My cholesterol is way too high! Help!
 

Been on Aitkins for about 5 months now and lost 22 pounds.

Before Aitkins my overall Cholesterol was 219. I run at least 5 times a week (4 miles), eggs every morning with bacon, Ceasar salad at lunch and typically chicken/fish/meat with a veggie at night. I try to put olive oil on dinner plates.

My fasting test just came in at:

Total cholesterol - 291
Triglycerides - 211
HDL - 50
LDL - 198
VLDL - 42

My doctor and wife want me off Aitkins, but I don't want to overeact with all the great long term results (I think).

Does anyone have advice?

Oh, I forgot to mention, I am on Norvasc for high blood pressure and I am a male 41 years old...

try dropping the eggs and bacon and eat more variety of veggies with every meal. Keep veggies on hand in the fridge for snacking and also eat almonds. I certainly am not an expert at all with cholesterol. But some definately have to watch the foods higher in Cholesterol.
Also, flax oil is excellent!

More info, please
 

Hi Cydspal!

No need to drop the eggs just yet (or even at all, really), but without a more detailed idea of what you've been eating, it's hard to even hazard a guess at what's going on. What is your daily level of carb intake? How often do you eat bacon? How much fiber do you get daily? I'd hazard a guess from your triglyceride level that you may still be eating too many carbs, but I may be wrong with that; too many carbs with too much fat is not a good combination.
Having said that, study after study has shown that the cholesterol that we eat in our diets has very little effect on the total amount of cholesterol in our bodies. When we don't get enough, our bodies simply make cholesterol and it's usually the bad kind when it does.
I have a theory. Now, this is just a theory and I have no real scientific evidence to back it up; just my own anecdotal evidence and that is that the nitrates in the bacon and sausage have a negative effect on cholesterol. When I first started low carbing, I was eating a lot of bacon and sausage too and my cholesterol went up. When I cut it out for the most part, it went back down again, lower than it was before. It's not that I lowered the saturated fat because I still eat beef and pork, often several times a week. So....my suggestion would be to cut out meats that have nitrates in them (they're bad for you in other ways anyway) and see what happens. More fiber would be a good thing, too and you may want to visit the supplements section to see if there's anything there that might help. I've read good things about Niacin, garlic, fish oil and flax oil and I take fish oil myself.

You really need to buy the book referred to on this page.

http://www.ravnskov.nu/cholesterol.htm



Here is one quotation.
"Myth 1: High-fat foods cause heart disease." In a striking graph from one of the papers of John Yudkin, M. D., Dr. Ravnskov shows that the number of deaths from coronary heart disease (CHD) in England and Wales between 1910 and 1956 is closely correlated with the number of new radio and television sets purchased each year. This is a perfect example of a correlation without a cause. Another line on the same graph shows that the number of grams of animal fat consumed per day changed by only ± 10% during this period. There is no correlation whatever between fat consumption and death rates from CHD, which increased 6-fold during this time period. "In the US, coronary mortality increased about ten times between 1930 and 1960, leveled off during the '60s and has since decreased slowly. During the decline of heart mortality the consumption of animal fat declined also, but during the thirty years of sharply rising coronary mortality the consumption of animal fat decreased [also

Hear, hear! This book will knock your socks off. It is unbelievably good. Chapter 6 on whether lowering cholesterol by drugs extends life is worth the price of the entire book. Anyone contemplating going on statins should read it first! You are in for a shock.

Do the right thing and forget about numbers.

Sheldon