Help with Cholesterol Numbers?

[JMyrtle]

Help, I need advice!
Had my annual review last week and my blood glucose is down to 39 but!
Our rural surgery has recently been taken over (bought) by a group practice from one of the coastal towns so we now have " smart townie doctors" taking our appointments.
My cholesterol has gone up from the 5.5 it has been for years to 6.5 and as I insist on sticking to (eyes roll) low carb diet for my diabetes it will be impossible to do low fat as well so I must go on to statinsat once, which by the way have no side effects other that slight joint pains or so I was told when I queried if they were safe for diabetics controlled by diet to take.
I actually believed the man until I came on here and found out that I can also expect a rise in weight and blood glucose which I have been keeping down by diet for the last three years as well as quite a few other little problems
I cannot pick up the new medication until Monday as it has to be ordered so I don't know what I have been given but having read the posts on here I'm scared stiff of going anywhere near the stuff.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Best wishes
Jackie

 

[silentsquirrel]

Help, I need advice!
Had my annual review last week and my blood glucose is down to 39 but!
Our rural surgery has recently been taken over (bought) by a group practice from one of the coastal towns so we now have " smart townie doctors" taking our appointments.
My cholesterol has gone up from the 5.5 it has been for years to 6.5 and as I insist on sticking to (eyes roll) low carb diet for my diabetes it will be impossible to do low fat as well so I must go on to statinsat once, which by the way have no side effects other that slight joint pains or so I was told when I queried if they were safe for diabetics controlled by diet to take.
I actually believed the man until I came on here and found out that I can also expect a rise in weight and blood glucose which I have been keeping down by diet for the last three years as well as quite a few other little problems
I cannot pick up the new medication until Monday as it has to be ordered so I don't know what I have been given but having read the posts on here I'm scared stiff of going anywhere near the stuff.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Best wishes
Jackie

MUST??? It is your choice whether you take them (or anything else) or not.

 

[JMyrtle]

Yes I know but suddenly I am at 20% risk of stroke or heart attack in the next five years although doctor agrees it's far more important to keep my blood sugar low than my cholesterol so I cannot understand why as a diabetic I should run the risk of going onto statins.
In the last eight years I have beaten breast cancer, diabetes and reduced bone density I just don't have the strength or indeed the will power to start all over again.

 

[ianf0ster]

As silentsquirrel says, it is your choice whether to take medicine - your doctors can only advise and prescribe, though it is best to be honest with them.
You just mention your total Cholesterol number without giving your full lipid profile which is what is required in order to make a sensible decision about statins.

For example Is your HDL higher than normal? It often is for those on Low Carb). Well absolutely nobody thinks that high HDL is bad for you (some even call it 'good cholesterol'), yet that forms part to the total number.

Are your Triglycerides lower than normal? Again that's quite common for those on Low Carb, yet most agree that low Triglycerides is good.

Even if your LDL is high, according to some research it is not a problem if little/none of it is damaged by Glycation or Oxidation.
Now LDL gets glycated by excess Glucose in the Bloodstream i.e. uncontrolled Diabetes! SO Low Carb can reduce your really bad LDL even if it increases your overall LDL. High LDL has been shown to correlate with longer life in Women and even in men over the age of 65. This is because it is used to make your immune system and to make the hormones to regulate your body as well as supplying energy to your cells. Humans need LDL in order to live.

If you want to know more about this try watching some videos by Dr Paul Mason (an Aussie sports Doctor, or Dr Aseem Malhotra a UK Cardiologist who de-prescribed statins for some of his patients).

I had what turned out to be Angina before being diagnosed with T2 Diabetes. It was so bad that I was given a Triple Bypass. My Lipid profile before going Low Carb (but on Statins) was Total 3.6, HDL 1.2, LDL 1.9, Trigs 1.93
I stopped taking statins after my T2 D diagnosis.
My current lipid profile may seem worse, but it is actually better: Total 7.4 , HDL 1.92, LDL 4.62, Trigs 1.75

According to Dr Mason ( and several other experts) the ratio of my Triglycerides divided by my HDL put me in the lowest risk group! Because my HDL has increased so much and my Triglycerides have decreased.

 

[JMyrtle]

I'm sorry I don't know the answer to your question about other readings, I don't even know what they mean
The only reading I have ever been given is a single figure, 5.5 for years and now 6.5.
Because we are a rural practice we d not have access to our results on line so have to rely on what we are told by the doctor.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

The other alternative @JMyrtle, would be to try the statin and see what happens - many people take them with no problem, and there are many studies (the majority of the published evidence) that suggest they are probably helpful.

If you’ve got a 20% qrisk score, they may be beneficial, and without trying them you won’t know if you can tolerate them with no negative effects at all?

 

[JMyrtle]

Hi there
Sorry to be a pain but I'm getting myself really worked up about all this it's just another thing I can't cope with.
I talked to the receptionist at our surgery today on the q. t. and she has given me my figures because she knows me, she knows all of us actually because there are only 400 patients on the books.
To quote my HDL is 2.1, LDL is 3.85 and my " tricywhatsits" are 1.0 is this good or bad?
Thanks everyone.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Hi there
Sorry to be a pain but I'm getting myself really worked up about all this it's just another thing I can't cope with.
I talked to the receptionist at our surgery today on the q. t. and she has given me my figures because she knows me, she knows all of us actually because there are only 400 patients on the books.
To quote my HDL is 2.1, LDL is 3.85 and my " tricywhatsits" are 1.0 is this good or bad?
Thanks everyone.

All I can offer is my completely unqualified lay viewpoint, based in some things I keep seeing pop up about cholesterol and how to interpret it.

First off, my understanding is that mainstream medical opinion recommends LDL for people with diabetes should be less than 2, which may be why your results are being red-flagged?

Additionally, total cholesterol for people with diabetes is recommended to be below 4.0, and your 6.5 is quite a bit higher than that.

I am also not sure what is contributing to your 20% qRisk score, but it might be helpful to interpret your cholesterol figures and considerations about statins with that in mind? @Eddy Edson had done a lot of reading in this area I think, and is firmly in the ‘lower the better’ camp I think.

However there are also many articles from Medics and specialists who try to unpick the detail within the various component parts of cholesterol numbers, and also within the numbers themselves (eg LDL consists of nasty dense vLDL particles, along with ‘fluffy’ ones which are not harmful and are involved in brain and muscle function). Additionally, in the UK, I gather that LDL isn’t actually measured - it is calculated from the other parts that they do measure using something like LDL = TC - HDL - (Trigs/2.18)

So some would argue that LDL alone may be slightly misleading and that ratios such as Total Cholesterol:HDL and Triglyceride:LDL may shed more light on individual risk.

According to this article https://www.docsopinion.com/2014/07/17/triglyceride-hdl-ratio/
Trigs:HDL below 0.87 is ideal (yours is 0.5)

And according to the Heart UK a TC:HDL ratio above 6 is high risk, and the lower it is the better. Yours is 3. (see the tables half way down that page).

HDL (sometimes called good cholesterol) should be above 1 for a man and above 1.2 for a woman - so your 2.1 looks really good.

Trigs are recommended to be below 1.7 if fasting, and below 2.3 if a non fasting test - so your Trigs of 1 are great.

So it looks like your LDL is on the high side, but your both Trigs and HDL components looks great, and really help with the guideline values for various ratios.

Im not sure if that that helps, or confuses matters further?

 

[silentsquirrel]

Your figures are similar to mine - total high, but trigs and ratios good.

I was not saying don't take them, but reacting to the "you MUST take them"!

Certainly as Mike suggests, give them a go, you may be lucky and suffer no side effects, and at least you are aware of the possibility. I took them for years, thinking the pain was arthritis, unaware it might be the statins, and the pain for me was very far from 'mild'.

 

[Ljc]

Hello. I thought you might like to hear from someone who is on statins, Atorvastatin. I am on it becuse my cholesterol was too high, I forget the breakdown now but the total was 7 ish also their is a lot of heart trouble on mums side of the family .

I have experienced no side effects and my total cholesterol has come down ,sorry I can’t remember the breakdown figures, my LDL is still higher than they want but I refused to go up to the max dose as I don’t want my HDL to go any Lower.

It is really up to you whether you go on medication, but please do your research and discuss it fully with your gp.

 

[Sharron1]

Hi, Thought i would share my recent discussion with my GP.My blood sugar is excellent (her word) My bad cholestrol, trigs and ratio are ok but she suggested I might think about Statins. I said i was a little concerned because I had heard a lot of different things wrt side effects . The chat went downhill rapidly. She told ne not to look at the internet about statins (I don't ).Didn't mention anything if there are side efects. (Mind you, she never mentioned anything about side effects with metformin...).Then she continued with the lovely comment 'we don't want you to have cardio vascular event'. I said, let's wait until my next blood test in September and see then. Her response, "oh, it will never go down, there is nothing you can do about that" We left it at that, because I could see she wasn't going to give me any sensible information. I posted this a few weeks ago and read people's responses and arrived at my decision. But I do wish she could heve been a little more helpful. My decision is to wait until the next blood test, if I need statins i will give them a go but aware that I can stop them if I find they are causing me problems. What I don't understand is why she was so unwilling to discuss my concerns. If I behaved like that work, well I would soon be out of a job. Good luck with whatever youdecide.

 

[mikeyB]

You will be very unlucky to get bad side effects, @JMyrtle. I took Simvastatin for years without any problem whatsoever. Millions take them without any problem, though you wouldn’t think that if you look on the Internet. It’s only the folk who have side effects who complain, so you get a skewed idea of how common they are. If I had your level of LDL I wouldn’t hesitate to get that sorted. The odds of having an adverse cardiac event are far more likely than getting side effects,

 

[Eddy Edson]

Just on statins and BG: from what I've read in the expert reviews, statins sometimes (but not always) cause a slight increase in HbA1c. Can't remember the actual numbers but I do remember thinking it was too small to worry about. Doesn't happen with everyone; doesn't seem to happen with me.

I've never seen anything about statins being responsible for weight gain.

As yr doc says, a small minority of people get some muscle pain but it's not permanent - stop taking the statin and the pain goes away.

IMO there's absolutely no reason not to take the statin and see how it goes.

 

[Sharron1]

Just on statins and BG: from what I've read in the expert reviews, statins sometimes (but not always) cause a slight increase in HbA1c. Can't remember the actual numbers but I do remember thinking it was too small to worry about. Doesn't happen with everyone; doesn't seem to happen with me.

I've never seen anything about statins being responsible for weight gain.

As yr doc says, a small minority of people get some muscle pain but it's not permanent - stop taking the statin and the pain goes away.

IMO there's absolutely no reason not to take the statin and see how it goes.

Question... curious, why is the cholestrol level lower for diabetics? What makes it different for a diabetic than the non diabetic? Just wondered.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

Question... curious, why is the cholestrol level lower for diabetics? What makes it different for a diabetic than the non diabetic? Just wondered.

I think because we are statistically more likely to have something go wrong with heart and circulation than a non-D.

All the other factors could be the same, and the BG profile could be great, but there will have been times when the body and circulatory system of a person with diabetes will have been exposed to glucose variation and glucose instability that a non-D simply won’t get.

There are some who theorise that the CVD / cholesterol problem is more to do with inflammation in the blood vessels than levels of chol per-se. A bit like having a coffee table that you keep banging your shins on, and cholesterol is having plasters in your cupboard that you use to patch over the scrapes. If you have too many plasters, the cupboard becomes unusable, but of your stock of plasters is within reasonable limits, what you need to do is move the coffee table (ie reduce arterial inflammation) rather than remove all the plasters from your house.

And I believe high and erratic BG is a source of arterial inflammation.

 

[Sharron1]

I think because we are statistically more likely to have something go wrong with heart and circulation than a non-D.

All the other factors could be the same, and the BG profile could be great, but there will have been times when the body and circulatory system of a person with diabetes will have been exposed to glucose variation and glucose instability that a non-D simply won’t get.

There are some who theorise that the CVD / cholesterol problem is more to do with inflammation in the blood vessels than levels of chol per-se. A bit like having a coffee table that you keep banging your shins on, and cholesterol is having plasters in your cupboard that you use to patch over the scrapes. If you have too many plasters, the cupboard becomes unusable, but of your stock of plasters is within reasonable limits, what you need to do is move the coffee table (ie reduce arterial inflammation) rather than remove all the plasters from your house.

And I believe high and erratic BG is a source of arterial inflammation.

Thank you for explaining this. There is so much to learn.

 

[JMyrtle]

Thank you everyone, I decided to " bite the bullet" and collected my prescription on Monday, I am on Atorvastatin 10 MG and no side effects so far.
It's very difficult having to deal with this in telephone consultations particularly as I already have very bad join pain caused by the hormone chemotherapy I'm on until this time next year for breast cancer.
I'm also worried about my bg going up but at the moment it seems to be going down, I had a 4.8 two hours after lasagne and salad following a 6.8 before eating.
I have never had a reading under 5 before so maybe I'm one of the lucky few that statins reduce bg for, you never know my luck anyway.

 

[KARNAK]

Hi Jackie nice to see you posting again.
Take `em and see, not for me I`m afraid tried three different ones
no point telling you what happened I would like you to feel better
and if statins work for you well done. xx

 

[JMyrtle]

Thanks Karnac.
For some reason I am not getting reply alerts for this topic so I have been a bit slow in replying to people.
The only side effect I have at the moment is stomach cramps for aittle while after eating my dinner in the evening but hopefully that will pass.

 

[Ian Brown]

My experience of statins has been generally good. I was on simvastatin for about 5 years having been put on it with a reading of 7.5. The drugs got me below 5 but after about 5 years i started to get achy joints and came off it. The aches went, so the gp started met on Atorvastatin 10mg, i also try to take about a teaspoon of a proactive or benecol type spread once a day and my results are kow fown to about 3.7.

I was told LDL was the stuff that plaques in your arteries were made of and the HDL was the stuff that cleaned the off. I bit simplistic perhaps jut it works for me.

Best of luck