Need A Little Help On Cholesterol

I’m so sorry to hear about your Dad and your brother Bev.
Can either of you help with this @Bluetit1802 or @bulkbiker ?

Do you have a full set of lipid results? HDL,LDL triglycerides? Without those figures the total cholesterol number is a bit meaningless. I certainly would not think of taking statins without those breakdowns first. Well in fact I wouldn’t consider taking statins ever but that’s just me.

Bev1977 said:

I found out I had diabetes a coulpe of months ago , I'm just wondering if a LCHF life style would work for me, as I have a cholesterol level of 6.4. The reason I'm asking is that my dad past away with the dieses Atherosclerosis , which I call Harding of the arteries .my brother past last week of the same thing he was 41 i'm 42 I've been told by the doctor I have the same thing , he said I had to go on low fat diet ,which I know that when you take out fat ,sugar is put in , I told the doctor this and he still said the same thing so I don't know what to do for the best any help would be much appreciated.

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I am so sorry about your brother. That is such a young age to have had that problem. Keeping your blood sugars under control, as near as you can to normal non-diabetic levels will be a great help.

Can you give us a little more information, such as what type of diabetes you have, which diabetes medications you are taking, and what your HbA1c was when you were diagnosed? Also, do you have your own blood glucose meter?

bulkbiker said:

Do you have a full set of lipid results? HDL,LDL triglycerides? Without those figures the total cholesterol number is a bit meaningless. I certainly would not think of taking statins without those breakdowns first. Well in fact I wouldn’t consider taking statins ever but that’s just me.

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Bluetit1802 said:

I am so sorry about your brother. That is such a young age to have had that problem. Keeping your blood sugars under control, as near as you can to normal non-diabetic levels will be a great help.

Can you give us a little more information, such as what type of diabetes you have, which diabetes medications you are taking, and what your HbA1c was when you were diagnosed? Also, do you have your own blood glucose meter?

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Thanks both of you, I still feel a bit out of my depth with cholesterol numbers

Bev1977 said:

I have T2 and my HbA1c 48 result . I'm on diet control at the moment no medication, and I don't have a monitor. The only information I got of the doctor this morning was that I have the same as my dad and brother and that the reading for my cholesterol was 6.4 he didn't say any thing about LDL or HDL numbers so I'm not sure . Thanks everyone for helping.

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There are two ways to get this information. You could pop into the surgery and request a printout of your test results. You are perfecty within your rights to do this. The other way is to view your results on line and your surgery should have offered this online service to all of its patients.

Guzzler said:

There are two ways to get this information. You could pop into the surgery and request a printout of your test results. You are perfecty within your rights to do this. The other way is to view your results on line and your surgery should have offered this online service to all of its patients.

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Unfortunately not all surgeries have conformed with this directive - the only thing I can do on line is book GP appointments for about 3 weeks in advance and order prescriptions and that was only introduced this year. However they do give me a breakdown of my results at every review.

Even when had access online to all my results my cholesterol results were not really worth looking at as they were non fasting and just a breakdown of total cholesterol and HDL number and non HDL number! I had no fasting lipid panels on my records. As my total cholesterol was 13.8 at my last nhs test In May - news delivered with dire heart health warnings despite being a non smoker all life, having hbaca1 of 30, bp 118/73, taking regular exercise and bmi of 20! I needed to know more.
I was motivated to pay privately for a full lipid panel it cost me £12 and was a fastingtest with full breakdown and allowed me to see what was really happening so I could look at trying to improve my ratios before my nhs provided full lipids in early August. I’m not keen on statins so I’m working on increasing my hdl highering fats and continuing to keep my bgs low. I’d managed to reduce my total in a month down to 10.8 but more importantly as part of this my HDL was still 2.2 and my trigs(never tested before so no comparison) were lowish at 1.2. So will keep going in this direction same way of eating but I’m being a bit more selective with fats I’m including - experiment in progress!

Guzzler said:

There are two ways to get this information. You could pop into the surgery and request a printout of your test results. You are perfecty within your rights to do this. The other way is to view your results on line and your surgery should have offered this online service to all of its patients.

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Mine doesn't.

dbr10 said:

Mine doesn't.

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There seems to be a lag with some surgeries. The government has directed practices to offer this full service but there seems to be no system of ensuring compliance.

Guzzler said:

There seems to be a lag with some surgeries. The government has directed practices to offer this full service but there seems to be no system of ensuring compliance.

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Seems like (not) a plan. I mentioned this on the NHS choices website and the surgery has not responded.

dbr10 said:

Seems like (not) a plan. I mentioned this on the NHS choices website and the surgery has not responded.

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We are told to take responsibility for our own health, to do this we must have access to information so that we can actually make choices and decisions with guidance and advice from our HCPs. It should be a partnership. Perhaps some HCPs (and/or managers) are loathe to give up their positions as arbitters of all wisdom? Sorry, that sounds harsh but tbh I'm losing faith in the medical profession.

Guzzler said:

We are told to take responsibility for our own health, to do this we must have access to information so that we can actually make choices and decisions with guidance and advice from our HCPs. It should be a partnership. Perhaps some HCPs (and/or managers) are loathe to give up their positions as arbitters of all wisdom? Sorry, that sounds harsh but tbh I'm losing faith in the medical profession.

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Not harsh. You are absolutely right. It should be a partnership, but it isn't. I lost it two months after diagnosis.