High Cholesterol Support Group

my husband dropped his 150 pts in 1 week, not sure what did it since he had made a lot of changes at once.. but here they are: he quit all sugary foods, added flax seed, and fish oil to his cholesterol meds. Then he threw in just a pinch of weight training nothing serious.
His doc told us that raising his good cholesterol could help lower his trigs. Hope that helps, let me know if you come up with anything that works well!
Good luck!!!
Kayte

Do you have a compounding pharmacist near you? They very often are well versed in alternative methods in addition to traditional Rx, and they may have ideas for you.

My comp pharm's suggestions have lowered my bad cholesterol after only 2 months of trying guggul/plant based things.

And I'm on a fish oil combo thing by Barlean's to work on my triglycerides, that weren't high-high but needed tweaking.

You need someone who understands the IUI and what affects what. A good comp pharm will be able to help you.

For the last 12 years I've had high cholesterol and the blood tests kept coming back with the high cholesterol results no matter what I tried. Anyway I changed my diet to all vegetarian, 1750 kcals per day, Protein:Fat:Carbs=15%:34%:51% and kept track of the vitamins and minerals in a computer program called cron-0-meter. FYI I'm 6 foot 2 inches and 183 lbs at the start and now 155 lbs after 6 months. I'm happy and have lots of energy for daily tasks and exercise. I get > 90% of recommended daily allowance of all vitamins and minerals from my diet now. This program of diet is called Calorie Restriction and you can find out more info at http://www.CRSociety.org. My diet is Oatmeal with Rice & Soy Milk + nuts, fruit snack with blackberries, blueberries, strawberries and prunes, Salad with spinach and coleslaw and sunflower seeds, Salad dressing with salsa, cottage cheese, apple cider vinegar, and Vegetable soup with water, cooked spinach, broccoli, sweet potato, brown rice, tomato sauce, onions & peppers, and soy meat substitutes, final meal of the day is rice, soy meat substitutes, quorn, tomato sauce on a small plate. I used to use lots of spices like curry, paprika, chili pepper, vinegars etc., but I've since cut down since I've read that lots of hot spices can increase hair loss in some people. My fats come from flaxseed oil and sesame + sunflower seeds + the nuts. I'm absolutely amazed by the results. It takes a lot of will power, but in less than 3 months my cholesterol numbers improved dramatically:



Test: Long Term => After 3 mo CR/Veg ( Guidelines )



Total Cholesterol: 207 => 144 ( should be < 200 )



Triglicerides: 154 => 81 ( should be < 149 )



HDL: 34 => 42 ( should be > 40 )



LDL: 152 => 84 ( should be < 129 )



Risk Ratio: 6.09 => 3.43 ( should be < 5.00 )

Here's a link to the study that gave me the idea for the nutrient ratios of the diet :

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1899979

And I also wanted to mention the important balance of omega-3 fats vs Omega-6 fats should be close to 3 : 1 with Omega-6 fats 3 x bigger than Omega-3 fats. I get most of my Omega-3 fats from flaxseed oil and sesame seeds, but you can also find it in many types of fish. Omega-6 oils I get from sunflower seeds (5g with every meal). If you can do this, then you can get similar results.