Changes to cardiovascular guidelines suggest taking statins as young as 30

The basic principal behind this shift is that exposure to bad cholesterol acts like radiation dose. Both the intensity (how high LDL/ApoB is) and the time exposed (how many years) matter.

These newest guidelines from the AHA/ACC, released yesterday, operationalize this partly by using a new set of equations that predict cardiovascular risk over a 30-year period (rather than 10 years).