Cholesterol help! page

[JonnyH]

Hi all, new here, would like some advice from all you good people if I may.

Quick bit of history about myself, I'm 44, 5'9", 141lbs, yes very skinny!
I used to do Tris and Duathlons, went over to the Paleo diet a couple of years ago, Cholesterol then was 5,9.
Gave up tris etc last year when I had a long bout of flu, bought the Primal blueprint last April, had another bloodtest, cholesterol was then 6.4.
So read the book, and adopted the ideas in the book most of the time.
I walk regularly, 2-3 hour hikes at the weekend, with 30min walks 2-3 times a week, run once a week with sprints, bike once a week with sprints, do 1 bodyweight session, and sometimes weights.

I followed the eating plan for the last year, lots of veg(kale, brocolli, cauliflower, carrots, turnips, cabbage mainly), some fruit(berries, apples, plums, apricots), avocadoes, 1 sweet potato, usually after exercise.
No bread, pasta, oats, cakes, hydrogenated fat, processed food etc.
I eat fish(salmon, cod, haddock, usually grilled), tuna, sardines, eggs, beef, lots of chicken, turkey, pork etc. not always organic though!
Once or twice a week I have grilled sausage(1), grilled bacon(1 rasher), 2 fried eggs.
I have 2 hard boiled eggs most days, not always organic.
I have a small amount of cheese a day,
3-4 times a week I have 100ml of double cream(not organic) with protein powder as a high cal drink.
I have a glass of red wine some nights, no beer or spirits.
1 cup of coffee a day.
I have a handful of nuts each day, walnuts, pecans and almonds mainly.
I have EVO oil on my luch every day

I take a tablespoon of fish oil a day, vit c, vit d and e daily. I have a spoonful of flax on my breakfast most days.

Anyway, I had another blood test yesterday, these are the figures:

Total Cholesterol 8.9 mmol(344)
HDL 2.5 mmol(96)
LDL 5.9 mmol(228)
Trigs 0.87

I am at a loss as to what to do now, my doctor has said to eat high fibre bread, pasta, oats etc, with very little sat fat, few eggs, no fatty meat, no butter. Basically all the things that are paleo!

I've got 3 months to lower the cholesterol or the doc said he would then have to give me some drugs, he didnt say what drugs, statins I guess.

Can anyone offer any advice? could it be the double cream? my wife tells me I have too much cream, I usually get through 600ml a week. I read on PANU that he drinks that, so thought why not, it's lovely.

Maybe that a lot of my food isnt organic and the Omega 3 to 6 ratio is way out maybe?!

Sorry for the long first message, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[megalodon]

Hi JonnyH and welcome,

for info on all things cholesterol you can find Griff's primer on the forum,he is the resident expert and will explain much.Imo your overall figure is a bit high but its importance is often overstated,your hdl and trigs are excellent,ldl higher than is desirable.Don't listen to your doc,statins are dreadful.I took them pre primal and my overall cholesterol was 2.7mmol but all my other markers were shocking,it is now 6.1mmol and my trigs have more than halfed and hdl has doubled, also my ratios are so much betterI 'm sure the good folk here will offer advice on your situation,once again,for your peace of mind,read Griff's primer.

Good Luck.

[Dragonfly]

Welcome! And here's the link for the Primer.

[MightyAl]

My TC is 296. when my Doc saw this I told him I don't believe in the Lipid Hypothesis. My VAP test showed my LDL is Pattern A and that just confirmed that I am fine. Get a VAP test if you are really worried about it. If your trigs are low then it will show your actual LDL instead of the calculated BS. You are fine and healthy so tell your doctor to shove the worthless statins. Just because he prescribes them doesn't mean you have to take them.

[JonnyH]

Thanks for the quick replies, I hust had a quick look at the primer, wow, a lot to take in there, will sit and read through it later.

I see if I can get a VAP test sorted, I am worried, and I know stress doesnt help the cholesterol levels, so need to sort this out soon.

Thanks again.

[JonnyH]

Have read through Griff's post, checked the figures, and worked out the ratios, though my total cholesterol is high, using the ratios he uses my figures come out ok, I think, if I've worked it out right!

[AndreaReina]

I've got 3 months to lower the cholesterol or the doc said he would then have to give me some drugs, he didnt say what drugs, statins I guess.

Can anyone offer any advice? could it be the double cream? my wife tells me I have too much cream, I usually get through 600ml a week. I read on PANU that he drinks that, so thought why not, it's lovely.

Maybe that a lot of my food isnt organic and the Omega 3 to 6 ratio is way out maybe?!

Sorry for the long first message, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

You've already gotten excellent advice, so I won't repeat that, but make a couple of points. First, your doctor can't do anything without your consent. If you believe you are on the right track despite "bad" test results according to CW, feel free to ignore him. If a doctor tried to coerce me into taking anything, he would lose my custom immediately. You've probably already understood from Griff's post that high cholesterol figures don't mean anything so the second part of my reply is sort of moot, but here it is anyway: organic/grass-fed vs conventional will make no difference in your results.

[JonnyH]

organic/grass-fed vs conventional will make no difference in your results.

Thanks for that, I did wonder if that would maybe contribute to cholesterol, good news then!

On the same subject, if I buy a skinless chicken breast that contains no fat, does it then matter if it's organic or conventional, as there is no fat content?
Would the same apply to other meats, if I trim the visible fats on convetional fed meats then the omega 6/3 ratio will be less of a problem?
Be good to hear what peoples thoughts are on this, I wondered about this for a while now.

Cheers

[sanepsycho]

Something to think about as you worry:

My MIL's doctor prescribe various statins to lower her cholesterol, but all of them caused her legs to ache terribly. She finally told the doctor that she didn't want to try any more. She's 89 years old now. Her cholesterol is still high.

[AndreaReina]

If you're going to trim visible fat, you might as well go for the lean cuts -- in fact this is what Mark recommends for conventional meat. According to Don Matesz however, if you stick to beef, pork, and other ruminants or hind-gut fermenters you can eat up to 6 pounds a week and have just a pound of fatty fish to compensate for the O6s (or rather, the lack of O3s).

These data make it very clear that the best way to reduce your intake of excessive omega-6 oils lies in restricting intake of chicken and eliminating most tree nuts and vegetable oils from your diet. If you do this, you can easily attain a healthy total diet ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 even if you eat only grain-finished beef, lamb, pork, and bison, by including some fatty fish like salmon, sardines, or sea bass in your diet.

As we saw above, a pound of pork has 1.7 g omega-6 and a pound of fatty beef has 1.0 g. Assuming that you limit all other significant sources of omega-6 in your diet, if you consume 6 pounds of beef in a week, you will get 6 g of omega-6. To get an ideal 1:1 ratio of omega-6: omega-3 in your overall diet, you will need to eat something that will provide 5 g of omega-3s with almost no omega-6, such as salmon or sardines. Take a look at the amounts of omega-3s in these canned fish:

* Salmon, pink, canned, solids with bone and liquid, 100 g, 1.7 g
* Sardine, Pacific, canned in tomato sauce, drained solids with bone, 100 g, 1.7 g


Thus, 350 g (12 ounces) of either salmon or sardines in the week will give you enough omega-3 to balance out 6 pounds of beef. So I could eat a pound of beef each day 6 days each week, then have three-quarters of a pound of salmon on the 7th day, to get the desired ratio. Alternatively, I could eat my pound of beef daily with a few sardines to achieve the same result.