How to lower cholesterol?

Ignore "total cholesterol" a completely meaningless number.
Do you have the breakdown of your full lipid profile?
Which idiot told you to cut out cheese, fat and red meat? Sack them.

Hi Miss Piggywig, I think you need to let people know the breakdown of your cholesterol levels. What is your ldl, hdl and Trig levels. I have learnt from the members on here that the total level is meaningless without the breakdown. So, if you can share those levels I'm sure someone more experienced than me will be able to help you. I also think steroids do tend to increase your blood sugar levels, how are yours? Hopefully, things will improve soon for you. Chin up and keep positive.

Miss_Piggywig said:

I have type 2, blood sugar was under control on low carb diet until steroids where added. Now insulin has been added. Today I've been told my cholesterol is 6 and I need to change my diet, cut out cheese, fat, red meat. What on earth do I eat now? Finding the whole thing over whelming. Been low carb for nearly 4 years. Can't ditch the weight and now this. Any idea welcome. (I'm low carb not keto, found I couldn't mantain that.)

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Hi there - you’ve tried so much, well done on 4 years low carb. Have you read Dr Jason Fung’s books & tried intermittent fasting? Might be worth a go - lots of case studies show good results, sine quite quickly. As you’ve now got insulin in the mix you need to be careful but he recommends IF for diabetes & health improvement. There are some of his videos in the low Carb programme.
There are also some good mentors especially for women who explain the science. Lots of new studies around cholesterol & what effect diet has on it to do worth doing your own research.
Good luck finding what works for you

My question would be why do you want to lower your cholesterol?
Your diabetic blood sugars are what is damaging your arteries and insulin can further encourage an inflammatory response in your body.
A better strategy may be reducing your insulin resistance as much as possible so that you can reduce insulin. I appreciate that being on steroids can make this tricky but hopefully you are not taking these meds permanently either?
As discussed above you can see how insulin resistant you are by looking at markers such as high trig/low hdl levels (see your blood lipid panel results), high blood pressure and gaining fat around your middle.
Ultimately you can quickly reduce your ldl cholesterol by taking a statin but my point is that doing so wont' necessarily reduce your risk of having a heart attack or stroke or even make you live any longer but you will get 'good' numbers on the panel and be congratulated by your nurse or doctor.
Dr Malcolm McKendrick or Ivor Cummins both discuss these issues at length as does Dr Asseem Malhotra (cardiologist) so its worth getting an alternative view.
To illustrate this my current hba1c is worse (at 64) and I know I need to work on this (type 1 so its tricky) and my cholestrol level is 7.8 but my BP is normal, I am not overweight and my triglycerides are 0.7 with an hdl of 2.7. So I am pretty concerned about the hba1c but much less concerned about my cholesterol and it was frustrating to be told by the nurse in parrot like fashion 'taking a statin will half your risk of heart disease if you're diabetic'. I've yet see data that supports this claim.

Miss_Piggywig said:

Thank you. I've added my break down, just really award as Father suffered with heart problems from 49 and I don't want to be in the same place.

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Your Trig/HDL ratio... these days looked on as far more important than total is 0.875 which is pretty near perfect.
Anything under 0.87 is considered as excellent.
Had you fasted for 12-14 hours before the blood was taken for the test?

Miss_Piggywig said:

No wasn't told to.

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Miss Piggywig, you need to take another test, I always fast no matter what!