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Tilley

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Type 2
Hi I am new to site but have had type 2 for 10 years was in remission for 5 years but covid and other health issues saw an end to that Now have coronary heart disease so just managing carbs just won't cut it anymore
 
I had a 3x Cardio Bypass before the same 'heart healthy' diet I had already been on for about 15yrs, then gave me Type 2 Diabetes.
It was after looking at the diabetes forums that I realised that diet was really good at giving people Type 2 Diabetes and not so good at helping them avoid Cardio problems. You may come to a different conclusion and all our bodies react differently so what is right for me is only what's right for me.

Doing as much research as I could, I found lots of gaps and unexplained problems in the Cholesterol; hypothesis for heqrt disease, so I gave priority to fixing what I knew I could to improve my chances of avoiding further heart disease (which was putting my T2D into remission and keeping it in remission).

I can't remember all the details, but recently read a summary of a study which showed Stents were 8 times likely to fail in the case of Diabetic than in those with high LDL.
In any case, apart from a high calculated LDL figure )so no idea of how much of the harmless fractions and how much of the presumed more dangerous fractions), my Lipid figures are now much better than they were when I was eating Low Fat and taking a Station !
 
Here is something I posted a couple of days ago:
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Outside of the mainstream media and public policies there has been a lively debate about cholesterol and fats for over 50 years. While probably all you have heard is that:
A. Eating Fat makes you fat.
B. Eating Fat increases LDL cholesterol ,
C. LDL Cholesterol causes clogged arteries and heart attacks.

While I appreciate that it's near impossible to prove a negative i.e. that animal mainly saturated fats don't harm us, consider the following:

1. Ancel Keys implicated saturated fat for causing heart disease which was still relatively rare at that time when a US president in his 50's had a heart attack. To do that he selected 7 countries (from over 20 for which he had data). The 7 selected appeared to show a strong correlation, but taking all of them combined there was absolutely no correlation.

2. It is now known that smoking is a major cause of heart attacks and that President was a chain smoker. As was my Dad who died of a heart attack at the age of 45 in 1966 - it was not his first, probably his 3rd the others just being thought to be bad indigestion.

3. Despite a campaign for low fat, heart attacks didn't change much leading to many more cardiac doctors being trained in the UK. Then smoking was banned in public indoors - and heart attacks suddenly dropped! Incidentally At the conference held to decide upon the first US Dietary guidelines (to combat heart attacks and obesity) half the scientists said that eating sugar should be discouraged and the other half that eating animal fats should be discouraged. Since it was a stalemate and it was not possible to advise both, an assistant to the US Politician chairing the conference made the decision to choose to limit animal fats. This directly led to margarines and trans fatty acids being introduced into our diet.

4. In this forum we know that eating saturated fat helps us reduce our weight just as eating carbohydrates tends to increase our weight. Yet sat fat is still blamed for making people fat. It also helps control T2 diabetes (since it doesn't raise Blood Glucose levels) which itself is a major cause to heart attacks. So how is it causing more heart attacks while reducing a major cause of them?

5. Many medical studies, plus the figures from Dr David Unwin's GP Practice patients show that on a Low Carb (higher fat) diet his patients have (on average) much better HDL figures, much better Triglyceride figure and even lower LDL figures. So even if one believes that high LDL is automatically 'bad' (which I don't) How is it that saturated fat can ''lower' that LDL and yet it is still blamed for raising it in the first place?

6. Lastly, the observation that the majority of heart attacks happen to patients with 'normal' LDL (nearly 75%) rather than those with 'high' LDL. In fact almost half occurred in patients with 'optimal' LDL .This from a study done by UCLA hospital and published back in 12/1/2009.
 
I was diabetic 1st just recently diagnosed CHD been on stating for 6 years as I have naturally high cholesterol I have had raised cholesterol for as long as I can remember
I have decided to try to have an all round healthy diet as in wholegrain low fat high fiber this I think is going to be a hard slog
I don't know yet how bad the heart problems are waiting for invasive angiogram CT angiogram showed calcification score of 780 ( Not sure what that means )
 
Hi I am new to site but have had type 2 for 10 years was in remission for 5 years but covid and other health issues saw an end to that Now have coronary heart disease so just managing carbs just won't cut it anymore

Welcome to the forum @Tilley

Sorry to hear that Covid and other health challenges have moved your levels away from the period of remission you were able to sustain for 5 years :(

The clinical evidence supporting statins is significantly stronger for people who already have heart disease - and it’s pretty compelling for primary prevention!

Hope you are able to find a menu which is BG-friendly, and also supports your heart health. Do call on the expertise of your Clinicians for how to balance what may feel like competing demands at times?

Hope your checks and tests bring you clarification and viable treatment options for your ticker. Good that you are getting thoroughly checked out.
 
I was diabetic 1st just recently diagnosed CHD been on stating for 6 years as I have naturally high cholesterol I have had raised cholesterol for as long as I can remember
I have decided to try to have an all round healthy diet as in wholegrain low fat high fiber this I think is going to be a hard slog
I don't know yet how bad the heart problems are waiting for invasive angiogram CT angiogram showed calcification score of 780 ( Not sure what that means )
Oh.
Well - I went back to a low carb diet when diagnosed and it was an absolute doddle to get back into normal numbers, and I lost lots of weight without trying too.
My GPs all pushed me to eat low fat and lots of starchy foods, even though I told them how ill it made me feel, and my weight was going up no matter how hard I tried to keep it steady - losing any seemed impossible. When diagnosed I went back to eating according to Atkins, and it all came right.
I did get a testing meter, which was a great help.
 
I was diabetic 1st just recently diagnosed CHD been on stating for 6 years as I have naturally high cholesterol I have had raised cholesterol for as long as I can remember
I have decided to try to have an all round healthy diet as in wholegrain low fat high fiber this I think is going to be a hard slog
I don't know yet how bad the heart problems are waiting for invasive angiogram CT angiogram showed calcification score of 780 ( Not sure what that means )
Coronary Artery Calcification score is supposedly a useful test, but apparently even if high (which yours is - though no where near as high as some), it isn't a big deal if it is stable. The worst ones are both high and rising.

The reason for this is that a stable plaque (which is what contains the Calcium) just means that a person had bad inflammation in the past. But if it is still growing, then the inflammation is ongoing.

I have heard that it is possible to reduce a CAC score, but not sure I believe that!
 
Thank you I feel a little better about that I don't need unstable heart problems with unstable type 2 I have put on dapagliflozin in addition to Sitagliptin for my diabetes so I am struggling a bit with side effects and trying to balance my diet as I was on atkins style but apparently I can't do that on dapagliflozin as it may cause DKA This is just a minefield of troubles Both Diabetes and Heart troubles run in my family so I guess I just drew the unlucky straw
 
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