Bad/good cholesterol and saturated fats

Last week i had my yearly full check up and blood test done,today i rang the nurse to see how it came out and was told that it was now perfect,good cholesterol is up,bad cholesterol to 3.8 and my diabetic risk is now low,she asked me how i managed to get them all within the recommended levels,i said that we a family that use only small amounts of raw sugar,we eat a lot of raw veg/salad greens and herbs,also i said that we changed to cooking with dripping/lard,we would go through a 454g container per week, she couldn't believe it,i told her that i thought what that we've been told about eliminating as much saturated fat out of our diets as we can is just a load of crap,the fact that i lowered my bad cholesterol by consuming more saturated fat speaks for its self.

My mother had high cholesterol for years, she was on a low cholesterol diet and it went up. If the body does not get it from food it makes its own. My father ate dripping on toast, loved his fry ups and had exceptionally low cholesterol.

I can second that about the fats. My hubby is Type 1 Diabetic, slightly overweight around his middle, and we eat a lot of butter and all the natural fat from our animals (which apparently according to some recent research, those animal fats are better for you now than seed fats).
His doctor said that if he didn't know him, he would have thought that OH was a skinny female or a triathelete! All his trans fats cholesterol were excellent! So yay to eating stuff how God intended!! And steer clear of refined stuff that just seeps through your arteries....

I agree, animals fats are the way for us. I avoid seed and most of the vege based fats except coconut oil which has a number of great health benefits incuding reducing bad cholesterol and reducing fat storage.

Ok so I'm different. Reasonably thin, eat moderately (as in all things in moderation), and cholesterol 6.2. I was gobsmacked last week when I got the results. Reading on the net about what I should give up - nothing as I don't eat those kinds of foods!

Genetics play a part in what your cholesterol level is - not just diet. Many of us don't have enough of a family medical history to know the trend in the family - cholesterol wasn't measured routinely 30 years ago. Exercise and alcohol can also alter the results. Those of us who ate non-mass produced foods when we were young tend to have lower cholesterol - this is not a rule but from personal observation of results in my patients. Of course, family history of heart disease, stroke, heritage and a personal smoking history will raise the risk. Since I started eating butter, organic double cream and working on my pico lsb my cholesterol has dropped. Having an underactive thyroid doesn't help though

Yes that's true. My wiry little very healthy 82 year old mum has a 6.1 reading. I get lots of exercise so maybe have to start milking little miss gentle again. I too have an under active thyroid gland though not medicated at present. How does that disturb things ?

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kai;492119 wrote: My mother had high cholesterol for years, she was on a low cholesterol diet and it went up. If the body does not get it from food it makes its own. My father ate dripping on toast, loved his fry ups and had exceptionally low cholesterol.

And your body will make cholesterol in response to inflammation so if you have high cholesterol look for the cause and treat that. Trying to reduce cholesterol in isolation is akin to arriving at a fire and blaming the firemen for the blaze.

thevarneys, as I understand it, the problem with T1 or undiagnosed T2 is that the carbohydrates that are digested into glucose inside the body go into the blood vessels. With insufficient insulin it does not easily get out to the blood vessels. And glucose combines with proteins to make glycoproteins which are not as flexible as proteins, so the arteries harden. This can be faster than when a person smokes .
When fat is eaten and digested, tiny particles float around in the veins and arteries until they get deposited in the fat storage structures. Saturated fats make bigger and stickier particles, so instead of being flushed out of the flexible arteries they are more able to stick inside them. Then a lump of fat sticks inside an artery in the feet, or heart, or head, and gets bigger and bigger until it blocks the artery with dire consequences.
So, the solid animal fats may well reduce the cholesterol, but .... cholesterol is only one part of artery blockage, and is not necessarily the most important factor. It is impossible to remove all lipids (fats and oils) from the diet, but deliberately using saturated fats and lots of it seems somewhat silly to me.
PS When I had my heart attack on 13 September 1998 at age 43, my total cholesterol was 3.4. But 41 years of out-of-control blood glucose had hardened the LAD artery.

My cholestrol levels have also decreased and i dont really eat any animal fats, I usually cut it off any meat,
Am pretty sure lots of exercise helps as nothing in my diet had changed between tests but I had increased the forest walks I was doing

Interesting LR.

I consume low amounts of daily carbohydrates in the form of no breads or breakfast cereals,i now dont drink any alcohol and have never smoked,ive got my daily calorie intake at about 1500 which is 1000 short of what a bloke who's moderately active should consume,my weight has gone from 120kg to now 95kg with 14kg to go.
I'm sure for me it's all to do with the full package in that if everything else is in balance the consumption of animal fats doesn't have any detrimental effects.

eelcat;492127 wrote: Ok so I'm different. Reasonably thin, eat moderately (as in all things in moderation), and cholesterol 6.2. I was gobsmacked last week when I got the results. Reading on the net about what I should give up - nothing as I don't eat those kinds of foods!

Not surprising. A friend of ours is a vegetarian and includes no fats (animal or vegtable) in his diet. His cholesterol is very high.

Stikkibeek;492201 wrote: Not surprising. A friend of ours is a vegetarian and includes no fats (animal or vegtable) in his diet. His cholesterol is very high.

You do wonder sometimes if that may stem back to a period in there lifes when they lived a poor lifestyle and the metabolism has remained out of kilter ever since.

Eelcat - I have a feeling that there is a hormone made by the thyroid that every cell in the body has receptors for, which means it is vital. So thyroid issues cause a lot of seemingly unrelated problems.

S I don't understand your post. Im by no means vegetarian nor animal fat free. I just meant I don't eat a high cholesterol diet so where literature says to cut back on those sots of food I can't really as I don't over indulge in them anyway. Our diet is considered a very healthy one by mainstream standaards.

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