New to Keto - Nervous about Cholesterol Levels

(Tracy) #1

I’m new, sorry if this has been addressed. I had gastric bypass 14 years ago. I was 285, today I’m 134. I’ve always been on some kind of carb restriction so going Keto was easy for me and I’m enjoying it. My doctor put me on a statin a few years ago and I’m nervous that my cholesterol will go up since going Keto and I’m not sure how he will respond to it. Do I refuse more statins if it does go up? I’m reading that LDL/HDL numbers aren’t that simple, but nothing I quite understand.

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #2

Do you have recent lab work that shows your levels?

Also, keep in mind that levels can easily fluctuate, especially while getting used to the very low-carb eating that keto is (it can take 6m). Lots of people here would stay to stay away from statins, and would suggest not taking more and to get off the ones you are on.

Its worth modifying your diet and keeping an eye on your labs (A1c) and your cholesterol panel, to know what to do with your medications. Maybe you can talk to him about getting off the statin you are on, as your labs improve :smiley:

It is worth noting that there are ways to manipulate your lab results with certain ways of eating days before the lab work.

Its probably a good idea to work towards getting off the statin, and I’m sure that many here will say that.

(Carl Keller) #3

The importance of total cholesterol is exaggerated to make statins seem like a wonder drug when they actually reduce your chance of coronary disease by a whopping 1% and cause many side effects that drastically affect one’s quality of life. Doctors are bound to guidelines that do not work so don’t let them intimdate you into believing you need statins. They are just doing their job.

https://proteinpower.com/drmike/2017/07/25/how-to-lower-your-cholesterol/

('Jackie P') #4

This is what made me stop my statins. I have since looked at a number of You Tube videos relating to this and I feel quite angry at some of the misinformation I was subjected to.
Especially as a woman, cholesterol protects us and there are reasons it increases with age!
(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #5

The idea that cholesterol in any form causes heart disease has very little scientific evidence behind it. Most of the large, government-funded epidemiological studies done to show that lowering fat intake helps cardiovascular risk have in fact mostly shown the opposite. The Women’s Health Initiative, the Nurses’ Study, the MRFIT study, Ancel Keys’s own Minnesota Coronary Study, and the Framingham study have all either failed to show a correlation between cholesterol levels and cardiovascular risk, or actually shown a negative correlation (i.e., lower cholesterol associated with higher CVD risk), especially in women and especially in the aging. While a correlation is by itself not proof of a causal connection, a lack of correlation or a negative correlation is pretty convincing proof of a lack of causality.

There is also a lot of other evidence that shows that cholesterol cannot be the cause of cardiovascular disease (which we can certainly discuss, if you would like to get into it; I just don’t want to hit you over the head with it all at once). At best, elevated cholesterol of some kind might be a marker of risk. But that means that lowering cholesterol is likely to have no effect on your CVD risk. And this is what experiments on people taking statins have shown, even in studies paid for by the statin manufacturers: at best, taking a statin is likely to extend your life by approximately four or five days. That, combined with the high risk of experiencing a side effect (diabetes, mental fog, muscle pain, impotence, liver trouble) makes me rather leery of ever taking such a drug.

In addition to Dr. Kendrick, in the video above, there are a number of physicians and researchers who are working hard to call the cholesterol hypothesis into question. Nina Teicholz has documented how this hypothesis came to be in her book, The Big Fat Surprise.