Hi. My husband and I started low carbing on January 20th. Prior to that he had labs done and his cholesterol was 224 (triglycerides 101, HDL 162 and LDL 8.0) as of January 10 2015. His dr suggested eating low carb.

Over the last nearly 6 months he has lost around 21 pounds. He'd like to lose 50 pounds. He's wishing it was more, but when he got his last labs done on 6/27 his cholesterol was up. Total 231, triglycerides 72, HDL 171 and LDL 7.5. He's really worried about this.

He's not sure what to do. He sees his dr at the end of the month and does not want put on cholesterol medicine, which is unlikely anyway.

Normal day for him:
Espresso with cream- breakfast

throughout the day at work he eats
Broccoli with butter, various meats like chicken, turkey, steak, ham, tuna or salmon salad with a mayonnaise dip or sour cream

Then dinner would be meat and vegetables or salad

Does anyone have a similar experience? I kept telling him his cholesterol would be lower but I was shocked to see it was higher. We have only cheated twice and that was once in March with chocolate mousse and then April when he was sick he had toast. He's super stressed out and I don't know how to help. Thank you!!!

I'm by no means an expert on cholesterol, but from observation, it looks to me as if his LDL (aka bad cholesterol) has gone down and his HDL (the good cholesterol) has gone up, which is a good thing. From what was explained to me, the higher your HDL is, the lower your chances of heart disease. If the HDL is the only thing going up, then I would take that as a good sign.

Not the best source, but it'll help explain what my Dr. said to me.

Webmd HDL

Maybe someone else can chime in with something better.

You can't have your cholesterol tested when you are in the midst of losing, I've heard. This temporarily increased cholesterol.

How is his triglycerides or CRP? If those have gone down, it's great!

The rest: well, the dirty little secret of cholesterol is that they don't really know much of what those numbers mean. Since the entire theory it was based on has been exposed as a sham, they are not the most important numbers to worry about.

Those HDL numbers look really high. Is the LDL given in a different unit of measurement or something? It can't be in mmol/l, or the ldl cholesterol would be higher than the total cholesterol.

Total cholesterol going from 224 to 231 is nothing. The accuracy of this type of test is limited.




Homing in on this;


Your husband's total cholesterol went up 3 percent in 6 months. Given day to day variability of 5 percent--this is the same as saying that total cholesterol didn't go up at all.

Correction on the HDL: 42 in January; 46 in June. Correction on the LDL: 162 in January; 171 in June.

Thank you all so much! I appreciate the replies!

Teaser, you were right. I was looking at a number below it. Sorry.

Werebear, his triglycerides did go down! From 101 to 72.

Cas327- I put the wrong numbers on for his LDL. Sorry, those went up a little, too. But your post was definitely helpful!

Thank you!

On low carb you can expect HDL to slowly climb, especially if you eat plenty of saturated fat. This is good. HDL is generally considered healthy. You should see triglycerides fall quickly. LDL... seems to go any which way and it is questionable whether it is a useful measurement of anything. Check out the articles in my signature.

Triglycerides and HDL are both the best indicators of heart health and your husband's values are headed in the right direction.

According to Dr. Davis (the Wheatbelly doctor), as you switch from carb based nutrition to using your own fat stores to nourish the rest of the body, your balance of fats in the bloodstream will temporarily spike, but, ultimately, drop.

Given that your husband's doctor recommended low carb for him, I would hope that she is also aware of this phenomenon.

Congrats to both of you on sticking to the plan for your health!