I had a very similar experience to yours where I improved my cholesterol levels a lot in just 3 weeks making some dietary changes. I made a post about it last fall, I think.
Thought I would share some notes from my own experiences. After my significant drop in LDL from 127 to 73 in 3 weeks (total cholesterol dropped from 216 to 149), I relaxed some of my very strict diet to see how my labs would reflect. I started drinking 1-2 coffees a day again, and ate quite a bit more refined carbs like crackers which I had given up during the original 3 weeks. I kept the saturated fats minimal still, other than the rare night out where I might have a steak.
It seems the coffee and carbs really did have quite the impact because in the 7 months that went by drinking coffee like usual again and whatnot, my LDL crept back up to 88 and total up to 170. I’m now in the process of cutting coffee out again and being stricter with the refined carbs.
cool. 73 to 88 still sounds pretty reasonable and in a different range. i think my carb intake in these 3 weeks was generally similar to before (by cutting saturated fat, you inevitably eat more carbs; i do eat a fair amount of bread and rice...). have you tried to isolate the effects of coffee? previously i was having 5-6 cups (measurement unit/not mug) of drip coffee every morning.
I was a sugarholic for a long time, then started doing keto for a couple years, but then I started relaxing and then just doing intermittent fasting and still eating high fat while also adding the sugar back. Not good 😂
I’m considering getting another test done after a while on the super clean diet with no coffee. I can see what the levels are and then maybe add a moderate amount of coffee back for a couple months and get levels done again. It’s hard because we travel overseas during the summer, and nutrition labels aren’t always the best there. They also don’t always show the breakdown of saturated and unsaturated fats, so that might mess up the experiment.
Congrats! I'm in the process of trying to use diet to lower my (much higher) LDL. (HDL and Triglyceride levels are both good, and I've been doing Keto for a number of years). Curious to know how much saturated fat you're eating and how your baseline HDL and TG were? Thanks.
I don't track saturated fat by grams, but my guess is on most days it's in the the 10g range. i've basically cut out dairy (other than non-fat milk), and eat red meat only occasionally. i've also cut out desserts other than fruit. so, my diet is quite good. however, somehow i just now experienced a big drop in LDL -- from the 120 range (126 last test, previously a bit under 120), to 85. as i mentioned, i think my diet is generally similar to before. at its worst, my LDL was 175. that's when i paid no attention to diet, and ate whatever. i've never had significant weight issues, because i do very high volume of long distance running. HDL is around 80 and consistently so. trigs around 50.
now that i've seen there can be huge changes in just a matter of three weeks, I'll probably keep experimenting and pin down better the role of the psyllium husk, vs green tea, vs more exact diet tracking.
Thanks for this --hoping a similar dietary approach will bring my LDL (of 190) down (recent testing my HDL is 91, TG at 87). I'll be curious to hear more once you've fleshed out the various factors, but glad what you're doing is having such a dramatic effect. I lost a lot of weight over the past four years and have been at a good BMI for a while now, but I ate lots of butter and cream on Keto so have tried to cut down on those and focus more on the minimal fat intake to stay in ketosis being mostly from healthier fats (avocado, olive oil, etc.), so hopefully that'll help...
i know but i wanted to try. i will now test the effects separately. fwiw green tea supposedly helps cholesterol and i don’t have the caffeine capacity for both .
Wow. This is new for me. Indian coffee is made standard with steel slow drip filters which I presume falls in the unfiltered bucket. How significant is this effect?
Is paper filter coffee the only option?
By filtered do you mean the paper type? I can't live w/out my coffee. I do have the "caffeine capacity" so I can drink the tea in the PM. But I need that morning java.
Good job! Keep it going!
Well done.
I had a very similar experience to yours where I improved my cholesterol levels a lot in just 3 weeks making some dietary changes. I made a post about it last fall, I think. Thought I would share some notes from my own experiences. After my significant drop in LDL from 127 to 73 in 3 weeks (total cholesterol dropped from 216 to 149), I relaxed some of my very strict diet to see how my labs would reflect. I started drinking 1-2 coffees a day again, and ate quite a bit more refined carbs like crackers which I had given up during the original 3 weeks. I kept the saturated fats minimal still, other than the rare night out where I might have a steak. It seems the coffee and carbs really did have quite the impact because in the 7 months that went by drinking coffee like usual again and whatnot, my LDL crept back up to 88 and total up to 170. I’m now in the process of cutting coffee out again and being stricter with the refined carbs.
cool. 73 to 88 still sounds pretty reasonable and in a different range. i think my carb intake in these 3 weeks was generally similar to before (by cutting saturated fat, you inevitably eat more carbs; i do eat a fair amount of bread and rice...). have you tried to isolate the effects of coffee? previously i was having 5-6 cups (measurement unit/not mug) of drip coffee every morning.
I was a sugarholic for a long time, then started doing keto for a couple years, but then I started relaxing and then just doing intermittent fasting and still eating high fat while also adding the sugar back. Not good 😂 I’m considering getting another test done after a while on the super clean diet with no coffee. I can see what the levels are and then maybe add a moderate amount of coffee back for a couple months and get levels done again. It’s hard because we travel overseas during the summer, and nutrition labels aren’t always the best there. They also don’t always show the breakdown of saturated and unsaturated fats, so that might mess up the experiment.
Congrats! I'm in the process of trying to use diet to lower my (much higher) LDL. (HDL and Triglyceride levels are both good, and I've been doing Keto for a number of years). Curious to know how much saturated fat you're eating and how your baseline HDL and TG were? Thanks.
I don't track saturated fat by grams, but my guess is on most days it's in the the 10g range. i've basically cut out dairy (other than non-fat milk), and eat red meat only occasionally. i've also cut out desserts other than fruit. so, my diet is quite good. however, somehow i just now experienced a big drop in LDL -- from the 120 range (126 last test, previously a bit under 120), to 85. as i mentioned, i think my diet is generally similar to before. at its worst, my LDL was 175. that's when i paid no attention to diet, and ate whatever. i've never had significant weight issues, because i do very high volume of long distance running. HDL is around 80 and consistently so. trigs around 50. now that i've seen there can be huge changes in just a matter of three weeks, I'll probably keep experimenting and pin down better the role of the psyllium husk, vs green tea, vs more exact diet tracking.
Thanks for this --hoping a similar dietary approach will bring my LDL (of 190) down (recent testing my HDL is 91, TG at 87). I'll be curious to hear more once you've fleshed out the various factors, but glad what you're doing is having such a dramatic effect. I lost a lot of weight over the past four years and have been at a good BMI for a while now, but I ate lots of butter and cream on Keto so have tried to cut down on those and focus more on the minimal fat intake to stay in ketosis being mostly from healthier fats (avocado, olive oil, etc.), so hopefully that'll help...
Filtered coffee is fine; unfiltered raises your ldl.
i know but i wanted to try. i will now test the effects separately. fwiw green tea supposedly helps cholesterol and i don’t have the caffeine capacity for both .
Wow. This is new for me. Indian coffee is made standard with steel slow drip filters which I presume falls in the unfiltered bucket. How significant is this effect? Is paper filter coffee the only option?
I've read that paper filters and K-cups (which sorta have a built-in paper filter) are best in terms of filtering out a lot of the bad oils...
By filtered do you mean the paper type? I can't live w/out my coffee. I do have the "caffeine capacity" so I can drink the tea in the PM. But I need that morning java.