Atkins and your blood chemistry

[Sherri]

I'm always fascinated how well the Atkins diet effects your blood chemistry. Do you have any numbers to compare and share? These are what your ideal numbers should be. Total cholesterol Below 180, HDL Above 60, Triglycerides Below 180, LDL Below 100, Non- HDL Below 140, TC/HDL Below 4.5. Also your A1C, which is your glucose level over a three month period, should be under 7. Just thought it would be fun to see how healthy we're doing internally. Alot of focus goes into stepping on the scale and measuring. It's nice to know our numbers.

[MorningGlory]

Re: Atkins and your blood chemistry

I'm curious about his too, Sherri, but the scoring system in Canada is different than the US. I can't remember how it works, or what my last score was exactly, so will have to figure that out first.

[tapper47]

Re: Atkins and your blood chemistry

I just started a few weeks ago and got my cholesterol results today.
My ratio of CHOLESTEROL/HDL is 3.0. My LDL/HDL ratio is 1.78.

My total cholesterol was 209. That is considered high these days when just a few years ago 250 was okay. I want higher cholesterol because it is better for me. Cholesterol is good for the brain and heart.

I have added much more saturated fat to my diet. I cook with lard (didn't tell my doctor as I didn't want to cause HIM a heart attack), use real butter, eggs, cream, whole foods not processed and I feel great. What a great way of eating this is.

Have only lost .7 pounds but the weight will leave. Not worried about that at all.

[sallyseachange]

Re: Atkins and your blood chemistry

Nice idea Sherri!

My cholesterol total is high (menopause)... but since Atkins, my risk ratio is right off the charts in a positive way. I asked my doc if I should continue eating meat, eggs, cream, cheese etc, and he said: "Absolutely YES!"

[Einy]

Re: Atkins and your blood chemistry

Great idea Sherri.. I have done a full blood work just before starting Atkins (about 3 weeks ago), so I still have at least 2+ months before I go check it again.

Tapper47 wrote:

My total cholesterol was 209. That is considered high these days when just a few years ago 250 was okay. I want higher cholesterol because it is better for me. Cholesterol is good for the brain and heart.

This is may be true for HDL, but excess cholesterol is for sure not a good thing, it is one of the major contributing factors for stroke, heart attack, ischemia and vascular diseases. 209 is still OK, although it is higher than the recommended value, it should still be OK. Higher than 250 may be considered risky depending on the HDL reading that can balance the bad cholesterol effect.

[tapper47]

Re: Atkins and your blood chemistry

Great idea Sherri.. I have done a full blood work just before starting Atkins (about 3 weeks ago), so I still have at least 2+ months before I go check it again.

Tapper47 wrote:

This is may be true for HDL, but excess cholesterol is for sure not a good thing, it is one of the major contributing factors for stroke, heart attack, ischemia and vascular diseases. 209 is still OK, although it is higher than the recommended value, it should still be OK. Higher than 250 may be considered risky depending on the HDL reading that can balance the bad cholesterol effect.

It's not the total cholesterol number that I care about, it's my ratios and as long as they are good, I have no issue.

I've been reading a lot about cholesterol and studies are showing that women who are older are better off with higher cholesterol.

"Cholesterol is a major building block from which cell walls are made. Cholesterol is also used to make a number of other important substances: hormones (including the sex hormones), bile acids and, in conjunction with sunlight on the skin, vitamin D 3 . The body uses large quantities of cholesterol every day and the substance is so important that, with the exception of brain cells, every body cell has the ability to make it."

Above quote from Barry Grove's website.

"Gary Taubes, a staff writer for Science wrote an article called "The Soft Science of Dietary Fat" for the 30 March 2001 issue of Science. He had reviewed all the available information on the demonization of dietary fat and the cholesterol issues and listened to the tapes of the 1984 Cholesterol Consensus Conference. He presented the graph which showed quite clearly that serum cholesterol levels of 200 mg/dl to 240 mg/dl were definitely in the normal cholesterol range for which there was no increased risk of heart mortality in males and even above 240 mg/dl there was a decrease in risk for women."

Above quote from Mary Enig, PhD

"But what Gary Taubes didn't know was that there was a political decision being made on the floor of the NIH (Building 10) Mazur Auditorium that day in December 1984. The decision would allow the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to have yet another even more extensive long-term "trial" to work on. The NHLBI could not get more money from Congress for more large trials such as the MRFIT or LRC and they were developing the National Cholesterol Education Program. With the cutoff number at the lower end of the normal range (200 mg/dl), they could include all of the healthy normal citizens in the range that would need treatment with diet, and since the diet would never work to permanently lower those normal levels (eg, 200 mg/dl to 240 or 260 mg/dl) to below 200 mg/dl, they could recommend that all these people should go onto cholesterol-lowering medications.

The three men who were heading the NHLBI (Cleeman, Lenfant, and Rifkin) were standing together in the Mazur Auditorium just before the Cholesterol Consensus Conference began. They were discussing the cutoff level of serum cholesterol to put into the consensus report. One said to the other two, "but we can't have the cutoff at 240 [mg/dl]; it has to be at 200 [mg/dl] or we won't have enough people to test." Several of us from the University of Maryland Department of Chemistry Lipids Research Group were standing directly behind them and within clear earshot. We looked at each other and of course were not surprised when the final numbers came out. This small chat did not get onto the tapes that Taubes reviewed."

The rest of the article by Mary Enig, PhD

[cancersurvivor]

Re: Atkins and your blood chemistry

In one question I’ll see "eat a lean cuisine as a meal; they're great to lose weight and low calorie". And then I’ll look at another and it'll say "Lean Cuisines meals are so bad for you!" It’s totally opposite. It seems like nobody else really knows how to lose weight either. I just want to ask a fitness trainer or someone else who honestly thinks they could help. If someone could just kind of sketch out a meal schedule I would be willing to follow it and I’d be much appreciated.