Low "Bad" LDL levels increase death rates in HF cases.

Less than 71 mg/dl is very, very low.

You can find a lot of papers discussing the problem. This Bandolier article is 8 years old but describes the issues.
http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/ ... tatHF.html
Since then a a 2009 review said

Most of the evidence for the use of statins in heart failure originates from retrospective trials and post-hoc analyses, and is not supported by prospective randomized clinical trials. There is no evidence to support initiating statin therapy in patients with symptomatic New York Heart Association II-IV heart failure, regardless of the cause

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19225296

But then you find a 2011 study that looked at those who had naturally low cholesterol and compared them to those who had cholesterol that had been lowered through drugs.

Patients with HF with instrisically low cholesterol levels have a double risk of death up to 5 years compared to patients with pharmacologically induced low cholesterol. Clinicians should not limit the use of statins by fear of lowering the cholesterol levels

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http://cpt.sagepub.com/content/17/3/284.short
When my father developed HF he wasn't put on a statin (I think his TC was in the low 5mmol/l s)

.

This makes me scared - my LDL levels are kinda low (but not as low as my TC, because my HDL sucks).

Total = 3.6 mmol/l
HDL = 0.9 mmol/l
Trigs = 0.99 mmol/l
LDL = 2.2 mmol/l

Sometimes I wish that saturated fat really did increase LDL-C.

Both my parents died of cancer in their early 60s

What we don't know is whether these peoples cholesterol became low or was always low.
It might be a bit like weight, when people die they are often weigh very little, doesn't tell you much about their weight earlier on.
I was thinking about the role of cholesterol after another thread recently. (this is just blind speculation no authority or real knowledge) I would imagine that there is a lot of cell repair going on after a heart attack so cholesterol would be needed to mend damaged membranes. That doesn't explain why those with statin reduced cholesterol faired better though .

Your HDL isn't very high but it probably doesn't need to be. You do lots of aerobic exercise, I'm certain that effects mine, I certainly had a slight decrease in mine on the last test and I hadn't been doing much in the month or so before
Perhaps you should eat more oily fish ; that 's paleo (and dare I say soluble fibre. This guy's from the lower paleo; maybe you should look at his diet ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranthropus_boisei)


I'd rather have your lipids than Jimmys ; read Dayspring's comments ( I assume it is really him) :wink: