Do you have high cholesterol?? Did you decide to take statins and if so why? or why not?

[Owl9to5]

Mine is high, 7. Ratio of 4. But my triglycerides are low. Blood pressure low. Blood sugar normal. I don't smoke, not overweight. I eat very healthily with my cholesterol in mind. I walk everywhere. Mindful of gut biome, eat in a 8 hour window. There's nothing else I can do.

does high cholesterol in isolation matter? 2 thirds of people who have heart disease have diabetes or pre-diabetes. I don't. Not everybody who has a heart attack even has cholesterol?

Statins have so many awful side effects.

I don't want to argue with a doctor because of youtubers saying that statins are a con. But on the other hand, how much do you trust a doctor? always? blindly?

Bear in mind GP’s are currently getting paid more and being incentivised to get people on statins for this years QOF.

Thank you this is useful. Dorn suppose you can link to the online test could you please?

I've googled but can't find one that's "easy".

If you decide to go on low fat diet beware reducing your calcium intake accidentally. I gave up milk, cheese, red meat etc and ended up with oestopenia and cholesterol still high. Went on statins and down came cholesterol but oestopenia doesn't go away ( but now eating much cheese and oestopenia has not got worse).

It is just the qrisk one someone linked to upthread
https://qrisk.org/

This is all very new to me; I only saw the GP practice nurse last week. I've never heard of those tests but that's a really good point, if they don't want to refer me for those tests then they can't really think I need statins. I didn't think my total Cholesterol of 5 was particularly high nor 3 for the bad cholesterol tbh

My grandmother and my MIL both had dementia and died by inches. My own mother is beginning to have difficulty with short-term memory and I fear the future. Once DD is an adult I’m not going to do anything to delay my end: I don’t want to be a dementia patient and would rather die of heart failure or cancer a bit earlier than strictly necessary.

I have always had (apparently) high cholesterol, between 6.8 and 7.2. This has never been a problem until my blood pressure went sky high after COVID 212/120 or thereabouts, my G P showed me some data about increased risk of high cholesterol coupled with high blood pressure, I now take 10mg of atorvastatin. I have not had any side effects.

Unless there is a genetic reason for statins, or my cholesterol was close to double figures I personally wouldn't and didn't.
Instead I gave up refined sugar and alcohol to help my liver and ate porridge every day. It worked.
Cholesterol is used by your body to synthesise lots of hormones including cortisol and androgens so I'd be concerned long-term statins could lower it too much.

“big Pharma pressure”…

What are your scientific qualifications ? Or training? Any?

“GP’s”

Why would anyone accept medical advice from someone who writes GP’s?

How do you get a test for cholesterol prescribed by your gp? Is it a routine test?

Mine used to be 7. But we lived in another country and I never had it checked in the UK. what do I need to say to get it checked again? I'm in my early 30s

That you’re worried about your cholesterol level and give them your last reading?

Im sure I’ve seen cholesterol test lots in Tesco. I wonder if you can have the test at pharmacies?

@Howbizarre22 . I have high cholesterol and am on statins but I don't have any family history of heart disease and my concern is that it seems that women's and men's bodies do some things very differently from each other e.g. processing food during excercise and I don't think that the link between high cholesterol and heart disease has ever been proven in women, just assumed? As women have much lower risk of heart disease anyway, it does make me wonder if maybe we are just all on statins for no real reason? I would love to know if there is any research being done more specifically into women and statins/ heart disease?

Wow thank you for posting. So interesting to get this perspective. Do you know, how likely is it that somebody with high cholesterol gets atherosclerosis? Is it 50:50? More? Less?
You see the people referred to you, obviously, and obviously they would have benefited from stating.

Do you observe if any of them have no other risk factors? How often would you observe somebody who has no other risk factor besides high cholesterol? Low triglycerides, low BP, not overweight, non smoker... how often do you observe that?

And diabetes/pre-diabetes is very definitely linked to heart disease as two thirds of people with heart disease have diabetes. So, .... I'm not 100% ruling out taking a statin, but if you took a statin, developed diabetes as a side effect, you'd have increased your risk not decreased it

@quizzys that is reassuring. I'm going to ask for one of those tests. My gut tells me I'm extremely healthy. My mother is 80 and just uses benecol, no incidents so far. But she is not overburdenin her metabolism with sugar, alcohol, cigarettes, she also has low BP.

I must try a d look into two things (if I can get info)

Does high cholesterol always or sometimes lead to atherosclerosis?

Can statins give you diabetes? Yes actually I think I read that they raise your blood sugar.

It's tricky to get the care that is tailored for you as an individual. Not aimed at a population

I have eaten worse this weekend than I have in the last few years. Made flapjacks with butter and sugar. Feel defeated. But my pity party will play itself out. I'll be back to health soon.

If you have the familial hypercholerol and diet doesn't bring it down, does exercise bring it down I wonder. ?

My diet v healthy but I don't do any cardio. I could try that.

Don't forget that you need to look for info specifically about women if you look into this as mens bodies definitely work differently. There is loads of proof that high cholesterol increase the risk of heart disease in men and I assume that is because it increases atherosclerosis.

If you have genetic high cholesterol, your body basically can't get rid of it very well, so excercise won't help either.

Exercise has definitely helped mine. Still high but reduced from c7.5 to 6.4 over a year - didn’t change my diet at all, still eat a lot of fat. The only difference in that period was I really upped the exercise. Not a lot of cardio (I’m working on it…) more strength training and fairly hardcore Pilates.

I didn't decide to take statins, I was told to take them by my GP.

What side-effects? I haven't had any at all.

Those people who are getting investigations done, how are you managing it?

My DH has high cholesterol - I suspect it's at least partly familial, because we eat similarly, and mine is really low. His dad has had mini strokes, although we don't know what his cholesterol readings have been, but dad is really fit - lots of cycling and running. Recent test showed DH's bad cholesterol (sorry I've forgotten if that's HDL or LDL) has come down (through changes we've made to diet we think) although not as far as we want, but his triglycerides were high.

The GP's answer is just statins (they weren't even interested in a conversation about diet and lifestyle, and actually wouldn't allow him a GP appointment - just a pharmacist to have the statin prescription). He really doesn't want to take statins if he can address this some other way, but without getting to the root cause that seems impossible. Maybe it's something we can't fix, but wouldn't an investigation tell us that?

Yeh, from the last 100 youtube videos I've watched, your metabolic health will tell you if your high cholesterol puts you at risk of atherosclerosis or not.... anybody's doctor done a fadting glucose test? Mine didn't. I had weetabix b4 the test!! But my triglycerides are low so i suspect my metabolic health is good.

A CAC test would tell you if the atherosclerosis you don't even know you have has given you heart disease or not.

I look forward to bringing this up with gp 😐

My cholesterol is always measured after a fast.

Because my cholesterol was so high, 8.9, that is above the level that is GP manageable. It flagged the need for an appointment a specialist lipid clinic at the hospital. I’m under their care now.

I started taking them 2 days ago (Atorvastatin).

I'd asked for a (full) blood test as we have high cholesterol in the family and early death from heart attack.

My cholesterol level was 7.4. I was asked if I just wanted to see if lifestyle changes would lower it but I wanted to start on statins immediately.

Thank you. His total was 7.1 in March, down to 6.39 in May. But triglycerides were up at 4.22 for some reason in the May test (2.3 in March).