Duh Duh Duuuhhh
Lately in my house there has been LOTS of talk about \kə-ˈles-tə-ˌrōl\!! It began with this excerpt from the china study: "Military medical investigators had examined the hearts of 300 male soldiers killed in action in Korea. The soldiers, at an average age of 22 years, had never been diagnosed with heart problems. In dissecting these hearts, researchers found startling evidence of disease in an exceptional number of cases. Fully 77.3% of the hearts they examined had gross evidence of heart disease (in this instance gross means large)... These soldiers were not couch potato slouches, they were in top condition in the prime of their physical lives. Since that time several other studies have confirmed that heart disease is pervasive in young Americans."
Husband has been talking with his dad(who has heart problems) about eating a vegan diet, and he told us about the Engine 2 diet, by rip esselstyn(the son of Dr.esselstyn in the china study) We read into that and came across a story of all the firefighters betting on who had the lowest cholesterol, and finding out that one of them was on the brink of a heart attack at well over 300 total cholesterol... they get him on the vegan diet immediately and within a month he is down to 123 total!!!!
Wow!!! I think, if he did it for one month and got such amazing scores, i bet ours are pretty low considering we've been doing it for over 3 months. So i get a full blood panel done (gotta love tricare)
i felt silly being 25 and wanting to check my cholesterol, but the doc said you should have it checked every year. Got a call a couple days later from the nurse said every thing was perfect... It was like pulling eye teeth to get the numbers out of her, and all she told me was, my total cholesterol was 188.
WHAT!?!?! i call andy and he checks the numbers out, and it is more like borderline heart disease than "perfect"... so andy gets his last scores from work(from last year) and he had a 144, and that was his highest, his previous scores were 120's. We cant figure out where the "perfect" came from, so i call and have them mail me the full test results(e-mail was too modern i guess)so we can see all the numbers. Meanwhile i start scrutinizing my, all ready scrutinized, meals, and come up empty handed. Then i start blaming it on family history and genes... its got to be all those years that i didnt watch my diet. But i have always considered myself a healthy eater, with the exception of a few broke times in college where we lived off of oat meal and mac and cheese. So what is it!?!
The results came in and every thing was WAY low except my cholesterol... so weird right? At this point i am pretty sure my genes have screwed me and i will be having a heart attack before 30. I say, "i dont know what i am eating to make it so high". Hubs says our bodies MAKE cholesterol, i could just be making more cholesterol, maybe because i am breast feeding. We look it up... LO AND BEHOLD:
During pregnancy, lipids and cholesterol levels fall during the first trimester and then rise throughout the remainder of your pregnancy. Increases in serum triglycerides, cholesterol, and free fatty acids are seen. This is not related to diet. The liver (the organ responsible for making most of our cholesterol) produces more cholesterol in response to the hormones of pregnancy.
Cholesterol levels can be very high during pregnancy and while nursing. Normal levels for total cholesterol are between 120 and 190 mg/dl, while typical values in pregnancy range from between 200 and 325 mg/dl. Nursing women also have higher levels of HDL and other beneficial lipoproteins. In an article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 1989, the authors recommend against lipid screening during lactation. They go on to state that the effects of lactation on lipids are beneficial.
All that worrying for nothing. But just incase, we went to the gym today!!
The moral of this story: get a yearly physical, and have you cholesterol checked!
