Cholesterol

Do you know what your cholesterol breakdown is? Your 7.5 is just the total, which includes the good as well as the bad bits. You need to analyse your HDL (good), LDL (maybe good or bad) and triglycerides (bad)

Tyftz said:

Haven’t got details yet but ratio is 3.8

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Which ratio is it? There are several different ones.
It would be a good plan to obtain the details. You could ask for a print out of the test results. All details will be on there.

Tyftz said:

Serum cholesterol 7.5
Serum HDL 2
Se non HDL 5.5
Serum triglycerides .5
Serum chol/HDL 3.8

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That's interesting, I'm another skinny person who exercises but with a blood glucose problem and my recent cholesterol test (after some weeks of more or less LCHF) came out as globally higher than yours at 9.8. I am also like you in having really low triglycerides: 0.9, so not quite as good as yours, which are excellent. But then I beat your HDL with 3.7 to your 2. My LDL was the killer at 5.7. I am seeing my GP tomorrow morning and she will NOT be pleased!

You say you eat well. It would help if you could be as specific as possible. Don't be afraid of going into too much detail and being a bore. We are all fascinated by this stuff. Also, we do like to help.

Tyftz said:

Serum cholesterol 7.5
Serum HDL 2
Se non HDL 5.5
Serum triglycerides .5
Serum chol/HDL 3.8

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There is no LDL there, but I calculate it to be about 5.27
Your HDL is very good
Your trigs are superb
Your trigs/HDL ratio is 0.25. The ideal level should be under 0.87 so yours is brilliant. This is the important ratio.

Tyftz said:

Think I do most of the right things. Avoid carbs so no pasta, rice, potatoes. Not much bread either. Breakfast a sandwich ‘thin’ with peanut butter then full fat Greek yoghurt with berries and mixed nuts. Nairn’s biscuit with coffee first thing. Lunch say salad with fish, eggs or a low carb soup. Have gym at work so eat q a lot. Low carb protein shake with milk b4 gym. Evening say something with quinoa or lentils, veg and chicken/lamb. Followed by sugar free jelly berries cream. Tend to add cinnamon to breakfast and pudding as read it help BS. Cheese or nuts for snack. So fats coming from nuts cheese yoghurt milk. But when first diagnosed went from 72kg to 67kg so too skinny so tried to put some weight back on. Now abt 70 and am ok with that. If I cut fat then will prob lose weight. Don’t want heart attack either but wife won’t be too bothered. Hope not too much detail!

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Sounds good enough to me. Oily fish especially salmon and also milled flaxseed sprinkled on yogurts or salads or soups are good for cholesterol and for your heart. In fact anything with a lot of omega 3 in it - and avoid vegetable/seed oils.

Tyftz said:

Thanks Blue have a nutritionist at work so going to see what he says on Friday will let you know. Similarly doc calling me Monday. Reckon she will talk abt statins which I don’t want so will quote your ratio and see what she says. Rgds.

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You could do worse than find some of the links in the millions of other threads about statins and cholesterol and make sure they have those, too. Ultimately, the decision about statins is yours. All they can do is offer them to you. You just need to say no thank you, if that is your decision.

"my recent cholesterol test (after some weeks of more or less LCHF) came out as globally higher than yours at 9.8. I am also like you in having really low triglycerides: 0.9, so not quite as good as yours, which are excellent. But then I beat your HDL with 3.7 to your 2. My LDL was the killer at 5.7."

That's quite a high LDLc right there. Borders on Familial hyperchol, one of the 2 bad genes. Sorry to break the news to ya but statins were invented for people like you. People with the gene can eat freaking tree bark and their numbers don't change unfortunately. The good news is about 80mg of atorvastatin will probably cut it in half. That's what I take. Go for it dude! I just saw a 70 year old guy with LDL of 5.2 back in the day. Had his first coronary stent in 2009 at age 62. Did not take statin because of chronic hepatitis C. Got 2nd stent in 2016 but he had been rx with Harvoni for the Hep C which cured it. Started on atrorvastatin 80 and now LDL is 1.8. I was frankly surprised he went that long between stents without bypass operation. A lotta guys woulda done a "Tom Petty" by now with that picture untreated. He does have Type 2 diabetes on glyburide but his A1C is 6.8 which is pretty good.

TheBigNewt said:

That's quite a high LDLc right there. Borders on Familial hyperchol, one of the 2 bad genes.

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Thanks for your input. But I doubt I could be showing signs of family hyperchol. for the first time at age 75. My highest previous LDL was 2.6 in early 2016. In July 2017, before I started lowering my carbs, my LDL was 2.1. It seems to me more likely I am a hyper-responder http://cholesterolcode.com/hyper-responder-faq/ The question now is, what to do about that.

Tyftz said:

Hi let me know what your doc says if you don’t mind. Would be interested. Good luck.

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Hi @Tyftz, I saw my GP this morning as planned. It is a large group practice, but I saw my favourite doctor with whom I have a good relationship. She seemed less upset by my high cholesterol than I expected. I suggested re-testing in 3 months, and I also volunteered to reduce the sat fats I am eating in favour of more olive and rape seed oil. I didn't mention that I will actually still be consuming a lot of sat fat as, now I have had to give up so many other foods, I am really hooked on cheese, and also have quite a lot of cream in hot drinks. However I have stopped eating lumps of butter neat and plastering it onto my fish. I was planning to make a kind of sweet by mixing cocoa and butter, and I guess I won't do that either.

I didn't plan this, but I think I got an easy ride because I started off the interview on the topic of my mysteriously swollen ankle. This led to removal of shoes, socks, trousers and lying on the couch to be examined, all of which took time. We must have been already well over the allotted 10 minutes, and then there were some prescriptions to write. So the prospect of a head to head on statins must have seemed unappealing.

I hope your conversation tomorrow goes well. You might like to point out that statins raise bg, and bg raised over normal increases the risks of heart problems. I did mention this to my doctor and it was news to her.

Alexandra100 said:

Thanks for your input. But I doubt I could be showing signs of family hyperchol. for the first time at age 75. My highest previous LDL was 2.6 in early 2016. In July 2017, before I started lowering my carbs, my LDL was 2.1. It seems to me more likely I am a hyper-responder http://cholesterolcode.com/hyper-responder-faq/ The question now is, what to do about that.

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Mistakes are made in labs and in lab reporting. Maybe ask for a repeat test. It seems very odd in your case.

TheBigNewt said:

That's quite a high LDLc right there.

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Is LDLc the bad small particle form of LDL cholesterol? The figure I was given is just for undifferentiated LDL. I did ask my GP if in the next test they could show the two forms separately, but she had never heard of this and thought such a test was not available. Perhaps you could tell me what I need to ask for, that would be a great help.

Bluetit1802 said:

Mistakes are made in labs and in lab reporting. Maybe ask for a repeat test. It seems very odd in your case.

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The description of a hyper-responder fits me almost perfectly. http://cholesterolcode.com/hyper-responder-faq/