Cholesterol: cue the violins

[Bluetit1802]

My bloods including cholesterol were all fine yesterday. I put that down to the hated statins, chick peas, and Benecol drinks. I can't stand the taste of the spread though.

Pipp

My GP told me to stop using Benecol once I was put on Statins, and I rather think there is a warning about this somewhere. Can't remember where now.

 

[Pipp]

........it's not something I could eat everyday admittedly but it's not too bad, my wife loves Edam on a salad and I do myself occasionally eat it, however my favourite is Blue Stilton

I don't know why I am continuing to read this. Almost 3 weeks on Newcastle and I am now drooling all over the screen. Oh how I would kill for a nice chunk of creamy brie or some stilton. Goddam it if I had a granddad I would go chomp one of his work socks.

 

[mpe]

Total cholesterol is a rather meaningless measurement

It probably is meaningful. Just with a very different meaning from that commonly assigned to it. With the current targets quite possibly being dangerous.

and unfortunately in UK they don't do proper apolipid quotes the best way to measure dangerous LDL

LDL isn't cholesterol with LDL-C being abused at least as much as TC.[/QUOTE]

 

[Pipp]

Ha ha thanks Pipp. Please don't think I'm knocking the statins. I understand they are life savers for some. For now, I don't think they're a necessity for me. It's early days yet and I have things to tweak. I like chick peas but haven't added them to my diet yet. Will do now though.

I don't really have a use for a spread and I really didn't need to add butter because I use olive oil . Iight try those benecol drinks if carbs allow and I'll put small amounts of oats back in.

I've done 20 ups and downs today.

Take care dear.


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Chick peas baked in a warm oven good substitute for roasted peanuts. Seasoned with black pepper or garlic yum!
Knock away at statins all you want. You have had a cow of a day. I hate the dratted things too.
I know you will be fine you are so positive, you will not be held back by one dodgy (slightly) blood result.

 

[Pipp]

My GP told me to stop using Benecol once I was put on Statins, and I rather think there is a warning about this somewhere. Can't remember where now.

Ta, will check that out, and if I can will be seeing about reducing statins, at next review. I have lots of health conditions and allergies and I am tired of polypharmacy. (Before some wag asks that is not a parrot in the chemists)

 

[sanguine]

Haven't I read on here somewhere that there is no direct relationship between fat in food and blood cholesterol?

 

[peacetrain]

Ha ha after my cheese clear out earlier it seems my fat percentage eaten today is 71!!!

Last week there was a Jacobs join at work. I had to walk past nearly everything. Luckily my contributions was a feta cheese and olive salad and someone else had brought a cheese board. I think I overdosed on the cheese. All the stuff I couldn't eat didn't bother me one bit (well some of the bread looked tempting). I just saw it all as poison.


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[Spiker]

Peacetrain stay on the cheese eggs and cream. Fat in your diet does not cause increased cholesterol in your blood. Losing body fat causes elevated triglycerides, so it's a symptom of a Good Thing. The lipid ratios that matter are worsened by eating carbs, not eating fats. VLDL increases, which are the worst kind, are entirely caused by excessive carbs. VLDL is created when the body has too many carbs and has to try to convert carbs to fat for storage.

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[Spiker]

As for Benecol, in my opinion it should be banned.

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[Indy51]

By a nice piece of serendipity, Jimmy Moore posted the following video on his blog today. It's pathologist Dr Ken Sikaris speaking on the subject of cholesterol and interpreting results at the Auckland University "Fizz Conference". According to him, the modern way to interpret lipid panels should be based on the Triglycerides : HDLC Ratio - the lower the better. Well worth watching if you're concerned by your cholesterol results:

Apparently high trigs and low HDLC are the hallmarks of metabolic syndrome.

 

[Indy51]

Just adding after watching the whole video, towards the end he has discusses A1c as a predictor of heart disease and insulin resistance - according to the doctor we should all be aiming to below 5.5 as hyperinsulinemia/insulin resistance tracks very closely to A1c levels.

 

[SJC]

Has anybody wondered if losing weight or increased exercise has anything to do with some people getting lower cholesterol results on the LCHF diet? Surely in a lot of cases there are other factors to consider. I keep reading on here about people losing good amounts of weight and saying their cholesterol has gone down. A lot of you seem to be exercising more. Just a thought! Surely it doesn't necessarily have to be the HF part of a diet that is making a person's cholesterol come down.

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[SJC]

That said, I went on a low fat diet a few years ago but got a bit complacent in the last six months and things crept into my diet that were probably higher in fat. My cholesterol went up for the first time in years.

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[Indy51]

Has anybody wondered if losing weight or increased exercise has anything to do with some people getting lower cholesterol results on the LCHF diet? Surely in a lot of cases there are other factors to consider. I keep reading on here about people losing good amounts of weight and saying their cholesterol has gone down. A lot of you seem to be exercising more. Just a thought! Surely it doesn't necessarily have to be the HF part of a diet that is making a person's cholesterol come down.

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Weight is definitely a factor in high triglycerides and higher LDL. On the video the pathologist wonders why GPs even bother testing overweight people for cholesterol as it is a given - he says all they need is a tape measure

 

[SJC]

I stopped high fat a few days ago because it's not agreeing with me and laying very heavy in my stomach. I wondered and fretted after that in case I should have persvered for the sake of putting off full blown diabetes. After all that was my goal. I decided to do some Googling on LCHF to see if I could persaude myself to go go back to the 'right' fats. I wasn't ready for two separate reports I read. One was damning the LCHF which didn't entirely surprise me, but when it came to a detailed report of higher increases of heart attacks in Sweden (might have said Scandinavia, can't remember), since the LCHF took off, I decided to stay off high fat and stay on my low fat diet.
I am telling you this because we all need to make informed choices. I am thrilled for all those who have got their BG down, cholesterol down etc. It's personal choice at the end of the day which route we take but it is very pro LCHF on the forum and easy, when you have just been scared by a diabetes diagnosis, to try almost anything to put it right. I jumped straight in out of desperation so I know how it feels.

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[Indy51]

I stopped high fat a few days ago because it's not agreeing with me and laying very heavy in my stomach. I wondered and fretted after that in case I should have persvered for the sake of putting off full blown diabetes. After all that was my goal. I decided to do some Googling on LCHF to see if I could persaude myself to go go back to the 'right' fats. I wasn't ready for two separate reports I read. One was damning the LCHF which didn't entirely surprise me, but when it came to a detailed report of higher increases of heart attacks in Sweden (might have said Scandinavia, can't remember), since the LCHF took off, I decided to stay off high fat and stay on my low fat diet.
I am telling you this because we all need to make informed choices. I am thrilled for all those who have got their BG down, cholesterol down etc. It's personal choice at the end of the day which route we take but it is very pro LCHF on the forum and easy, when you have just been scared by a diabetes diagnosis, to try almost anything to put it right. I jumped straight in out of desperation so I know how it feels.

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I think that's the problem with just reading bits and pieces here and there - but eventually the logic of the arguments (or lack thereof) will sway people one way or the other. To me it's never made sense that we should be scared of red meat or saturated fat since that's the way we were eating when our species evolved. No matter what our ancestors were eating, we definitely know they weren't eating processed garbage and the frankenfoods we eat today. The more processing involved in any "food", the less nutrients it's going to contain.

 

[peacetrain]

I'm going to try LCHOO diet. High olive oil. I like the acronym ;-)

Seriously my cholesterol has gone up in the 3 months since LCHF. All elements up. I've posted elsewhere so I won't detail it here. I will continue with the diet but forget the butter. I added it when I never have spread of any kind. I've also overdosed on cheese so I'll watch that. I use a lot of OO and it can do the job of butter in my case. Essentially, I'm a LCHF fan with OO in it.


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[SJC]

It's all swings and roundabouts to me lol. I have used nothing but extra virgin olive oil for years but my cholesterol still went up...obviously other parts of my diet and exercise might have been a factor. Interestingly, my cholesterol went up a bit about four years ago. Being a bit concerned as I was already eating low fat, I started to eat a bowl of porridge every morning. That was the only thing I changed in my diet. After a year it had gone down to lower than it was originally! I put it down to porridge because I couldn't see anything else that had changed in my diet or lifestyle.

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[SJC]

I agree about the processed foods Indy51. My friend who died of cancer a year ago was adamant that chemicals and pesticides in our diet are to blame for the increase in cancers.

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[AnnieC]

I followed a link last night from something on the dietdoctor site- some New Zealand low carb guru think it was.. anyway whoever it was, the article was about how for some people, usually those with a family history of heart disease and high cholesterol, that the high fat element of the LCHF bit might be better translated as LC moderate good fats- so he advocated cutting out the cream and reducing butter and cheese and instead focusing on olive oil, nuts, oily fish and leaner meats to get your fat fix. This is sort of what I have been doing as one GP says statins and the other says lose weight and control BS first. As my Dad has cholesterol issues I've always steered clear of full fat dairy and have tried to watch fat intake in general. I know that the oodles of fat is what attracts some folk to the diet, but I think that some of us just have to accept that we need to watch them a bit more closely.,

I am prediabetic and I take statins and I do agree that high fat is just not suitable for some people but those who prefer to do a low fat diet can still reduce the carbs.
I did try having more in the way of butter full fat yogurt cream and cheese but was not completely happy with it as I had been doing low fat for years because of raised cholesterol and just felt my stomach was not happy with the higher fat content so I went back to low fat stuff.....checking the sugar content not all low fat is high in sugar.... I don't eat red meat I stick mostly to chicken and fish and I cut out starchy carbs like bread root vegetables pasta and rice. I take statins and they work for me without any side effects and.I am not overweight