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Cholesterol up on low carb high fat

S

Slayer Mum

Active Member
Messages
43
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
So I am 3 months approx since my diagnosis. My hba1c was 98. I started metformin and up to 2 g per day and did the lchf diet as best I can. I have just had my blood test results and am down to 68……. But my cholesterol (total is up at 5.4. I don’t know what that has been before now.
I have gone from somewhere over 100kg to 94 but seem to be plateauing around there. So far I have been winging it. I e eating meat and vegetables , fry up for breakfast, eggs, double cream and berries or Greek yogurt. I drink tea with a wee bit of milk and coffee with coconut milk and a blob of cream. I have cheated and had a Singapore noodles once and an Indian takeaway weeks ago. I also had a slice or two of brown nimble bread with breakfast a handful of times.

Any words of genius for me. Am not enjoying too much double cream as I think it is making me nauseous but that may have been antibiotics as it turns out I have had pneumonia for weeks! Off them now and feeling a little better in terms of get up and go.
 
Great start!

My experience was that weight loss was not steady. It went in a series of steps, and didn't seem to connect with anything else. I just carried on as I was and it restarted.

Cholesterol - I have to say I am unconcerned about what my total cholesterol is estimated to be. Most cholesterol in your body is made by your body rather than as a result of what you eat. So mine rose slightly in the early stages, and then fell. It's now 18% below where it was before I started keto.

Overall there is evidence that higher cholesterol is protective, particularly for women. The link below is to a recent very large Norwegian study.

Is the use of cholesterol in mortality risk algorithms in clinical guidelines valid? Ten years prospective data from the Norwegian HUNT 2 study - PMC

Many clinical guidelines for cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention contain risk estimation charts/calculators. These have shown a tendency to overestimate risk, which indicates that there might be theoretical flaws in the algorithms. Total ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

This was the conclusion:

Our study provides an updated epidemiological indication of possible errors in the CVD risk algorithms of many clinical guidelines. If our findings are generalizable, clinical and public health recommendations regarding the ‘dangers’ of cholesterol should be revised. This is especially true for women, for whom moderately elevated cholesterol (by current standards) may prove to be not only harmless but even beneficial.
 
Hi @Slayer Mum How long have you been low carbing? It's said to be quite normal for Cholesterol (LDL in particular) to rise in the first few weeks of Low Carb as the body fat starts to be consumed as energy. The idea being that fir it to be used as energy, this body fat needs modifying and transporting through the bloodstream, and thus while that is happening the LDL will be higher than either before starting Low Carb, or later when nearer to target weight and the body fat burning has reduced to a trickle.
But you just quoted Total Cholesterol, which of course includes the HDL that for the majority may be better when higher. Though I have heard that the 'sweet spot' for HDL is just below 2.0.

By the way, last time it was checked my Total Cholesterol was 7.7 my HDL 2.17 (so perhaps a little too much of a good thing), but my Triglycerides were nice and low.
 
My hb1ac was 106 when I was diagnosed in March and at that time my total cholesterol was 7.5. I went low carb a couple of weeks after my diagnosis but also tried to avoid eating too much fat, and my hb1ac is now down to 43 and my cholesterol down to 4.6 - so still a bit of work to do on both, but certainly heading in the right direction.

My BMI has also dropped from over 28 to around 22 in that period, so I've also lost a fair bit of weight.
 
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