High cholesterol conundrum

[iris lilies]

My levels are elevated, but I don't take statins. Cholesterol plays an important role in your biology, and I think the medical focus on the heart risk is influenced by the availability of pharma solutions. I would encourage you to look into all cause mortality stats. You probably have some risk at your levels, but the risk may not be as high as you think. For me even though my LDL was elevated, the ratio wasn't crazy bad and my corresponding all cause risk isn't actually elevated.

See for example https://www.nature.com/articles/s415...61-y/figures/2 for the summary

And here for more break out by age and gender https://www.nature.com/articles/s415...61-y/figures/3

There is actually more risk to being too low than too high.

J, good to see you around these parts!

[Rogar]

The Mayo Clinic, Harvard school of medicine, Stanford school of medicine, and John’s Hopkins all seem to share a similar recommendation. I didn't check with Yale, the Cleveland Clinic, or articles from the Lancet.

[nswef]

I am taking sunflower lecithin . It seems to be keeping it level although my dr. wants to check in 6 months to see if it will lower it some.

[frugal-one]

I take lecithin as well but find it mostly helps with memory. When we go on vacation and I don't take it ... I start forgetting words. It obviously helps me for cognition. I take soy vs sunflower mainly based on taste. There is no taste for the soy version.

[pinkytoe]

I remain Jane's sidekick - a skeptic when it comes to most pharmaceuticals. I figure the same thing will happen with Ozempic type drugs as it will be prescribed like candy once the price goes down.The good thing is we all get to decide how we wish to proceed.

[Rogar]

I was talking with a financial adviser the other day and he suggested that people in our parents or maybe grandparents generation had a shorter lifespan and planning for the future was/is is different than now where we have people living well into their eights or nonagenarians. My physician has commented on how he has more patients living into their nineties. Of course there are the anecdotal stories like my great aunt and uncle who almost reached a hundred, but it should be not a secret that people in our age groups may have an expected lifespan a decade or two more than a person born before mid century and later medical advances. One can speculate why that is.

[pinkytoe]

We do live longer but with more chronic morbidities and drugs to keep us afloat but not in a desirable state. Case in point - my MIL. Just turned 89 and is in bad health but still alive. If not for blood thinners, she would have had a stroke a while back. Now she vegetates in assisted living and frequently asks why am I still here?

[Rogar]

My next door neighbor is 96. He and his son painted his house when he was over 90. He did the trim and cut in and his son who is older than me did the rest. He was able to play the short nine with a cart until about a year ago. My accountant takes flowers from the local home and garden show to nursing homes. He said there are a lot of people in nursing homes around our ages. My parents lived into their eighties (and on the usual cocktail of prescription medications). They were both relatively healthy and active until their last year or so.

i suppose if if a person wanted a life expectancy of 60 or so they could live like it was 1940.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I'm not against pharmaceuticals, but I don't think just looking at cholesterol tells the whole story. It's simplistic. It's not the latest science is my understanding. There are markers of inflammation, there is lipoprotein (a), there is breaking down LDL into what kinds of LDL it is (apparently there are several kinds of LDL), and there is looking at the actual condition of one's blood vessels with xrays etc.. So there is a more wholistic picture of risk (of course triglycerides, blood sugar, blood pressure, etc. is all part of that too). Even with statins some think the mechanism of action might not be primarily about cholesterol (which is kind of an aside because who cares how exaclty they work if they work)

[Rogar]

ANM, that’s about exactly what I discussed with my doctor. He waved me off a couple of the extra testing methods with my general approval, but they are all worth discussing. We did talk about the wholistic approach, which seems like a pretty basic thing to review for anyone.