My brother, and I have been on this woe for about one month now, and he had to have an insurance checkup the other day, (blood pressure, blood work, etc,). His cholestoral was way high, and he wondered if it was due to all this meat we're eating. I thought that this was supposed to lower your bad cholestoral. What's the scoop?

hi Razorback,
The ideal situation would have been to have lab work drawn before starting Atkins. In fact, sometimes the cholesterol and triglycerides will go higher at the beginning of Atkins/low carbing. Dr Atkins recommended checking labs at around the 6 week mark after starting his plan. Typically, the triglycerides may plummet within the first month or so on Atkins, then HDL begins to rise. Thus, having baseline labwork(before starting Atkins) and then rechecking again at the 6-8 week time span.

If your brother is losing weight, I would venture to guess that given a few more weeks, his labs will start to reflect the good way he's eating. Perhaps he can have his labs rechecked then?

hth

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Shelley
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RAzorback - I can only give you my stats from doing this woe for almost 5 years now. I had my cholestrol tested 3 months after starting this woe. at that time my total cholesterol was 218, hdl was 40 and ldl +vldl was 178. May 2007 I had a new test.
Total was 200 which is okay because my Hdl (good choesterol) was 75. my ldl was 115 and vldl was 9. Triglycerides were at a low 45. as Shelly says in the beginning a rise can take place but that will start to level out and improve in most cases.

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Just adding my own experience here. My lipid profile improved remarkably after 6 months following this way of eating. Since then, it has remained excellent. It's a good many years, now.

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Yeah, from a medical standpoint, one month of eating this way has not affected your brother's lipid profile.
More likely: He is seeing the poor effects of his previous way of eating.
I would wait 3 months and then do a re-check.
My lipid profile improved TREMENDOUSLY, not to mention all of the other benefits I've noticed.

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Summer

One more thing:
If either of you are "cheating" while eating this way -- going off plan and eating carbs, then returning to on-plan eating -- you very likely WILL see a rise in your lipids.
The reason (which is explained very clearly in both Dr. Atkin's book and in the Eades' book, Protein Power) is this:
Eating adequate or even large amounts of protein and fat will not raise blood lipid level
EXCEPT
if you are also eating carbs.
There is something about the combination of the two (high carbs -- even intermittently) and high fat that causes the rise in cholesterol levels.
You need to read one of these books so that you have a better understanding of how & why this works. They do a MUCH better job than I of explaining the process.

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Summer