Cholesterol Levels

[Marin Mom]

I am one year raw and here are my stats. I am perplexed because while some things went down my HDL (good cholesterol) and Triglycerides didn't improve, although they are well within acceptable ranges.

Today vs. May 2007

Cholesterol 146/198
Trigylceride 38/33
HDL 63/77
LDL 75/114


I eat alot of nuts and avocados. Any insights to this will be appreciated.

[RawKnitster]

Very little room for improvement there. Congratulations on significant improvement of LDL level. :)

[yogashmoga]

i test cholesterol daily as a biometric health screen tester. i guess i don't understand where you wanted your HDL and Trigs to go, lol. these are extremely healthy ranges (HDL should be as high as possible...60 is considered high, and Trigs should be under 150.)

your cholesterol ratio (total divided by HDL) is a pretty important value to consider. under 3.5 is considered healthy, and you're well within that range. in fact, you imporoved from 2.57 to 2.32. that's pretty significant.

as rawknitster said, congrats on the LDL. keep up with the avocados. i did one a day for three weeks and noticed my HDL shot up from 78 to over 100. this was before i was raw, however. now that i am raw and my total cholesterol is much lower, getting HDL that high would be extremely difficult and unnecessary. HDL is considered "good" because it is believed to remove cholesterol from atheroma within arteries and transport it to the liver for excretion or re-utilization. it is also thought to buffer acidity in the blood. without a surplus of cholesterol/acidity to begin with, you don't need HDL above 100. look to your ratio for peace of mind. hope that helped :).

[Marin Mom]

Thanks so much for your response. It does explain things a little more clearly to me now. I tend to split hairs a bit! :)

[raweater]

It's important to understand the whole cholesterol story is a myth to sell statin drugs (which actually increase heart attack risk as well as cause cancer, alzheimers and other diseases, these drugs, like most, accelerate death).

The "recommended" cholesterol (and blood pressure) values are specifically designed to sell as many drugs as possible and have no scientific validity. In less corrupt contries the normal/safe blood pressure is 160, here it's like 120, specifically to frighten people into buying heart pressure drugs (which increase heart attack risk by 60% compared to no treatment at all).

It has also been shown that low cholesterol, not high, is the true risk factor for heart attacks, half the people that get heart attacks have low cholesterol values.

www.mercola.com has a lot of information on the cholesterol fraud.

[Aleesha Sattva]

Also... your cholesterol goes up if your body is fighting any illness. So often our cholesterol will show up high... when in fact it's assisting us to combat illness. :)

[twilight]

Congrats on a healthy cholesterol count!

Saturated fat raises HDL and lowers triglycerides, (found that out personally years ago when I went from junk-food vegetarian to shrimp/salmon/sardine/whole boiled egg-eater). Not that you want to do that!!

[cherries]

Coconuts contain lauric acid which increases good cholesterol. It does this by protecting apolipoprotein D (which is created by the body and which binds with cholesterol and transports it) from being degraded by proteases.

[yogashmoga]

[QUOTE=raweater;442101] In less corrupt contries the normal/safe blood pressure is 160, here it's like 120, specifically to frighten people into buying heart pressure drugs QUOTE]

acceptable range in US is under 200