I'll take a covid break for now to discuss cholesterol instead. Just curious if any buzzers have high cholesterol and if any of you have tried any non-medicinal ways to treat it. After initially getting my blood work done about 6 months ago, I was found to have very high cholesterol levels to the point where my doctor was urging me to go on statins right away. I told my doctor I wanted to try making lifestyle changes and he balked at that notion and said that diet can only have about a 30% effect and no matter how good my nutrition is, I'll still need to go on meds. I told him that I would try other things first before resorting to meds and I subsequently went to a naturopath.
Changes I have made as recommended by my naturopath
- Plant-based diet predominantly (80% plant minimum)
- Intermittent fasting (12-16 hours/day)
- Supplements such as fish oils and red rice yeast extract
So far so good, after doing this for a few months, I got retested and all my numbers went down. My cholesterol is still high overall but much improved and now I am below the threshold for having statins recommended, although my doctor still wants me to take them. Recently, I have added oatmeal, hemp, chia seeds, flax and psyllium fiber and plant sterol supplements to my daily diet and have started going to the gym as well to see if I can drop some weight as I am probably about 20-30 pounds overweight. I've been going to the gym for about 5-6 weeks but no weight loss yet but the body is transforming slowly so I know I'm progressing slowly there. I'm planning to do another blood test in a few months to see if I can improve my numbers even more and if not, then statins might be in the cards for me.
Edit - my naturopath believes that I may have inflammation in my body which is causing it to produce too much cholesterol - this is why she recommended the intermittent fasting (lucky me)
Anyways, that's my story, any of you have any non-medicinal success lowering your cholesterol?