Checking Heart Health With a Home Monitor

Professionals state this is better for Trig readings more so than HDL...BD

A $99 gadget called CardioChek lets you check your cholesterol, triglycerides and a handful of other cardio- health indicators at home, without having to send anything off to a lab. Using a lancet (included in every pack of test strips, sold separately), you place a drop of blood on a test strip. Then the device, made by the Indianapolis company Polymer Technology Systems, analyzes the strip's color change and compares it to a reference standard, providing results within two minutes.

It's more useful, says William James Howard, a lipidologist with the Washington Hospital Center, for measuring triglyceride levels, which change quickly from day to day according to diet and exercise, than for measuring HDL cholesterol, which takes weeks or months to change.