NMR Done. I'm Not Supposed to Know More Than My Doctor

(Tracy) #1

Maybe I should have waited to get the results to start this thread but I’m just wired about my experience this week. My doctor advised me not to go off my statin because my total cholesterol was over 300. He said the total cholesterol is the number he is interested in. He has not been pushy and is letting me make my own decisions but the fact that I’m explaining particle size to my doctor makes me feel uneasy and isolated. I asked for an NMR and he ordered it, which I don’t think he has ever done for any patient. With a Trig:HDL ratio of .9 and low VLDL, I’m confident that I’ll have pattern A. I’ll be nervous until I see it on paper.

I’m a housewife with no education. I’m not supposed to tell my doctor about my cholesterol particle size. This makes me feel isolated and deviant. It feels like something that would happen in a parallel universe. I’m feeling no gratification from going against medical advice. I stopped taking my statin.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #2

Educate your doctor…



In case you don’t know who Dr Ali is:

Dr. Nadir Ali is an interventional cardiologist with over 25 years of experience. He is also the chairman of the Department of Cardiology at Clear Lake Regional Medical Center. Before working as a cardiologist, he served as an assistant professor of medicine for eight years at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where he also received his medical training.

Source.

(Hyperbole- best thing in the universe!) #3

No education is not the same thing as not smart. And sometimes education entrenches false ideas. I’m not saying it is right that you should have to educate your doctor, just that it is understandable. .

(BuckRimfire) #4

Kudos for every word! You rock.

Just out of curiosity: Did you want to get off the statin due to side effects, or just on general principles?

#5

I have a history to go against the decision/opinion of my doctors… I told dentists they were wrong about my teeth (rarely, I usually had good ones), I told doctors I didn’t need a plaster cast… I always was right when I argued (and always got what I wanted as I am quite stubborn) and it’s quite sad, actually.
Fortunately I never felt I shouldn’t do this :smiley: Someone has to be on my side and if not the doctors, it will be me.
Some doctors don’t care, some even lacks knowledge…

(Tracy) #6

I wanted to get off the statin for no other reason than for the last 8 years I have had memory loss and brain fog. I’ve asked doctors over and over why this is happening and nobody said statins can cause it. One even said it could be early onset dementia (I was 35 at the time).

Something that made me question medications and doctors in general is that I was prescribed atenolol when I was 22 years old and weighed 285 lbs. Twenty years later I’m still getting that RX refilled even though I weight 130 lbs today. No doctor has ever said, “Your blood pressure is great. Want to see if you don’t need the atenolol?” They just refiled it. I stopped taking it last week my blood pressure is perfect. How long did I take it unnecessarily? Now I question everything.

(Bacon for the Win) #7

Doctors are not Gods. They know what they were taught unless they have a specialized interest. Consider this being socially responsible by helping to educate your doctor.

#8

That’s always been your choice, don’t give him power he doesn’t actually have!

Sure you should! When people are wrong or uninformed don’t just go along with it because they have a title! It’s not our fault that Doc’s give advise on things they don’t understand. Took me years to find a Doc that wasn’t brainwashed.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #9

Mazel tov, you deviant, you! :+1::+1::+1: :bacon::bacon::bacon:

I will be extremely surprised if your LDL does not fall into Pattern A.

#10

My blood fats used to be very high too. I started keto and stopped taking statins after I found out that their effect is actually very minimal. Last time i had my blood checked - they were only “slightly elevated”! A big improvement.

#11

^ This one million times and then some

#12

Right there with ya - My cardio Dr. wants me to take a statin based on me saying my LDL is elevated: no test ordered?
In the years since I started tracking calcium scores and NMR values (Pattern A, LDL-P ranges from very high to off the charts) I’ve never strayed from the LCHF WOE: the calcium progression has slowed, and Trig/HDL ratio is down even further…I’ve never felt better!

(Tracy) #13

SDOC - Do you happen to know what the trig:hdl means? Mine is always less than one and someone told me the closer to one the better. I wonder why it isn’t calculated on our lipid panels.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #14

The ratio of triglycerides to HDL-cholesterol is an indicator of cardiovascular risk. The lower the ratio, the better. In American units, a ratio of 2.0 or less means extremely low cardiovascular risk; and the same for 0.9 or less in the units used the in the rest of the world. The ratio is a much more useful indicator than the raw numbers or the various LDL numbers.

High triglycerides indicate a high carbohydrate load in the diet. Low HDL means a lack of saturated fat in the diet. Thus, a well-formulated ketogenic diet is a good way to move the two numbers in the proper direction.

(Tracy) #15

TG:HDL isn’t even listed as a score on my lipid panels. I wonder if I’ll have to explain to my doctor how to calculate it and its relationship to CV risk. I’ve been medicated for 8 years based on my total cholesterol. Unbelievable and shocking.

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #16

Yes, you will have to help him figure it out. The regular lipid panels do not have it listed, I have years worth of them and not one has that formula on it.

You are smart to find this stuff out for yourself. Now you can educate him.

#17

kyarn Tracy - PaulL/Admin is right on.

Ratio Calculation Example: with triglycerides of 65 and HDL of 68, to calculate the ratio, divide 65 by 68, which equals .96 (my actual numbers). Said another way, the ratio is less than 1 to 1, you may also see it written as .96:1 (or said .96 to 1).
Hope that helps?

(Bob M) #18

Or fasting. If you fast multiple days, your trigs go up and your HDL goes down. Trigs go up due to the energy model theory (Dave Feldman), though I haven’t quite figured out why HDL goes down (no hepatic fats?)

I personally don’t think there’s a correspondence between HDL and saturated fat. I think the diet helps HDL to go up, but I don’t think it’s because of saturated fat.

I could do a “low fat”, low carb test and compare with my normal eating pattern. But that would mean I’d have to count calories. Ugh.

(Can’t do it any other way, as I don’t want to eat more MUFA and definitely not PUFA, so low fat is it.)

Then I could gobble dairy and compare too.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #19

Phinney and a couple of other researchers have stated in lectures that increased dietary saturated fat leads to higher HDL. There are a couple of drugs that will also raise HDL, but they have unacceptable side effects and have never been marketed, apparently. From what I’ve gathered from these lectures, the only way to effectively raise HDL is by dietary intervention.

You’d have to wade through Dr. Phinney’s presentations about the practical aspects of eating keto (see LCDU’s YouTube channel) in order to see if he gives a reference (he generally puts it somewhere on the slide). Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to do that right now, sorry.

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #20

This has some good info from Virta group on HDL etc.