Cholesterol Metrics

What a difference a year makes... a year of dietary changes, mind you! I had my cholesterol tested at the end of September 2019. I was a happy carnivore and we had been using ghee (clarified butter) and coconut oil in our cooking (at my partner's request). Cause coconut oil and ghee are "good for you". Uh-huh. Not so much.

Here's my numbers from September 2019...

• Cholesterol 7.10 - should be between 2.00-5.19 mmol/l - eek!!!
  
• LDL 4.98 - should be between 1.50-3.40 mmol/l - nooooo!!!
  
• HDL 1.48 - should be greater than 1.19 mmol/l - check!
  

So... while my HDL (good cholesterol) was good... the rest of the numbers were bad. Very bad. LDL cholesterol is the bad cholesterol and it was clearly in trouble. And let's not even talk about the total cholesterol number.

For Americans, who use a mg/dl system (still metric but different than Canada and the UK)...

• Cholesterol 274 mg/dl - less than 200 is good, more than 240 is high
  
• LDL 192 mg/dl - less than 100 is good, more than 160 is high, more than 190 is very high
  
• HDL 57 - more than 60 is ideal, but 40 or more for men and 50 or more for women is acceptable

Sheesh... no wonder my doctor was freaking out and muttering things about statins and what not. Last year, after we got my results, I told him that I wanted to see what I could do with dietary changes and he agreed. He gave me three months... 

But... from September - December, we also went on a modified Keto/Paleo eating plan because a chiropractor (I know, I know!! Face-palm...) told us that it would be good for reducing my partner's inflammation and chronic pain. No carbs or sugars but eat as much meat and fats as you want. I don't even want to think what my numbers would have been in December.

Let's just say... the Keto/Paleo thing did nothing for inflammation and sent my gut into a tailspin. I even went and saw a dietitian at the hospital because my doctor thought I might be having a flare-up of IBS. The dietitian almost squeaked when she learned what we were eating and showed me all sorts of charts about the dangers of coconut oil and ghee. Not to mention the carnivorous diet we were on. Luckily... we were near the end of the grand Keto/Paleo experiment and... went back to normal eating in mid-December.

At the same time, we started reading a book by Dr. Michael Greger - How Not to Diet. We aren't normally diet people but... in trying to get the inflammation and chronic pain under control, we were experimenting with different eating plans. At the end of January 2020, we decided make a lifestyle change and embrace whole-food plant-based eating. No meat, no eggs, no dairy, no fish. No animal products of any sort.

We've been on that now for 10 months or so and I am 16 pounds lighter... and, had my cholesterol tested again in mid-November...

• Cholesterol 4.76 - should be between 2.00-5.19 mmol/l - check!
  
• LDL 3.01 - should be between 1.50-3.40 mmol/l - check!
  
• HDL 1.11 - should be greater than 1.19 mmol/l - hmmm...
  

 And... in the American scale...

• Cholesterol 184 mg/dl - less than 200 is good, more than 240 is high
  
• LDL 116 mg/dl - less than 100 is good, more than 160 is high, more than 190 is very high
  
• HDL 43 - more than 60 is ideal, but 40 or more for men and 50 or more for women is acceptable

My cholesterol metrics from 2014-2020

Right then... doing not too bad for LDL (bad cholesterol) and total cholesterol. The HDL (good cholesterol) is a bit low. I could start eating more good fats - olive oil, ground flax, avocado and... coconut oil.

I can already hear the people saying... "eat coconut oil - it will raise your HDL"! But... take a look at my HDL history... I was eating a tonne of coconut oil from 2018-2019 and... my HDL wasn't much better than in the previous years with no coconut oil. So... I'm not sure that's the solution.

The best way to raise my HDL is apparently high-intensity exercise three times a week. Or I could lose weight. Or I could quite smoking... except I don't smoke... I'm thinking that my HDL number is a reflection of an uptick in a sedentary lifestyle thanks to rainy autumn weather, no gardening activity and generally sitting around in front of the computer.

So, them's my options at this point. In the middle of a pandemic no less... Sigh. I think I see some interval training on beast hill coming up... maybe it's not enough to trudge up the hill once a day (8 minutes)... maybe it's better to go up 2 minutes, down 1 minute... up 2 minutes, down 1 minute... etc. And stutter my way up the hill... It certainly qualifies as high intensity... gasp... wheeze...

Sauté without Oil?? What!

Did you know you can sauté without oil? I had no idea! The dietician at the hospital suggested this when I met with her last year. She showed me graphs and charts of all the different cooking oils and none of them are really healthy, especially when you are looking for a high-heat oil. And, no, coconut oil, despite all the advertising is NOT good for you... it has a ridiculous amount of saturated fat.

But... the idea of sautéing without oil had never even crossed my consciousness. Oil was just a necessary evil, I thought... Turns out, you can actually sauté with water. Yep... who knew? Just use small bits of water at a time (1 to 2 Tablespoons) and it works really well.

We cook a lot of curries and we usually start by sautéing onions. All we do is add a bit of water to the pan, let it heat up and then toss in the onions. As the water evaporates, just keep adding more water in little bits and keep stirring. It's cut down on our oil use drastically... at least for frying and stuff. We still use olive oil in salads because that has healthy fats, or so we are told.

Wiping out on Oil's Slippery Slope

Relax, Alberta, this post ain't about petroleum oil! I'm talkin' about the stuff we suck into our bodies with gusto - fat, grease, cooking oil, liquid gold. It's a pretty hot topic and if you follow the news at all, you might know that dietary fat has a complex history. One year, fat is good for you, essential to our body functioning well. The next year, fat is bad. No... wait... there's good fat.... and then there's bad fat. Saturated... unsaturated... polyunsaturated... trans... it's enough to make my head spin. I've even heard that it was the sugar industry in the 1950s that painted fat as the bad guy. You know... dietary fat makes you fat. But now we hear that sugar is the bad guy and fat is... the good guy?

There is a LOT of information out there... and a lot of it is misinformation. Here's a tale of our little foray into the world of dietary fat... based on information gleaned from... wait for it... Pinterest! I should mention here that I, personally, ahem, am NOT on Pinterest sooo...

Coconut oil

A few years ago, my partner tried to convince me that coconut oil was the latest dietary thing. It was a miracle working wonder that was "good" for you while the high temp cooking oils like canola, sunflower and peanut were "bad" for you. I was... skeptical... to say the least. I knew that coconut oil was extremely high in saturated fats (very bad) and that seed oils were low in saturated fats (good). We had a bit of a tussle over this where she would use coconut oil for cooking while I would use canola oil.

I had had a brush with high-cholesterol in 2000 and did not want to repeat history. Going on a reduced fat diet was no fun... good-bye cookies... hello fig newtons. Mmmm... (not).

A year ago, my partner introduced the idea of also using Ghee for cooking. Ghee is basically clarified butter that can be used for high-temp cooking. Apparently it's a thing in Ayurvedic recipes. Let's face it, Ghee is not much better than coconut oil... but it is slightly better. My partner can be quite persuasive and... I caved. Fine... we'll try the coconut oil and Ghee although my arteries cringed every time I saw the stuff slithering around in the frying pan.

My LDL cholesterol levels over the last few years. See spike
over last year? Thank you coconut oil & ghee.

Cue my latest blood results this fall - cholesterol had jumped dramatically... like dramatically! I also appeared to be struggling with a bout of IBS and my doctor referred me to a dietician at the hospital's outpatient clinic. We had a conversation about low FODMAP foods (ick)... and about fats and oils. The dietician was frankly appalled to hear that we were using coconut oil and Ghee. She said that any sautee-ing of vegetables should be done with the thinnest skiff of oil, and then supplemented with judicious amounts of water (not too much at once). I told her she was preaching to the choir but... what to do...

In truth, it was worse than that just coconut oil and Ghee. You see... in late September, my partner saw a sports medicine guy about her chronic pain and he recommended that she go on an 8 week detox diet aimed at reducing inflammation in her body. Great! It was basically a modified version of a Keto/Paleo diet which meant... cut the sugar and grains and eat as much meat, eggs, dairy and fat as you can.

Ummm... really? My arteries cringed some more. But this guy was a lean runner and... he said his cholesterol was high too and... look at him.. trim and fit. Eeeeshhh...

So we followed the detox. And... to be fair... we did feel better - more energy, lost some weight. But, towards the end of the 8 weeks, my partner got her blood work done and... can you guess? Yep, her cholesterol was high as well (including the LDL - the bad cholesterol). Our family doctor calculated her risk of heart attack and... it was high enough to be scary. No wonder... her breakfast of choice during the 8 weeks had been a crust-less quiche stuffed with cheese, bacon, ham and some veggies.

How Not To Diet - Michael Greger

And then... over Christmas, I read a blog which highlighted ten key takeaways from a new book: How not to Diet by Dr. Michael Gregger. The key points were fascinating and we bought the book. It is not for the faint of heart - over 600 pages with thousands of footnotes. We've been reading it out loud and are just past halfway but... already we have some new insights.

For one, my partner has now admitted that perhaps Pinterest and it's associated links are not the best source of dietary information. Excellent. She has also agreed to cut out the coconut oil and Ghee. Sorry Pinterest and Ayurveda... saturated fats are bad news. Coconut oil has more saturated fat than lard (think Crisco)... And, yes, I've heard the story that medium-chain-fatty acids in coconut oil "may" raise good cholesterol (HDL). Jury is still out on whether those actually survive the processing of coconuts to coconut oil. I can also tell you that my blood results do not support this assertion. But that's just me... oh, and my partner... cause her blood results were bad too.

The thing is... seed oils have their own issues. Almost all seed oils are extracted in a chemical process using hexane which is carcinogenic. Well, that's not good, is it? And while olive oil is held up as a shining light of health... there's more to that story too. There's the first press of the olives which is called "cold pressed" and that is the best. After that, each successive pressing (second and third) uses heat and the quality of extracted oil goes down. The dietician had mentioned this when I first met with her in October. "Read the label carefully" she said. "Make sure it says cold-pressed." Oh, and we all know that olive oil should NOT be used for high temp cooking. Right?

Sautéing onions without oil... just water.

On top of all of that... the coconut oil craze has incentivized farmers in the tropics (SE Asia) to plant more and more coconut trees. And where does the land from these expanding plantations come from? One guess. Yep, cutting down local forests and planting coconut trees. This doesn't sound all that different from the problems with palm oil plantations. And let's not even talk about the environmental cost of shipping coconuts and coconut oil around the planet.

So, yes... we've ditched the Ghee and the coconut oil. As well as the seed oils. The other day, I tried sautéing onions with water and... hot darn if it didn't work like a charm. What the heck?

It's all a bit of a grand experiment with us as little guinea pigs. Will any of this make a difference in our cholesterol numbers? Cutting out the coconut oil and the ghee. Backing away from the animal proteins. Time will tell...