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Old Mon, Oct-31-16, 12:01
khrussva's Avatar
khrussva khrussva is offline
Say NO to Diabetes!
Posts: 8,671
 
Plan: My own - < 30 net carbs
Stats: 440/228/210 Male 5' 11"
BF:Energy Unleashed
Progress: 92%
Location: Central Virginia - USA
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Thanks everybody. It was a good 1000 days - made all the better by the wonderful support that you all provide. Having your health is a very good thing. I didn't appreciate what I had until I started losing it. I'm happy to have found it again.

I thought I'd add these old vitals to this milestone as well. It provides some details of how my cholesterol took a very strange turn well into my LCHF journey. About the only thing that I had done differently was to reduce my carb intake to what would be considered a very low carb diet. I then tweaked my diet and found a way to resolve the cholesterol issue. What happened to me is fairly uncommon with this WOE - but what I did might prove useful to the next person who's LDL goes nuts when eating a very low carb diet.

Here is a chart of my annual checkup labs that cover the period prior to me starting this WOE up through the first year eating LCHF. Something very strange happened to my LDL & TC by that last lab. There is no information on my macros. I was not tracking my daily food at that time.


Here is an update of my cholesterol chart with the most recent lab results added numbers. I started tracking my food and changing up my diet to see if I could make positive things happen with those numbers. Adding fiber to my diet seems to have had the greatest impact. So these days, I eat a lot of fiber.


The results above are from standard lab tests. I had an NMR done in December 2015. This test actually measures LDL cholesterol as opposed to the estimated LDL/VLDL numbers on a standard lipid panel. An NMR also measures partial size where the standard test does not. The results were good and as expected for a low carb diet. The particle size was large and fluffy and the count for small, dense (bad) LDL cholesterol was very low. All good news. But my LDL particle count was still very high. I'm sure would be better now given my most recent lipid panel.


The results from the NMR:

LDL-P was at 1577 -- at the high end of the "Borderline High" range.

The other results from the NMR were as follows:
  • My HDL-P was 29.7 (a little lower than normal)
  • My LDL Size was Pattern A - Large (which is good)
  • My Small LDL-P was < 90 -- which is outstanding. Low (which is good) has a cutoff of <117 and the 50th percentile is 527.
  • My Insulin Resistance score was < 25 and the cutoff for low is < 27. I'm not sure how meaningful this score is, but the results were very good.

I don't know if my high cholesterol issues was ever a cardiovascular risk or not. That's the problem. Nobody really knows. The studies don't exist for people who eat like I do. So I'm still glad that I was able to change my numbers for the better. I chose the "better safe than sorry" approach to this. My doctor was happy about the results of my year long experiment. She was amazed in fact. 18 months ago she was talking about prescribing a strong statin. There is no talk of that now. It has been over 6 months since I was last tested. Now that I am weight stable and still eating the same as I did before that last test, I am curious to know if anything has changed. I visit my doctor later this month. I may request another test just to find out.
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