is the small tugboat that carries it back to the liver for disposal. The more risk factors for heart disease a person has, the lower you want the LDL levels.”

For years I’d been told that my total cholesterol (252) wasn’t bad because my high HDL (98) gave me protection. No more. “Forget the total!” Rader practically yelled. “It’s all about LDL now. A young, healthy person wants to shoot for an LDL under 130; diabetics and people with high blood pressure and a family history of heart disease should aim for under 100.”