"so we got in your car with our kickabout hearts"
Sorry I never gave you guys an update about the cholesterol.
tl; dr: it's still bad. I'm working on it.
Longer: Collectively, it's 233. LDL (bad) is 166. HDL (good) is 37. For those of you not in the know, the collective should be under 200, the LDL should be under 100 (right now it is considered "High" by the American Heart Association) and the HDL should be above 50.
Interestingly enough, though I haven't gotten around to pulling up my old results, I do remember that my LDL is better than it was last time (last time, it was in the high 170's), though obviously, not by much.Interesting because, since late November, I've put on roughly 15 pounds (it yoyos) from finals, holidays and lifestyle change from tramping around campus everyday to working a deskjob.
Normally, with levels that high (and with a pre-existing history of heart disease on both sides of my family--my maternal grandfather and uncle both had quad. bypass, my paternal grandfather died of a heart disease related stroke, my paternal grandmother died from a heart attack induced by her diabetes and my dad's sister had some kind of faulty valve), I would have been on statins immediately. However, I've been seen by THREE of the doctors I work with and all of them are in agreement that they are very hesitant to put someone my age (23) on those because they're not really one of those meds that you get on, get cured and get off and also because they could cause problems if I ever wanted to have children (there are some tentative links between birth defects and statins, though, as far as I know, nothing certain).
So, they have decided they want me to try the South Beach Diet (which, incidentally, was developed by a cardiologist) to see if that will help. Normally, I'd be kicking and screaming about this but I kind of, you know, value my life. So I'm trying it out. Right now, I'm not going whole hog because Europe is looming, two weeks away and don't want to go into full on diet and then go to Europe and indulge (in case your wondering why not, its because I have what I will politely refer to as "food issues" and I don't need that kind of guilt and self-loathing in my life on my vacation). Also, if you think I'm going to go to France and not have some croissants and brie cheese and red wine, I would like to invite you to drop the crackpipe.
That said, I'm actually kind of looking forward to the diet. Lord knows, it'd be nice to drop some pounds and the diet actually looks pretty decent. Of course, I can't have bread and rice and fruit during Phase 1...but I can have a ton of veggies and the meals aren't really restrictive. An example: today's breakfast was celery and peanut butter (which I've happened to enjoy since I was a kid), snack 1 was bell pepper with lite mozzarella, lunch was a vegetable salad (which I didn't eat because the things in it aren't cholesterol healthy like eggs and olives, much as I love them), snack 2 was cottage cheese and cucumbers (two more things I adore) and dinner is mushroom-stuffed bell peppers. So the ingredients are easy to play with and create my own meals.
In other news...hmm. Not much, actually. I've just been working a lot, designing ads, writing content for our website, researching stuff, etc. Once the website launches, my life won't be quite as hellacious though. Quite. :)
Also, Ravi and I have pretty much decided to get on a family plan with Verizon (which he has and which seems to usually work better than AT&T, at least out here). It would be cheaper for both of us. I might get a new phone too...both of us were considering the Blackberry Storm, but I'm not sure I need that much power in my cell phone. We're going to go talk to the people about it today and make a decision from there. I'm not sure if my number will change or not--I have a weird cell phone situation right now, so my number my not transfer over. If it changes, I'll give you guys a heads-up.
I guess that's about it. There's a St. Patrick's Day parade tomorrow that I usually like attending but the high tomorrow is 57 and there's a 70% chance of rain. So...maybe not. Maybe coffee and tea and snuggling and "Lost" instead!
tl; dr: it's still bad. I'm working on it.
Longer: Collectively, it's 233. LDL (bad) is 166. HDL (good) is 37. For those of you not in the know, the collective should be under 200, the LDL should be under 100 (right now it is considered "High" by the American Heart Association) and the HDL should be above 50.
Interestingly enough, though I haven't gotten around to pulling up my old results, I do remember that my LDL is better than it was last time (last time, it was in the high 170's), though obviously, not by much.Interesting because, since late November, I've put on roughly 15 pounds (it yoyos) from finals, holidays and lifestyle change from tramping around campus everyday to working a deskjob.
Normally, with levels that high (and with a pre-existing history of heart disease on both sides of my family--my maternal grandfather and uncle both had quad. bypass, my paternal grandfather died of a heart disease related stroke, my paternal grandmother died from a heart attack induced by her diabetes and my dad's sister had some kind of faulty valve), I would have been on statins immediately. However, I've been seen by THREE of the doctors I work with and all of them are in agreement that they are very hesitant to put someone my age (23) on those because they're not really one of those meds that you get on, get cured and get off and also because they could cause problems if I ever wanted to have children (there are some tentative links between birth defects and statins, though, as far as I know, nothing certain).
So, they have decided they want me to try the South Beach Diet (which, incidentally, was developed by a cardiologist) to see if that will help. Normally, I'd be kicking and screaming about this but I kind of, you know, value my life. So I'm trying it out. Right now, I'm not going whole hog because Europe is looming, two weeks away and don't want to go into full on diet and then go to Europe and indulge (in case your wondering why not, its because I have what I will politely refer to as "food issues" and I don't need that kind of guilt and self-loathing in my life on my vacation). Also, if you think I'm going to go to France and not have some croissants and brie cheese and red wine, I would like to invite you to drop the crackpipe.
That said, I'm actually kind of looking forward to the diet. Lord knows, it'd be nice to drop some pounds and the diet actually looks pretty decent. Of course, I can't have bread and rice and fruit during Phase 1...but I can have a ton of veggies and the meals aren't really restrictive. An example: today's breakfast was celery and peanut butter (which I've happened to enjoy since I was a kid), snack 1 was bell pepper with lite mozzarella, lunch was a vegetable salad (which I didn't eat because the things in it aren't cholesterol healthy like eggs and olives, much as I love them), snack 2 was cottage cheese and cucumbers (two more things I adore) and dinner is mushroom-stuffed bell peppers. So the ingredients are easy to play with and create my own meals.
In other news...hmm. Not much, actually. I've just been working a lot, designing ads, writing content for our website, researching stuff, etc. Once the website launches, my life won't be quite as hellacious though. Quite. :)
Also, Ravi and I have pretty much decided to get on a family plan with Verizon (which he has and which seems to usually work better than AT&T, at least out here). It would be cheaper for both of us. I might get a new phone too...both of us were considering the Blackberry Storm, but I'm not sure I need that much power in my cell phone. We're going to go talk to the people about it today and make a decision from there. I'm not sure if my number will change or not--I have a weird cell phone situation right now, so my number my not transfer over. If it changes, I'll give you guys a heads-up.
I guess that's about it. There's a St. Patrick's Day parade tomorrow that I usually like attending but the high tomorrow is 57 and there's a 70% chance of rain. So...maybe not. Maybe coffee and tea and snuggling and "Lost" instead!