For predicting your risk of heart disease, many healthcare professionals now believe that determining your non-HDL cholesterol level may be more useful than calculating your cholesterol ratio.
As the name implies, the non-HDL cholesterol level simply subtracts your high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, known as the "good" cholesterol, number from your total cholesterol number. So the non-HDL number includes all the bad types of cholesterol.
An optimal level of non-HDL cholesterol for most people is less than 130 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL), which is 3.37 millimoles per liter (mmol/L). For people with a history of heart attack, the desired level may be lower. Higher numbers mean a higher risk of heart disease.
