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I got basic blood work done recently, and in the interests of full disclosure I felt I ought to share the results with you. I am 53 years old, and have been eating a low carbohydrate diet for 17 years, or 32% of my life. In the past year I have deliberately slanted my diet toward higher fat and moderately lower protein — indeed, I shoot for 85% of my calories from fat. My blood work is as follows:
What a Low-Carb Diet Has Done To My Blood Work
Total Cholesterol: 202. Some of you may be thinking “That’s too high!” But read on.
Triglycerides: 32. Yes, 32.
HDL: 85
LDL: 111. Again, some of you may think that’s high. I’ll go into that in a moment.
VLDL: 6. The form says that anything under 50 is good. I’d say 6 is well within the healthy range. 😀
It also says that my heart disease risk factor is 2.38, with anything under 4.44 being healthy.
About that LDL: It’s not much talked about, but LDL is not measured directly. Apparently it can be done, but it’s expensive, so instead LDL is calculated using something called the Friedewald Equation. The equation goes like this: Total Cholesterol – (HDL + Triglycerides/5) = LDL. This is reportedly pretty accurate for people with average blood work.
But see that part about triglycerides/5? When triglycerides get under 100, as they so often do on a low carbohydrate diet, one-fifth of that small number becomes quite a small number indeed. (In my case, just 6.4.) This throws off the equation, resulting in artificially elevated LDL values. Indeed, at a previous visit my doc commented on my LDL being a little high. I said “Yeah, but look at my triglycerides. You know and I know that I could lower my LDL by raising my trigs.” She laughed and said, “Bad idea.”
Low-Carb and my HbA1C
My HbA1C, the measure of average blood sugar over roughly the past three months, was 4.7, down from 5.1 a year or so ago. This translates into an average blood sugar of 88 — that includes fasting and postprandial blood sugar, both, and everything in between. Not too shabby for a girl who has been diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome, and who has, in the past eight months or so, gone off both metformin and Victoza.
My doctor also ran a comprehensive metabolic panel, all of which came up stone normal. Apparently my kidneys are not “asploding,” nor is my liver going wonky, nor any other internal creepiness.
Oh, and the day I went in to get my blood work done, my blood pressure was 120/80 — perfect.
I am also happy to report that at 53 I still have no osteoarthritis, despite years of doing massage, I lift weights regularly, recently danced for three hours straight without wearing out or running out of breath, and can see close up without my glasses. 😀
Lest someone assume I simply won the genetic lottery, I will point out that my paternal grandfather dropped dead of a heart attack at 58, and my father, the parent I take after, was hospitalized with heart problems at the age of 55. No genetic jackpot here.
In short, 17 years of meat, eggs, cheese, etc, etc, appears to have done me no harm. And a good eight months or so of deliberately increasing fat as a percentage of my calories has measurably improved my health.
Way to go, Dana! And so encouraging for others to hear.
I have been on a low-carb diet the last 6 yrs and just went through a complete blood work up and numerous other medical tests and everything came back normal.
We’re all shocked, shocked I tell you! ;-P
Yeah for you Dana. I know that low carb is the best for me. Works everytime. When I go back to low fat, I end up gaining all of my weight back and then getting it off isn’t so easy as low carb.
Thanks for this article.
Dana any idea what can I try to raise my HDL? Doctor is beginning to think it is genetic that it is staying low .. Also any ideas on getting CRP lower ?
Niacin lowers LDL and raises HDL. It also makes you hot, red and itchy all over for about 20 minutes, so expect it. (The “flush” reduces over time.) See Dr. William Davis’s blog Exercise and alcohol both can help, as well. (Be careful about the two together, though. ;-P Although a glass of wine and an hour of dancing sounds pretty good.)
CRP is a measure of inflammation, which is, in a word, bad. You need to figure out what is inflamed and why. Surprisingly, dental problems can cause systemic infection and correlate with higher rates of heart attack; if you spit pink when you brush your teeth that’s the first thing to look at. Be very careful about vegetable oils — soy oil, safflower oil, all of those, since they contain pro-inflammatory omega-6. And if you haven’t added some fish oil (or oily fish) to your diet, that’s worth trying, too.
And once again: I am not a doctor, I do not play one on television, I cannot give medical advice, etc.
I get so tickled when I hear things like this! Congratulations!
(Of course, there is also a small part of me that just loves to see carb ‘promoters’ and professional vegan’s heads explode when they’re forced see the proof that invalidates everything they earn their grants and salaries on. I should no doubt be ashamed – but not today…)
Eh, what’s life without a little schadenfreude now and then? ;-D
Dana…I have loved you for TEN long years – you GO girl! I am so grateful for the day I fell into your “low carb nonsense” cookbooks! Keep going and you’ll live to be 95 and you’ll still be dancing!
Hi, Dana.
I have most of your books and have been following you for years. Your story is similar to mine except that I am a good bit older than you. About a month ago I began testing my blood ketones, ala Jimmy Moore. It took me a while to get into ketosis but here is my problem. I had to eat too much protein in order to get enough fat in my diet. How in the world did you get to 85% fat? You ought to write another book telling us how you did it. I love cream but eating or drinking that is not very satiating and is not sustainable. Please tell us more.
Thanks
I deliberately add fat to things, as does Jimmy. (He was here a few weeks ago for the Low Carb Meet & Greet, and asked for butter to melt over his spareribs.) I use a lot of fat to scramble eggs in or make omelets. I eat nuts for snacks, especially high fat nuts like macadamias, Brazils, and pecans. I often eat shirataki noodles with a good, fatty topping — butter and Parmesan, or a cheese sauce made of melted cream cheese and cheddar, that sort of thing. I also make shirataki into Asian sesame noodles, using a 50/50 blend of almond butter and coconut oil, plus a little ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil (of course!) and a squirt of sriracha hot sauce. I also have made coconut butter — this is different from coconut oil; think “peanut butter” but made from coconut. It’s dead simple if you have a good food processor: Dump in a few cups of plain shredded coconut (this costs me $3/pound in the bulk bins at the health food store). Turn on processor. Run for about fifteen minutes, stopping once or twice to scrape down the sides. When it actually flows, it’s done. I’ve mixed this with some bitter chocolate and sweetener, for a very high fat “spoon candy” — I just scoop a spoonful or two out of the snaptop container I keep it in
Speaking of which, it’s 10% off day at my health food store! I should go buy nuts and shirataki!
Thanks for all of the great tips.
My problem was that for three weeks I was weighing and measuring every bite I ate and entering it into a nutrition program. It became very tedious. I am going to up my fat consumption but keep weighing my vegetables because I am always afraid that I am eating too many carbs. I try to stay in dietary ketosis but have a hard time maintaining it.
I love to read about your lc journey. Mine was similar. I co-authored a book published by Prentice-Hall in1982, villainizing meat, coffee, and sugar. I, like you, have done an about face. It depresses me that some of those books are still out there:-)
I make a coconut almond brittle by pouring a layer of Emerald Cocoa Roast Almonds (No sugar) into the bottom of a pyrex baking pan and covering it with a thin layer of coconut butter mixed with coconut oil. I put the pan in the freezer until hard and remove the thin block of brittle (comes out very easily) and break it into pieces. No need to sweeten because of the almonds. I sometimes add a tablespoon or two of natural unsweetend peanut butter before freezing. Of course the brittle must be stored in the refrigerator.
Thanks again for sharing some of your strategies.
Hi Dana,
Quite an interesting article. Although we have different digits for mostly everything in Sweden, I will take some time to try to translate that into our ways.
But, I have some questions:
You have eaten low carb in so many years, why did you have Metformin and Victoza?
Probably we also have different rules for doctor’s prescriptions as well, but I need advice.
Can you say that you could quit those medications due to higher fat intake? Or is that just a coincidence?
m
Will you publish some books with your great reciepies and more fat.? maybe you already have done that, but I have missed it.
What kind of fats do you use?
And of course I will take the opportunity to thank you for your good works and congrate you to fantastic blood values, you are such a role model!
Many regards
Karin
Karin, you ask excellent questions.
I had long suspected that I was a whole lot sicker than anyone suspected back when I went low carb. Sure enough, about 18 months ago I was diagnosed with PCOS — polycystic ovarian syndrome. I had no overt symptoms — no cysts, no menstrual irregularity, no male pattern baldness, none of that. But my testosterone levels were high. My doctor said that it was driven by elevated insulin. I hadn’t been worried about my blood sugar, because my HbA1C — the test of average blood sugar over the previous 3 months — had always been fine. But I started taking my blood sugar, and discovered that it was just a little high in the morning when I arose — in the prediabetic range. The rest of the day it was fine, and certainly my postprandial blood sugar was good, but that morning thing was driving me crazy.
How, I asked my doctor, can I be running high blood sugar when I eat 20 grams of carb per day or less? “Your liver is making it,” he replied. Apparently my liver is very good at gluconeogenesis, making new sugar. Overnight, when I’d been fasting for 8 hours or so, my liver apparently decided it needed to crank out some sugar, and would overshoot the mark. The doctor thought that my morning sugar creeping up into the pre-diabetic range was likely due to other hormonal changes, since I’m 53.
We tried the drugs, and they helped some. And, again, my HbA1C was fine, and even my morning sugar wasn’t in the diabetic range. Call me a perfectionist. (I’m hyper-aware that every time blood sugar is elevated, permanent damage is being done to the body. I kept thinking “I’m rotting!”
Then I tried the fat fast, and all of a sudden my blood sugar was stone perfect. I quit the Victoza, and cut the metformin back from two tablets a day to one. I couldn’t fat fast forever, for obvious reasons, but it was clear my body liked this stuff. I kept my fat percentage up, and eventually dropped the metformin entirely. I don’t even check my blood sugar every morning anymore, more like every third. I haven’t seen it above 100 again, and generally it’s in the 80s.
The only other thing I can think to attribute this to is that I have been taking cinnamon capsules; cinnamon has some good clinical testing showing it has a hypoglycemic effect. The doctor did put me on estrogen, but I was on that for several months without a noticeable effect on my blood sugar.
I think I will, indeed, put out a fat fast book, probably in ebook format, since I’m not sure my publisher will want to handle it.
I use coconut oil, organic lard from pasture-raised pigs, bacon grease, olive oil, and butter, often local small-farm butter.
Hope this helps! Thanks for your kind words.
I’m really glad i read this! i have recently changed to a low carb, low sugar diet at the age of 32 after consuming too many protein shakes a day and carbs galore in an attempt to grow extra muscle. This was just not working so i have changed to a real food diet and am watching the fat disappear! My only concern was my having a raised cholesterol due to all the dairy, eggs and bacon i eat. Thank you for putting my mind at rest 🙂
I like to know when you are planning on publishing the fat fast book? I read your article above very intersting.
Working on a basic outline now.
We are working on the book now. We have some great plans for it including a lot of recipes. We will announce more about it as we get closer to publishing it.
On Dr. Michael Eades blog he had a post a few years ago about how LDL is calculated. It can be found here: http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/weight-loss/low-carbohydrate-diets-increase-ldl-debunking-the-myth/
In the comments he noted that there is another formula that can be used when TG is below 100. Under that formula, your LDL comes out to 71, a considerable difference from 111.
Oh dear. I’ve read so many positive things about blood workup with low carb, but my first workup after my first year of LC was not so great. My total cholesterol, triglycerides and LDL were all well over the limit. And I don’t really understand why. I eat high fat, as you do, and my HbA1c is 4.8. I thought I was doing everything right. I don’t feel bad, and I am a bit underweight. I’ve heard recently that dangers of high cholesterol in women have been overstated. Do you think this is the case, and I shouldn’t worry?
I do think that’s the case — so far as I know, elevated blood cholesterol is only a risk factor in women between about 55 and 65; during child bearing years and in old age it doesn’t correlate with heart disease. (Keep in mind, too, that “risk factor” only means that two things correlate; it does not prove that one causes the other.)
Your HbA1C is glorious. I don’t know how high your TC and LDL were, but they’d worry me less than the trigs. Did you by any chance eat a really high fat meal the night before? A high fat meal before your blood tests can mean that you have transitory high trigs from dietary triglycerides — ie, the fat you ate. You might eat a lower-fat meal the night before your test, and see if your trigs drop.
Standard disclaimer: I am not a doctor, I do not play one on television, I cannot give medical advice.
TC=283, LDL=168. I eat very high fat all the time, so perhaps your explanation fits the scenario. I will try the lower-fat meal before my next test. Thanks Dana. Disclaimer acknowledged 😉
thank you, dana, for this information. i was on your blog and i and another lady had asked about it and so i am very glad to find the info here 🙂 i am wondering if your ‘carbs’ are the only thing you ‘limit’ – since you are consuming a good deal of fat – do you have to do any other kind of limiting of food?? i was just reading the new ‘atkins’ book and they seemed to indicate that you MIGHT possibly have to limit CALORIES as well as carbs if you weren’t losing well – SHEESH!! i hope not 🙁
thanks again!
Yes, for a fat fast you are supposed to eat only 1000 calories per day. At 80-90% fat, that’s not a lot of food. That’s why it’s not a long-term strategy.
However, I have decreased my protein a bit, and increased my fat, even when I’m not limiting calories. And I always stay quite low carb, most days under 25 grams.
thanks, dana!!
also, when you do the ‘fat fast’ according to the book, it isn’t that you just ‘eat fat’ – you only eat a certain AMOUNT of ‘fat food’ – around 1000 calories if i’m remembering correctly – somewhere around that or up to 1200 calories perhaps…..this is what i’m really looking to understand. do you ‘trade out’ other food in order to eat more fat?? i have been ‘stuck’ for such a while and i am REALLY trying not to go down any ‘deadends’ if i can help it!!
thank you so much for sharing your info and experience with us.
Yes, you just eat high fat foods, and not a lot of those. Atkins (and before him Kekwick and Pawan) said 1000 calories per day; I often hit as high as 1200. I also often wind up between 80-85% fat instead of 90%, which is hard. It’s not a lot of food, but I’m in such deep ketosis that I am genuinely not hungry.
Dana – I can not thank you enough for the information you posted above. My 21 daughter has been battleling PCOS as well. I’m trying to learn to low carb life style to help her out. Is there a chance for you to give us a sample menu of your day?? As a family we are not big on carb , but vegetables are a big portio of what we eat. I have a very difficult time figuring the fat , protein and carb percentage. what is the best tool in your opinion??
When I’m keeping track, I generally use my cooking program, MasterCook, because I’ve used it so much it’s really comfortable for me. I just enter everything I eat as if it were an ingredient in a recipe, but the “recipe” is actually my day’s food intake. I use the recipe analysis button to see my totals. I’m betting you don’t have MasterCook, though. I’ve used FitDay’s free online nutrition tracker, and think it’s pretty good. There are also plenty of nutrition tracker apps for smart phones, though most of them are aimed at counting calories and assume you’re limiting fat. Still, they’ll tell you where you stand for the day.
My food intake for the day varies quite a lot, especially dependent on whether I’m working on a book at the time or not. I eat a more varied menu when I’m working on a book, and I also tend to eat leftovers any time I’m not cooking something new.
The past several months, I’ve fallen into a pattern of eating a late breakfast and a late lunch/early supper, rather than three meals per day. I generally get up sometime between 8:30-9:30; I realize most of the world has long since gone to work by then. I drink a pot of tea, sometimes take a walk when the weather’s nice (especially in summer, since it will get hot later), and don’t eat breakfast till 10:30-11. Sometimes I’ll have a handful of nuts in the interim. A typical breakfast would be an avocado-and-cheese omelet, cooked in plenty of coconut oil, bacon grease or lard. Other common breakfasts include three eggs scrambled in lots of fat with four to six slices of bacon, or three fried eggs and three sausage patties. If there are leftovers in the fridge, I often will warm them up with fried eggs on top — cauli-rice dishes with eggs on top are great. So is meat loaf, or green beans, or spinach.
Anyway, I eat a big late breakfast, and often am not hungry again until somewhere around 4-6 pm. Again, I may have a handful or two of nuts sometime in the afternoon, or if I’m really peckish, a bowl of shirataki noodles with butter, Parmesan, and a little garlic, or made into sesame noodles.
Suppers vary a lot. It’s not unknown for us to just eat meat — a steak, a chop, a piece of chicken, but if I have salad stuff in the house I’m likely to eat it. If I have made a “deli-style” salad — coleslaw, UnPotato Salad (potato salad made with cauliflower instead of the potatoes), something I can just grab and eat I will nearly always have it. Indeed, this kind of thing doesn’t last too long, because I love ’em so much. Soup is like this, too; if I have soup in the fridge I tend to reach for it reflexively until it’s gone.
If I’m working on a book, it’ll be more complex than this because I’m testing recipes — I’ll do a skillet supper, or a new vegetable side dish, something like that.
Vegetables are actually great for this way of eating, so long as you stick to the really low carb ones — lettuce, spinach, cabbage, anything leafy, really; asparagus, mushrooms, cauliflower, broccoli, celery, bean sprouts, cucumbers, etc. These very low carb vegetables served with butter, mayo, olive oil, sour cream, something high fat, let you get your fat percentage up without eating excessive protein or carb. Too, they let you feel like you’re eating a substantial portion of food. I’m working on fat fast recipes right now, and I think I’m going to get a lot of mileage out of the lowest carb veggies.
Hope this helps!
thank you, dana! that really helps ME seeing how your ‘day’ plays out with what you eat – i tend to eat on about the same time shedule!! only real diff is that i have to eat something small (protein) when i first get up to take meds with – i usually just eat and egg and then have ‘more’ breakfast later 🙂 anyhow, THANK YOU
Dear Dana- I really appriciate your detailed respond. I have read it once and will come back to it and keep reading it more. I have to apologize for all the misatkes. I usually type so fast and in mind all the words are there. I meant to say – My 21 years old daughter, not 21 daughter, so sorry. I ‘m sure you understood what I meant. With all due respect to the people that published and maintain FIT day I find it not user friendly, because we don’t use a lot premade food or food out of a package it is difficult to use FIT day. I might have to write a small program with the food that we eat to keep track of everything. Again thank you so much. Hope to talk to you soon.
dana
i’m a bit confused :-/ i was just reading jimmy moore’s blog about in ongoing ‘nutritional fat fast’ i think he called it…..
i know i asked this before but i’m not SURE of the answer!! as you and jimmy are doing this are you limiting your calories to 1000 per day?? he seemed to indicate that he wasn’t but i thought you indicated that you WERE. i’m limiting my carbs to 20 per day and i am shooting for the right ratio of ‘fat’ (although challenging) but as i was NOT trying to actually do the ‘regular fat fast’ i was NOT counting my calories – should i be? i’ve had ‘hard going’ losing any weight in a while and i would really like to lose another 15 pounds (still a long ways from skinny!) but i’ve done the ‘fat fast’ and after i go back to ‘regular low carb’ the weight i lose on it just comes back 🙁 i’ve also done the ‘egg fat fast’ and the same thing. i even did dr. eades liquid low carb with a salad for dinner fast’ and lost 8 of the pounds and they came back, as well!!! i’m talking staying LOW CARB and i’m talking no sugar alcohols, etc. i was allowing myself some erythritol but i’ve given that up, too, a couple of weeks ago…..i just hate ‘jumping through hoops’ and the weight just ‘come back’.
any ideas?? and ARE you limiting yourself to 1000 calories a day???
thanks again!!
Somewhere between 1000 and 1200 calories per day when I’m fat fasting, but I’ve never done this for longer than 8 days. However, I do shoot for super-high fat all the time.
when you’re shooting for ‘super high fat’ on an ongoing basis do you limit calories then??- i don’t mean the ‘fat fast’ per se – but on your ‘ongoing program’??
thanks!!
Nope, but I do try to be mindful of eating only when I’m actually hungry, and of not eating till I’m stuffed just because the food is there.
oh! and perhaps i should tell you that i am an almost 59 year old woman and that i walk 4-5 miles BRISKLY every day – i’m been on one form of low carb or another for several years but found that ‘basic’ seems to be the best – at least at maintaining since i’m not having much luck going forward (or downward :-))
dear dana
don’t pull your hair out!! i apologize that i keep giving you too much info and ‘burying’ what i’m asking in all the words….
i understand that on the ‘fat fast’ you only do 1000 to maybe 1200 calories a day and you personally don’t do it longer than 8 days – got it!!
what i am REALLLLLLY wanting to know is on a ‘NUTRITIONAL FAT FAST’ like jimmy moore and you both seem to be doing – DO YOU LIMIT YOUR DAILY CALORIES on this, as well??
this is a BIG question for me, right now.
thank you so much for your patience!!
Ah — you mean, when I’m just eating high fat, super low carb, and modestly limited protein, ’cause my blood sugar really, really likes it? Nah. I don’t pay attention to calories much then. I do try not to eat unless I’m genuinely hungry; like all Americans I’ve been programmed to eat for entertainment, or because it’s time, or any number of reasons other than “My body needs fuel.”
When I’m working on cookbooks I gain weight, specifically, I think, because I have to cook and eat whether I’m hungry or not. :-/ Still beats a day job.
thank you, dana
i got ‘into’ trying out a bunch of recipes a couple of months ago and horror upon horror the scale ROSE!!! had to nip that in the bud :-/ i love to cook, but i also LOVE TO EAT what i cook!! i think it’s the whole idea of ‘keeping track of the protein’ that is the new concept i’m stubbing my toe on – but i shall prevail 🙂 i am going to figure this out!!
thanks again – looking FORWARD to those recipes you are ‘developing’ using the low carb veggies as base……yes yes yes…………..!
If you’re eating seriously high fat, you don’t really have room to eat except to deal with genuine hunger. But yes, if you want to eat large quantities of food, low carb veggies are your friend — those, and shirataki noodles.
Dear Dana- i just love your sense of humor and honsety. Do you tour and give speeches or talks? How about book singning??? I love to meet you and learn more from you. I just wished that I liked to cook- cooking is not of interst to me, but then again I went ahead and bought all your cook books. I hope they have nice pictures to amuse me.
I’m sorry, but they don’t have pictures. They’d be vastly more expensive with photos of several hundred recipes in each!
I actually like public speaking, but don’t really know anything about how to get on a speaking circuit…
Thanks for buying my books! I hope you like them, even without pictures. The 15 minute book, in particular, may be really useful to you, since it has some ideas that call for very minimal cooking. And I do crack wise, even in my recipes. It’s instinctive, I can’t help it. ;-D
Dana –
I just found this website and I’m so thankful that you posted your blood work results from last summer . Are you still as healthy now as you were then, and are you continuing with the higher level off fat on your low carb lifestyle? I recently got the news that my pre-diabetes has now shown up as something more with an A1C test of 7.0 – I do not want to believe or accept a diagnosis of diabetes, so that lab result was a wake up moment for me and I have been doing Atkins for 2 months. I think my total daily calories have been too high, so I am about to change that – I slowly lost 11 poounds, but then 6 came right back – and I have been so vigilant to keep Net carbs below 25, and some days below 20. But that is NET carbs and I think I need to keep my total carbs to that level and lower my calories if I want to lose weght. But I am writing to you now to ask what you know about metformin and how it might interact with a low carb diet, and will it help or hinder. I suspect that is what my doctor will propose when I see him for the first time since that last lab test with the A1C of 7. Do you have any comment on the pros/cons of using metformin? Thank you for sharing your perspective and insights with us. Gratefully –
Metformin has multiple, multiple side effects, not the least of which is weight gain. In fact, weight gain seems to be the commonest side effect. I do not know how this works with low-carb, but I do know that this side effect is one I’ve seen very frequently in my thirty years of nursing and among friends. While we’re at it, stay far away from the statin drugs as well. They are scary, have serious side effects (like diabetes and neurological damage), and there are no studies showing a correlation between cholesterol and heart disease.
Congratulations on the pretty bloodwork. For much of it, it is a matter of keeping your doctor happy. I have spent years looking for a study connecting cholesterol and heart disease. Admittedly, I won’t accept studies from the big pharmaceutical houses who have literally billions at stake tied to their statin drugs–scary, scary drugs. In several years of research, I’ve yet to find such a study, at least where the data wasn’t “cherry picked”. Indeed, the study that started the whole low cholesterol, low saturated fat silliness was that of Ansel Keys, and he practically wrote the book on cherry-picking data! That being said, I am grateful beyond words for your most excellent advice. Low-carb living has quickly stabilized my blood sugar and gotten me off diabetic meds. And it tastes so good!
Hi Dana, great article! I just subscribed to the iPad version of the magazine. You stated that you can still see up close with glasses. Please tell me how you have managed that. I am 51 and have just become dependent on reading glasses to see small print and read. It’s annoying!! Do you think that the low carb diet has anything to do with it? Please advise. Tracy
The subject of Cholesterol fascinates me. I have read Malcom Kendrick ( going to hear him speak in 2 weeks time!) Uffe Rannscov, Gary Taubes, and am presently reading Cholesterol Clarity. I have personally come to blows ( figuratively speaking) with my Lipid Consultant because she put me on Finrate tablets because of the bad effects of statins, then when these seemed to work she then put me on Ezetamine, which I found out afterwards are giving some cause for concern. I simply told her that I now knew better because of reading the books that I have mentioned, in a letter and that I was leaving off all drugs and not going to worry about my Cholesterol levels. These had been high and I was led to believe by her that I had FH. ( I have realised now that it is probably high because I have problems with one of my kidneys and my body is producing more Cholesterol as a healing process) I had a letter back from her, pulling rank and declaring that she was reporting all this to the British Heart Foundation, including Malcom and Uffe! She also sent a disclaimer to my surgery. Actually my GP wrote back to her and said that I had every right to refuse treatment if I wished! Such a performance!
Anyway I just want to comment that if we need to not be concerned about our numbers, why have you gone to the bother to find them out?
I would like to add that I have had blood tests twice lately to check on other things as well as the C levels. Not for my sake, but for the records and other treatment I have been having. I don’t know what the numbers were, but there Hasn’t been a word said about my C levels, so I am assuming they are down. I am not asking for them because I wish to “Let sleeping dogs lie!”
I am currently on the second day of FF to see if I can shift a few pounds that have been stubbornly sticking with me! Although I have been on low carb for four years.
So glad I came across you and your site and the Low Carb magazine.