Cholesterol

[Hele1]

Is this high or ok? Thanks x

[bluebug]

What are your triglycerides?

Your renal function looks OK.

Doctors will say your total cholesterol is slightly raised however as there is no range I'm going on the range my surgery uses which goes up to 5.2 .

[greygoose]

Doesn't matter if it is. It will go down as your thyroid hormone levels rise.

[bluebug in reply to greygoose]

To be fair it isn't 10+ which is the level doctors normally panic at thinking you will collapse almost immediately.

At the moment doctors just mention it is high so they can prescribe statins.

[greygoose in reply to bluebug]

Yes, well, you don't need statins. High cholesterol will not give you a heart attack or a stroke, it is an essential nutrient. Your body needs it. It's just high because your T3 is low, so the body cannot process it properly. It will go down.

[Hele1 in reply to greygoose]

Thanks for your reassurance. I will start a new thread about my suppressed TSH and low t3 and t4 I have a doctors appointment in June and will go armed with information. In the meantime I have increased thyroxine back to 150mcg. I feel like I'm going round in circles. I originally went to endo to see if I could try t3 as felt unwell on 200mcg but now feel far worse than when I started! No wonder lots of people on here are self medicating doctors/endos need to be educated on the subject!! Sorry rant over 😊

[Mary-intussuception in reply to greygoose]

Isn't it so that high levels of LDL Cholesterol may contribute to Cardiovascular diseases as the excess not required by the cells can be deposited in the arteries?

[greygoose in reply to Mary-intussuception]

No, it's not true. If cholesterol is in the arteries, it is there to repair damage done by inflammation. Without the cholesterol, the damage would get worse. It's nature's sticking plaster!

[Katepots]

If your T3 is low cholesterol will go up. Add T3 or switch to NDT and it will come down 😀

[Hidden]

When I was on levo for only 5/6 months and my cholesterol went up, since changing to NDT it has now lowered again to 5. Yours is not high and nothing to worry about.

[Joyia]

Research has shown that the ageing population with low cholesterol tend to die earlier! We also need cholesterol for our brains to function properly.

[Mary-intussuception in reply to Joyia]

Hi Joyia

What research?

[Joyia in reply to Mary-intussuception]

I cannot exactly name the research off the top of my head Mary, but I have read this many times on the internet. If you google I am sure you will find substantive evidence. In the meantime I will have a look myself and try to find evidence for you.

[Joyia in reply to Mary-intussuception]

There has been many discussions on this site regarding cholesterol and am sure others will reinforce my findings. It may be an idea to look at old posts regarding this subject.

[Mary-intussuception]

Hi Hele 1

Do you like porridge? Unknown to me at the time, my cholesterol was raised after over 3 years on Levothyroxine. I wasn't told till 10 months later & a Medical Consultant was about to prescribe statins (which I had refused from Rheumatologist in the past).

9 months prior to this (ie one month after chest pain incident) I had switched from Shredded Wheat to porridge for a different reason. Med Consultant retested prior to prescribing and my Cholesterol was down to 4, which was lower than it had ever been !!!

I add a little fine oatbran sometimes and make with semi-skimmed milk.

I noticed that your sodium is the low end of normal range. You might like to try using a little more salt. We use the Fine SEA SALT.

Also your potassium is towards the low end of normal range but as you can see it is a small range anyway so OK. Do you like Bananas? They are an excellent source of potassium and best eaten early in day.

I have a banana and porridge for breakfast with water and decaf tea.

Hope this helps.

🐥

[Mary-intussuception]

Hi again Hele 1.

About your Cholesterol :

Your Plasma HDL (GOOD) cholesterol level is high which is good.

Your Plasma LDL (refered to as 'bad') cholesterol is 3.63. I think you will find that between 3.3 and 4.1 is regarded as "borderline high". Although no range is given. As they usually go by the Plasma total c. level - yours is 6.3. I think they like it to be around 5. But, years ago 5.4 was regarded as ideal.

If you start eating porridge every morning or adding fine oat bran to your cereal, I think you will find that over the coming months your Cholesterol levels will improve. Which is far better than ending up on statins.

The reason that LDL is referred to as 'bad ' I think you will find is that it is the Cholesterol that is carried to the cells and any excess not required by the cells can be deposited in the arteries and lead to symptoms of Cardiovascular disease.

Eating healthy oils/fats and cutting down on saturated fats can also help.

X

🐥

[humanbean]

If you want an interesting read on why cholesterol doesn't matter and higher levels lead to longer lives, read this - the graphs are particularly helpful :

drmalcolmkendrick.org/2012/...