You may remember a post I did in March of this year sharing my husband’s cholesterol experiment. To refresh your memory or in case you didn’t read it, he decided after years of being told his cholesterol was high and he needed to go on statins, that he would go gluten free for 6 weeks to see if that would make a difference. I shared that he essentially did the first 2 detox weeks of my Today’s the Day plan for 6 weeks and his results were impressive. After just 6 weeks his total cholesterol dropped 35 points and his LDL cholesterol dropped 31 points which is amazing especially in such a short time.
He was encouraged by the results and was committed to continuing. As we went forward I found some excellent low-carb, gluten free recipes for things like burger buns and English muffins so he could enjoy those things in a healthier way. I did find some gluten free burger buns in the freezer section of my supermarket but they were VERY expensive and not low carb at all. So these easy-to-make versions were a much healthier and more affordable option.
I revised several recipes for meals he especially liked to be healthier and gluten free and he was very happy, satisfied and committed to seeing this through. Interestingly, to me anyway, he has not gotten his taste for pasta back. In fact, we just went on a cruise vacation and he said he went to the pasta station to see if he might want to have some and it absolutely turned him off! I know my Italian mother-in-law would be upset with me for this – but it’s definitely better for his health.
He scheduled his bloodwork for the week before our vacation. His conversation with his doctor was pretty interesting. She still was pretty insistent that she wanted him to go on a statin because she was worried that he might have some sort of “event.” I do appreciate and believe she is sincere about her concern for his health. That being said he told her that he changed his diet and wanted to see how it affected his results.
She asked him how he changed his diet and he said he is eating low-carb and gluten free, avoiding sugar and eating eggs most mornings. As you might imagine she was horrified and said why would you avoid carbs and sugar? He just told her to do the blood test and they could discuss it when they had the results.
She never called before we left on vacation so we went on vacation and to be totally honest, he went off his clean eating. With my blessing. I think when you are too restrictive and say you can never do anything whether it’s eat bread or pasta or ice cream or whatever – you are headed for trouble. I told him before we left he could eat whatever he wanted to and we’d just go back to the way we were eating when we got home.
She called when we got home and was extremely low key about his results. Here are the results after eight months of these clean eating changes:
Total cholesterol dropped a total of 75 points to a perfectly normal 190;
LDL cholesterol (supposedly the “bad” cholesterol) dropped a total of 81 points to a perfectly acceptable 110; and
Best of all, his HDL, the “good” cholesterol, which had never been higher than 56 rose to an excellent and heart protective 72!! So much for restricting eggs!
Even his triglycerides, which were never high at all dropped 27 points to 41.
She told him his levels were all improved saying, “Your diet seemed to work for you so congratulations on that but I still suggest you go to a cardiologist and if there is any calcification he will still want you to go on a statin.”
Does it seem to you like the whole focus here is getting on that statin? Yes, it does to me too. I am very proud of his commitment to a very different way of eating and also to his determination to stay off the dangerous statin drugs.
It is very gratifying to be able to see those results solely from cleaning up nutrition. I am a huge fan of evidence based medicine and consider this to be evidence based nutrition!
What do you think about our cholesterol experiment?
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