Dr. visit: cholesterol down. Yay!

[Liz]

I'm still stalled, but blood tests results after 2 months of eating saturated fat, cream, full mayo, butter, creamy cheeses etc. my cholesterol is down from my last visit when they were in the normal range. Seems hard to believe, but true. Doc says a 70% decrease in triglycerides. Good cholesterol is also somewhat down. Don't know if that matters when bad is down so much. So, that's a comfort to know that I can stay on this woe without risking my arteries. Dr. Atkins said those kind of blood results are common, but it's nice to see it in my own personal blood. I'm going to stop hrt to see if that helps break me out of my stall. Here's hoping.

[numberonewendy]

Way to go Liz......

Wendy

[tamarian]

Liz, this is great news, congrats. It doesn't surprise me as most lc literature make this point, but it's great to hear it confirmed repeatedly! :)

Wa'il

[doreen T]

hi Liz,

Great to hear about the improved bloodwork. Re - the HDL ("good cholesterol"), levels should be between 0.9 and 2.07 mMol/L --- and for women, the closer to 2 it is, the better. Your recent thoughts to cut back a bit on animal fats, and increase the mono-unsaturated vegetable oils (esp. olive and flax) will help this as well.

Re- stopping the HRT - probably controlling Insulin Resistance with a nutritious lowcarb program will do as much, if not more, to protecting your heart and blood vessels. As for osteoporosis, there are many non-drug things you can do. Obviously, calcium supplements are helpful, 1,500 mg per day is recommended for post-menopausal women (by the way, they're looking at upping the recommended amount for older MEN as well). Make sure you get adequate vitamin D, which is needed for calcium absorption - 400 units per day. The body makes its own vit. D in response to sunlight.... a minimum exposure of 1 hr. per day is required, which means in the gloom and doom of winter, you'd be wise to take a supplement. Liquid milk and powdered skim milk are fortified with vit. D, but they're not exactly lowcarb; unfortunately no other dairy foods (cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt, cream, etc...) are fortified. So it's sunlight, supplements or nothing .. ;)

Weight-bearing exercise, like good old-fashioned WALKING, has been shown to increase bone-density by 10%, so there's another benefit besides weight loss.

I'm assuming ? that you're past the hot-flash / menopausal symptoms stage?? If this is still a problem, you might look into soy isoflavones for relief.

Take care, and continued good health to you

Doreen

[Liz]

And the other virtual high fives. I've stopped the hrt and don't know whether I'll have hot flashes or not. Will see I guess in the next few days. However, will fiddle around with the alternatives you've suggested. For a non-math person, I seem to be awash in counting these days. I've started recording my intake on the Fitday site which is a really useful site. Once again my hope helium balloon is aloft on the possibilities that eliminating hormone and cutting calorie will nudge me out of stall. In the meantime, I have lamb flavoured with rosemary stew waiting in my crock pot for dinner. Great little appliances crock pots. Especially after a long day at work.