Back among the living

And it feels great! I take my good health for granted. I'm a very healthy 52-year old that somehow escaped any serious illness that could have been caused by being 100 pounds overweight. It takes getting sick like I did last week to realize I'm very fortunate.

Last week my work had a health fair where employees could be tested for cholesterol, blood glucose and blood pressure, for free. I had these tests in February when I had my physical and started Weight Watchers. In just six months my cholesterol dropped 25 points, which is amazing, but something else really bad happened along the way. Here are my numbers:

Feb. 2008 / June 2008
Total cholesterol 171 / 146
LDL 146 / 88
HDL 36 / 29 <----very bad!
LDL/HDL Ratio 4.8 / 5.0 <----very bad! High Risk Heart Attack!
Triglercerides 146 / 145

With a LDL/HDL ration of 5.0 I'm in the high risk category for a heart attack. My total cholesterol went down, but it was already pretty good (should be below 200). Now my HDL is scary low, I have to get it up. Anything less than a HDL of 50 for a female is high risk. Mine is 29!

HDL is actually not a type of cholesterol but it's the transport mechanism that removes the bad cholesterol out of your arteries and transports it to the liver where it's disposed. It's like a little scrubbing machine and transport system. Without high HDL even a little of the bad stuff, LDL, can kill you. My big goal is to get that number up, preferably to 60 (ideal is greater than 60).

How can I do this? Thanks to the internet, I know what to do. Exercise, fish oil supplements, olive oil, avocadoes, niacin, glass of wine a day, oranges, cranberry juice, oatmeal, 1/2 a raw onion a day, and the list goes on. Of course I can't do all of this every day, but I can incorporate some of it each day. Exercise is a given, I already do that every day. Adding fish oil and niacin are easy, and I'll work on the other things.

I suspect my lower HDL is because I've been cheating on Weight Watchers and not eating my healthy oil. Eating an extremely low fat diet will cause HDL to decrease. In fact, I've eliminated almost all fat from my diet because I didn't want to waste Points on something silly like oil. Now it doesn't seem so silly since I'm in the high risk heart attack category. In fact, it seems pretty serious.