Sun, Feb-19-06, 21:35
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Senior Member
Posts: 216
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Plan: Atkins
Stats: 195/178/150
BF:
Progress: 38%
Location: Northampton, Massachusett
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There is a lot of research, as far as I could find, behind plant sterols and stanols for lowering LDL cholesterol without lowering HDL. Supposedly they are safe, except for possibily inhibiting the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins, remediable by upping the intake of such vitamins. I'm *not* convinced that the stanols and sterols will lower heart disease risk, but they, with other dietary methods, have been shown to be as effective as statins. So for short-term use they might be worth it. (I bought Cholest Off at Costco.)
I wrote another post today about the anti-saturated fat "religion." And this religion punishes heretics and deviants. I was writing about doctors who can be sued if they don't prescribe statins and warn you about saturated fats. (In the suit, the plaintiff would establish that statin treatment and sat-fat advice were the standard of treatment....)
Here we see another edge of this: even if your risk of heart disease is low, you can be punished for "bad" lipid numbers. My own response to bad numbers was to get a cardiac CAT scan. $400, not covered by insurance. But at least I would *know* how my cardiac arteries were doing. (Just fine, thank you.) And, a bit cheaper, C-reactive protein (excellent, thank you *very much.*). Essentially, my risk of heart disease is *very* low.
(I also now have, thanks to Atkins, good HDL, very low triglycerides, and the only "bad" thing is very high LDL and total cholesterol; I've been unable to find a local lab that will fractionate the LDL so that I'd know what it really means.)
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