lab results, could you comment? page

[claude512]

Hi,

I just got back my lab results, and I am not sure what to think...
I have been primal since about 9 months now, not 100% (some cheats here and there, but I would say I hold up well to the 80/20 rule)
so here's the stuff:

Total cholesterol: 241
HDL: 38
LDL: 178
Trigs: 125

that works out to
Total/HDL:6.34 (best is 5 or lower)
Trig/HDL:3.29 (best is 2 or lower)
LDL/HDL: 4.68 (best is 4.3 or lower)

that doesn;t look too good (but not horrific either), does it?
I am worried about the Trig/HDL ratio though...

I don't eat any grains (or very very seldomly), but i still drink a beer here and there (not too many, I guess around 2 or 3 a week)

other than that I eat a lot of meat (not grass fed, but no hormones or antibiotics or any of that stuff), lots and lots of vegetables (including nightshades), avocados, salads, eggs, some bacon (about 2 pounds in 3 weeks), and some dairy (cheese and cream and yoghurt mostly)
almost no tubers or legumes, excet the odd potato or bean in a soup or stew
lots of butter and olive oil too, lots of fat from the meat and butter and oil

no fruit, no nuts

I take 5000IU D3 daily (25(OH)D3 test shows 65.7ng/mL, so very good), and fish oil (2 grams daily, 1000mg DHA and 500mg EPA total)

I exercise 3 times a week (lift heavy, plus a little bit of sprinting), plus 20 - 30 minutes walk everyday (more on the weekends)
maybe I could increase the sprinting if needed :-)

One disclaimer though, I stopped smoking 1 week before the blood test, would that have an effect? inflammation and all... (stupid me, I had stopped for quite some time, then took it up again for 2 months or so... !@!@%$ luckily that is over again)

that's about it...
now how to increase the HDL, and get rid of the trigs, that is the question...

thanks a lot for your comments!

[lizch]

Quitting the smoking should improve things, but with only 1 week between quitting and doing the blood test, there won't have been enough time to see the benefits. Give it another 3 months and test again. You should find your HDL up, LDL and trigs down. Not sure by how much though.

[claude512]

well I actually meant that the smoking could have made the results worse then they would have otherwise been? or is that not true?

btw, this was my first blood test, so it might very well be that I am improving my numbers... I will take another one in 6 months or so and see what happened...

how do you decrease trigs (and LDL) and increase HDL in general though?

[lizch]

Yes, smoking would have made the results bad, and stopping should make them better in 6 months. I'd say that alone should make a big difference.