After the holidays, we all think it’s time to get healthy and start new habits. The thing is, your body might not be so quick to catch up to your changes and may lag behind your mental progress. An action’s impact can stay long after the behavior is changed. January first isn’t necessarily the best time to take stock of your cholesterol.

Seventy-five percent of cholesterol is created in the liver, which can be fought by taking supplements like BergaOne. Because 25 percent comes from food, it can vary at different times of the year. Danish researchers found cholesterol levels can spike massively around the holidays. After Christmas, levels were 20 percent higher in the 25,000 participants in the study. The giant difference surprised the researchers. They expected a rise but not to that extent.

To avoid heart problems, it’s important to keep an eye on your cholesterol levels. However, testing after the holidays might be misleading. You could see numbers vastly different from what you would see at other times of the year. Some people might find it motivating, the extra high numbers forcing them to take their health seriously. For others, it might be either disheartening or frightening.

Dr. Signe Vedel-Krogh, coauthor and researcher from the Univ. of Copenhagen, said, “There is a greater risk of finding that you have elevated cholesterol if you go to the doctor and have your cholesterol tested straight after Christmas. It is important to be aware of this, both for doctors who treat high cholesterol and those wishing to keep their cholesterol levels down."

The researchers also said, “A diagnosis of hypercholesterolemia should not be made around Christmas, and our results stress the need for retesting such patients later and certainly prior to initiation of cholesterol-lowering treatment.”

Now might be a good time to get tested. The holidays are in the rear-view mirror and diets are back to normal. Get checked now and talk to your doctor about your health.