Cholesterol, yeah that.
DvlDwnInGA
Posts: 368 Member
Anyone have any before and after checks. I have been following a guy on youtube name Dave Feldman, I am sure most of you have seen or know of him, and am curious to see what some of the members here have seen with their numbers from the Dr. If you haven't he is worth looking up.
I am going to get blood work next month. At that point I will have been on a low carb high fat diet for a month.
Background for me:
I am on cholesterol meds, crestor 10 MG.
I had mild heart attack at a young age in my 30s, lots of smoking, drinking, bad lifestyle choices, stress, etc. It did not hurt my heart, and it no longer shows up on an EKG.
I no longer smoke, have one vodka soda a day, and go to the gym daily and have been for the last 4 years.
Currently weigh 262
Goal Weight 230
I have been as high as 285 and as low as 218 over the past 4 years. I am not nearly as fat at 262 now as I was coming down from 285. I do carry a fair amount of muscle.
I know my numbers will initially probably be high. I am going to ask for an NMR and calcium score as well to get a baseline for a follow up in 6 months.
Hoping to get off these statins and turn my cholesterol numbers on their head or at least have a good enough NMR and calcium score to feel good enough to stop them using them.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
I am going to get blood work next month. At that point I will have been on a low carb high fat diet for a month.
Background for me:
I am on cholesterol meds, crestor 10 MG.
I had mild heart attack at a young age in my 30s, lots of smoking, drinking, bad lifestyle choices, stress, etc. It did not hurt my heart, and it no longer shows up on an EKG.
I no longer smoke, have one vodka soda a day, and go to the gym daily and have been for the last 4 years.
Currently weigh 262
Goal Weight 230
I have been as high as 285 and as low as 218 over the past 4 years. I am not nearly as fat at 262 now as I was coming down from 285. I do carry a fair amount of muscle.
I know my numbers will initially probably be high. I am going to ask for an NMR and calcium score as well to get a baseline for a follow up in 6 months.
Hoping to get off these statins and turn my cholesterol numbers on their head or at least have a good enough NMR and calcium score to feel good enough to stop them using them.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
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Replies
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Not technically before/after, but my earliest record (right, 2013) and most recent (left, 2/2017) that I have readily available. Note the increase in HDL, decrease in triglycerides, and Total/HDL improvement ("despite" the "increase" in LDL).
While you're getting tests, I highly recommend an LDL particle size measurement. The standard lipid panel measures concentration, but doesn't account for LDL particle size outside of the LDL/VLDL delimiter. So, what happens when your LDL particles become larger, denser, and more like HDL particles? The standard panel sees that as an increase, which will get flagged as "bad" by most doctors. Particle size tests will help prove to your doctor that the "increase" is actually good.
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Thank you for the reply and the suggestion to have particle size measured.
I will bring that up with my Dr as well.
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I just had mine done. My doctor was just about to start me on meds. At this point I had lost around 20 pounds.
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Wow that is a heck of a drop in a year. Congrats. Hoping to see similar changes in a year as well.0
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Thank you. I've been keto for about a month and a half.0
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I started Keto in late March of this year. I was diagnosed as pre-diabetic in November. I dieted a little but nothing specific. I was MOSTLY concerned with my cholesterol levels, since I had given up all sugar with Keto. All my numbers were better......but here's my Cholesterol history:
8/12/15 - 168
10/17/16 - 169
4/21/17 - 170
11/2/17 - 175
5/10/18 - 153
Doc said that only 20% of your cholesterol comes from your diet. The other 80% from what your liver processes. All I know is I put off medication. In six months I expect that I'll be off the medication I'm currently on for high blood pressure.
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SteveP999Tx wrote: »Doc said that only 20% of your cholesterol comes from your diet. The other 80% from what your liver processes.
He's largely right, albeit a bit oversimplified. Your food intake doesn't generally directly affect cholesterol levels (unless you're a hyper-responder and even then, not much).
However, your diet can indirectly affect it. Cholesterol is kind of like the emergency response services. It's deployed when something goes wrong. Foods that cause inflammation, or that you're sensitive or allergic to, among other things, will cause the body to increase production. If your cholesterol is high, there are fires that need put out, basically.
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Dragonwolf wrote: »SteveP999Tx wrote: »Doc said that only 20% of your cholesterol comes from your diet. The other 80% from what your liver processes.
He's largely right, albeit a bit oversimplified. Your food intake doesn't generally directly affect cholesterol levels (unless you're a hyper-responder and even then, not much).
However, your diet can indirectly affect it. Cholesterol is kind of like the emergency response services. It's deployed when something goes wrong. Foods that cause inflammation, or that you're sensitive or allergic to, among other things, will cause the body to increase production. If your cholesterol is high, there are fires that need put out, basically.
Yep, from what I am reading/watching, blaming cholesterol for heart disease is like blaming fire fighters for starting the fires. They ARE present at the fires, but they are not there doing the damage.
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Cholesterol is also produced when your body metabolizes fat, so unless you are weight stable for over 6 months the tests are terribly inaccurate because the weight loss is artificially inflating the numbers.1
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tcunbeliever wrote: »Cholesterol is also produced when your body metabolizes fat, so unless you are weight stable for over 6 months the tests are terribly inaccurate because the weight loss is artificially inflating the numbers.
Yep, since technically, the cholesterol test isn't actually testing cholesterol, but rather serum lipids (fats).
When your body is burning fat for energy 24/7, the fat shows up in your bloodstream, whoda thunk it?1 -
Just an fyi, it may tale your body longer to find it's norm where cholesterol numbers are concerned like mine did. This is because our bodies have their own timelines for getting rid of the excess cholesterol that dieting release back into our systems. I mention this because what we tend to think of as a "long time" (e.g. one year), is not necessarily likewise seen as a "long time" by our bodies. It took my body four (4) years to finally fall within the normal range where cholesterol was concerned.
Here are my numbers during that 4-year time frame:
2014:
HDL - 31 mg/dL
LDL - 118 mg/dL
Trig - 132 mg/dL
Total - 175 mg/dL
Chol/HDLC ratio : 5.6
2015:
HDL - 44 mg/dL
LDL - 157 mg/dL
Trig - 76 mg/dL
Total - 216 mg/dL
Chol/HDLC ratio : 4.9
2016:
HDL - 64 mg/dL
LDL - 212 mg/dL
Trig - 61 mg/dL
Total - 288 mg/dL
Chol/HDLC ratio : 4.5
2017:
HDL - 65 mg/dL
LDL - 73 mg/dL
Trig - 35 mg/dL
Total - 145 mg/dL
Chol/HDLC ratio : 2.2
I was just about to give up and let the doctor's put me on a medication for cholesterol but I'm soooooo glad I hung in there. Here's a helpful link to a short video that you will probably find interesting because it explains perfectly what happened to me (why my numbers went up before going down):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNfjkTyBUdQ 2 -
One thing to note about those numbers, notice that your ratio and your triglycerides went down, even as everything else went up (including HDL). That, to me, indicates improvement, and if they were my numbers, I'd challenge the doctor to more accurate tests before consenting to drugs.3
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Dragonwolf wrote: »One thing to note about those numbers, notice that your ratio and your triglycerides went down, even as everything else went up (including HDL). That, to me, indicates improvement, and if they were my numbers, I'd challenge the doctor to more accurate tests before consenting to drugs.
Understood @Dragonwolf! Great insight!0 -
Ladipoet, thank you for sharing your numbers. I also want to mention that that doesn't just happen when major weight loss is involved. Some years back I saw the same thing happen at a fasting clinic. Folks came in with normal cholesterol readings but after a week of fasting (the blood work was only done weekly there) it was normal for a patient's cholesterol to go way up, only to come back down in the following week/s.0
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Ladipoet, thank you for sharing your numbers. I also want to mention that that doesn't just happen when major weight loss is involved. Some years back I saw the same thing happen at a fasting clinic. Folks came in with normal cholesterol readings but after a week of fasting (the blood work was only done weekly there) it was normal for a patient's cholesterol to go way up, only to come back down in the following week/s.
That's what Dave Feldman gets into in his cholesterol self experiments. He eats more fat, and at a caloric surplus, and cholesterol drops noticeably about 3 days later. It's pretty neat.
http://cholesterolcode.com/1 -
Ladipoet, thank you for sharing your numbers. I also want to mention that that doesn't just happen when major weight loss is involved. Some years back I saw the same thing happen at a fasting clinic. Folks came in with normal cholesterol readings but after a week of fasting (the blood work was only done weekly there) it was normal for a patient's cholesterol to go way up, only to come back down in the following week/s.
That's what Dave Feldman gets into in his cholesterol self experiments. He eats more fat, and at a caloric surplus, and cholesterol drops noticeably about 3 days later. It's pretty neat.
http://cholesterolcode.com/
GRRR, I keep forgetting about Dave. Thank you for the reminder and the link.
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Ladipoet, thank you for sharing your numbers. I also want to mention that that doesn't just happen when major weight loss is involved. Some years back I saw the same thing happen at a fasting clinic. Folks came in with normal cholesterol readings but after a week of fasting (the blood work was only done weekly there) it was normal for a patient's cholesterol to go way up, only to come back down in the following week/s.
That's what Dave Feldman gets into in his cholesterol self experiments. He eats more fat, and at a caloric surplus, and cholesterol drops noticeably about 3 days later. It's pretty neat.
http://cholesterolcode.com/
GRRR, I keep forgetting about Dave. Thank you for the reminder and the link.
LOL
I'd love to do that self experimentation on myself, but I'm way to lazy to do that many blood tests.
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Just do the basic one, eat fatty keto for three days, fast for 12 hrs. and take the standard lipids test. Dave is just a total geek about this kind of stuff. I did that and my total cholesterol did go up ever so slightly, but my HDLs went up about 20 pts. and my trig. went down lower than the HDL no. so my ratio was .7, my dr. said that was a good sign, she isn't on board for keto, but she like the Med. diet, so I tell her I'm on the low carb, health fat eating plan, which is true. She let me get the NMR profile done, my LDLs are the healthy ones. So no talk of meds except she said "you are doing fine, keep it up, no need for medications with these numbers."1
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Just an fyi, it may tale your body longer to find it's norm where cholesterol numbers are concerned like mine did. This is because our bodies have their own timelines for getting rid of the excess cholesterol that dieting release back into our systems. I mention this because what we tend to think of as a "long time" (e.g. one year), is not necessarily likewise seen as a "long time" by our bodies. It took my body four (4) years to finally fall within the normal range where cholesterol was concerned.
Here are my numbers during that 4-year time frame:
2014:
HDL - 31 mg/dL
LDL - 118 mg/dL
Trig - 132 mg/dL
Total - 175 mg/dL
Chol/HDLC ratio : 5.6
2015:
HDL - 44 mg/dL
LDL - 157 mg/dL
Trig - 76 mg/dL
Total - 216 mg/dL
Chol/HDLC ratio : 4.9
2016:
HDL - 64 mg/dL
LDL - 212 mg/dL
Trig - 61 mg/dL
Total - 288 mg/dL
Chol/HDLC ratio : 4.5
2017:
HDL - 65 mg/dL
LDL - 73 mg/dL
Trig - 35 mg/dL
Total - 145 mg/dL
Chol/HDLC ratio : 2.2
I was just about to give up and let the doctor's put me on a medication for cholesterol but I'm soooooo glad I hung in there. Here's a helpful link to a short video that you will probably find interesting because it explains perfectly what happened to me (why my numbers went up before going down):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNfjkTyBUdQ
Very good info.
Didn’t you lose a significant amount of weight also?
Just to clarify the numbers further. Could you tell us which years were during weight loss and which were at the stable weight you achieved.
I ask because as we often see, the numbers are really wonky by old school standards during weight loss and we expect them to suddenly normalize once weight stable but even that often takes maintaining weight for quite some time to happen. I wonder what the scenario is for your data.
Also, was your first number prior to starting low carb?1 -
Sunny_Bunny_ wrote: »Very good info.
Didn’t you lose a significant amount of weight also?
Just to clarify the numbers further. Could you tell us which years were during weight loss and which were at the stable weight you achieved.
I ask because as we often see, the numbers are really wonky by old school standards during weight loss and we expect them to suddenly normalize once weight stable but even that often takes maintaining weight for quite some time to happen. I wonder what the scenario is for your data.
Also, was your first number prior to starting low carb?
@Sunny_Bunny_ ...Yes, I lost an entire person (167 pounds).
Started dieting in either August or September of 2014 (I forget which). Didn't really find Keto until a month or two later (October 2014 maybe?). It took me 22.5 months to reach my goal weight. I switched over into weight maintenance around July of 2016. I consider the first set of numbers in 2014 my pre-Keto numbers because I kind of floundered around for the first few months trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing and that took me a while. 6 -
Interesting new stuff sent to my inbox by Peter Attia:
partial quote with link below.In the world of lipidology, remarkable stories about a remarkable therapy, PCSK9 inhibitors. From the early clues provided by the hyperfunction of this proprotein convertase (i.e., a family of proteins that activate other proteins) in gain-of-function mutations in the PCSK9 gene linked with hypercholesterolemia — to the flipside — rare people with loss-of-function mutations linked with big reductions in CHD risk, and low cholesterol levels, particularly LDL-C. How low? Around 15 mg/dL! What might be more remarkable is how quickly everything has unfolded. PCSK9 was unheard of prior to the 21st century (2003, in fact). It’s humbling and heroic (and, currently, expensive). To witness these kinds of scientific insights translate into effective treatments in little over a decade almost feels superhuman. But it’s also as if biology is looking at us, winking, as if to say, ‘you have no idea just how little you know about me.’0 -
I thought I would come back and update this thread with my own findings/numbers.
2017 Cholesterol Totals
LDL 169
HDL 51
Total 220
Trig 145
2018 Post 5 weeks Keto
LDL 102
HDL 56
Total 173 (three points higher than my LDL last time)
Trig 77 (almost cut in half)
Numbers don't lie. I will take this as a win. All the numbers that needed to go up are up, and the numbers needed to come down have come down significantly. I am definitely SOLD.
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Total cholesterol ~260 eating SAD. Total cholesterol ~160 eating lowcarb/keto. Cholesterol is a RESPONSE (inflammatory) to what you eat (specifically carbohydrates and carbohydrates combined with fat), not from it.1
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