Well, I went and bought the device yesterday and after a 12 hour fast, tested again today. (You can see those result in my other thread.)

Thank you so much for alerting me to the fact that such a testing device was available. I'm so glad I ran into your thread.

Incidentally, I've read all of your posts here and would be glad to share some suggestions on what I believe has worked in my case. (Of course, now that I have my own testing device, I'll know much better what truly is working or not.)

Thanks again.

I'm glad that I was able to help, HAdriven.

I've subscribed to your thread and I'll be monitoring it to watch your progress and get tips from you.

Since it's the half year, 26 week mark, I thought I'd give an update.

Here are my CardioChek measurements for June 29, 2008:
Total Cholesterol 227
HDL (good cholesterol) 42
Triglycerides 117
Calculated LDL (bad cholesterol) 162
Total Chol to HDL Ratio 5.4
LDL to HDL Ratio 3.8
Triglycerides to HDL Ratio 2.8
Weight 179.4 lbs
Waist 34.8 in
Blood pressure 105/72
Fasting blood sugar 125 (higher than normal due to TOM)

Compare to January 2, 2008:
Total Cholesterol 339
HDL (good cholesterol) <25 (too low for the meter to measure)
Triglycerides 492
Calculated LDL (bad cholesterol) >216
Total Chol to HDL Ratio 13.6
LDL to HDL Ratio 8.6
Triglycerides to HDL Ratio 19.7
Weight 195 lbs
Waist 38.5 in
Blood pressure 130/77
Fasting blood sugar 289


On January 2, I had all 5 signs of metabolic syndrome (syndrome X). Today, 3 of them (blood pressure, waist size, and triglycerides) are routinely out of the range defined as metabolic syndrome. Frequently, a 4th sign, fasting blood sugar, is below the "definition cutoff" of 100. It's higher today because I'm going through my first TOM in months (I'm in perimenopause), which generally raises blood sugar. I'm still working on raising HDL. That's the slowest. At least it's now above 40, although I'm shooting for above 50, which is a healthier range for women.

It's been a while since I updated this thread. The past 2.5 years have gone by fast! I haven't always been as attentive to healthy eating as I should have been, although I've always been generally low carb. Menopause did mess with my metabolism for a while and I rapidly gained 20 pounds in early 2009, but have since lost them again, thankfully. For the past month, I've tried to be strict low carb with less than 30 g carbs per day.

Here are my CardioChek measurements for February 27, 2011:
Total Cholesterol 170
HDL (good cholesterol) 29
Triglycerides 94
Calculated LDL (bad cholesterol) 122
Total Chol to HDL Ratio 5.9
LDL to HDL Ratio 4.2
Triglycerides to HDL Ratio 3.2
Weight 178.0 lbs
Waist 34.5 in
Blood pressure 117/74
Fasting blood sugar 98 (dawn phenomenon)

At this time I only exhibit 1 of the 5 symptoms of metabolic syndrome: low HDL. HDL above 49 for optimum health (in a woman). It's been the hardest one for me to get in shape and the numbers in this thread show that my HDL level is current lower than it was in mid-2008. I never got my HDL level consistently above 49 in 2008, but I at least got it into the 40s.

So, why did it go down again? I've concluded over the years that I'm one of those people whose HDL doesn't go up readily by diet and exercise alone. From early 2008 to mid 2010, I was taking the supplements niacin and pantethine to raise my HDL. In mid-2010, I decided that I was taking too many supplements in general and cut back to what I considered the bare minimum (vitamin D, krill oil, magnesium, and good multi-vitamin). I cut the niacin and pantethine. It seems that my HDL level has suffered because of this. I'm going to add them back on a daily basis and measure again in a month. HDL levels don't change fast with changes in diet and supplementation, but I hope to at least see the number moving up.

Great job CarolynC! How did you get your fasting bs down so low? Did you say it was high just from menopause? Wow, I've not heard it could do that. Great job on the weight loss.

Donna

Thanks, Donna!

Menopause hasn't had a noticable effect on my blood sugar--other than the fact that it's contributed to weight gain. It's the dawn phenomenon that makes my morning blood sugar high. I'm a type 2 diabetic (diagnosed in 1996) and my blood sugar is always higher in the morning than it is before I go to sleep or in late afternoon. The dawn phenomenon doesn't seem to have been too bad for me today; it's frequently worse.

I've tried just about every suggestion to lower my dawn blood sugar. I've tried apple at bedtime, cheese at bedtime, wine at bedtime, vinegar at bedtime, etc. Currently, I'm taking 850 mg of metformin (Glucophage) at bedtime, although metformin in general doesn't help my blood sugar as much as it does with many diabetics. Controlling morning blood sugar for a type 2 diabetic is just so much harder than it is to control blood sugar after meals!

Well, that's the only time my bs is high also. I can go to bed with it around 100 and wake up with it around 136. Go figure. Did I eat in my sleep? I've never heard of the dawn phenomenon. Is that a medical diagnosis? I was just starte on metformin also. But I'm still increasing my dose to eventually 500mg 2x day. I am hoping it helps. Otherwise, why am I taking it? Unless it helps with the insulin resistance?

Donna

The dawn phenomenon is a well established issue with type 2 diabetics. If you Google the term, you'll find many websites that discuss it. See, for example:

http://www.diabetesselfmanagement.c...n_phenomenon/1/

It's also discussed on numerous threads at this board's diabetes subforum.

How much krill are you taking? Chris Kresser blogged about a study showing good HDL improvement with high enough doses of krill (but the study was paid for by Neptune, maker of krill oil).

Thanks for the info, Daryl! I'd never heard of Chris Kresser, but web searched for his site after reading your post. It looks interesting and I've bookmarked it to read when I have more time. I also web searched to see what research you (and Chris) might be referring to. I turned up a study from McGill University which found that patients who took 1-3 g of krill oil per day increased their HDL by a 44 %. In contrast, patients who took the same amount of fish oil only increased their HDL by about 4 %. (I'm really surprised that krill oil vs. fish oil made such a big difference and will also read up more on this research.)

I've been taking 500 mg of krill oil per day (when I remember it) for 3 years. Based on what the researchers at McGill found, that's too low to help my HDL. Today, I upped the krill oito 1000 mg (1 g). I'll increase it to 2 g per day after I receive the new supply of krill oil that I ordered.

Hey Carolyn Here's a snippet of Kresser's blog on fish oil in general:



http://thehealthyskeptic.org/the-de...il-buyers-guide

So, if the study is valid, then you going to 1 mg would hopefully show better results

Thanks, Daryl! That is the McGill University study. I found the original research article at:

http://www.thorne.com/altmedrev/.fulltext/9/4/420.pdf

I also think that the 1 g of krill oil per day looks very promising. The 0.5 g that I currently take is described as a "maintenance dose" that the authors suggest after the desired HDL/LDL levels have been achieved. Krill oil is pretty pricey, so I'd much prefer to take 1 g per day rather 2 g if it gives about the same effect.

The last line from Kresser's blog:

This statement by Kresser is unfortunate. The work was published in 2004 in Alternative Medicine Review, which is a peer-reviewed journal. Also, the article does not state that Neptune Tech. sponsored the work. All the article says is that Neptune supplied the krill oil. I'm an academic researcher myself (although in chemistry) and I know that's a big difference. Companies will often send a researcher some of their product, free of charge and with no strings attached, if it's work that they're interested in or that they hope will show their product in a good light. The article doesn't state where the funding came from, but that suggests it came from the research grant program of the Canadian government. In the US, academic scientific researchers don't automatically receive funding from the government (or anywhere else) and must spend a lot of their time searching for money. In contrast, in the Canadian system, all academic researchers essentially receive enough government funding to keep going, which means that they can spend more time focusing on the science and less time worrying about money.

This has nothing to do with cholesterol, but since I've written in this thread that I'm apple-shaped, I thought I'd update.

I just put my measurements through the waist-to-hip calculator found at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical School website:

http://www.wfubmc.edu/healthCalculators/

I'm usually an apple (the most unhealthy shape), but because my waist measurement has recently reduced by fractions of an inch and I've graduated to "squash"!

In the past week, in an effort to improve my HDL, I've:

- Started back with taking 2 500-mg tablets of Slo-Niacin (sustained release niacin) per day.
- Started back with 2 450-mg tablets of panthethine (a vitamin B5 derivative and precursor of Coenzyme A) per day.
- Increased my krill oil from 1 500-mg tablet per day to 2 500-mg tablets per day.
- Made a more concerted effort to walk at least 30 minutes per day (although I didn't manage this every day).

I wanted to see if this was helping, so I remeasured my HDL. Seven days ago, the measurement was 29 and today it is 31. So, I'm moving in the right direction. (Yes, I know that based on the precision of the CardioChek home meter, there is probably no statistical significance between 29 and 31, but I'll claim it anyway. )

Here are my measurements for today, March 6, 2011. Numbers in parentheses are change from last week:

HDL (good cholesterol) 31 (+2)
Triglycerides 106 (+12)
Triglycerides to HDL Ratio 3.4 (+0.2)
Weight 175.4 lbs (-2.6)
Waist 34.0 in (-0.5)
Blood pressure 106/64 (-11/-10)
Fasting blood sugar 85 (-13)

I'm out of test strips to measure total cholesterol (from which LDL can be calculated), but those numbers don't matter anyway.

The only thing that went the wrong way was my triglycerides (and, consequently, the triglyceride to HDL ratio). However, the change wasn't much. Plus, I lost 2.6 pounds this week and the body stores fat as triglycerides. So, it's not unusual to have a slight rise in the blood level of triglycerides when the body is in the process of releasing fat and losing weight.

My efforts to raise my HDL with niacin, krill oil, pantethine, cinnamon, flax seed, and walnuts are starting to take effect. My HDL is moving up faster than it did in 2008.

Here are my CardioChek measurements for March 13, 2001 (numbers in parenthesis are changes from February 27, 2011):

Total Cholesterol 187 (+17)
HDL (good cholesterol) 38 (+9)
Triglycerides 100 (+6)
Calculated LDL (bad cholesterol) 129 (+7)
Total Chol to HDL Ratio 4.9 (-1.0)
LDL to HDL Ratio 3.4 (-0.8)
Triglycerides to HDL Ratio 2.6 (-0.6)

That's about a 30% increase in HDL in 2 weeks.

Now that the weather is better, I also plan to add a long walk every evening.

Yesterday at Sam's Club there was a sample lady with milled golden flax seed put in small sample cups of yogurt. It was a good price, so I bought some more flax seed. I even added 2 T to a small container of Dannon Carb Control yogurt (3 g carbs per container) this morning. It was good.

Oh, for comparison and based on what I've read, here are the "goal" values:

Total Cholesterol <200
HDL (good cholesterol) >49 (for women)
Triglycerides <150
Calculated LDL (bad cholesterol) <100 (assuming that it even matters here, which it probably doesn't!)
Total Chol to HDL Ratio <4
LDL to HDL Ratio <3
Triglycerides to HDL Ratio <5 (although much lower is better)