[miss_ok_ish]

hello everyone.hope you all had a lovely xmas holiday,

I would like to know how to calculate cholesterol from USA to UK. just so i can understand some treads.

Also just one question about my cholesterol, i'm 28, 5ft 3, 8st 12lb (and rising over xmas!), i was Dx'd in june and my cholesterol was 5 and 6 month later it's 4.2, 2.5 being the good kind.

Now i did listen when i saw the Doc but you know what happens, it goes in one ear and then straight out the other.

How does my progress seem to others. i have been told to get under 4 and when i reach 40 if its not under 3.5 i need to be on tablets to control it, is this a realistic goal?

I think i eat pretty healthy and i don't add salt to my food. how can i get this alittle lower for my next endo visit in feb?

thanks guys

[BlueSky]

Originally Posted by miss_ok_ish

... my cholesterol was 5 and 6 month later it's 4.2, 2.5 being the good kind. .... i have been told to get under 4 and when i reach 40 if its not under 3.5 i need to be on tablets to control it, is this a realistic goal?...

I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. For the most part, stressing about cholesterol is completely unneccessary. And taking medication for it, IMHO, does more harm than good. I suspect your doctor was talking about LDL cholesterol. The usual target level is 4.0 mmol/l, but some doctors set the target for diabetics at 2.5mmol/l. I think this is an unrealstically low target. My LDL is 3.9, I am very happy with it, and I won't take medication to bring it down.

To translate US cholesterol figures (mg/dl) to UK figures (mmol/l), divide cholesterol by 39 and trigycerides by 89. There is a converter on the right of the screen.

[REDLAN]

There is quite a vocal community that disagree with the cholesterol heart hypothesis - they do include many doctors.

Essentially they claim that the dominant hypothesis of cholesterol causing heart disease is overstated. Critiques range from lack of evidence from population studies - in particular there is no evidence that eating fat causes heart disease (except from 1 study), and also high cholesterol is in fact protective in the elderly (the time when most people get and die from heart disease) to critiques of the effectiveness of statins.

Personally I happen to believe that the cholesterol hypothesis is overstated. Along with statin use. In my view there appears to be a failure to use the results from major statin trials to inform prescription policies.

what you need to know (and your doctor probably doesn't)

1) prescribing statins to men who have had a heart attack, lowers their risk of further cardiac disease, and lowers total mortality - this is known as secondary prevention.

2) prescribing statins to women who have had a heart attack, lowers their risk of dying from further heart attacks, however it does not make any difference to their overall mortality.

3) prescribing statins to groups at high risk of heart disease (known as primary prevention) lowers the risk of a heart disease in both men and women, but makes absolutely no difference to overall mortality.

these results come from large primary and secondary prevention studies. Yes statins lower heart disease risk, but they only improve overall mortality in men who have had a heart attack. The questions becomes, if people are dying of fewer heart attacks, then how come overall mortality is the same what are they dying more of....

unfortunately while most studies are very willing to release mortality figures from heart disease, they are much more reluctant to publish overall mortality figures. In the ones that are published it appears that the excess deaths are typically due to accidents or violent death.

Before you agree to taking statins - there are side effects from the medication. and being a young women, you also need to know that statins have been associated with serious birth defects. Currently there is nothing definitive, as few women of child bearing age receive statins, however there are some serious birth defects being reported in women taking statins. I think this is something which needs to be carefully considered before prescribing a statin to any woman of child bearing age.

[JJM335]

In the UK, there still seems to be a prediction to look at Total Cholesterol as the principal diagnostic. The Americans seem to be much more willing to separate into HDL and LDL and to look at the ratio.

Since LDL is supposedly the "bad" cholesterol and HDL supposedly the "good" cholesterol, I cannot see the point of adding the two together.

My Doctor told me he wasn't interested in what my Cholesterol figures were, he thought all diabetics should go on Statins regardless.

[BlueSky]

Originally Posted by JJM335

.... My Doctor told me he wasn't interested in what my Cholesterol figures were, he thought all diabetics should go on Statins regardless.

And to think that these so-called doctors actually went to university. The mind boggles!

[ant hill]

I have come across some info about Statins and I see that this is so undesireable to take statins.
Here is what I have read.