Cholesterol Numbers

crisvetter
crisvetter Posts: 3 Member
Keto since August. Feel great mentally and lots of energy. Lost 40 lbs. 43 years old CW179 Height 5’7. Had lab work completed. Everything good except cholesterol numbers. Total was 310, hdl 85, tc 78, ldl 215. Now doctor wants to see me. I do not want to take medicine. Any resources anyone would recommend to research this further?

Replies

  • crisvetter
    crisvetter Posts: 3 Member
    Meant triglycerides 78, not tc.
  • FIT_Goat
    FIT_Goat Posts: 4,224 Member
    That trig/HDL ratio is awesome. 78/85, you're kicking some serious butt.

    Your doctor is likely going to try and push a statin for the total cholesterol. You're a female with no history of cardiac issues (I assume). I can't believe it isn't malpractice to recommend statins to you.

    https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/587563
    Relevant quote:
    Statins reduce cholesterol and, in some contexts, adverse heart outcomes, but meta-analyses of primary prevention clinical statin trials have found no statistically significant cardioprotective effect for women.[1,2,3,4] These meta-analyses reasonably reflect the individual primary prevention trials. Of these studies, none showed statistically significant cardioprotection for women and some yielded hazard ratios exceeding one.[5,6,7,8,9]

    You're able to refuse. I'd recommend that.
  • Sunny_Bunny_
    Sunny_Bunny_ Posts: 7,140 Member
    Yeah. Your numbers wouldn’t be concerning to me.
    Run them in this risk calculator
    https://cholesterolcode.com/report/

    I think it will tell you you’re low or lowest risk.
  • nvmomketo
    nvmomketo Posts: 12,019 Member
    edited March 2019
    I agree.
    If the doctor is worried, get a CAC done, but your tris and gel look great, especially considering that this and ldl are often elevated during weight loss.
  • wabmester
    wabmester Posts: 2,748 Member
    No comment on your numbers, but here's a list of low-carb-friendly docs that might understand your situation a bit better than most:
    https://www.lowcarbusa.org/low-carb-providers/lchf-doctors/
  • kpk54
    kpk54 Posts: 4,474 Member
    Click on this link from our stickies, scroll down and find 10 or so past conversations regarding cholesterol. I didn't look at each again but am sure there is some information there to get you started so you can have a conversation with your doc and make the decision that is best for you.

    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10423197/open-threads-member-threads-on-low-carb-topics#latest
  • Dragonwolf
    Dragonwolf Posts: 5,600 Member
    Of course, there are those that are electrical problems, but there is no test for that, as far as I am aware.

    ECGs are about the only thing. They can detect certain anomalies and whatnot, but really only work for chronic abnormalities.
  • crisvetter
    crisvetter Posts: 3 Member
    Thank you everyone for taking time to answer and to share resources! I really am getting in tune with my body after all these years and know this way of eating feels good to me. I will keep eating this way and researching how to find the right practitioner!
  • qweck3
    qweck3 Posts: 346 Member
    edited March 2019
    Lots of test that can be done to check the heart out if there are any concerns with the cholesterol vs. just starting a statin. My LDL/Triglycerides are always spot on but HDL lags a bit. Since heart stuff is prevalent in my family my primary referred to a Cardiologist. He ordered me to get a CAC score, EKG, Stress test and Echo. All test have their strengths but the Echo I did was crazy detailed and worth every penny. 45 minutes of seeing my heart in action on the screen as the tech checked everything.

    The Cardiologist said it best: If you exercise and commit to continuing to live your healthy path your chances of following your family issues is minimal. Offered a statin if I couldn't live a healthy life but I like nah doc I'm good I got this.
  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,159 Member
    The first set of labs in 2015 after the first year on keto my cholesterol shot up some over 300. I have been low carb but not much keto for the past two years of working on improving my gut microbiome health.

    My numbers have been dropping slowly for the past 5 years and the lab from last week showed a cholesterol of 247 and HDL of 56 giving me a ratio of 4.4 with 5 being middle of the road for a guy.

    My calculated LDL was 175 which makes me pleased since I am over the age of 60 (being 69) as it seems to reduce my cancer risks and risks for death from all causes.

    https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/6/e010401

    Is high LDL-C beneficial?
    One hypothesis to address the inverse association between LDL-C and mortality is that low LDL-C increases susceptibility to fatal diseases. Support for this hypothesis is provided by animal and laboratory experiments from more than a dozen research groups which have shown that LDL binds to and inactivates a broad range of microorganisms and their toxic products.27 Diseases caused or aggravated by microorganisms may therefore occur more often in people with low cholesterol, as observed in many studies.28 In a meta-analysis of 19 cohort studies, for instance, performed by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and including 68 406 deaths, TC was inversely associated with mortality from respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases, most of which are of an infectious origin.29 It is unlikely that these diseases caused the low TC, because the associations remained after the exclusion of deaths occurring during the first 5 years. In a study by Iribarren et al, more than 100 000 healthy individuals were followed for 15 years. At follow-up, those whose initial cholesterol level was lowest at the start had been hospitalised significantly more often because of an infectious disease that occurred later during the 15-year follow-up period.30 This study provides strong evidence that low cholesterol, recorded at a time when these people were healthy, could not have been caused by a disease they had not yet encountered.

    Another explanation for an inverse association between LDL-C and mortality is that high cholesterol, and therefore high LDL-C, may protect against cancer. The reason may be that many cancer types are caused by viruses.31 Nine cohort studies including more than 140 000 individuals followed for 10–30 years have found an inverse association between cancer and TC measured at the start of the study, even after excluding deaths that occurred during the first 4 years.32 Furthermore, cholesterol-lowering experiments on rodents have resulted in cancer,33 and in several case–control studies of patients with cancer and controls matched for age and sex, significantly more patients with cancer have been on cholesterol-lowering treatment.32 In agreement with these findings, cancer mortality is significantly lower in individuals with familial hypercholesterolaemia.34

    That high LDL-C may be protective is in accordance with the finding that LDL-C is lower than normal in patients with acute myocardial infarction. This has been documented repeatedly without a reasonable explanation.35–37 In one of the studies,37 the authors concluded that LDL-C evidently should be lowered even more, but at a follow-up 3 years later mortality was twice as high among those whose LDL-C had been lowered the most compared with those whose cholesterol was unchanged or lowered only a little. If high LDL-C were the cause, the effect should have been the opposite.

    Conclusions

    Our review provides the first comprehensive analysis of the literature about the association between LDL-C and mortality in the elderly. Since the main goal of prevention of disease is prolongation of life, all-cause mortality is the most important outcome, and is also the most easily defined outcome and least subject to bias. The cholesterol hypothesis predicts that LDL-C will be associated with increased all-cause and CV mortality. Our review has shown either a lack of an association or an inverse association between LDL-C and both all-cause and CV mortality. The cholesterol hypothesis seems to be in conflict with most of Bradford Hill’s criteria for causation, because of its lack of consistency, biological gradient and coherence. Our review provides the basis for more research about the cause of atherosclerosis and CVD and also for a re-evaluation of the guidelines for cardiovascular prevention, in particular because the benefits from statin treatment have been exaggerated.38–40