Keto Long Term Question

maureenkhilde

First thing I want to be clear on I am not against Keto, I understand that many people have used it, or are using it and have found it as a successful way to lose weight, and keep it off.

The one thing I keep wondering about in regard to Keto is about long term. Do you find you are getting in the too high zone for Total Cholesterol? Are you able to keep this number under 149? Do you feel that most understand to stay away from the Trans fat? But other fats are ok?


I freely admit at Christmas to keep me away from Sugar and white flour, I did make a number of Keto cookies, pound cakes, and fat bombs and everyone who tried them thought they were very good. So I will be using for special times. As a T2D this really kept my BS numbers level. All good.

nvmomketo

As a very general rule, those who eat Keto find that their HDL goes up, triglycerides goes down, crp drops and LDL stays roughly the same although particle size tends to improve greatly. It appears to be good for calcium scores too. If you still place a lot of stock in LDL and total cholesterol (which usually goes up since HDL rises and ldl stays about the same) then it could worry you. I find LDZl does not have a good correlation with CVD and tend to not worry about it.high insulin and BG levels correlates more closely with CVD so I prefer to watch those.

TBH, I have no idea what my cholesterol numbers are. They were fine before Keto and I haven't had them checked in a few years.

baconslave

My experience was that my Total Cholesterol was high, due to my HDL going up to 104. Trigs went down to 40. LDL stayed the same (normal). In light of the 2 latter numbers, in conjunction with my high HDL, the doc didn't give a fig about the "high" Total.

Studies are showing that the ratio between HDL/Trigs is a better and less invasive predictor of cardiovascular disease risk. High HDL and low trigs correlate with lower risk and better arterial health.

So for those who do not suffer from genetic cholesterol issues, keto in and of itself is not a cholesterol wrecker. I've known folk who needed to prioritize staying away from polyunsaturated fats more and then any uptick in the numbers resolved. Cholesterol can also be higher while weight is being lost due to higher mobilization of fat/cholesterol in the blood. Cholesterol numbers aren't a one and done thing. Multiple snapshots over time are more accurate. People who do see an uptick during weight loss often find it to resolve within 6 mo to a year once in maintenance.

tcunbeliever

I've only been keto for about 15 months and I don't track cholesterol since I'm keto for migraine control and not really a huge fan of the evidence for high cholesterol being a problem - it's very correlative, not causative, and cholesterol lowering drugs don't actually improve mortality rates, so I just question the validity of the medical community claims that cholesterol is even an issue.

However, from talking to other who have been keto longer and who do track cholesterol, there seems to be about a 2 year adaptation phase. After that cholesterol numbers seem to return to normal for most keto folks. This is totally anecdotal and not evidence based.

Keep in mind that weight loss (fat metabolism) will boost your cholesterol numbers because the tests are not sensitive enough to distinguish between real cholesterol and metabolized fat circulating in your bloodstream. You should really be weight stable for about 6 months for accurate testing.