Cholestoral confusion

[Wenders55]

I had a cholestoral check done as advised by my optician. Last one was three years ago when I was a stone heavier. The total level then was 5.01 and now is 5.5. I was surprised it was higher than last time as I have been eating healthily or so I thought and exercising. Can anyone help me working out what these figures mean. I did have a look online but totally confused by it all.

Serum triglycerides has been highlighted in red 0.5, HDL 2.1, LDL 3.2, non HDL level 3.4, cholestoral/HDL ratio 2.6 and BMI is 25.

Is there anything I should be doing to improve this or is it ok ish?

Thanks.

[TheAwfulToad Ambassador]

None of these numbers really have any diagnostic value, so frankly I'd take no notice, especially if you've been successfully losing weight and exercising.

TG, HDL, LDL are all in the expected range anyway.

The generally-accepted value for estimating future risk of cardiovascular disease is the TG:HDL ratio. Yours is extremely low (0.24), which would normally be good, but are you sure the value for TG is correct? 0.5mmol/L is unusually low, even on an LCHF diet.

[Wenders55 in reply to TheAwfulToad]

Thanks for quick reply. I was wondering about the TG being correct and why it was highlighted in red with an exclamation mark as well. I would have to check with my doctor but when phoning for result they said it was all normal.

[TheAwfulToad Ambassador in reply to Wenders55]

That's odd. Possibly they were highlighting a (suspected) incorrect measurement?

Anyway, IMO you've got nothing at all to worry about ...

[Wenders55 in reply to TheAwfulToad]

Thanks for your comments - I appreciate the response.

[Subtle_badger]

I really think you should talk to your optician. I wasn't aware of the connection between cholesterol and eye health, but apparently cholesterol can build up in the eyes and possibly damage your vision, even lead to blindness. Your optician wasn't asking for the test because they were concerned about your CVD risk, but from concern about your sight. I suspect if your optician as observed something in your eyes.

A lot of the arguments in favour of lchf are a long the lines of "our ancestors ate like this and they weren't obese/diabetic/having heart attacks" etc etc, but old blind people are common enough in Victorian literature and earlier, that it would not surprise me if blindness was a risk from high cholesterol. It might even be an reasonable evolutionary trade off.