Okay....got the results back from my latest cholesterol check. Good news...they look a lot better! I'll post the last results from 6 months ago and then today's numbers:

October 2001

Total Cholesterol: 229
LDL: 150 LDL/HDL ratio: 3
HDL: 50 HDL/Triglyceride ratio: 2.88
Triglycerides: 144


April 2002:

Total Cholesterol: 177
LDL: 108 LDL/HDL ratio: 2.51
HDL: 43 HDL/Triglyceride ratio: 3
Triglycerides: 129

The nurse wanted to know if I had been "watching my diet" and I said I had been and thought "If you ONLY knew" and said to keep up whatever I had been doing! You know...looking at the ratios from my last test, they don't look all that bad...and to think...doc wanted to put me on Lipitor...HA! Not sure why my HDL went down...I've been taking 1000 mg of EPA oil daily...maybe I need more? And to think...numbers that look this good from a diet that is 60-70% fat!

Lisa, those numbers are great I'm on a crappy laptop in a hotel room so I can't give you a direct bookmark but if you check out the Eades webpage, they have some information in their FAQ describing what you can do to help raise HDL and lower LDL - also, exercise generally helps raise HDL.

Eades are at www.eatprotein.com and the FAQ is under "resources"

HTH
Nat

hi Lisa,

HDL over 40 is still good .. it's just that over 50 is better

Nat is right, exercise will raise the HDL, in particular aerobic type. Also, moderate intake of red wine has been shown to be beneficial. Monounsaturated fats, such as olives, raw nuts, olive oil and cold-press nut oils are also helpful. Note : peanuts are not nuts, they're legumes. So peanuts and peanut oil aren't helpful for raising HDL.

Check out this article on Raising your HDL from about.com .. (just ignore the stuff about avoiding saturated fat. In fact, eating meats and natural unprocessed saturated fat will help with bringing up HDL because they suppress insulin).

Congrats on the great results

Doreen

Guess it's time for me to get off my butt and get moving. I've been pretty sedentary this winter as the weather's been pretty cruddy and I can't afford a gym membership. Now that the weather is clearing, I'm going to start walking again. I do walk a fair amount at work, but I guess it hasn't been enough to be helpful. Also going to switch from cooking with soybean oil to olive oil. Don't much care for wine. Thanks for the tips! I can't wait to see the look on the doc's face when I tell him my numbers came down not by following low fat, but by low carbing.

Soybean oil???? Aaarrggh!

Yes, stopping the soya oil will definitely help! Soya oil is high in omega6 polyunsaturated fatty acids, which have been linked to heart disease and inflammatory conditions. You're wise to switch.

Fish oils are also shown to be helpful .. either as a supplement, or just having 3 servings a week of fatty fish, such as salmon, tuna, mackerel or sardines. Check your canned fish if you eat that ... it's better to choose water-pack varieties, then add your own olive oil or mayonnaise. Unless the label states the type of oil specifically .. you can assume that "vegetable oil" listed on a can of food means "soya oil". Best choice of all is to eat the fish cooked from fresh (or frozen).

Doreen

I guess I never realized that vegetable oil was that bad for you. I have been taking EPA (fish oil) capsules for quite some time...1000 mg. a day; that's why I was a bit surprised that my HDL had gone down....I also use mostly butter for cooking..only vegetable oil when I'm deep frying stuff. I also put a ton of butter on almost everything I eat. I think getting my bod moving is probably what I need most. Thanks again.

congrats on the numbers--nice ratios. Lisa.

Ahh, spring. Yes, it's MUCH nicer to walk or jog or hike or bike than to do something repetitive indoors on a machine.

I too got about a 50 point total cholesterol drop quite quickly from LCing (unfortunately don't know the "before" HDL/LDL numbers, so can't say if the ratios improved)

On soybean oil...after reading PPLP, I went out of my way to by HFS mayonnaise, as all grocery store stuff is made with partly hydrogenated soybean oil--oops!

I should probably point out that the numbers I posted from last October were not "before" numbers. I had been low carbing for about 5 months when I had those done and initially some of my readings did go up. Actually, the only thing that dropped at my 5 month check was my triglycerides. I think some people need to hang in there even when their numbers increase at first. Perhaps they are like me. I think my body just needed more time to adjust to the way I was eating. The fact that things did stabilize and drop again in the next 6 months holds up that theory. In that time I didn't change the way I was eating except to increase my fat intake a bit and to add a few supplements (which I probably should have been doing from the start). Just some food for thought...