Maggie, you'd probably be interested to know that my Dr. is a DO with a fairly small solo family practice. He gives monthly nutrition and diabetes prevention lectures at one of the local hospitals and is the only person around here giving lectures on "Syndrome X".

Ken

LC since 2001
215/175

1. I want to remind everyone that Dr. Atkins clearly stated in his books that within the first 4-6 weeks of starting the diet, you cholesterol may GO UP. However, after two or three months, there is "ususally" a nice big drop. So do be aware of this when you have your bloodwork done. I would wait a good 3 months unless you doctor says otherwise.

2. ditto what everyone else said about the "total" vs "ratio" thing.

3. I've been low carbing for years, and my blood results just done a few weeks ago were:

Total cholesterol: 139 (good is below 200)

HDL (good) cholesterol: 51 (good is over 40)
LDL (bad) Choleseterol: 78 (good is less than 130)
Triglycerides: 48 (good is below 150)


4. My question to the original poster of this topic is this: did your md want you to go off the diet because of your cholesterol, or the ketones?

LCandrea, thank u for asking. the doctors gave both reasons for getting off atkins. i want to say that i had only been on atkins for 4 weeks prior to getting the bloodwork, so maybe things will change. for now these were my numbers: total cholesterol 212, triglyc 76, hdl 43 vldl(what is this?) 15, ldl 153. i can see reason for concern about the ldl, but like i said i had just started this woe. thanks.

christine

166/151/120
L/C 8/04/03

Hi, Christine.

vldl= very low density lipoprotein. They don't always break it out as a separate reading, but if you add your ldl + hdl and subtract that number from your total cholsesterol, the result is pretty much your vldl.

Ken,

Whoops! Didn't mean to put your doctor into the wrong school of medicine, LOL! Just a habit. I'm just old enough that when I started nursing, there were few, if any, doctors of osteopathy with admitting privileges in most hospitals. Now DO's are as common as MD's. I should stick to a more generic term which would be more accurate.

He is clearly a doctor who keeps up with the latest research.

Maggie
5'1" ~~ Atkins since '98 (160)/Maintaining nicely (110) ~~ Redhead until further notice!