[riosmom]

My DH was diagnosed about a month ago, and ever since has been on a very low carb (less than 40 grams a day) diet. His BG #'s have been great. AM average is around 90, and 2 hr post meals around 85. He started out eating mainly grilled chicken & fish, but lately has been bored with that so he is adding in more of what I wonder is too high in fat & cholesterol. He's been eating more cheese, eggs, bacon, and red meat. I have the Adkins book, and it claims that eating these foods in the absence of carbs, will actually lower cholesterol levels. But still I wonder..... His triglycerides were something like 421 a month ago. The dr wants to do a lipid panel again at the end of Jan. I don't want him to have #'s even higher! Is it OK to be eating all these fatty foods?

[fgummett]

To quote BlueSky - a very smart guy here on DF:

As far as eating foods containing cholesterol is concerned, we need to keep this in perspective. The body uses about 2,000 mg of cholesterol a day, for things like making hormones, building tissue, fixing damage and maintaining the nervous system. What you don't get from food, the liver makes. So if you limit your cholesterol intake to 100mg a day, the liver will make the other 1,900 mg to make up the shortfall. If you didn't get cholesterol from any other food, you could eat 8 eggs (at 240mg each) a day, and the liver would only need to make 80mg of the stuff to make up the shortfall. And your serum cholesterol would stay the same. This is certainly in line with my experience. I eat 3 eggs a day and my cholesterol is the same as it was before I started doing this.

The notion that dietary cholesterol increases serum cholesterol levels is an old, very tired, and now discredited theory. It was created by Ancel Keys back in the 50's, based on very dodgy epidemiological research. In the 70's Keys himself acknowledged that dietary cholesterol does not affect serum cholesterol in humans, but the theory persists. It has become part of conventional medical wisdom and is the basis of a $30bn industry (statins). This misconception is being actively perpetuated to protect vested interests. And most doctors simply don't know any better.

This is borne out by my own experience and that of several others here on DF. I have been eating "very low to zero" carbs since August of last year (2008) and along with no longer feeling hunger all the time, I have lost weight, my BG levels are stable near normal on a third of the insulin I used to use, and my lipids are the best they have been since I started having them tested.

I eat only eggs, bacon, steak, butter, pork chops, sausages, chicken, fish, full-fat mature cheese, full-fat cream, dark chocolate (70% cocoa or higher), nuts, and some green leafy vegetables - mainly plain Romaine lettuce. No sauces other than seasonings (salt, pepper, curry powder, garlic salt, chilli powder) and natural juices.

My latest blood work was taken after a 12 hour fast on the morning of 14th November 2008:
A1c 5.0%
Triglycerides 60.23 mg/dl
HDL-C 42.08 mg/dl
LDL-C 71.43 mg/dl
Total-C 3.24
Total-C/HDL-C Ratio 3.0
Triglycerides/HDL-C Ratio 0.6

[dlife]

What fish does your husband take? I am trying to take salmon but can't bear the smell. Sorry, I don't really have an answer to your question right now. I am also trying to get equipped with knowledge through this great forum.

[riosmom]

I agree, this is a wonderful forum! He has been eating mainy Salmon. I buy the fillets, and grill them in a fry pan with olive oil. I use Mrs Dash spices on them, which makes them quite tasty. He is not a big fish fan, but has found the salmon to be likeable. I did bake it once, but neither of us enjoyed that. It seemed to make the meat more stiff. Pan grilling only takes a couple minutes per side, and makes the meat very moist and tender. He hates tuna form a can, but I am thinking of trying to grill tuna steaks. They say fish is a very healthy food.

[riosmom]

I also meant to thank you, Frank, for your answer. It was pretty much what I was hoping to hear.

[cyberus]

I eat low to very low carb, breakfast consists of 3 eggs cooked in lard with a slice of low carb (6g) toast slathered with real butter. I eat things like sausage, roast pork, pot roast at work and so on, the numbers in my sig below bear out the results.
However comma pause .. I do have to say it doesn't always work for everyone, your hubby may not have been doing it long enough to have a real effect.

[fgummett]

Fish is supposed to be a great food... especially the oily ones like salmon. Although for myself, since switching to low-carb, if I have any cravings, it is for steak... red and juicy (my apologies to any vegetarians out there ) it seems to satisfy me the most and leaves me feeling invigorated. Steak also has a surprising number of nutrients other than just protein and fat... again, the less cooked the better, in that regard.

I also do most of my cooking in a heavy cast-iron pan, rather than the grill. By leaving the meat or fish to stand a few minutes after cooking, you get all the natural juices as well.

---

You are most welcome riosmom

[CaptainMike]

I've been on what I call "The Bacon, Eggs, Steak, and Full Full Fat Dairy Diet" since late 2007. My cholesterol and triglyceride numbers have been excellent the entire time (blood work every 3 months) though they tend to go up if I succumb to "carb creep" At diabetes diagnosis when I was on a NO fat, NO Cholesterol "Healthy Whole Grain" diet on the advice of a quack GP, my LDL and triG's were both well over 300. I realize this seems to run counter to the conventional wisdom, but it does work for me. Hope it works for your husband. You should try to get him on the forum for himself..

[lorilei]

I agree with above...and i was a fat and protein phob for years...better Bg with lower carbs...and i don't eat any seafood...just lots of chicken and the like...

[jps]

From my own experience - eating high fat and high protein while staying under 60 g carbs per day slashed my lipids. Common sense, or at least on the surface, you'd expect the lipid profile to become worse by eating so much fat. I figured I was going to have a lipid problem to deal with after I got my BG #'s well under control. I was grateful that my lipids in fact dropped rather significantly.

[xMenace]

I agree, mostly. I try to follow a "you are what you eat eats" approach. Most meat, beef, pork, chcken, etc, are grain fed to some degree. I blieve you are much better off eating grass fed meats. Greass feeding promotes omega 3 fats while grain fed promotes omega 6's. our 20th+ century bodies are much higher in omega 3s than previous generations. It's a theory that this is also a cause of heart disease.

I have a local organic butcher who deals soley in grass fed meats. We buy 90% of our meat and eggs there. They actually have taste!

[Barberian]

My Grandfather on my mothers side ate a diet high in meat and always got the meat high in fat. At dinner time when we ate together it was a predetermined fact that he would get the piece of meat with the most fat content, and he would eat it all including the fat on the outside most people trim off. He said it was the best part of the meal. Other than potatoes he never was to hot on veggies, ate a minimum just for balance. He never had a problem other than high blood pressure (other than the unrelated cancer that eventualy got him).

I'm working on it ever so slowly. I was raised when fat was "bad". I still have a hard time with texture, especially if it is cold.

[matingara]

my lipids have been magnificent since i embraced low carb/higher fat (see my sig).

my trigs actually got up over 1000 on a low fat diet!

[soso]

I did 2 yrs under 30g carb per day now I do 40-100g per day and my lipids are so good that the Diabetes Education Centre thought it was a typo, they had never seen a diabetic with such good cholesterol.. a word of warning though, dont be too alarmed if the LDL rises a bit in the first year, the HDL will rise too actually improving the ratio.. and his triglycerides will drop to the low end of normal quite quickly.. in the 2nd yr the LDL will come down as well... it all seems to balance out.. I eat as much fat as I want, but have found after 4 yrs, I do not want an extraordinary amount.. I pretty much eat what the low fatters, eat plus a bit more fat, minus a lot of simple carbs.

[fgummett]

Originally Posted by soso

...a word of warning though, don't be too alarmed if the LDL rises a bit in the first year, the HDL will rise too actually improving the ratio.. and his triglycerides will drop to the low end of normal quite quickly.. in the 2nd yr the LDL will come down as well... it all seems to balance out...

This has been my experience as well... my LDL-C initially went way up which freaked my Doctor..! but at the same time my HDL-C was going up and my Triglycerides were dropping.

You also need to understand the following about LDL-C:

LDL-C (the so-called "bad" cholesterol) is an over-simplification as it just gives a total volume of LDL-C... but LDL comes in different particles sizes with "large and fluffy" being seen as harmless in comparison to "small and dense" - considered by some authorities to be 300% higher risk. The implication of "volume" versus "particle size" is that someone could have an high LDL-C volume made up of large fluffy particles and still be at lower risk than someone else with a low volume of small dense particles. Please read this PDF (by Paul E. Lemanski, MD, MS, director of the Center for Preventive Medicine and Cardiovascular Health, Prime Care Physicians, P.C., and assistant clinical professor of medicine at Albany Medical College - not a "quack") Beyond Routine Cholesterol Testing: The Role of LDL Particle Size Assessment..., print off a copy and take it to your Doctor. This is not controversial, just new, and your Doctor may not have heard about it yet. There is a blood test called "apo B" which measures LDL particle size.