Blood Work Back

Total Cholesterol: 244
LDL: 160.2
HDL: 68
Triglyceride: 79

According to my doctor my cholesterol is pretty high. Thing is, I’m only 20 years old. I don’t consume much if any butter or margarine. I do eat a good amount of eggs, red meat, milk and etc.

I’m not sure exactly how to interpret these results, but I’m wondering if I should be worried to any extent.

What changes should I make to my diet? Right now I’m basically living off chicken, rice, eggs, lean cuts of meat, protein shakes, almonds, milk, peanut butter, and cottage cheese.

Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

MM

Your HDL and Trigs are great, you just need to lower your LDL. I have battled cholesterol since my early 20’s. Just eat healthy, keep your weight down, exercise. I have had great luck with Slo-niacin. You can get it for a decent price at Costco. Take it at night, before bed, to avoid flushing. I have also heard Curcumin works fairly well.

Doctors often prescribe fish oil to help with hyperlipidemia, which is a genetic condition where a person’s liver just makes way too much cholesterol. Flameout could help lower your LDLs.

[quote]cywren wrote:
Your HDL and Trigs are great, you just need to lower your LDL. I have battled cholesterol since my early 20’s. Just eat healthy, keep your weight down, exercise. I have had great luck with Slo-niacin. You can get it for a decent price at Costco. Take it at night, before bed, to avoid flushing. I have also heard curcumin works fairly well.[/quote]

Do you remember if the Slo-niacin also helped bring up your HDLs?

Thanks a bunch, I appreciate all the replies.

I currently work out 3 times a week using a muscle group split. I’m thinking of upping it to four though.

As far as diet goes, I really don’t see what foods could be contributing to such a high LDL. Genetically predisposed maybe? I was religious with Flameout but it got really expensive so I dropped it. I’ll have to look into Curcumin though. It’s pretty cheap and looks like it has a lot of benefits.

On a side note, do cholesterol levels have any correlation with body fat? I’m not fat, but just wondering.

MM

Any fish oil will help, you may just have to deal with taking several caps per day. Also, fish and grass-fed chicken and beef are very high in omega 3 and 6 saturated fats.

The main reason I use Flameout over other oils is because I don’t get fish burps, and it only takes 4-6 caps per day, whereas the generic drug store stuff is much lower concentration, and I had to take like 15-20 per day. The price is tough to stomach though, but there are ways to get around that.

what’s your fiber intake like?

I am not completely convinced the on the cholesterol argument. Maybe some people have a different baseline level of cholesterol than 200. I knew a skinny scrawny guy who had cholesterol of like 260, and when he went on a medication to lower it, it went back up after 2 weeks.

And this guy is a vegetarian, so he is not eating animal protein, milk, eggs, or any of the things that contribute to a high cholesterol.

There are strong scientific evidences that cholesterol isn’t bad for your health. In fact, its quite the opposite (cholesterol is good for you). I read numerous scientific studies clearly showing that high cholesterol has no impact on heart disease.

From what I’ve read, what is bad and causing heart disease is the “oxydation of the LDL” (LDL is also fasely known as the bad cholesterol). Now, a high level of LDL in your blood isn’t bad at all, in fact, there are again strong scientific evidence that shows that LDL is in fact an anti-inflammatory substance (that’s why people having heart problem have often a high level of LDL, since you have some inflammations in your arteries, your body produces LDL (anti-inflammatory) to counteract the inflammations in your arteries.

So lowering your LDL or cholesterol is a very bad idea in that case (and apparently in any case) since you basically shut down your body natural defences to inflammation.

Now, what cause heart disease? I would point trans fat, smoking, bad food choices, processed carbs, bad control of your glycemic index, etc. which could lead into oxydation of your LDL.

So my advice is not to take drugs to lower your cholesterol and make some research before. Watching the movie Fat Head (see link below) could be a good first step.

Here’s some resources for those of you who wants to know more about cholesterol:

-There’s an excellent (and funny) documentary called Fat Head (http://www.fathead-movie.com/) that talks about saturated fat and Cholesterol. Here’s a clip from the movie exposing how we got to adopt the current dogma about cholesterol being a bad thing Big Fat Lies - YouTube

-And here’s some blog from doctors devoted to the cholesterol question:

http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/

Hope this help.

Also, some facts taken from the Fat Head movie website:

  • There’s never been a single study that proves saturated fat causes heart disease.
  • As heart-disease rates were skyrocketing in the mid-1900s, consumption of animal fat was going down, not up. Consumption of vegetable oils, however, was going up dramatically.
  • Half of all heart-attack victims have normal or low cholesterol. Autopsies performed on heart-attack victims routinely reveal plaque-filled arteries in people whose cholesterol was low (as low as 115 in one case).
  • Asian Indians - half of whom are vegetarians - have one of the highest rates of heart disease in the entire world. Yup, that fatty meat will kill you, all right.

[quote]as wrote:
cywren wrote:
Your HDL and Trigs are great, you just need to lower your LDL. I have battled cholesterol since my early 20’s. Just eat healthy, keep your weight down, exercise. I have had great luck with Slo-niacin. You can get it for a decent price at Costco. Take it at night, before bed, to avoid flushing. I have also heard curcumin works fairly well.

Do you remember if the Slo-niacin also helped bring up your HDLs?[/quote]

It actually raises your HDL generally. You want your HDL high in comparison to your LDL. A level of 40 or above is desirable. Even on Slo-Niacin my HDL is only 38 but my LDL is 99. So my HDL is a touch low but my ratio of HDL to LDL is decent.

[quote]cywren wrote:
as wrote:
cywren wrote:
Your HDL and Trigs are great, you just need to lower your LDL. I have battled cholesterol since my early 20’s. Just eat healthy, keep your weight down, exercise. I have had great luck with Slo-niacin. You can get it for a decent price at Costco. Take it at night, before bed, to avoid flushing. I have also heard curcumin works fairly well.

Do you remember if the Slo-niacin also helped bring up your HDLs?

It actually raises your HDL generally. You want your HDL high in comparison to your LDL. A level of 40 or above is desirable. Even on Slo-Niacin my HDL is only 38 but my LDL is 99. So my HDL is a touch low but my ratio of HDL to LDL is decent.
[/quote]

Ok thanks. My levels are almost identical to yours and I wanted to boost my HDL’s. I was just wondering what degree of improvement I could expect with the Slo Niacin. For example is it possible to get it into the 50’s with the niacin?
What was your levels before the niacin ?

I do believe before I started my HDL was about the same just my overall cholesterol was much higher in general. Gave me a really crappy ratio. So I lost overall cholesterol (LDL mostly) while maintaining my HDL level.

Thanks for all the feedback.

I’m going to throw in some oatmeal in the morning and am actually waiting for the curcumin article to get back up so I can do some reading on it.

MM

Kill the rice, and only eat meat/veggies.

Total cholesterol is calculated using LDL + HDL + triglycerides(0.20) I believe.

Cut carbs and tri’s go down A LOT. Only eat veggies and Fiber goes up A LOT.

15g fishoil daily.

Quite simple actually.

I’m pre-disposed to genetically high cholesterol levels, but doing that My total is 2.3, 5 being Normal.

[quote]Xab wrote:
grass-fed chicken[/quote]

Haha. I’ve never seen grass fed chicken in the store. Grass fed beef - yes. Chicken - no. You mean free range?

look into www.jonnybowden.com and he has some recent info on the cholesterol lie

holy crap that’s high. i got mine back yesterday and my total cholesterol came back at 150-155

[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:
look into www.jonnybowden.com and he has some recent info on the cholesterol lie[/quote]

Yeah, that article is good stuff. You need more butter and less rice/carbs, not vice versa.

FWIW, I did an at-home test 2 yrs ago and my total was 103