HDL - Any ideas for raising my level?

[larsson]

Excellent link from Graham / John, just goes to show that the truth is out there, it's just conveniently buried in obscure places sometimes.
Saturated fats will definitely raise HDL, just as carbohydrates will lower HDL. Swapping fats for starches is a double whammy in other words! Monounsaturated fats actually do that remarkable thing - raising HDL while lowering LDL. Since monounsaturated fats (such as in olive oil) are also the principal fats in meat and eggs, well, I think you can see where I'm going with this.....

larsson

[AliB]

Oh yes John, I would agree with the others.

You need to up the fats when you lower the carbs. If you are eating a higher carb amount than would normally be considered then your cells are still using carbs for fuel rather than fats.

You can't remove one fuel source without replacing it with another. But better to have either one or the other, not both, as eating carbs encourages the fat to be stored and the carbs used as fuel instead.

So it's either high carb low fat, or high fat low carb, and I know which one is the better....

[hanadr]

Hi John
I find it illogical to advise that plant oils( unsaturated fats) are healthier than animal fats( saturated). I am, after all, a member of the animal Kingdom, Not a plant, so the ingredients my metabolism needs, are more likely to be present in the righr proportions in fats from my own kingdom. I do quite like olive oil on my salad though. Or even oilive oil and balsamic vinegar to dip bits of bread into. IF I ate bread

[AliB]

Yes Hana, my take on that too is that the oils found naturally in plants may be be ok in small doses, but what is the quantity doing? Olive oil may be slightly different - that has been used since time immemorial as a valuable oil, but the others haven't.

Saturated fats too have always been there and people have for millennia been able to eat as much or as little as they wish without any problems.

[wallycorker]

Excellent link from Graham / John, just goes to show that the truth is out there, it's just conveniently buried in obscure places sometimes.
Saturated fats will definitely raise HDL, just as carbohydrates will lower HDL. Swapping fats for starches is a double whammy in other words! Monounsaturated fats actually do that remarkable thing - raising HDL while lowering LDL. Since monounsaturated fats (such as in olive oil) are also the principal fats in meat and eggs, well, I think you can see where I'm going with this.....

larsson

Yes Larsson,

That seems to fit in with what I said in my original post i.e.:

"In fact, there seems to some sort of correlation between my HDL being at it's highest of 1.3 wnen my TC level has been elevated too - i.e. it seems as though when my TC increases then my HDL does too. This latter effect seems to have occurred on three separate occasions in my nine-year history of health checks."

That was just an observation that I made when looking back at all my results. I hadn't been expecting that to be the case - just the opposite in fact.

I'll be interested in what my next reading will show........and in the meantime I'll be building in a little bit more monounsaturated fats - especially olive oil. Pity it's got so many calories!

Best wishes - John

[AliB]

Yes olive oil has calories - all oils do, but is it really calories that are the issue?

Gary Taubes tears apart the 'fat makes you fat' propaganda in his book and shows that it is not calories that are the issue, but rather what the calories are made of.

A few of the many studies that he also mentions were overfeeding studies. In one, a group of men were fed 10,000 calories a day in different foods, but the ones who ate the low carb high fat regime didn't gain any weight at all! Guess which ones did!

I'm not advocating that quantity you understand........

[wallycorker]

Yes olive oil has calories - all oils do, but is it really calories that are the issue?

Gary Taubes tears apart the 'fat makes you fat' propaganda in his book and shows that it is not calories that are the issue, but rather what the calories are made of.

That might be the case AliB but I seem to have been doing OK by counting calories and drastically reducing my starchy carbohydrate intake. At this stage, I'm not looking to try something too radically different - at least until I reach my "ideal" weight or somewhere thereabouts. I seem to have found a very good way of eating and I'd be scared to change things at this stage. When I get where I want to be weightwise then I'll consider something different then.

A few of the many studies that he also mentions were overfeeding studies. In one, a group of men were fed 10,000 calories a day in different foods, but the ones who ate the low carb high fat regime didn't gain any weight at all! Guess which ones did!

I'm not advocating that quantity you understand........

10,000 calories a day! That might be where I came from AliB! I'd dread to add up and know what calories and carbs I was eating before I started my improvement programme. That really is interesting though. I've not read Gary Taubes book yet but rest assured that I will.

Best wishes - John

[AliB]

One wonders then if it was merely the quantity of carbs that you were consuming that led to the high BG levels in the first place!

Now you have lowered your carbs and your BG has returned to more normal levels and your weight is reducing, your body may well just be returning to a better equilibrium.