I've been low carbing for 2 years now. I was initially worried about my recent blood results, but after reading through it a few times I'm not too concerned. I'm a bit confused about whether I have large fluffy LDL or not. My ApoB and ApoA-I ratio is high, but then there is a %sdLDL-C reading which is pretty low.

Anyhow, take a look and let me know what you think. I've posted basic 2007 and 2011 (2 weeks into low carb) in another thread but I could bring them over here if that helps. I've listed the "risks" according to the lab after some of the more detailed tests.

TC: 340
LDL (direct): 247
HDL: 71
Trig: 68
Non-HDL-C: 269
Apo B: 165 (high >80, med 60-79, low <60)
LDL-P: 2130 (high >1300, med 1000-1299, low <1000)
sdLDL-C: 49 (high >30, med 21-30, low <21)
%sdLDL-C: 20 (high >30, med 26-30, low <26)
Apo A-I: 154 (high <114, med 114-131, low >131)
HDL-P: 34.7 (high <28, med 28-34, low >35)
Apo B/Apo A ratio: 1.07 (high >.81, med .61-.81, low .6)
Lp(a) Mass: 5 (high >30, low <30)
Lp(a)-P: blank (not sure why, gotta follow up with Dr.)

Everything else in the 10 page report is optimal, some in the extreme. My inflammation markers are all very low which is what I was mainly concerned about. There are a bunch of other tests on the report but I'm not sure what is interesting or not.

So I went back in today for my physical (first in a long time) and the Dr. sits down, opens my charts and looks at my bloodwork and says the S word. Next, he looks at me and says the other S word, statin. I laugh and tell him under no circumstances am I going on a statin. He's confused and I tell him about the side effects like memory loss and muscle deterioration. He claims to have 6000 studies backing him up, so many that even though he has a "normal" lipid panel, HE is on a statin. Strike 1.

Golly, these guys sure are programmed.

He goes on through my chart and points out how high LDL-P is and tries to drill that into my head so I ask him what that number actually means in comparison to my cholesterol. He says, well, it's the actual count of your LDL and it's on the high side. I ask on the high side of what. He says it's above 1300. Turns out he doesn't really know what the count represents. After about 5 seconds looking at the chart I point out to him that of course it's on the high side when the LDL is high. I show him how that 1300 range is 10 times the 130 range of the high side on the regular LDL. I show him that they're measuring deciliters in LDL and liters in LDL-P so trying to convince me I'm going to die because both numbers is high is irrelevant because they're the same thing. I ask him about my sdLDL percentage being 20% (lower than the low end of 26%) and he says he's not sure what that is. I ask, maybe "sd" stands for "small dense" and he agrees and says well, that looks good but your LDL is still too high. I point out a few other things in the chart and it turns out many of the tests he ordered he doesn't actually know what they mean. Strike 2.

He actually suggested a heart sonogram (looking for ANYTHING to back him up I guess) so when that comes back normal and he's still stuck on the LDL issue I'll have to simply thank him for his time and wish him well because after three strikes you're out.

Its actually hard to find any "real" evidence these days to back up that high cholesterol causes anything and that statins help anything.

I always remember a doctor friend of mine trying to get the world and his wife to take statins - I knew him quite well and he confided in me that the statins rep had done a deal with him, if he prescribed "x" amounts of statins, the drug company would pay for him to get married in the Seychelles

Jo xxx