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[matildamouse]

My feeling is very much that cholesterol is not the enemy we used to all think it was. It is sugar.

Absolutely agree Machair. The wheel of truth is turning, though very slow...we have been mislead for centuries...

[matildamouse]

Don't worry about your cholesterol, it's just a health red herring. Give it a few more years and it will have dropped of the radar.

AGREE!!!

[Machair]

I think we only have one life and it is so easy to get obsessed with screening tests and results when we are feeling well. Better I think to live and be happy to a certain extent and enjoy things in moderation. Smoking is not good though, my Mum and Dad smoked for many years, and although now 85 Dad has battled bladder cancer for a decade, and Mum has been a cabbage since she was 75. Both have chest infections all the time and it isn't good. They have done very well to reach this age but many don't. I would have loved a Mum that I could talk to now. but she doesn't know who I am and hasn't been aware for many years. I wonder if she had been a non smoker if her fate would have been different as her Mum lived to 102 in excellent health.

[dahliagirl]

I managed to get mine down from 6.5 to 4.something with diet.  I did it by making up a spread sheet (called the 'low fat spreadsheet'  ) to keep to the guidelines for fat and saturated fat.  It was dismal.  No cheese.  I used to end up with a load of calories short at the end of the day, and only wholegrain starch to make it up    Once I bought some chapatis.  Normally, if you make them they are virtually no fat, but these took my daily saturated fat allowance over the top    It is surprising what contains saturated fat.  Biscuits are bad and wafer ones like kitkats are beyond the pale.  It is the only time in my life I have lost weight through diet. 

Anyway, I threw in the towel on that one when my vit D tested low and I was wondering about the balance of my diet.  There is only so far you can go by replacing creamy pasta sauces with tomatoes, and curry sauces with tomato based ones - you end up eating everything in tomatoes............

I have had my cholesterol tested since, and it has only crept up a little bit and the balance is much better.

Another method I have read about is to make sure your diet contains plenty of the following:

Oats - for the beta glucans.  You can also increase soluble fibre.
Almonds - some other nuts are good too, but they do vary in fatty acid balance.
Soya and other beans.

I haven't tried it as the soya is not good for people who have had kidney stones, and I am allergic to the nuts    but I do have plenty oats and other beans.

The other thing to look at is fatty acids. There is a school of thought that too much omega 6 and not enough omega 3 is associated with inflammation and that cutting out saturated fat has not had the effect it should have had because it is easy to replace saturated fat with polyunsaturated that often contains an high proportion of omega 6 fatty acids (sunflower is mostly omega 6).  Olive oil is mostly omega 9s which are neutral and is good for sweating onions etc and rapeseed is similar but will take higher temperatures.  There are nut oils which may contain more omega 3s, but they usually do not like being heated so are better for salads and dressings.

Omega 6 and 3 fatty acids are used in the proportion you eat them.  Ideally, you want a proportion of Omega 6 to Omega 3 of 4:1, but in the modern diet 20:1 is good going.  In a non-veg diet fish, esp sardines and pilchards are a good source.  Vegetarians need to get it from nuts and seeds - check out the ratios though.

[Hurdity]

Sounds very complicated. I posted earlier in thread about my diet. I eat high protein low carb - but medium fat ie very few fried foods, but lots of lean protein (meat fish eggs), olive oil, lots of nuts, some beans, oats about twice a week, very few other added carbs (except what are in beans, fruit and veg), almost no cheese (except cottage), lots of low fat Greek yogurt, milk only in tea and coffee (8 mugs per day!), very rarely biscuits cakes bread pastry etc - I have more or less eliminated these from my diet. Alcohol mainly at weekends. Other than cutting out even more meat, eggs and increasing carbs again I can't see what else to do. My fat intake is not high...maybe if I did a spreadsheet it would be  . Also doc did not say I should reduce anyway 

Hurdity x

[Elizabethrose]

Blimey dahliagirl, get round here and sort me out! You could be on Mastermind!  x

[nearly50]

Sounds too much like hard work to me dahliagirl - well done on sticking it out more than a day! Hurdity, think I eat much the same as you, but I don't eat enough nuts, beans, oats. I say I'm vegetarian but I do sometimes eat fish so I am going to make an effort to eat more oily fish. My problem is that I can go months without eating any rubbish and then completely fall off the waggon and do something mad like eat boxes of mince pies. Hot cross buns are my downfall at this time of year too.

Think the consensus is that you only live once and there's too much focus on this one number when really added sugar is the thing to watch.

[Machair]

As I said before apart from high sugar levels I am not too bothered about numbers. Life is very much about chance. I used to breed guinea pigs. They are amazing little creatures. They give birth to their offspring after 9 weeks gestation, and they walk within moments after birth and are absolutely wonderful. I loved them all, they all ate the same wonderful green veg based diet, with more veg than any government guidelines, and they all lived at the same address. Their life spans were anything from 9 months to over 10 years with all factors being equal- male or female it was all chance. Same has happened with my Persian cats - all loved and all kept the same, some passed on at 7 some at 17. 

My parents had a very unhealthy lifestyle, but they are alive at 85, albeit with medical issues, but I have seen healthy living friends succumb to terrible diseases in their forties. I think we should do our best and then live our lives without fear and worry, and above all not feel guilty if the worst happens. My concern is that some pressure is coming from government telling us how to live, and then making us feel bad if we get a disease that they claim is partly our fault from some aspect of our lifestyle. My thoughts anyway.

[Elizabethrose]

All joking aside Machair, whilst I eat really well, I am absolutely not prepared to give up on any food stuff. I cut back on carbs if I need to lose a few pounds but still eat them in moderation. I don't have a sweet tooth but if once in a blue moon someone offers me an eclair or raspberry tart who am I to say no!!!

I've always been lucky in that I've always been tiny despite having a massive appetite all of my life, hubby and kids are the same. However, I've gained a little recently as discussed so I'm reducing portion size. I know the rise in my cholesterol is due to the sudden disappearance of oestrogen, my diet can't be faulted so I'll just continue sensibly. Now the migraines seem to be calming I'll be able to exercise more.

Happy days! 

[Machair]

So delighted your migraines are calming, that is the best news ever!

[Elizabethrose]

Thanks sweetie  x

[breeze]

Fat is better for you than carbs. You get far less hungry on a low carbon diet with a reasonable amount of fat. Fat is not the enemy in diets or weight control.

[dahliagirl]

Like I said, you can do it, but it is dismal    I know someone who had got hers down from 9, but she says she is very strict.  She is also so incredibly thin that she must have had some eating disorder in the past.  I also worry that you can get so caught up with trying to restrict one thing, that you neglect another.

My in-laws lived totally blameless lives and died at 70 and 73 from cancer, even though their parents lived until late 80s/90s.  So I came to the conclusion that you have to enjoy what you have got.

I eat lots of nice food, not sunflower stuff.  If it is fatty, it has good enough to be worth it    Plenty of fish, and I am learning to like beans better 

[Machair]

I really agree dahliagirl. In fact my in-laws are an interesting case as my father in law had high cholesterol at 6.5 and lived to 87 in good health, whereas his wife died at 75 with a 10 year history of Alzheimer's and had a cholesterol of 4.
He ate crisps, she snacked on fruit.

[nearly50]

Interesting conversation. My parents lived into their 80s, neither looked after themselves at all. They left responsibility for their health firmly with their doctors. Hard to know what is down to lifestyle and what is down to genetics for me. I don't want to live my last few years depending on other people as my mum did - that would be my idea of hell. Maybe we'll have robot carers by then though