wabbit

i wouldn't freak out about it...by the way were you fasting when you had the test? That can make a difference.

A few years ago my cholesterol was tested high during a regular blood test, and i got worried because heart disease runs in my family. If anything my cholesterol was always LOW. As it turns out, it was due to a thyroid condition. ANd when I tested again it was normal, and I was tested when fasting. SInce then it's been normal. THere could be something that runs in your family to keep an eye on, and it's entirely possible that next time you'll test normal. in the meantime, try and watch the cholesterol in your diet, don't eat too many eggs, forget the butter, etc. The good thing about low cholesterol diets is that it's not like you have to eat birdseed and lettuce.

Roody

To help raise HDL: Exercise (preferably 7 days/week) and a diet with moderate levels of "good" fats (mostly monounsaturated, along with Omega 3 polyunsaturated fats--olive oil, canola oil, nuts, fish oil).

To help lower LDL: Fiber, especially soluble fiber, from fruits, vegetables, oatmeal, whole grains. Limit saturated fats, avoid trans fats, reduce polunsaturated fats of the Omega 6 variety (peanut oil, corn oil, vegetable oil< etc.)

See on the internet: American Heart Association, WebMD, whfoods.com. Avoid extremist pseudo-scientists like Weston Price and the caveman diet.

Ask your doctor about trying diet and exercise for at least six months before going to drugs. Besides statins (which I take), there are other classes of drugs that lower LDL. Each class has its own benefits and side effects. Some drugs may also raise HDL.

sfrider 

Your LDL and HDL are very good, in fact LDL < 70 is excellent. Putting you on medication for that makes no sense whatsoever! Your triglycerides are pretty high though, do you eat/drink a lot of fructose? If so, reduce it to no more than one soda a day or so. Also, avoid saturated fats, and eliminate trans fats, and your triglycerides should plummet. Consider tossing a couple of heaping tablespoons of oat bran in your breakfast cereal and protein drink. Don't eat sugar bomb cereal, and don't forget milk is loaded with simple sugars. Oh, and if you take a whey protein supplement, make sure it's an isolate and not a concentrate. (Although some concentrates also have very low levels of milk cholesterol, sat.fat and sugar, an isolate is chemically pure and will have only whatever it's flavored with. No BGH and other crap, harmless or not, it doesn't belong in a human body.)

Roody

Can you recheck those numbers? It seems more likely that LDL was 80, and HDL was 50. Still, great numbers. Good for you!

AnthonyG

OK I had to bite.

What's extremist about the Weston A Price Foundation?

One organisation isn't EXTREMIST just because another organisation/group/political group say's it is although given the current state of American politics you could be forgiven for believing this.

The Weston A Price Foundation is the HEIGHT of CONSERVATISM! They're a group of traditionalists who are saying hang on just a minute. Where's YOUR scientific evidence to justify turning away from traditional animal fats in the human diet and where's YOUR evidence as to the safety of the promoted alternatives.

OK they're chalenging the athority of self proclaimed experts but could you call them a group of extremists. Not likely.

Regards, Anthony

nickw

I have to agree, they are conservative....I wouldnt consider 1000 year old asian diets or traditional african tribesman diets to be 'extremist'-

nickw

"Vegetarians usually have lower cholesterol than other people and they eat little animal fat. But vegetarians differ from the rest of the human population in more than their diet. They usually smoke less, they are usually thinner, and they usually exercise more often than other people. Whether it is their diet, or their other living habits, or perhaps something else that lowers their blood cholesterol is unknown.

The fact that blood cholesterol is influenced by the diet in laboratory experiments and clinical trials but not in people who live without the interference of scientists and dieticians has a simple explanation: blood cholesterol is controlled by more powerful factors than the diet. If these factors are kept reasonably constant in a laboratory experiment or a clinical trial, it is possible to see the influence of the diet alone."

Interesting exerpt from this link, https://www.ravnskov.nu/myth3.htm

jazzy_cyclist

Only 10-15 years ago, a cholesterol of 230 was considered okay, so I wouldn't panic.

My situation was similar a few years ago. After the test, I went on a pretty strict diet and workout regimen, and I was able to lower mine to 190, but I found that I really had difficulty maintaining that when work starting claiming more and more hours. So I succumbed to Lipitor which I take every other day. Now I'm down to about 160-170 comfortably (I still work at eating a good diet) the last time I was checked. So it is really is controllable. Also, when it was lower previously, my weight had dropped quite a bit - so I think if you lose weight, it can also help your cholesterol (not necessarily that weight loss itself does it, but there's another correlation).

Live long and prosper .

ModoVincere

https://www.americanheart.org/present...dentifier=4524

https://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NGGU5GV0V1.DTL

A couple links to some information regarding cholesterol and CHD.

Also, one of the newer lines of thought in controlling CHD is inflammation. So called "silent inflammation" may be responsible for much of the arterial damage seen in CHD. However, cholesterol is also affiliated
with this scenario as well, and therefore should not be ignored.

14R 

Thank you for all the help. My diet and lifestyle are both full of room for improvement, so in 3-6 months I'll re-address the issue medically if lifestyle change and diet does not work by itself. Even if 230 is normal as shown in some studies, having it lowered can't be bad.

Once again, thank you for all replies.

Larks

I understand everybody is entitled to opinions, and I would encourage everybody to question any advice they are given.

However... some of the posts here are more than a little irresponsible. The only people who can accurately address your problems are the people directly involved in your healthcare. Your doctor will be able to provide you with most of the information you will need.

Just a quick note though, exercise is a great way to increase HDL levels, as are some natural fats. Cholesterol is an essential part of the body's metabolism so eating 0% fat would be a bad idea. While there are some truths to various post that cholesterol has not been 100% proven as a cause of CHD, there is a proven relationship between the levels of your cholesterol (in particular LDL and TG's). Saying that you should ignore cholesterol just because it isn't 100% proven is a pretty naive notion but again I stress that everybody should be entitled to take control of their own health care.

I urge the OP to speak to your doctor, and if in any doubt at all, question them. But from my experience the risk profile of statins is actually pretty low for the proven benifit in lipid lowering.
If it were me I would happily use a statin or similar. Statins are infact the highest self prescribed drug in my country among doctors, and when I get a little older I will probably follow suit (poor family history).

Good luck with the lifestyle modification. Get the exercise and diet right and you should be fine!

James

Moistfly

Yeah, I realized after reading some responses that I had my LDL and HDL mixed up ... and thought the LDL was "good" which is why I gave it the lower number ... live and learn

Moistfly

Yeah I had my numbers transposed but my Dr. said my cholesterol wasn't anything to worry about and that my triglycerides were probably skewed a little (though still high) because I wasn't able to properly fast before the test ... he recommended taking some rice/pasta out of my diet (I eat one of the two with dinner pretty much every day), no soda or cereals for me, though I do drink whey shakes (ON which uses a mix of isolates and concentrates) ... maybe I'll try and find a brand that's pure isolates

mrfreddy

Blind trust in your doctor can be very, very dangerous.

like I said before, my doctor would have been very happy to put me on statins. Being a well-informed pateint, I of course refused, so she talked me into taking a CT Angiogram. Which of course revealed I have absolutely no need to be on statins, despite a supposedly dangerously high LDL of 201.

so who is being irresponsible, me or my doctor? she should have known that my high HDL, and my low triglycerides indicated that my LDL number, tho high, was nothing to worry about, because low trig. indicates that your LDL is mostly the safe large fluffy kind. She should have known that but apparently she didnt.

If I had simply listened to her, I might very well have been talked into taking drugs that have numerous side effects, some of them permanent.

So, educate yourself first, learn about LDL subtypes, small dense LDL versus large LDL, triglycerides and their relationship to LDL size (Low trig. almost always means you have large LDL), how your diet directly affects your trigl and HDL, etc. etc.

Look into the actual history of the lipid hypothesis and look into the actual science supporting it.

THEN talk to your doctor. And dont be suprised if you know more than he/she does.

nickw

Well put...not to mention that the 'herd' mentality applies to doctors as well. Not to long ago margin was being pawned off on unsuspecting patients to control cholesterol levels.

slowandsteady

So in a 2 minute search of pubmed....I got this. Don't listen to the nuts and their uninformed weak attempts to explain biostatistics. ANY epidemological study can only use correlation and not causation. Something about feeding a bunch of volunteers a lethal diet and then counting the dead doesn't sit well with the FDA. However, there are thousands of causation studies in animals that show that cholesterol and fatty diets are unhealthy...atherosclerosis, heart disease, death, diabetes, and so on.

Part of being a scientist is to be able to translate what the stats mean by having an deep knowledge of the biology. Having statistical significance only means that there is a difference. R values only show correlation. The formulas don't explain the why or the how. And THAT is what science is about...not some p values.

The fireman example just illustrates what happens when you blindly follow statistics. Scientists don't blindly follow stats. Anthony may blindly follow stats....the local newsbunny may blindly follow stats, but scientists don't. Stats are a tool, but are far from the whole answer.


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16520262&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsu m

yak

In addition to diet and exercise, plant stanols or sterols can be used to block the absorption of cholesterol in foods. Take 'em before each meal. They don't work as well as statins, but they do work, and have miniscule (if any) side effects.

andrello

Before taking medication stick to this along with regular strenuous exercise:
https://www.americanheart.org/present...tifier=3031890
https://www.deliciousdecisions.org/
https://www.cancer.org/docroot/PED/co...p?sitearea=PED

And get back to us in 6 weeks with your new cholesterol levels.

Edit --> All under your MD's supervision of course.

!!Comatoa$ted

Is it possible that there is more than one way to lead a healthy life?

ModoVincere

Great post!

Bikepacker67

For those that want to stay off the statins, you might give Niacin a try.

AnthonyG

Here's the first line of this study,

Antioxidant?

Antiinflammatory?

Eat your vegetables and fruit people! Statins are a DANGEROUS and expensive way to get your antioxidants. It is widely achnowledged now that the only bennifit that can be truly attributed to statins is that it has antioxidant/antiinflammatory properties and it has NOTHING to do with its cholesterol lowering properties.

Regards, Anthony

Jarery

To my knowledge the anti-inflammitory properties are in addition to its other properties, and it is specifically these anti-inflammitory properties which make it usefull for doctors to now prescribe to patients post coronary surgery. Thats in addition to its reversal of plaque buildup,etc.

The best advice is to stay healthy thru exercise and diet and not get in a situation where you need to make a choice about taking statins or not.

A far cry different from anthony's interpretation. Of course, advice from the Mayo clinic holds more weight than some guy who refuses a microwave because his cult website told him its bad for humanity.

https://www.mayoclinic.com/health/statins/CL00010

Heres some more, from John Hopkins.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press.../10_11_04.html

Ya, sure looks 'widely know' that its only the anti inflammitory aspects...........Nice 'scientific fact' you keep claiming your wap society is based on.

ericgu

That's pretty close to what South Beach says (and how I eat...)

AnthonyG

I don't think much of the links you've posted Jarery. The Mayo clinic link was just an out and out sales pitch. No science there.

The Hopkins Medicine link is a press release only. Unfortunately I can't get it to download properly at the moment so I don't think I've read all of it but despite its claims to the otherwise I can't see how it has controled for the antiinflamatory/antioxidant bennifits of statins vs cholesterol lowering.

Sick people HAVE high cholesterol. When you get better your blood cholesterol levels go down because it's no longer needed. So, those with less plaque have lower lipids. That's to be expected and it doesn't rate as scientific evidence that statins provided the benefit.

Regards, Anthony