In late August 2018 just days after my 34th birthday during a routine checkup, for the first time in my life I was told my cholesterol was high. LDL was 152. That’s odd, I thought. Never experienced that before. The doctor offered me Statin’s but I explained how I was guilty of some crappy eating and I would cut down and see what happens. Still, I was quite shocked as even though I wasn’t eating as healthy as a horse, I wasn’t shoving cheeseburgers and cake in my mouth every night of the week. In any event, it was true I was a bit of a sweets junkie, with cookies and some ice cream being culprits after a few meals here and there. I figured some changes would do the trick. Over the course of the next 6 months I all but eliminated ice cream and cookies and other sweets, cut down a bit on things like cheese, egg yolk and bacon, and even switched to a lower cholesterol milk instead of whole. It was hard to completely give up butter on my toast. Soda I have not had in several years aside from maybe big get togethers.
In March 2019 I returned and was told LDL was down to 137. Though still in the borderline high range, this was a great sign I thought. After this good stress relieving news however, for the rest of the year, while I stepped it up in certain areas (i.e. Literally no more egg yolk, literally no more ice cream and literally no more whole milk), I began going back to the sweets. A box of cookies in the house here , some chocolate there, and cheese came back into my diet to an almost normal level. I had this rather immature thought that at 34 and in August 2019 35 years old, that I was simply too young to worry about my diet to such an extreme degree, and that once my next checkup came around I had this naive idea that things would just be fine.
Well in December 2019, now at 35 years old I went back for another blood test. The doctor informed me that my bad cholesterol had went back up to 142. I told him I’m just shocked as I even though I still have cheesy foods here and there and some sweets as well, I literally have not had egg yolk, whole milk or ice cream (have had yogurts) since I last saw him in March, and in general I simply do not have such an awful diet at all and how I actually make an effort to eat relatively healthy. Salads more often than not, burgers on an EXTREMELY rare occasion, basically no soda at all for YEARS, etc etc. Bc of this he told me there is a good chance this is genetic. No immediate family members deal with this so he said it could easily have skipped a generation.
I SHOULD note however, that over the course of the last 3 years or so I have had some rather serious sleeping problems. They have improved greatly over the last 6 months or so, finally, after much effort, but they are still not perfect. I have read that prolonged poor sleep could in fact impact cholesterol. Any real truth to this?
Well anyway, now he wants me to finally try a low dosage statin, taking it every other day for 2 months, then coming back to recheck my levels. ((Sigh))
Can anyone please give me some thoughts and/or advice???