Cholesterol Tests 101

Hello!

I often see clients who are disturbed by a high cholesterol test result, after years of having healthy results. Often their doctors are insisting they start medication immediately. If this ever happens to you, keep this in mind:

1. Your cholesterol results are highly influenced by what you ate the previous few days. If you normally eat well, but ate junk food the night before your test, it can give you high results. I see this all the time. One client had a high result because of a cookie binge on the eve of a blood test and another client had bad results the day after returning from vacation in Mexico. Both clients had a cholesterol score 100-150 points higher than usual. Two weeks later, after getting back to normal good eating, their scores were back down.

2. The opposite is true. If you kill yourself to eat super-duper-healthy for a week before your test, your cholesterol results will look abnormally good. Airplane pilots looking to ace their flight physicals know this all too well! I don’t suggest doing this–you need to know where your cholesterol normally is, not just how good it can get when you eat like a saint.

3. You can buy a home testing kit at the pharmacy for about $20. If you want to experiment with how healthy you need to eat/exercise/etc. to maintain good numbers, you can test as often as you like at home.

4. There are lots of things besides diet that you can do to improve your cholesterol. Come talk to us if you have a serious problem and want to try lifestyle changes before medication. We have a great track record. The regular DfH weight loss program is wonderful for cholesterol, but ask us what other non-diet habits you can adopt.

OK, hope that helps. Have a good week!

Jill