No success stories, only failures, so I’m watching intently.

I'm sorry to hear that. What have you tried?

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

I'm also borderline high cholesterol so I'm curious to hear others' experiences. The more recent studies I've read, like this one...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...20LDL%2FHDL%20ratio.

...essentially refute the notion that dietary cholesterol affects blood cholesterol in any meaningful way. In reading studies like this, I'm left wondering what, if anything, I can do about my own cholesterol other than trying to drive up HDL through exercise and weight management to provide some measure of protection against cardiovascular disease.

Over the last several months I've started supplementing with omega 3 and with Psyllium (Metamucil), both of which are shown in studies to be beneficial in managing cholesterol, but I haven't had another blood test yet to see what benefit, if any, they provide for me.

I "flunked" my cholesterol test in 1988 (age 33). That scared me, so I lost weight (25 lbs), got in shape, and cleaned up my diet.

Since then, keeping the cholesterol in line has been a lot like weight management. If I don't eat more calories than I burn, I don't gain weight. It's like magic! The same way, if I stay below the FDA recommendations on saturated fat and dietary cholesterol, my blood cholesterol stays below the limit.

For me, it's been very reliable. Twice I've been a little over the cholesterol limit, but cleaning up my diet lowered my cholesterol in time for the following year's checkup both times. Today I'm lucky enough to be med free at 68.

(I understand dietary cholesterol isn't that important any more. Limiting saturated fats is probably what helps me.)

I have a very hard time sticking to routine due to work/family schedules, travel etc. I try to eat more oatmeal, apples, fruit, whole grains etc but it doesn’t outweigh the bad stuff. I don’t even think my diet is *that* bad, but certainly could be better.

I'm 36. I'm 7-8 lbs above the cutoff for "underweight" so that's not an issue.
I think it's the saturated fat I need to look into... and I didn't even know there were FDA guidelines for dietary cholesterol. This is good to know.

Thanks so so so much.

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

Runs in my family also. I had high cholesterol also. Cleaned up my diet. Helped quite a bit. Only meat I ate was turkey and chicken. Then went plant based and haven’t looked back.

I take some supplements. Go to a holistic Dr that is pretty well known and has written around 30 books. I listen to him and trust him. Get a shit ton of blood work done 2-3 times a year as he tests everything. (He didn’t tell me to go to plants, I chose that)

I’m doing pretty well with no prescriptions.

My wife is also very active and has the genetic high cholesterol her parents had. It's not exceptionally high, just on the limits really of what's deemed acceptable for her age. She had some statins prescribed but the side-effects were not pleasant so went back to trying to make some dietary changes. We do eat fairly healthily but even then, once off the statins (they were ¼ dose), the cholesterol has climbed again. There are few dietary changes she can make but will try to reduce increase intake of oats, nuts etc to see if the level can be lowered. We've held on to full-fat milk but will drop that to semi-skinned now even though she does not drink too much.

Unfortunately, some people do have a disposition to high cholesterol and there's little that can be done without recourse to medication. Even more unfortunately is that MDs here in NZ are much too quick to prescribe drugs without investigating changes that could be made to lifestyle and diet.

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Trust me I’m a doctor!
Well, I have a PhD :-)

OK, I'll tell you mine, and try to stick with just what's relevant and hopefully helpful. Always quite active, and transitioning from marathoning to IM and half IMs the last 7 years.
First cholesterol test was when I was in my 20s, total 140, with 80 HDL.
2nd was in my late 30s, and it was low 200s, and about 60 HDL. So borderline high.
Slightly higher total cholesterol in my mid 40s. Vegetarian, but lots of dairy.
Cut the dairy and went mostly, but not obsessively strict, plant based about 10 years ago, and to my surprise, I was right back down to 140 total, 80 HDL, where it's stayed since. Just had a calc test last week, and had a score of zero.

I'd read studies suggesting that diet could at best lower total and "bad" cholesterol by less than 10%, but for me it wasn't the case.

That's great!

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

given my family history, that's what I'm worried about
I'm glad I'm catching this now when it's only borderline high so I can make changes now.

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

Cholesterol test results are know to be inaccurate if taken within 24 hours of vigorous exercise

thank you!

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

You have already acknowledged the diet part, and it is important. Oatmeal instead of bagel and butter with cream cheese. Veggies in place fatty meats, all in moderation of course. If you are like most people, setting up a strict program just doesn't work over time. Just make small changes each day, and they will add up.

I had some luck with niacin back in the day, it seemed to lower my numbers all thing being equal. But other than the statin I'm on now, never could tell if any of the vitamin type remedies actually worked. Not saying fish oil and all the other things people take for this aren't effective, just that I could never measure those. The niacin yes, it did work for me...

Monty: Curious which statin you use. I’m on lipitor (low dose/every other day) and it works on the cholesterol, but the side effect for me is muscle cramps when I race anything approaching an hour or more….I’ver heard different medicines may be less likely to cause muscle issues, but I’m curious about what works for others.

I have been doing 10mg of Crestor every other day, no issues. May have to up that dose, but I think the every other day really helps with any potential side effects. dtoce here and my regular cardio guy both agreed on the Crestor too. But as with all drugs, they can often work differently in different people, so good news is there are many to choose from these days.

If you are having side effects and can directly relate them to the drug, might be time to look at something else?? Maybe the dose?

Thanks for the reply. The “solution” for me, so far, has been to stop the lipitor for at least a week before the competition. (This was suggested to me by a cardiologist, and it worked—no muscle cramps in my triathlons where I did this; 100% muscle cramps in races where I stayed on the med before the race). The problem is that I like to do about a dozen races a year, which means I end up going off the med for about a week every month, and then my cholesterol numbers go up!

I’m on the lowest dose of the lipitor that still gets my numbers in the safe range, so I can’t really lower the dose. I think I will ask my doctor about trying a different med, like crestor. Hope it works! Thanks.

I’ve had high cholesterol before. Managed to get it down to the normal range with only diet changes. For me I didn’t ever pay any attention to the cholesterol numbers on any foods I was eating. I focused solely on eating less saturated fat, more nuts, and more seafood - not the fried kind.

For less saturated fat, probably the easiest thing I’ve implemented to be a consistent change was just to stop cooking with butter. I won’t avoid it at restaurants as I like good food but for day to day cooking I’ve cut it out and at fast food places you can ask for unbuttered buns.

I’m not a huge fan of the flavor of nuts. I’ve heard pecans or walnuts are pretty good but unfortunately I’m allergic to those two. So for me I find the key to regularly eating them is availability. Pretty easy to carry around a little can of almonds or peanuts and have them on your desk or with you to reach for when you want a snack. It’s a bit like drinking water. If I have a water bottle with me 24/7 I’m going to be a lot better hydrated then when I have to go get water to drink.

I also made some effort to get in more fruits and veggies but it sounds like you’ve got that part down.

I'll second the daily use of supplemental fiber. My lipid specialist said it is normally worth about a 10-point or more reduction.

Mine was up and work during Covid caused me to eat poorly. Started eating oatmeal for breakfast adding flax seed. Cutting way back on red meat and processed food. Per my daughter who is a doctor Red Rice Yeast daily. My cholesterol went from 251 to 201 and the ratio’s all looked great after that. I maintain the same diet.

Lower saturated fat intake and up fiber intake, especially soluble fiber. That seems to be what has been shown to work for a lot of people.

I'm curious if anyone has tried taking Berberine to lower cholesterol. There seems to be some science behind it having moderate effectiveness but I don't know of anyone who has tried it.

Far from a nutrition expert but I wonder if it is partly genetic. My husband's grandmother was rail thin, ate relatively well for that generation and always had really high cholesterol no matter what she did.

My husband used to have really high cholesterol in his mid 30s. So high the doctors wanted to put him on cholesterol medication. He ate a lot of meat/diary/eggs and I was a vegetarian at that time. A couple years later we both went vegan in 2007. Did a lot of healthy whole foods. And my husband's cholesterol got down to normal levels. But I think that was an n=1. He did eat a lot of eggs and before going vegan and we both did eat a lot of dairy before 2007. Seems like there is controversy on eggs having cholesterol (I don't trust many studies as some are actually sponsored by meat/dairy/egg industries). I really think it depends on the person.

My suggestion would be to slowly substitute eggs for maybe tofu scrambles and try some non dairy yogurt. And see if that helps. I wouldn't do anything drastic since the body doesn't like abrupt dietary changes. My yogurt favorite at the moment is Siggis's plant based with extra plant protein.

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Death is easy....peaceful. Life is harder.

My cholesterol has been high since my late 20's. It's actually one of the things that got me to start running/triathlon. I've lost 20-30lbs since my all-time high weight. I ignored my cholesterol during my 30's and my doctor never brought it up. Since turning 40, I've gotten regular blood tests and paid attention and the numbers have been creeping up. I'm now 48 and had to take my head out of the sand. I started on 5mg of Crestor last month, which is a very little dose and zero side effects up to now, other than peace of mind.

My kind of success story is that I had never taken any pills and really didn't want to. Diet changes I made that did help, just not enough were eliminating cream in my coffee, replaced with oatmilk which I actually like more. I also started eating fish(omega 3), I had been a vegetarian. I eat a tin of sardines every 3 days. I had a blood test on Oct 16, 2023, LDL = 4.62; HDL = 1.2. I had a follow up after making these diet changes on Nov 14th(1 month) and the numbers were LDL = 3.92; HDL = 1.58. Those are crazy amazing improvements in 1 month, but alas still not great and after 20+years of high cholesterol, it was time. I'm going to be retested after 2 months on statins. I'm hoping that a combination of staying active and maintaining these diet changes will allow me to stay on the low dose.