Do you take red yeast rice? I’ve taken it for years and eat poorly, and have low cholesterol.
Is there specific brand or type of this rice you buy and eat? I’ve had high cholesterol for years but not high enough for drugs. Yet.
Thanks, but reading the side effects of that stuff, I might as well take statins instead. Sounds like it can be rough on your liver, and I need to avoid that. I already do eat salmon every week or two and I take fish oil for when I don’t. I pretty much do everything right, that’s why my HDL is high, Trigs are reasonable, and VLDL (the really bad LDL) is low. Just generic LDL is borderline high.
I know where I need to make changes. I was eating potato chips a couple of times a week for a snack, that’s out. Whole milk coffee drinks everyday are out (Even though my LDL went down this year, and I have been doing that everyday for over 2 years). Then just cut back on cheese and butter, that will be the hard part, but I know I can do it.
I need to watch the sugar too, all this stuff is connected more than I knew before this week.
Here’s a fun anecdotal story for you. A couple of years ago (before I lost 80 lbs from doing keto) my doctor (who I like) prescribed statins for me due to a bad blood test. I started taking them, and they had a horrible effect on my joints, giving me terrible joint pain. Oftentimes I could barely walk upstairs from the basement, as each hip would give me terrible pains, and I’d pull myself up with the help of the banister.
After going through life that way for maybe 2-3 months, I had another doctor appointment. And when I was there I made the connection between “recent pain” and “taking statins.” So I asked my doctor if statins could give you terrible joint pain. He told me they could. I told him they were giving me horrible issues. He then said “ok, stop taking them. We’ll keep an eye on your cholesterol moving forward.”
My blood work is ok since then but he hasn’t brought up the subject again.
Statins are an odd thing and seem like they might not be worth the side effects, unless a person can’t change their diet. The US government guide line is basically anyone over 40 who is at risk should take them. Same with the UK, but not mainland Europe. A doctor I saw on YouTube (that sounds horrible), said statins are partly popular just because of big pharma.
I took atorvastatin briefly 6-7 years ago. I recall being very happy to get off them, but don’t recall why. I think it might have been giving me indigestion/heartburn?
That was the same time period I started eating protein bars from Costco (later quest). I credited the fiber in those for helping to bring my cholesterol down, along with some other changes.
There are a bunch of different statins available, so sometimes switching to a different one if a particular one gives you problems is an option. Some even cross the blood brain barrier (simvastatin and atorvastatin). They can have different modes of action (for what genes in the upstream pathway to cholesterol synthesis are impacted.) I’m not a doctor, but I’ll just say that we have a growing appreciation that cholesterol is REALLY important for the brain’s functioning - I’m currently studying that at the single cell level in brains of normal and schizophrenic individuals. There’s also some research on temporary cognitive impairment that is not yet convincing (and mood altering effects, eep?), but is yet one more thing that would make me less excited to take one of the two statins listed above.
I continue to work hard on diet/exercise to put off using these drugs as long as possible - one of my emphasis/self-experiments now is to use soluble fiber to pull LDLs out of my blood. I’m both taking a supplement as well as emphasizing soluble fiber foods in my diet.
I also continue to look at pictures of smash burgers loaded with cheese and feel very hungry. Thanks, “The Menu”!
I live in Spain. The ‘s’ is silent.
So you study the effect of statins? And you do not want to take them? Should we read between the lines there?
Doing it by diet and exercise is going to be difficult. I can’t really exercise more than I do, so that leaves me with diet. I have been re-evaluating everything I eat, and I think I fell into a mindset of “I exercise so I can eat whatever I want” and “I will just have a little bit of this or that” and it adds up. I eat a lot of dairy, and didn’t even realize it.
Now that I have been trying to cut back on sugar and snacks I am back in my always hungry mode. I don’t really know what to eat, so I am just not eating.
It’s not smash burgers for me, it’s chocolate and bread.
Just in the context of how they modify cholesterol and how that affects some cells in the brain. I didn’t want to take statins (or any drugs really) unless it was necessary. I’m a little boggled at how they may have some effect on brain chemistry, but we’re still in the model system stages (ie: cells in a dish) so no need to induce worry based on my direct work, but in reading it’s curious that there are some conflicting reports of cognition and the like, which ties into what we might expect to see from our work. In the real world though, the effects might be minor / non existent.
If it makes you feel better, my boss is doing the same research, and he takes statins every day and isn’t the least bit concerned, and he’s a much better biologist than I am.
I was like this in November and December. New job and festive season, no time for PT.
Just nibbling a bit of this, a bit of that, and 4 days of Christmas binge.
Got to 89 or so kilos.
Getting it back down now. 86 yesterday :)
The morning blood coughing up continues. 2 times already in Jan.
Fucking annoying, have a 2nd endoscopy set for Feb, excited for them to tell me “everything looks fine” like in 2021.
Have you had a sputum culture to make sure nothing bad is growing?
Not been suggested by the doc, the blood literally only happens after using my APAP, most often after waking up and moving around, sometimes it has happened in the middle of the night.
When they did the endoscopy before, (2021) they did a bronchial lavage, and found nothing. They noted evidence of past pnemonia (don’t remember that) and bacterial infection, but nothing that wasn’t “healed” CT scan and Xray were all clear as well.
Working theory is “posterior nosebleed” which is dripping down into my throat while I sleep.
Sounds like maybe the CPAP is drying membranes too much?
Yeah, maybe? I use humidty, and often end up using up most of the entire humidity well every night. I think it is more than that.
I had them adjust the pressure to slightly lower, that didn’t seem to help.
I do wake up very pleghmy pretty often, and I can feel a lot of congestion in my nose all the time, as well as my nose feeling pretty dried out.
Bread is the enemy. The problem I have is if I try to cut it out completely it makes me crave it eventually.
Got a relative who has authored many scientific papers and works for Big Pharma and he told me the same thing. Only take any kind of medicine if you have to, including aspirin and Tylenol.
White bread is, but whole grain breads are ok. I think. They aren’t completely useless calories like white bread is at least. We have a brand in our supermarkets here called Dave’s Killer, not sure if it’s regional or not, and all their stuff is varying degrees of whole grain and no corn syrup. I already eat their English muffins, but I bought some of their “Better than White Bread” and have been using it to replace tortillas when I want to make a meal more filling.
The thing with bread is that it is also a butter delivery vehicle. So I have been eating it unbuttered, mostly to soak up sauces.
Oat milk flat white this morning. Meh.
Dave’s is regional to the PNW.