I have test results!

Lets talk about cholesterol.
The first thing people think when they learn about a Primal or Paleo ancestral-type diet (well, maybe second after, "No BREAD??") is, "You are going to DIE of a heart attack right over your plate of bacon."

Now I've never been afraid of fat- especially natural fats like butter and olive oil. But it's hard to not have a fairly low-fat diet when you are eating pretty much only fruit, veg, beans, cereal and bread. So when I decided to give this Primal thing a go, I thought I'd just try it for a while, all the while wondering how my heart and circulatory system would fare. I also made it a point to educate myself on the subject....since conventional wisdom is so very infallible. *cough* Here's a hint: Even our doctors have a LOT of it wrong.

Here is a pretty good summary of what you need to know about cholesterol, its exaggerated correlation to heart disease, and what a heart healthy diet really consists of.
Watch the short video clips, and then come back and I'll show you the results of my very recent biometric screening, and discuss why I'm pretty excited about them.

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Did you watch them? Really? (If not, go do it!)

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Okay. Here we go.


The Basics:
BMI: 24.8
Body Fat %: 23 (I've lost over 8% body fat in the past 2 months alone)
Blood Pressure: 109/71
Heart Rate: 69 bpm
Weight: 163 (my home scale says 157 and it's that time of the month... we've talked about weight.)

Now for the blood panel results:
Total Cholesterol: 231 (CW says this is high and I need statins. The following numbers actually indicate my 10 year risk of heart disease is well below 1%.)
HDL: 80 (the good stuff- higher is better. Anything above 40 is decent.)
Triglycrides: 49 (I'm stoked about this! Anything below 150 is considered good- the lower the better.)
LDL: 141 (My super high HDL and super low trigs tell us that it's likely the majority of these are large, bouyant LDL.)
non-HDL: 151
TC/HDL: 2.9 (ideal is below 5)
Trigs/HDL: 0.61 (ideal is below 2)
LDL/HDL: 1.76 (ideal is below 4.3)
Fasting Glucose: 92 (normal)

I feel good. Hubs had his numbers done too. His look good, but his HDL needs to go up- he doesn't eat nearly as much saturated fat as I do. We plan on remedying that in a delicious fashion. :D