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So I’ve been eating for heat since last August, have gained a bit of weight (like 40 lbs) and just had some blood work done for a program my job offers for a discount on your health insurance. I wasn’t worried, and thought all of my levels would be great but woah was I wrong. My fasting blood glucose wasn’t terrible at 118, two years ago it was 110, but my total cholesterol is very high at 264, up from 198, triglycerides up to 248 from 140 and my LDL is up to 165 up from 115. I am totally freaked out. I’m in grad school to be a nurse practitioner and those cholesterol levels are frightening. I haven’t been able to exercise much due to aforementioned grad school, but I work as a nurse and am on my feet running around for 12+ hours a day three days a week, and try to be active on my days off, going for walks, cleaning around the house. I don’t know what to do about these levels. I’m usually never cold, warm hands, sleep fine through the night, am just eating the food, but my cycles are still irregular and I do have PCOS. The irrational side of my brain is screaming to do what I did years before, which put me in this mess and eat nothing and exercise like a maniac, but I know that won’t help me in the long run. Any advice?
My husband has just been to his new doctor and is being put on statins. I’ve heard that the new idea is that you take statins as a last resort. Does Matt discuss cholesterol anywhere so that I can find more info and hopefully not have my husband take these questionable drugs?
@nurse.mcbride-
Have you considered a middle ground between starving yourself and ad libitum eating? As you know (probably much better than I do), those numbers you quoted are a little scary. A moderate diet and exercise plan might be what you need to keep them from getting worse. It’d be shame to start your new career as a nurse practitioner with diabetes and a looming heart problem.
I think people get burnt out on dieting because they take it to extremes and unnecessarily deny themselves, but I also think that good health requires certain limits. I’ve lost 40 pounds since last summer (and regained my health) basically by eating what I want, while watching portions and exercising. I understand that what works for me might not work for everyone, but watching your calorie balance might help you get some of those numbers under control.
Right around the time I wrote that post, I hadn’t gained any weight in about 8 months. I started eating for eat in August 2012, got my temps up by December 2012, and stopped gaining any weight by April of 2013 at which point I stopped RAARFing and just ate until satiation. Since then I don’t eat to excess, and since I’ve gotten that blood work done, I have lost about 15 lbs. or so. I hope this is the beginning of a slow weight loss. I keep active, and am not very sedentary, so hopefully the trend will continue since I have been consistently warm, and my cycles are pretty regular. So we’ll see how things go! Thanks for the advice!
Oh, wow, I didn’t notice the date on your original post. Great to hear you’ve made so much progress in the last four months!
Greyhound gal, there is lots of info online about ways to lower your cholesterol without statins. Some of it is very shortterm (like I wouldn’t recommend increasing PUFAs), but things like stress reduction, moderate exercise, eating plenty of soluable fiber (oats, beans, etc.) and fruits and veggies, and an all-around healthy and balanced diet can certainly help if he hasn’t tried that already. Also certain herbs can help. Cholesterol is a body’s natural antioxidant, so it usually rises in response to stress and free radicals – addressing the stressors in other ways can lower cholesterol. Doctors also sometimes put people on statins for cholesterol that isn’t all that high (like around 200 for example), and there is a lot of debate about whether that is necessary or even helpful. So, I would do some research, and have your husband follow his own preferences and not just blindly follow doctor’s orders. People have serious side effects on statins to be sure. If he does decide to take them, make sure he takes ubiquinol (a form of COQ10), and is on the look out for any issues with muscle pain and cognitive or memory decline.
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