Saturday 4 September 2010

Cholesterol levels

Well we've done 8 weeks of no saturated fats. Had the blood test and now the results. And they are, as we might have expected, inconclusive.


For those of you that know, we have managed to lower Him Outdoors' total cholesterol by nearly 1.00 mmol/L which is good but not as good as we had hoped. We have managed to lower his LDL (bad cholesterol) by 11% but because we have also lowered his HDL (good cholesterol) by 20%, the ratio of Total/HDL is actually worse than when we started.


Figures now Total Cholesterol is 6.42 (from 7.38) when it should be under 4.00
LDL is 4.5 (from 5.04) when it should be less than 2.00
HDL is 1.5 (from 1.88) which is good because it should be above 1.00
Triglycerides are 0.93 (from 1.00) which is good because it should be under 1.7
Ratio of Total/HDL is now 4.28 (from 3.92)


At the moment, studying these over a cup of tea at the kitchen table, we feel blinded by science and statistics. Him Outdoors is pissed off at the lack of clear and positive results and has had a rant about 'waste of f*ing time' and 'might have well not have bothered' and stomped off into the garden to take it out on a bit of wall.

Back to the doctor next week.

4 comments:

  1. I just wrote a huge comment. Vaporized by Blogger... I'll try again later. I have painting fatigue, not art, walls.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can sympathise with H.O. somewhat - all that effort and it is still high and the good bits have gone down! but then what is the rough guide of how long it takes to reduce the levels? what did the doctor expect the results to be?

    Give H.O. a big hug!! xx

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you both. Pliers I hate when that happens but thank you for writing it the first time.
    Jen yeah it raises more questions than it answers! No idea how long it takes or what was expected. Both the nurse that took the blood test and the pharmacist, were of the gallic shrug, he doesn't smoke 'pas de probleme' variety.
    Tony's of the, go away and bash hell out of something til you feel better, mindset. He'll be back ready to be more huggable in a bit :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh that is a bit disappointing. I can understand how he feels...all that effort.

    Could I suggest another test? Maybe in a week. They aren't always accurate. I have had some done in the past and then re-tested a week later and there was a difference.

    ReplyDelete