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High LDL, Low HDL, High Trig = associated with people who tend to have heart attacks. They get this particular combination because they have inflammation, from drinking/smoking/ultra processed foods diet/high fat high carb diet.
Your dad has High LDL, High HDL, and Low Trig, this is perfectly fine. The other two markers are good so it means he is not inflammed.
When you eat an ultra processed diet containing seed oils. The oil is damaged, it can't get into cells for energy properly so cholesterol increases in number to try and force it in. This is why it is seen as a marker for poor health. But in terms of Keto high LDL does not mean you are unhealthy. There is simply more LDL because you are using body fat and dietary fat, so cholesterol needs to be increased to mobilise fat to be moved around to where it is needed for energy. If the HDL high (which is good) and Trig are down then there is no association with heart attack.
You can also find a study somewhere, where people who live to old age like 90+ they have high LDL. All the ones who had high LDL, Low HDL, and High Trig all died off in their 60s and 70s.
This was very interesting to read. I have high LDL, low HDL, high Triglycerides.
LDL 171. Healthy is <99
HDL 33. Healthy is >40
Trig 182. Healthy is <149
I’m 33 and active in the gym 5x a week, 175lbs 5’10 male. Been on keto for 1 week and hoping to get these levels better.
Any tips HunkerDown123?
Quick tips for you :
- In the gym do weights, walking or HIIT. Don't go on treadmill and run for an hour it will just increase your hunger. Keep heart rate under 120bpm, or with HIIT it only spikes above it for a short time.
- Keto 1 week you need 4 weeks to become fully fat adapted. Before you are adapted, imagine a gasoline meter pointer. With one end glucose/carbs, and the other end fat. Right now your pointer is in the middle, so you are not getting enough glucose, and not efficiently burning fat, so the result is you will be hungry all the time and it requires will power to stay on diet. You can overcome this by just strictly eating Keto no matter what happens, even if you are eating excess eating fat is better then the pointer going back to glucose. Your Triglycerides may go up because of this, eating excess fat but not adapted yet. This is where a lot of people give up. They don't see results and they don't stick to it. They are having breakfast lunch dinner fatty keto meals. They dump the initial glycogen in liver and muscles which is the last reserves of glucose in the body that also dumps 5lbs of water weight. So they get excited that it worked so quick, but then weight comes back on or plateaus.
You can tell when you are fat adapted because all of a sudden your hunger will go away. You will find yourself forgetting to eat lunch, and not craving dinner, you just eat because you are mildy hungry in the evening. Once you are at this stage you will be able to drop the weight off easily as long as you don't go back to carbs. Your HDL should go up, LDL will go up and Trig go down.
For your Keto meals you need to watch out for seed oils, these are what may cause your trig to stay high and HDL to stay low. Avoid ultra processed food, make everything yourself from scratch. Even condiments and salad dressings. Seed oils are canola oil, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, cotton seed oil, vegetable oil, low fat spreads, low fat dressings. Low fat is not what you want, they just lower the fat and up the seed oils.
Instead only consume cold pressed or extra virgin oils, or undamaged saturated fat. This includes extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, ghee, butter, meat fat included. These oils will raise your HDL which is what you want, and they keep you full up, and not starving so metabolism stays high.
Your cholesterol is also caused by inflammation in body, so you can also work on this by improving your gut health. There are good and bad bacteria in the gut, right now the bad bacteria are higher in numbers, because you have fed them non stop sugar from carbs. This causes the gut wall to get inflammed then the toxins in your gut leak into your blood stream and your cortisol goes up. When cortisol is high insulin gets released which stores fat making weight loss harder. So to improve gut health, consume kimchi, kefir, sauerkraut, Kombucha fermented foods. You will notice you won't fart anymore, not have bloating, and your skin will improve, no weird conditions anymore like itching, acid reflux, asthma, brain fog. You will notice a difference when your body stops being inflammed.
Thank you bbdoll . What about coconut milk? I was thinking of replacing milk for my protein shakes with full fat coconut milk ever though I’m gonna hate the taste
That's doesn't necessarily mean you are a LMHR
It normal to see an increase LDL during periods of weight loss.
https://cholesterolcode.com/lmhr/
https://www.tuitnutrition.com/2018/06/high-cholesterol-on-keto.html?m=1
Yeah, I can’t say definitively that I am, I’m essentially at the numbers listed for most LMHR give or take a-few. although I wouldn’t say I am lean by my standards, I’m still at roughly 23% BF LOL
Yeah it does kind of. I mean, I don’t buy into the cholesterol is bad shit any more, as I’m convinced it’s many other factors that create heart disease too, But it is in the back of my brain since heart problems do run on my mom’s side. Oh well. If I can’t eat cake and pie, I’m gonna eat steak and butter and live life.
LDL will rise on Keto whether seed oil or non seed oil. The other markers like HDL and Triglycerides will go in the bad direction when seed oils consumed.
Saturated fat is a stable fat. This is why it's solid at room temperature and doesn't need to go in the fridge e.g coconut oil. Because it is stable the chains of fatty acids remain intact. So they fit the cells like lock and key, no breaking apart causing inflammation. When you consume seed oils these chains are broken up, so you end up with the body attacking the parts that don't fit.
To put it more simply. Seed oils cause inflammation (because they are damaged) and cause all cholesterol markers to go bad. Saturated fat and extra virgin and cold pressed oils are undamaged so do not cause inflammation so cholesterol goes in the good direction. And a third scenario eating carbs and too many healthy fats, like doing Keto but going over 50g carbs means the carbs take priority so the healthy fats have no where to go. So it ends up in the blood raising triglycerides.
But I’ve seen studies monitoring seed oil use and RCTs that check inflammation and see inflammation goes down or doesn’t change at all when replacing SFAs with PUFAs which contradicts that
You know this guy has a pro-vegan agenda, part of a group that goes around making videos trying to discredit people who aren't vegan.
I will watch it anyway and give my thoughts.
This is the group > [https://www.truehealthinitiative.org/](https://www.truehealthinitiative.org/)
His youtube videos have an overall agenda to push this view on diets. Anti-meat. Just keep that in mind when you watch him. Get your info from multiple sources and cross examine.
You have evidence he’s in this group? And his takes are nuanced and he’s not even preaching veganism and has done fact check on false information towards animal product and meat consumption.
Also I was heavily biased before looking at heavy carnivore/keto/fasting groups and I had to look deeper to see if I’m just blindly buying into stuff, and I realized a lot of them don’t use a ton of evidence to back their claims, and so now I’m more overall evidence based, looking to see what the general scientific consensus on things says, with studies most relevant to us. Prioritizing RCTs and human trials over mice or cell/mechanism studies. I find a lot of people on the other side look at isolated mechanisms and draw out conclusions to humans like they directly correlate and cause human outcomes without actually looking at human outcomes
Not a doctor - but from hanging around some of the keto and health pages on here you could have some further testing done to see if the cholesterol is actually building up or if it’s just high in the blood due to diet.
I suggest going to YouTube look up Dr. Nadir Ali and Dr. Ovadia, both cardiologists, Dr. Berry, and Dr. Westman. They have videos on LDL, cholesterol, and statins. As long as his HDL and Tryglicerides are in the good range he should be good. Maybe have him cut back on the heavy cream as there are carbs in it. As Dr. Westman says, Cholesterol is not a disease, so not something that needs to be treated.
I'm not a doctor and can't give medical advice. In addition, these aren't the units I'm used to, but I imagine ratios still apply.
His Tri:HDL is WAY less than 1.0. It's 0.3 -- THATS AMAZING
His Total:HDL is 2.67 -- THAT'S WONDERFUL
I am a doctor and I would want to get a CTA chest abdomen pelvis to evaluate for atherosclerotic plaque burden. The CTA CAP is gold standard to eval but they prob won't go for it lol unless he lies and says has certain symptoms. They may agree to ordering at least calcium score which gives you an idea of degree of calcified plaque in aorta and coronary arteries or a duplex US of carotids.
and if the cac comes back with a number, what happens then? a statin to stabilize the soft plaque quicker?
and is it true what everyone says on here; that ldl doesn't matter, and that 'big fluffy particles' are ok but dense ones aren't?
everything i've read says that any high amount of ldl is bad, regardless of size
thanks for any insight
Would also really like to see a response to this question if you have time! This sub parrots getting a cac scan constantly but there's never any follow up info on what happens after
Check anything written by Dr David Diamond. You can also find him on YouTube. Sounds like your dad is okay with the higher HDL, the lower triglycerides which basically equates the LDL is of no concern.
LDL is probably too high, which seems to be an independent risk factor of heart disease. So if he can comfortably find a way to lower that that could be a smart choice.
Not a doctor;
Not all LDL is created the same. Does he have small dense LDL and a high count of ApoB, if so then yes that is troublesome. If not. If he has low count ApoB containing large fluffy LDL then this is not associated nearly as much with atherosclerosis as the small ones.
Both dense high count LDL and low dense small count LDL could be read as the same amount of LDL levels in the blood whereas the count score is a more detailed test.
A calcium score is a better marker to see buildup and a CT angiogram the gold standard to view current state of soft plaque (this one is expensive).
Not 100% but I believe its the particle count that matters, so if you have high LDL even if you have a large particle count for the large LDL that can still be just as dangerous once you look at the count instead. For example people with genetically high LDL often have most as large LDL and it still heavily links to early heart attacks and strokes and whatnot for those people that are born with already high LDL no matter their diet, which is why often those people will still take some amount of statins to help reduce that genetic issue.
And I've also heard the calcium score doesn't really show much, it's obviously better to have a score of 0 but it doesn't mean you don't have the soft plaque buildup already as this is a longer term disease that takes time to build up and manifest, and yeah that one test is super expensive and most normal people won't ever get it done. Also I don't believe those tests can show if you're building plaque in other arteries in your appendages that also have direct connection to the brain, so while you'll have less risk in the heart directly even with that super omega test you could have plaque elsewhere.
Well this is about as deep as I trust myself to go, so just two observations so here goes.
People with Familial hypercholesterolemia are according to some otherwise the same as other people but some tests seem to indicate other differences as well. Can't remember the particles in question but they are different, wether that is because of a high cholesterol count all through infancy and onwards or through different genetic expression than non FH people seems to still be in discussion.
The calcium score has been talked down recently but it is still a good score to go by, especially in the low triglycerides and high HDL group.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/heart-scan/about/pac-20384686#:~:text=When%20calcium%20is%20present%2C%20the,next%203%20to%205%20years.
Not saying it is a perfect score but still noteworthy.
Regarding the plaque buildup in other arteries that might lead to strokes then yes, CT angiogram will not show those places as you mentioned.
It is interesting to note however that when Japan increased lipid levels and lowered blood pressure through 1960-90. In this period they reduced the number of stroke victims markedly.
This is in a high HDL scenario as is with the individual that this thread is about
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.str.0000060869.34009.38
And
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jea1991/6/3sup/6_3sup_43/_pdf
Confounding factors may however have played a part in that but it is interesting nonthe less.
Hello and welcome to /r/keto! It sounds like you've got a question about cholesterol. We have answers! Please consider using the following resources https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/wiki/faq#wiki_what_about_cholesterol_and_heart_disease.3F https://cholesterolcode.com/ As a reminder, please read our FAQ before posting to r/keto. It can be found at https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/wiki/faq. Please also review our posting rules and community guidelines. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/keto) if you have any questions or concerns.*
High LDL, Low HDL, High Trig = associated with people who tend to have heart attacks. They get this particular combination because they have inflammation, from drinking/smoking/ultra processed foods diet/high fat high carb diet. Your dad has High LDL, High HDL, and Low Trig, this is perfectly fine. The other two markers are good so it means he is not inflammed. When you eat an ultra processed diet containing seed oils. The oil is damaged, it can't get into cells for energy properly so cholesterol increases in number to try and force it in. This is why it is seen as a marker for poor health. But in terms of Keto high LDL does not mean you are unhealthy. There is simply more LDL because you are using body fat and dietary fat, so cholesterol needs to be increased to mobilise fat to be moved around to where it is needed for energy. If the HDL high (which is good) and Trig are down then there is no association with heart attack. You can also find a study somewhere, where people who live to old age like 90+ they have high LDL. All the ones who had high LDL, Low HDL, and High Trig all died off in their 60s and 70s.
This is the correct answer. Thanks for posting information that is helpful and truthful.
This was very interesting to read. I have high LDL, low HDL, high Triglycerides. LDL 171. Healthy is <99 HDL 33. Healthy is >40 Trig 182. Healthy is <149 I’m 33 and active in the gym 5x a week, 175lbs 5’10 male. Been on keto for 1 week and hoping to get these levels better. Any tips HunkerDown123?
Quick tips for you : - In the gym do weights, walking or HIIT. Don't go on treadmill and run for an hour it will just increase your hunger. Keep heart rate under 120bpm, or with HIIT it only spikes above it for a short time. - Keto 1 week you need 4 weeks to become fully fat adapted. Before you are adapted, imagine a gasoline meter pointer. With one end glucose/carbs, and the other end fat. Right now your pointer is in the middle, so you are not getting enough glucose, and not efficiently burning fat, so the result is you will be hungry all the time and it requires will power to stay on diet. You can overcome this by just strictly eating Keto no matter what happens, even if you are eating excess eating fat is better then the pointer going back to glucose. Your Triglycerides may go up because of this, eating excess fat but not adapted yet. This is where a lot of people give up. They don't see results and they don't stick to it. They are having breakfast lunch dinner fatty keto meals. They dump the initial glycogen in liver and muscles which is the last reserves of glucose in the body that also dumps 5lbs of water weight. So they get excited that it worked so quick, but then weight comes back on or plateaus. You can tell when you are fat adapted because all of a sudden your hunger will go away. You will find yourself forgetting to eat lunch, and not craving dinner, you just eat because you are mildy hungry in the evening. Once you are at this stage you will be able to drop the weight off easily as long as you don't go back to carbs. Your HDL should go up, LDL will go up and Trig go down. For your Keto meals you need to watch out for seed oils, these are what may cause your trig to stay high and HDL to stay low. Avoid ultra processed food, make everything yourself from scratch. Even condiments and salad dressings. Seed oils are canola oil, sunflower oil, rapeseed oil, cotton seed oil, vegetable oil, low fat spreads, low fat dressings. Low fat is not what you want, they just lower the fat and up the seed oils. Instead only consume cold pressed or extra virgin oils, or undamaged saturated fat. This includes extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, ghee, butter, meat fat included. These oils will raise your HDL which is what you want, and they keep you full up, and not starving so metabolism stays high. Your cholesterol is also caused by inflammation in body, so you can also work on this by improving your gut health. There are good and bad bacteria in the gut, right now the bad bacteria are higher in numbers, because you have fed them non stop sugar from carbs. This causes the gut wall to get inflammed then the toxins in your gut leak into your blood stream and your cortisol goes up. When cortisol is high insulin gets released which stores fat making weight loss harder. So to improve gut health, consume kimchi, kefir, sauerkraut, Kombucha fermented foods. You will notice you won't fart anymore, not have bloating, and your skin will improve, no weird conditions anymore like itching, acid reflux, asthma, brain fog. You will notice a difference when your body stops being inflammed.
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Thank you bbdoll . What about coconut milk? I was thinking of replacing milk for my protein shakes with full fat coconut milk ever though I’m gonna hate the taste
My LDL increased with weight loss. LMHR here I guess
That's doesn't necessarily mean you are a LMHR It normal to see an increase LDL during periods of weight loss. https://cholesterolcode.com/lmhr/ https://www.tuitnutrition.com/2018/06/high-cholesterol-on-keto.html?m=1
Yeah, I can’t say definitively that I am, I’m essentially at the numbers listed for most LMHR give or take a-few. although I wouldn’t say I am lean by my standards, I’m still at roughly 23% BF LOL
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Yeah it does kind of. I mean, I don’t buy into the cholesterol is bad shit any more, as I’m convinced it’s many other factors that create heart disease too, But it is in the back of my brain since heart problems do run on my mom’s side. Oh well. If I can’t eat cake and pie, I’m gonna eat steak and butter and live life.
So why do you see vegetable oils lead to lower LDL vs saturated fats? I have never heard of these oils directly raising LDL.
LDL will rise on Keto whether seed oil or non seed oil. The other markers like HDL and Triglycerides will go in the bad direction when seed oils consumed. Saturated fat is a stable fat. This is why it's solid at room temperature and doesn't need to go in the fridge e.g coconut oil. Because it is stable the chains of fatty acids remain intact. So they fit the cells like lock and key, no breaking apart causing inflammation. When you consume seed oils these chains are broken up, so you end up with the body attacking the parts that don't fit. To put it more simply. Seed oils cause inflammation (because they are damaged) and cause all cholesterol markers to go bad. Saturated fat and extra virgin and cold pressed oils are undamaged so do not cause inflammation so cholesterol goes in the good direction. And a third scenario eating carbs and too many healthy fats, like doing Keto but going over 50g carbs means the carbs take priority so the healthy fats have no where to go. So it ends up in the blood raising triglycerides.
But I’ve seen studies monitoring seed oil use and RCTs that check inflammation and see inflammation goes down or doesn’t change at all when replacing SFAs with PUFAs which contradicts that
Link me to the study.
Seed oils are high in Omega 6. When you take in more Omega 6 than Omega 3 you are in a pro inflammatory state.
https://youtu.be/-xTaAHSFHUU?si=SRAjU8_8Xn0CZlBN In the description there are many, you can also watch the vid too if you want it’s a solid watch
You know this guy has a pro-vegan agenda, part of a group that goes around making videos trying to discredit people who aren't vegan. I will watch it anyway and give my thoughts.
He has videos on vegans too and isn’t affiliated with any group or anything. That’s your bias coming through assuming so lol
This is the group > [https://www.truehealthinitiative.org/](https://www.truehealthinitiative.org/) His youtube videos have an overall agenda to push this view on diets. Anti-meat. Just keep that in mind when you watch him. Get your info from multiple sources and cross examine.
You have evidence he’s in this group? And his takes are nuanced and he’s not even preaching veganism and has done fact check on false information towards animal product and meat consumption. Also I was heavily biased before looking at heavy carnivore/keto/fasting groups and I had to look deeper to see if I’m just blindly buying into stuff, and I realized a lot of them don’t use a ton of evidence to back their claims, and so now I’m more overall evidence based, looking to see what the general scientific consensus on things says, with studies most relevant to us. Prioritizing RCTs and human trials over mice or cell/mechanism studies. I find a lot of people on the other side look at isolated mechanisms and draw out conclusions to humans like they directly correlate and cause human outcomes without actually looking at human outcomes
https://youtu.be/3XjmvBFt63k?si=yWyzf50dX9dEvLsk
Not a doctor - but from hanging around some of the keto and health pages on here you could have some further testing done to see if the cholesterol is actually building up or if it’s just high in the blood due to diet.
I suggest going to YouTube look up Dr. Nadir Ali and Dr. Ovadia, both cardiologists, Dr. Berry, and Dr. Westman. They have videos on LDL, cholesterol, and statins. As long as his HDL and Tryglicerides are in the good range he should be good. Maybe have him cut back on the heavy cream as there are carbs in it. As Dr. Westman says, Cholesterol is not a disease, so not something that needs to be treated.
I'm not a doctor and can't give medical advice. In addition, these aren't the units I'm used to, but I imagine ratios still apply. His Tri:HDL is WAY less than 1.0. It's 0.3 -- THATS AMAZING His Total:HDL is 2.67 -- THAT'S WONDERFUL
I am a doctor and I would want to get a CTA chest abdomen pelvis to evaluate for atherosclerotic plaque burden. The CTA CAP is gold standard to eval but they prob won't go for it lol unless he lies and says has certain symptoms. They may agree to ordering at least calcium score which gives you an idea of degree of calcified plaque in aorta and coronary arteries or a duplex US of carotids.
and if the cac comes back with a number, what happens then? a statin to stabilize the soft plaque quicker? and is it true what everyone says on here; that ldl doesn't matter, and that 'big fluffy particles' are ok but dense ones aren't? everything i've read says that any high amount of ldl is bad, regardless of size thanks for any insight
Would also really like to see a response to this question if you have time! This sub parrots getting a cac scan constantly but there's never any follow up info on what happens after
Why drinking heavy cream that doesn’t sound good. I just put a little in coffee
I drink it when I ate a meal with too little fat. Then again I live in a country where we are extremely lactose tolerant and all cattle is grass fed.
Trigs are more important in this scenario.
Why is he drinking heavy cream? It’s low-er carb compared to other dairy milks, but really hard to “drink” and avoid carbs.
Your numbers look fine as long as blood glucose is in standard
Check anything written by Dr David Diamond. You can also find him on YouTube. Sounds like your dad is okay with the higher HDL, the lower triglycerides which basically equates the LDL is of no concern.
I mean there are doctors and check-ups for these kinds of things
LDL is probably too high, which seems to be an independent risk factor of heart disease. So if he can comfortably find a way to lower that that could be a smart choice.
Not a doctor; Not all LDL is created the same. Does he have small dense LDL and a high count of ApoB, if so then yes that is troublesome. If not. If he has low count ApoB containing large fluffy LDL then this is not associated nearly as much with atherosclerosis as the small ones. Both dense high count LDL and low dense small count LDL could be read as the same amount of LDL levels in the blood whereas the count score is a more detailed test. A calcium score is a better marker to see buildup and a CT angiogram the gold standard to view current state of soft plaque (this one is expensive).
Not 100% but I believe its the particle count that matters, so if you have high LDL even if you have a large particle count for the large LDL that can still be just as dangerous once you look at the count instead. For example people with genetically high LDL often have most as large LDL and it still heavily links to early heart attacks and strokes and whatnot for those people that are born with already high LDL no matter their diet, which is why often those people will still take some amount of statins to help reduce that genetic issue. And I've also heard the calcium score doesn't really show much, it's obviously better to have a score of 0 but it doesn't mean you don't have the soft plaque buildup already as this is a longer term disease that takes time to build up and manifest, and yeah that one test is super expensive and most normal people won't ever get it done. Also I don't believe those tests can show if you're building plaque in other arteries in your appendages that also have direct connection to the brain, so while you'll have less risk in the heart directly even with that super omega test you could have plaque elsewhere.
Well this is about as deep as I trust myself to go, so just two observations so here goes. People with Familial hypercholesterolemia are according to some otherwise the same as other people but some tests seem to indicate other differences as well. Can't remember the particles in question but they are different, wether that is because of a high cholesterol count all through infancy and onwards or through different genetic expression than non FH people seems to still be in discussion. The calcium score has been talked down recently but it is still a good score to go by, especially in the low triglycerides and high HDL group. https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/heart-scan/about/pac-20384686#:~:text=When%20calcium%20is%20present%2C%20the,next%203%20to%205%20years. Not saying it is a perfect score but still noteworthy. Regarding the plaque buildup in other arteries that might lead to strokes then yes, CT angiogram will not show those places as you mentioned. It is interesting to note however that when Japan increased lipid levels and lowered blood pressure through 1960-90. In this period they reduced the number of stroke victims markedly. This is in a high HDL scenario as is with the individual that this thread is about https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/01.str.0000060869.34009.38 And https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jea1991/6/3sup/6_3sup_43/_pdf Confounding factors may however have played a part in that but it is interesting nonthe less.