Creatine and Cholesterol Levels high?

cholesterol
newbies
ldl
creatine
liver
(Shane Collins) #1

Hey guys,

I am not new to Keto as I have been on a keto lifestyle (for the most part) for about 4 years now, and although I will admit I won’t be as strict consistently as some of you folks on here I do stay low carb and then periods of strict keto at times. But I won’t lie, I have not been strict enough, too many days of ‘dirty keto’ and too many days of 'just some more carbs won’t hurt.

Basically, I need to basically cop on and either do keto all in or not at all because long term I might do more damage than good?. I am concerned that through laziness or taking my eye off the ball I could see some negative sides of not doing keto correctly and ill health. That and my doctor has been nagging me and is against keto.

Any time I would get blood results over the past few years my doctor would be concerned about my cholesterol levels and most recently my creatine levels

I was advised that a normal healthy level for a man is 85µmol/L but since my keto journey my levels average 100-120µmol/L

And my Lipods to date

Date Chol Tri LDL Adrenals
Aug-18 7.3 1.46 5.3
Feb-20 6.5 1.34 4.7
May-21 5.9 2.15 4.9 124µmol/L
Nov-21 7.2 2.29 3.8 116µmol/L
May-22 6.1 2.52 4.1 104µmol/L

My question is, what do you think of my bloods? Do I need to change things quickly or is my doc being dramatic? If the later, what advice should I bring to my doctor? because she has booked me in to see a specalist on this…

Either way, I plan on doing extensive research on these forums and really following a strict plan going forward. Thanks for any advice guys.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #2

I’d say it would be better to be all in rather than in and out, but it would be interesting to know how insulin-resistant you are. The greater your insulin sensitivity, the more carbohydrate you can consume and stay in ketosis, the greater your insulin resistance, the less carbohydrate you can safely eat if you want to remain in ketosis.

As for the numbers in your post, I would also like to know what your HbA1C was, and what your HDL level was in those tests. LDL and total cholesterol are largely irrelevant. The ratio of triglycerides to HDL is the main indicator of cardiovascular risk, and you want that ratio to be 0.9 or less (2.0 or less in American units). While it is concerning that your triglycerides seem to be rising, even the 2.52 would be okay if your HDL were 2.8 or greater.

The triglyceride number is generally the amount of energy from food intake that is circulating in the blood, especially if it came from carbohydrate, so a fasting triglyceride level should be on the low side. There is plenty of information about what are good levels to have on the site run by the citizen-scientist, Dave Feldman, www.cholesterolcode.com.

If it were me, I would be asking my doctor to see if I could turn these numbers around in, say, six months’ time. And then I would embark on a true and consistent low-carb/ketogenic diet for those six months. Then the re-test should tell something useful.

And just as a side note, the evidence against cholesterol as the cause of cardiovascular disease is sketchy, at best, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that lower cholesterol levels actually correlate with worse health outcomes, and higher cholesterol is associated with better outcomes. So I think the people who still believe that cholesterol is the problem have to come up with much better evidence before they can consider their case to be proved. (I’ll spare you my usual rant on this topic.) Unfortunately, the conventional wisdom is so deeply engrained at this point that very few researchers dare question it any longer.

Your doctor needs to know that there is an organisation called The International Network of Cholesterol Sceptics (THINCS), which is made up of respected researchers around the globe, so this idea that cholesterol might not be anything to fear is not a a crackpot notion at all. It is at the very least an opposing point of view that needs to be carefully considered before anyone tries to dismiss it.

P.S.—I edited your post to make the test numbers display more legibly.

(Bill) #3

How long had you water fasted before the bloods were taken for the cholsterol tests?

(Shane Collins) #4

Thank you PaulL for that response, it’s very informative. Here are my HDL results for the same dates

Date HDL
Aug-18. 1.34
Feb-20 1.17
May-21 1.19
Nov-21 1.22
May-22 1.2

What did you think of my Adrenals? should I be concerned, is 100-120µmol/L fine?

Regarding HbA1C, do you mean the below info? the is from my last bloods

Test Name Results UNITS Reference Ranges
Protein 79 g/l (65-83)
Albumin 47 g/l (35-50)
Globulin 32 g/l (26-39)
Bilirubin 6 umol/l (5-24)
Alk Phos 60 I.U./l (30-130)
ALT 35 I.U./l (0-55)
Gamma-GT 12 I.U./l (11-67)

sorry about the display not being legible, I don’t know how to use tables here :smiley:

I am a big believer of keto and I don’t think high cholesterol is a red flag for cardiovascular diseases unless you have high cholesterol and lots of inflammation, and eating all the wrong types of foods. Ivor Cummins is someone I have learned a lot from there.

I recently had a CAC (coronary calcium scan) just as a precaution because mainstream doctors say keto will lead to problems here and being over safe I got this test. It scores from zero to ten, with ten being you are on the wrong end of the spectrum and likely going to have a heart attack or event soon. My score was zero.

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And just to satisfy everyone, and myself and the keto skeptics in my ear, I am waiting to get a CT Angiography (CTA). I am pretty confident in those results too, I am 37 and in good health.

Anyway, I plan on going strict keto from here on, I just need to work on my chocolate addiction :slight_smile: 85% dark only + it is so

(Shane Collins) #5

Most of my bloods I have not fasted, and I understand I need to be, so there might be big improvements next time round.

#6

Creatine, or Creatinine? Do you work out? If so, especially with a lot of either weight lifting or excessive cardio that’ll be high and out of range every time.

On the cholesterol, those numbers mean nothing to me without a calculator (on the phone right now, too much work) but how much fat are you eating daily?

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #7

Ah, well, your HDL numbers are not trending in the direction I was hoping for, nor is your ratio of triglycerides to HDL (if I haven’t already said so, you want 0.9 or less).

They say that eating more saturated fat is supposed to raise your HDL levels, so you might try taking a look at your fat intake. If you are getting most of your fat from the industrial seed oils (soybean, canola, corn, cornflower, sunflower, cottonseed, etc.) you might wish to consider switching to butter, lard, tallow, and bacon grease for cooking fats and avocado or olive oil for salad dressings.

There is beginning to be research implicating the seed oils as causes of cardiovascular disease and other problems. The polyunsaturated fatty acids in the animal fats I mentioned are ones that we evolved to eat, but those in the seed oils were mostly unknown to the human body until at most a couple of centuries ago. There are also concerns about what happens to them when they are heated during cooking, not to mention what might be happening to them during all the refining and other processing needed to make these oils fit for human consumption. The three fruit oils I mentioned require minimal processing, not much more than simply squeezing them out of the fruit in question.

Also the question of whether or not you fasted before the blood was drawn is important. Dave Feldman, the citizen-scientist behind www.cholesterolcode.com, advises fasting between 10 and 12 hours (check the site to be sure I got that right; my memory might not be accurate) before the blood draw, no more, no less. He also advises avoiding coffee (water is okay) until you break your fast. All that could well make a difference. And some of the tests are affected by how well-hydrated we are when the blood is drawn, apparently.

P.S.—forgot to mention that HbA1C is a measure of how glycated your haemoglobin is. I didn’t see it among the numbers you posted. It serves as a sort of rolling three-month average of your daily serum glucose levels. Of course, that assumes that the lifespan of your red blood corpuscles is pretty close to 90 days; if they are living much longer or much shorter, your level of glycation may be falsely inflated or undercounted.

P.P.S.—The fact that your Agatston score is zero is a very good thing. That says that your cardiovascular risk is minimal, despite whatever your cholesterol is doing.

(Bob M) #8

GGT is excellent too. Odd about HDL not going up.

You do need >12 hours fasting.

(Bill) #9

In that case I’d be very wary indeed about drawing any conclusions from the resulting figures.

(Shane Collins) #10

How often would you do fasting? I also just need more fats in my diet, actual keto because I think I’ve just been on a low-carb diet but not high fats or enough. This forum should teach me a lot.

(Shane Collins) #11

Creatinine and I did a lot of working out during all those tests

(Shane Collins) #12

I do need to look at my fat intake, because I think I’ve been on a low carb diet more than a low carb and high fat diet, so not real Keto. I find the calculations of macros challenging

Thanks for that info again, its really helpful

#13

Then it’s completely normal to be out of range :+1:

(Shane Collins) #14

Back again.

Latest Results

Chol 7.9
Tri| 1.9
LDL 5.5
HDL 1.5
TG:HDL Ratio 1.3 (previous bloods had a ratio of 2.1)

As you can gather, because my overall cholesterol is high my doctor was not happy, but I am!

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #15

Definitely progress in the right direction! Keep up the good work! :+1:

(Luke) #16

Those numbers are up there if I’m not mistaken. Like you could take meds for cholesterol that high. I truely believe that you can inherit it , and or just be unlucky with cholesterol numbers. I’ve read on here before people eating keto with very high numbers , thinking it’s all the fat in the diet, others like myself keto lowered my cholesterol.

(Shane Collins) #17

The overall Chol is up, but my Triggs is down, HDL is up and more importantly, the ratio between Triggs and HDL is down.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #18

Then that’s as it should be.

(Alec) #19

With your CAC scan score of zero, you are all good. I would just recommend that you work on limiting carbs, and this will drive the triglycerides down. Eat more saturated fat.

Totally ignore the total cholesterol and LDL numbers: totally worthless, except if LDL was low, but yours is nice and high. Just as you want it: high LDL is protective against all cause mortality. Don’t believe the conventional wisdom BS.