Indians and cholesterol. Review on Managing Cholesterol

A lot of the research I have done on what I write below is both the effort of my doctor, what I have fed back to him based on trials on my ownself as well as several hours of reading. However I am not a qualified medical professional and therefore confirm with your own physician before following my advice.

A lot more Indians suffer from high lipid levels than do

most races. However the lipid profile of indians(especially high carbohydrate eating vegetarians especially from the the south of india) tends to be somewhat like this.

1. The highest values are noticed in Triglycerides

   
   




2. LDL is near normal sometimes high

   
   




3. HDL cholesterol tends to be below normal.

   
   

The lipid profile of indians described above tends to

be so.primarily driven by high triglycerides. This is

what happens.

1. Triglyceride values are high(I will explain why)

   
   




2. That drives down the HDL values

   
   




3. eventually LDL starts going up due to low HDL values

   
   

Just for the uninitiated, HDL is High Density Lipoprotein and is called Good cholesterol and the highher it is the better. LDL is called Low density lipoprotein

and is called Bad Cholesterol and the lower it is its better. Finally Triglycerides are what I call very bad

cholesterol and they need to be low as well.

When we see a high cholesterol reading what we tend to do is cut down on fat, go and exercise and drink wine to

increase HDL values and then go and do a lab test to find that our triglycerides have gone up even higher and that the HDL has gone even lower.

What happens is this, Triglycerides go up not so much

because of fat intake, but because of intaking refined sugars, alcohols and carbohydrates. It somehow seems also

to be tied to a lower than normal protein intake.

Lowered fat intake does nothing in this case, because

the carbohydrates that you eat get converted into fats anyways and get stored in your gut(if you have a big gut go check your lipids and see what your TG looks like). The effect of exercise is also not visible because higher triglycerides compensates the good effect of exercise and has a bigger effect it seems in lowering HDL.

What needs to be done is as follows

1. If you have a high lipid reading driven by TG, treat

yourself like a diabetic and cut down on sugars and

excess carb intake

1. dont drink wine.wine increases triglyceride levels

which in turn reduces HDL values(which wine is supposed

to increase) so it has the opposite effect

1. exercise regularly

   
   




2. If none of this works, go and ask your doctor if you

   
   

can take 1 to 2 gms of slow/extended release niacin

It is better than medicines like lipitor because it

has fewer side effects and it lowers triglycerides

which is what you want

1. If you have any lipid problem insist that your doctor

test for homocystine. High Homocystine levels are

another special problem for indians. You may need upto

4 mgs(my doc says Homocystine metabolism is messed

up for indians so the usual max of 2 mgs does not

always work.this was my case also).

1. High TG levels is also the road to diabetes, since one

of its effects(and cause too) is insulin resistance.

So ask for a Glucose Tolerance test(Glycosalated Hemoglobin test is useful to diagnose diabetes.GTT can

give you trends sometimes).