[cycomiko]

Originally Posted by RacerBill

Any data on which individuals? Is there a test? Sounds like I may be one of them.

Not really.

Typically the people are higher in cholesterol to start with *hypercholeserolemic* and are eating a good whack of saturates to start with. Which the list below shows a reasonable amount of saturates.

there are genes involved (cant remember them off teh top of my head) but the above pretty much covers the basic setup.

Currently fish oil, eggs, cheese, olive oil, butter, nuts, meat (generally I don't eat much fatty meat, though). I use a little canola when cooking in cast iron. I try to avoid soybean oil.

In some people, raising the intake of fats in general can influence their cholesterol levels. Like fish oil can lower LDL, if it replaces another fat in the diet, if the fish oil is consumed in addition to other fats, it can raise the levels. Fish oil will generally lower TAG's adn VLDL tho.

Since you are carbophobic, how much fibre do you have in the diet, specifically relating to the soluble fibre. Something as simple as reducing the fibre in the diet can raise the level of cholesterol nicely, due to decreased losses through the GI tract (fibre can bind cholesterol).

I have seen peoples cholesterol improve dramatically from low carb, and I have seen others double...

No, I actually decreased kcal. I've lost 14 pounds since January.

In general losing fat will lower cholesterol levels, however this are some issues with this.

I saw a presentation a year and a half ago from a researhcer who performed a posthoc analysis on subjects who were involved in a trial of three diets, low carb, zone and the standard ADA style diet (not exactly, different country different diets but its similar enough). During this time, they took a ton of blood samples, examined their plasma fatty acids (erythrocyte, esters and shit - memory is fading), cholesterol levels and a few other measures.

the plasma fatty acids did not change significantly during the diet, and did not represent what the dietary fatty acid spread looked like.

This is because the plasma fatty acids at rest were influenced by the fat being released from your cells (which is representative of the diet months/years ago) and thus the stimulatory effect on cholesterol is based upon these fatty acids. Dietary fat in the terms of this has minimal effect, as its being used by the body relatively quickly as an energy source/ketones, where as its availability increases re-esterification in the fat cell (keeps as much of the the fat that was in the cell, in the cell, as it can). It gets complicated... I havent seen enough long term work examining it.

If you have no other risk factors (BP, Tags, waist/hip ratio, bmi yada yada yada) push back on the statins in the short term.

Try some short term trials (2-3 weeks is enough to have a good change in cholesterol from diet) with raising the fibre content, soluble where possible, supplement or food based. Niacin is another option, but it also blunts lipolysis. Also, dont be afraid of the carbs. They are great within context of a whole diet.