I've just got my blood test back and my total Cholestrol is 371. Really?
I never seen anyone with a number that high. Not sure what to make of it?
I've been LCHF 80/15/5 for about five months and am in nutritional ketosis (blood check) since months.

My GP seem uninterested and made me an appointment with the dietist. I'm not overweight
anymore, just on the higher end of normal BMI but suspect I eat a bit too much since I'm not
losing anymore but easily maintaining.
I would be so grateful for any comments and help understanding what this means for a LCHF'er since
I'm not having any luck with my GP. I've converted to mg/dl and calculated ratios.
Here are my test results- bad numbers in bold. Non-fasting and I'm not
diabetic and all other blood results were fine including thyroid.

Serum cholesterol: 371
Triglycerides: 124
HDL 85
LDL 261
non-HDL-C 286
Cholesterol/HDL ratio 4.3
Triglyceride/HDL ratio 1.46
HDL/LDL ratio 0.328

Hi. Ken had some numbers similar to this. Look down (on the first link) to his graph (post 6) and then on his journal page.

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=467687


Ken's Journal (go to p. 51)

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=461979

My husband had numbers like this, though his triglycerides were lower. Never paid it any mind.

Yes - those numbers do look familiar. At 5 months in to this WOE, my cholesterol numbers were greatly improved over what they had been before. 9 months later, still sticking strictly to my ketogenic LCHF diet, my LDL had doubled. Something changed. I just have not figured out what happened. I also haven't figured out if I need to be concerned. Currently, my doctor is checking into the possibility of below normal thyroid function. I have not got my results back yet.

My diet from a year ago has not really changed. I eat a little less than I did, but at pretty much the same ratios. I now try to walk a couple of miles every day. Other than that, there is nothing new happening. I have lost 100 pounds over the past year and I have gotten my blood glucose under control. BG spikes are a thing of the past. A year ago I was still testing at pre-diabetic. My A1C this past March had me well into the normal range.

If I ever figure out what is going on, I'll be sure to post it. I have no interest in taking a statin, BTW. I'll take what I've got vs. taking a drug to change a number. No proof that that does anything helpful and there is mounting proof that they may do more harm than good.

Did you ever get your numbers checked before going low carb?

If not, how do you know you haven't improved?

Also, if you're currently losing weight, they'll be higher.

Nancy, I had my cholesterol measured two ears ago and the total cholesterol was 201 mg/dl.
Unfortunately that's all I have to go after since I moved and my current surgery haven'y got a copy.
I was told that it was excellent at the time.

I've got a theory that I've been eating too much because I'm not losing atm, just maintaining.

I'm going to focus on getting the Triglycerides down a bit and I wont take statins either.
Hopefully the dietician will agree to the particle test. I'm going to call my old surgery tomorrow
and see if there is a possibility to get the old test to compare.

I've never had my thyroid checked so I won't really know if it has changed much in the past year. When I first learned that my LDL had suddenly gone wacko, I started researching as to the possible reasons why. Low thyroid function was one of the causes I read about. But since thyroid is much more common with women (8 to 1), I didn't look into that too much until my doctor ordered this thyroid test.

One common symptom of hypothyroidism is feeling cold. This past winter I was cold. But we had a frigid winter and a cool spring this year. Now summer is here and it is hot and steamy. I am tolerating the heat much better this summer than in years past. It is hard to say why. It could be a down regulated thyroid -- mild hypothyroid symptoms -- or it could just be the 170 pounds I'm no longer carrying.

Funny - but losing weight is always listed as one of the ways to improve cholesterol numbers. Maybe it will normalize when all is said and done. Maybe this is normal for me and it may or not be a cardiovascular risk. What ever the case, I'm 100 times better off than I was 2 years ago and have no plans on changing. I was dying a slow miserable death before. I'm happy, healthy, and loving life again these days. If I have to go early, this is how I want to do it.

Tyra, my cholesterol has been that high since December. In April I got those particle size tests and the other speciality tests. Those different tests did nothing to help me understand what is going on. I do have an explanation for my situation however.

For over 10 years I have been taking niacin on the advice of my doctor back then. It has to be the kind of niacin that makes you flush, as it gives much better results. I buy my niacin online from Amazon. But in October I decided to quit niacin as I had read a study that said it really did not prevent heart attacks. As long as I was on it, my LDL and trigly were nice and low. abd the HDL was nice and high. I started LC in August and quit niacin a few months later. When I got my blood checked it was out of sight. Of course my doctor was ready to put me on statins, although he did not push it because I told him I would not do it. I got it all checked again in April and it was the same. So I told my doctor that I was going to put myself back on Niacin.

My doctor's opinion is that niacin does not lower ldl but lowers trygl. I told him my long term study on myself showed that it did lower LDL, noting how low it was up until this year. He conceded that i might be an outlyer on the statistics and it might work for me. I have been back on niacin for s couple of months now, so will be getting my blood checked in another month or so.

I do not mind the flushing, as when I take it regularly it doesn't cause too much flushing. To get to the high enough dosage to make a difference you start out at a low dose and gradually go up. I now take 1000mg twice a day.

One thing I did learn from the particle tests and other unusual test is that I have an inherited tendency to high cholesterol. My parents both had heart attacks at young age and my father died at 45, this was long before the modern surgeries and other treatments. My mother had a heart attack at 52. But, both of my parents smoked. I don't do any of the things that affect risk. I also have 2 brothers who have no heart disease at 68 and 78.

I don't know if any of this information is helpful. Good luck on avoiding statins.

Here are links to the two special tests I had
http://www.medfusion.net/templates/...1/12677/VAP.pdf
http://www.liposcience.com/nmr-lipoprofile-test

These really did not help me as my doctor paid no attention to the results. I also saw a kidney specialist who is an internist and he said the problem with the special tests is that nobody really knows what it all means. Well until some doctors get interested nobody will know what it means.

I don't know what is going on either, but I do know that unless we know what was tested in your thyroid we don't really know if it's "fine" or not. I'd say probably 99% of doctors don't test the right things. Mine certainly never have. However my total cholesterol and LDL both dropped like rocks when I finally got a holistic nurse practitioner to prescribe natural thyroid for me.

Just noticed you said your test was non-fasting. If so it's practically worthless for diagnosing anything related to cholesterol and you can throw the numbers in the bin. Hopefully this is why your doctor wasn't concerned. On the other hand if your doctor was treating this the same as a fasting test then they're an idiot and you need to find a new doctor.

LOL! Yeah, non-fasting test results are utterly worthless. I'm surprised they even bothered with the test.

Update 6 months later!
Just got my results back today. The numbers in bold are the new ones.

Serum cholesterol: 371 -> 297.6
Triglycerides: 124 -> 53
HDL 85 -> 94.7
LDL 261 -> 192.6
non-HDL-C 286 -> 203
Cholesterol/HDL ratio 4.3 -> 3.1
Triglyceride/HDL ratio 1.46 -> 0.56
LDL/HDL ratio 3.07 -> 2.03

It looks like it's going the right way! I'm really
happy that I stuck with my diet!
This new was a correctly done fasting test.
I had another test done (fasting) two weeks after the
first erroneous test in July which also showed a
high total Cholesterol of 387 (no other numbers given)
which was even higher than the first one!

Wow - that is nice progress. Trigs way down and look at that HDL to triglyceride ratio! Awesome! So what dietary changes have you made, if any?

FYI: I too have made serious progress with my cholesterol issue in the past 6 months. I had labs done and visited my doctor a few weeks ago. I wanted the partial data, so I paid for an NMR out-of-pocket in addition to my normal labs. I posted about it on THIS page of my journal. My doc was very pleased with the progress. I could tell she was happy about it - probably as much as I was. On the visits before, I know she was torn between doing her supposed 'duty' to prescribing statins vs. letting me continue to try and fix the issue myself through diet. I think she was pretty amazed by what she saw.