I love you all

carol43 said:

Thank you to you all for the help you give to everybody.


Had my appointment with DN this morning and I am now 44mmol/L but can't drop the Metformin yet. DN was very pleased and asked if I could help some of their other diabetic patients, (think she was joking) because she told me originally that LC was not safe. Also weight on diagnosis was 83kg (13st1lb)and it's now 64kg (10st1lb).


But, there's always a but, my TSH levels have risen from 0.59 miu/L to 8.4 miu/L so I am back to 125mcg Leovthyroxine after it was dropped from 150mcg to 100mcg soon after diagnosis in March 2015 and my cholesterol has risen to 8.0 from 4.7 as a consequence. Another blood test in 6-8 weeks.


Again thank you for your help, wouldn't have been able to do this without you all.

lv Carol

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Carol - I'm not overly knowledgeable on thyroid, but probably feel a bit more confident when it comes to lipids, so I'll make a couple of comments.

Firstly, many people find that in their early few months on a low carb diet, and losing weight, their lipid scores go up, before they come down. The way I figure that is your body is in the process of clearing some out, then it finds it's own balance.

For some, the Total Cholesterol remains high, but when broken down into the underlying components, they find the breakdown to be good, with the "good cholesterol" making a difference to the Total (just by arithmetic).

For some, their numbers just remain elevated. If they remain elevated, it's good if you can consider whether there's likely to be any familial hyperlipdaemia going on. Familial hyperlipdaemia, as the name suggests, is heavily influenced by the individual's genetics, and it manifests itself in a number of ways (Dr Google can explain better than me!), but they can include early heart attacks, so it's not something to completely ignore.

Personally, my Total Cholesterol has always had a higher Total Cholesterol than my Doc feels happy with, but once we had both done a library worth of reading, and viewed several presentations on the topic, we have agreed my breakdown is actually very good, and certainly doesn't warrant any intervention. We have now agreed my Total Cholesterol is an inconveniently, but meaningless higher number.

There is some fascinating work going on right now on cholesterol, with the tide turning on where the desirable dials should be set, but having been on the low fat mantra for such a long time, these new ideas are still being challenged by some.

Do you know what the underlying components of your Total Cholesterol numbers are?

Finally, I started a thread on the Public Health Collaboration Conference presentation videos going up onto YouTube. There were a number of presentations where Cholesterol featured. None of them have been uploaded yet, but once they're all up there the presentations by Zoe Harcombe and Aseem Malhotra could be useful watching for you.

Good luck with it all. If you have the time, I'd suggest investing some time on some reading and viewing.

carol43 said:

Thank you to you all for the help you give to everybody.


Had my appointment with DN this morning and I am now 44mmol/L but can't drop the Metformin yet. DN was very pleased and asked if I could help some of their other diabetic patients, (think she was joking) because she told me originally that LC was not safe. Also weight on diagnosis was 83kg (13st1lb)and it's now 64kg (10st1lb).


But, there's always a but, my TSH levels have risen from 0.59 miu/L to 8.4 miu/L so I am back to 125mcg Leovthyroxine after it was dropped from 150mcg to 100mcg soon after diagnosis in March 2015 and my cholesterol has risen to 8.0 from 4.7 as a consequence. Another blood test in 6-8 weeks.


Again thank you for your help, wouldn't have been able to do this without you all.

lv Carol

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@carol43 In my experience most hypothyriod suffers like to take a little over the recommended levothyroxine to give a feeling of wellness. I myself can forget to take a tablet now and again so that little extra carries me along. Also I've experimented in the past and it took my body 3 weeks to start missing my levothyroxine. So be careful. It took a while to build up that tablet again. As it would if you were treated with F4. Very few nhs gps treat with F3 and F4. Levothyroxine is our only address, for now. A TSH level doesn't give the full picture but a very very rough guide. Only guide available to me, again, for now.
A good very very rough guide would be to see a tsh at less than 1.5

I found when I restricted my carbs to 20g my tsh showed a better result. Although I'm following 100g carb currently and taking 200mg of levothyroxine.

When I had my annual blood test last November my cholesterol was good but I was diagnosed with T2 at 7.2
I was already eating quite lowish carbs as I didn't ever eat rice and pasta don't like them, very much bread or had much of a sweet tooth. I then tried to eat higher fat although I don't eat red meat in any form but I did start to have full fat yogurt cheese butter and cream where I had always had low fat dairy before so I did not particularly like the full fat stuff When I had my first 3 month blood test my BG had gone down but my cholesterol had gone up quite a lot and my doctor was not very happy about it she did give me the breakdown but I can't remember that now she said I had a lot of good cholesterol but that did not cancel out the bad. I now do not eat so much full fat stuff my BG levels are staying good and I hope at my next blood test in September my cholesterol it better

carol43 said:

@Galji I've been LCHF since May last year so the weight has been gradually reducing. I'm getting through clothes at an alarming rate, going out tomorrow to buy more underwear as my size 14 knickers keep slipping up the crack in my bum (too much information I know)


@AndBreathe Here is my cholesterol break-down. The figures don't look too bad to me as my Trig figures are going in the right direction but the DN is obviously not happy. From what I have read having too high a TSH level stops the body using fat so it just stays in your blood stream.
24/2/15 19/8/15 28/10/15 22/6/16
Serum cholesterol levels (XE2eD) 4.5 4.0 4.7 8.0
Serum triglyceride levels (XE2q9) 2.2 2.2 1.8 1.5
Serum HDL cholesterol level (44P6) 1.8 1.6 2.0 2.3
Serum LDL cholesterol level (44P6) 1.7 1.4 1.9 5.1
Serum cholesterol/HD ratio (XaEUq) 2.5 2.5 2.4 3.6
Serum non high density lipoprotein 2.7 2.4 2.7 5.8
cholesterol level (XabE1)

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In an ideal world, Carol, I'd be trying to get those trigs down a bit more, but they are in the healthy range already. The trigs can usually be trimmed back by trimming down on the carbs, but only you can decide how you feel about trimming those back. I don't know anything of what or how you take your food to comment.

It would seem you've trimmed up significantly. Are you close to a weight/figure you're going to want to stabilise yet? If you're getting close, start planning how you'll approach that stabilisation, because that may also influence other factors.

There are many lipid calculators out there that "analyse" your scores and convert them into context. I use HughCalc, as do my GP does, then at least we're debating the same screen data. The web link is here: http://www.hughcalc.org/chol-si.php

I have input both our scores (my latest and yours below them, so you'll have some idea what might be going through your Doc/nurse's head when you discuss it with them.

Thanks very much for the link @AndBreathe. My total cholesterol has gone up; the receptionist wouldn't give me the individual lipid profile numbers, but when I get these I'll be using the calculator!

I am not going to go on statins whatever the results are as Mum had very serious and permanent muscle weakness, and I don't want to take that chance, but it would be good to have the information. Mine wasn't a fasting test and I'm on LCHF (fairly high fat, as I'm keeping my carbs to about 30g). I'm also losing weight, so I suspect that the numbers are going to be higher in the short term.

carol43 said:

Thanks for your input @AndBreathe. Will see what my blood test says in August when I have my TSH and cholesterol checked again.

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I don't really have anything much to add, but I would just say it's probably just worth checking out the familial stuff on Google; particularly if any family members have heart disease that came to light early in their lives. I'm not a fan of statins, and personally, want to avoid them, more and ore in the light of recent findings, but and it is a significant but, if you have familial hyperlipidaemia, then you should keep an open mind. If that were the case, I'd be asking for a referral to a specialist in that field. When my total went above 8, my GP got a bit spooked and suggested a referral, irrespective of other levels and that is a bit of a flagging level for them, allegedly.

I'm not making this post to freak you out, but to ensure you've taken that element onboard.

High LDL is common in hypothyroidism and as you have been under-medicated for a while it's possible your high cholesterol is at least partly due to that.

Totto said:

High LDL is common in hypothyroidism and as you have been under-medicated for a while it's possible your high cholesterol is at least partly due to that.

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I had no idea! I'm going to have to do some reading................................................ again!

AndBreathe said:

I had no idea! I'm going to have to do some reading................................................ again!

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High cholesterol in general but particularly high LDL.

And obesity, of course.