Blood work......before and after.......your opinion?

blood
(Catherine ) #1

I have just received my latest blood work results and they are as follows:

Cholesterol - 27/1/2016 - 6.4…13/09/2017 - 8.6 made up of:

Triglycerides - 1.6 (2016)…0.9 (2017)
HDL - 1.85 (2016)…2.37 (2017)
LDL - 3.8 (2016)…5.8 (2017)

so, total cholesterol is UP 2.2
Triglycerides are DOWN 0.7
HDL (goodie) is up .52
LDL (baddie) is up 2.0

Have been following the ketogenic lifestyle in the duration between the 2016 reading and the 2017 reading. I’m thinking these numbers are ok even though the baddies have increased more than the goodies cos the triglycerides are down. Would value your opinion.

Cathy

(Sjur Gjøstein Karevoll) #2

I’m not an expert, but as far as I understand the TG/HDL ratio is the best marker for heart disease, with TC/HDL also being a good candidate. In your case one of these improved a lot while the other very slightly worsened, which just goes to show that these markers make a lot of assumptions about what influences them. If they were both good markers then a change in heart disease risk alone should affect both of them but since they’re in somewhat disagreement that indicates that there’s at least one other factor in play.

One explanation is that while your heart disease risk decreased, your need for LDL to transport fat increased which throws off the TC/HDL ratio. That’s just a hypothesis though, it could be something else, but there’s really not enough information in just your lipid panel alone to do more than speculate. I do know that for myself in my situation I wouldn’t be unhappy if I got those numbers instead of my own, and I have a total cholesterol of 4.3.

(Catherine ) #3

thank you so much for your reply. I am happy with the figures given the ratios. I did the TG/HDL ratio as well and reckoned my blood was doing ok :slightly_smiling_face: