What? High Cholesterol?

We had our annual wellness assessment recently and were pleased with the results… we’re healthy… except our routine lab test results hadn’t come back yet. We were confident, however, that all would be normal… probably better than normal. Then we got results. Both of us tested higher than normal for cholesterol. LDL(bad stuff) was higher and HDL(good stuff) was lower than normal. Both of us? Me, more than David, but still. What the….?

So, what is cholesterol anyway? I immediately jumped onto the Internet to find out? According to VeryWell Health “Total cholesterol is the total amount of cholesterol in your blood. Your total cholesterol includes low-density lipoprotein (LDL, or “bad”) cholesterol and high-density lipoprotein (HDL, or “good”) cholesterol. Cholesterol is a waxy, fat-like substance found in every cell in your body. […] Your cholesterol level reflects your risk of heart disease.”

I was most interested in determining the causes of high cholesterol. We knew most of the causes… lack of exercise, obesity, bad eating habits, smoking. But we exercise regularly; we’re definitely not overweight; we don’t smoke; we eat a healthy diet avoiding red meat, eating fish at least once or twice a week, rarely eating fried foods, eating lots of fresh fruits and veggies. What could possibly contribute to our high cholesterol levels? We decided we needed to ferret out the culprit(s) and remedy the situation. Neither of us takes any medications other than multivitamins and maybe Ibuprofen once in a while and we certainly don’t want to start with daily Rx meds now if it can be avoided by just altering our diets.

To be clear, we’re borderline, but we wanted to avert any preventable future issues. So, we started by assessing what we regularly eat, and right off the bat, we found an obvious suspect. We drink coffee each morning… a lot of coffee… several cups a day. To which we add half and half … a lot of half and half which has, I’m disappointed to say, a considerable amount of cholesterol. Along with all the coffee, we usually have plain Fage yogurt for breakfast to which we add fruit and nuts. Fresh fruit and nuts… good. Fage plain yogurt… evidently, not so good. Low carbs, but high cholesterol. Really? We avoid so many sugared products, hence the plain yogurt, yet we were fueling our bad cholesterol levels without realizing it. Darn!

Some of the other culprits we discovered with high cholesterol that we somehow assumed were healthy for us? Shrimp, lobster, and most shellfish… tell me it isn’t so. And then there’s movie theater popcorn (no, we really didn’t think this was healthy, but… geez) and we usually get the jumbo tub. Bah! Pizza… take off the cheese and meats (not even turkey pepperoni is good for you) and what do you have: a crust with pizza sauce… c’mon! Sardines and organ meats (kidney, liver, heart) are bad for you, too. Thank goodness! At least some high cholesterol foods are easy to avoid. And a saving grace for my once-in-awhile potato chip binges… no cholesterol (but high carbs).

Conclusion: We don’t want to go overboard here, but we do work hard to maintain a healthy lifestyle and high cholesterol isn’t healthy. It looks like cutting down on dairy will take care of the biggest portion of our daily cholesterol intake. No more half & half. We’re now using a combination of creamy oat milk with a little non-dairy creamer. We’ve found we’ve also cut down on our coffee consumption as well… probably a good idea. We’ve switched yogurt brands from Fage (sigh!) to Two Good (and it really ain’t ‘too good’, but it’s better than no good). Those two changes alone should help. And… worst of all… no more trips to Sonic for their thick, luscious milkshakes. It appears it takes as long as 3-4 months to show results from dietary changes, so we’ll chug along watching our cholesterol intake till then and see if our altered diet does the trick. Fingers crossed.

Of course, usually, when you worry about one thing and take steps to handle it like cholesterol, for instance, another one pops up… like increased carbs. It’s a neverending battle.