chol (total) 241mg/dl-------6.23mmol/l
tg 108 mg/dl
hdl-c 36 mg/dl
ldl-c 183 mg/dl
108/36 = 3, still way high
The only other observations
No fat on the liver, and vitamin D is high off the chart
I was prescribed statin. I usually do not argue with the doctor, I let him prescribe whatever he likes, but I do not buy or use the statin.
Any way how do I bring my hdl-c up
I do not trust omega 3 gels that are in the market. many reports indicates they contain oxidized oils.
thanks
How long have you been low carb? My HDL took a while to come up.
Your trigs aren’t that bad, and that’s a “noisy” indicator sometimes anyway.
For what it’s worth, a lower HDL than desired seems to be genetic and more likely in men than women. I think the highest I’ve ever had in my life is 41. Maybe 42.
The problem with taking a statin is that it lowers your HDL as well as LDL. The reason I’m not taking a statin now is I asked my GP (a new one at the time, six years ago) “if the statin lowers my HDL, why should I be taking it?” He said, “good question” and asked if I wanted to do the experiment of quitting the statin and seeing how I responded. It actually took about two years to get my HDL up to 40.
I don’t know of any good, repeatable, way of increasing HDL. Aerobic exercise doesn’t work. I was riding a bike 100 miles every week for years (when I wasn’t riding 100 miles in a day), and taking a statin had my HDL in the 20s. I’ve heard that HIIT affects it more, but I just don’t believe it enough to try.
Very informative
I am 63 and my brother is 60
His hdl is also low. Slightly higher than mine. he is much more athletic than me.
Thanks
For reference, I’m 68. Without having exact start date in front of me, I probably took a statin of some sort from age 50 to 61. I was on several different statins over the decade because they hammered my liver enzymes. My latest numbers from February. There’s always some sort of variation in them, but the pattern of LDL too high, HDL too low and trigs in the good zone is about what it always is.
Total chol: 218
HDL: 35
LDL: 165
Trigs: 80
Dr. Stephen Phinney says that the easiest way to bring up our HDL level is to increase the amount of saturated fat in our diet.
Just what I was thinking: sat fat = increased HDL. What is it that Dr Ken keeps saying? Fatty meat and eggs! And it tastes fantastic!
I’d honestly completely disregard the test, somebody that remembers (because ATM I don’t) when you eat keto you basically short circuit the equation that they use to guess some of these numbers. Sometimes they’re only a little off, sometimes way off. Also, when a keto person fasts they’re ketones shoot way higher than a normal persons so that (can) artificially give you a higher trig reading, get an NMR done so you get actual numbers, and then you’ll get your sdLDL, which is the one that matters anyways.
Nordic Naturals, Sports Research and Carlsons are all good quality fish oils in triglyceride form.
If you’re not tracking your intake or eating unlimited fat, that’s your first step to moving your numbers. Can’t change what you can’t see.
I’d guess it’s way more complex than this. For instance, LMHRs have crazy high HDL, while eating not that much saturated fat (relatively speaking, of course). Nick Norwitz eats tons of olive oil (relatively high MUFA, low sat fat), yet has HDL extremely high (and LDL too).
And, as someone who tried to eat a very high saturated fat diet, it’s not easy to do. The things that are > 50% saturated fat are: dairy; cacao butter; beef suet; coconut. (And if you’re looking for long-chain saturated fatty acids, you have to remove coconut.) That’s about it. Most, if not all meats, are >50% MUFA.
There’s a common (mis)conception that meats are “high” in saturated fat, but that’s relative to what? I’ve often wanted to compare what I eat in a day with what someone would eat if they ate a “Mediterranean” diet, and since I typically eat lower fat, I but I eat less saturated fat than someone eating a Med diet.
Remember that when people talk about this stuff, they are always thinking in terms of percentages of calories.
So a steak that contains equal amounts of fat and protein by weight is 69% fat and 31% protein by caloric content. The saturated fat would be roughly half that, right? So about 34% of calories as saturated fat. That, right there, is a “high-fat” diet, especially in the context of dietary guidelines that emphasise limiting saturated fat to 13% of calories. And especially when compared to the composition of the seed oils we are supposed to be using.
So when we say “eat lots of saturated fat,” people who are eating a whole-food diet, cooking with butter and lard, and eating the fat that comes with their meat are automatically doing exactly as recommended. No need to go out of the way to get more.
When I am asked to increase my fat intake, I use goat ghee.
I take one to three table spoons of ghee. I take it with fermented pickles or the like. If I have non, I take it with ACV.
With fermented stuff, it is really good and save me the time of finding fatty chunks of meat. Then it does not matter how fat or lean the remaining part of the meal (OMAD)
@Alpha Goat ghee is something I haven’t seen here in the US.
@PaulL Everyone isn’t an engineer like me. 
And I should note that while eating a diet ridiculously high in saturated fat, my HDL did not budge from any other time. May have gone down, actually, but only a tad. I think I’m maxed out at the mid 50s.
Dr. Kata Shanahan thinks you have high PUFAs in your fat cells if you have <60 HDL. I personally find this hard to believe, as I’ve been avoiding PUFAs for years, but without a fat biopsy, I don’t know.
You have more goats around Texas than we have in Saudi Arabia
I lived there in the late seventies, we used to buy our goats from Vidor, tx ( KKK head quarters) 
So then you understand how knowing what the terminology means is crucial to the right result. Remember that space shuttle accident that resulted from someone working in inches when they should have been working in centimetres?
I’m not sure I understand. The idea is that “saturated fat” raises HDL. That is wrong, and I have data to prove it.
Or, put more specifically, for a person who has been keto/LC for 7+ years prior to eating a high saturated fat diet, HDL did not change or possibly went down while eating a very high saturated fat diet. I ate as much saturated fat as I could physically eat.
Now, if someone transitions from SAD to keto, while HDL go up? Most likely, for most people. Is it because “saturated fat” increased? Maybe, maybe not.
Here are my results:
The 12/28/2020 was taken while on a high saturated fat diet. HDL no higher, in fact a bit lower, than other tests.
Also, if “saturated fat” increases, what does this mean? It means “saturated fat” replaced something else, let’s say PUFAs. Maybe it’s not in the increase in “saturated fat”, but the decrease in PUFAs that’s the issue.
There’s no way to tell.
It was my experience that my HDL went up after I went keto, but I didn’t go out of my way to increase my saturated fat intake.
So, am I an outlier? Are you an outlier? Did you overdo the saturated fat and experience a rebound? Is there some natural limit to HDL level that we are not going to exceed, no matter what we do? Is saturated fat irrelevant to HDL level? Too many hypotheses, too few data, alas!
All that I know comes from lectures by Stephen Phinney, in which he says that the increase of HDL from saturated fat is documented. I never wrote down or looked up the studies he listed, however, so I don’t know the quality of his data. He also mentioned having once been assigned to work on a drug that was intended to raise HDL, but it apparently had so many untenable side effects that the company shelved the research. He appeared to be trying to establish the point that diet was more effective at raising HDL than any drug.
In any case, do you really want or need your HDL over 60? Your readings in the mid-fifties seem excellent to me, especially since your triglycerides dropped nicely. Since the 11/16 test, your ratio of triglycerides to HDL has been wonderful, except for that one fasting experiment, where we would naturally expect triglycerides to be circulating at a higher level. How do you expect to improve on perfection? 
