So, I went to the doctor and told him that I'm feeling tired all the time and when I lie down at night my heart is racing and I that have upped (well, started) my exercise and cycle roughly six miles a day and I don't smoke any more, so could he please test my blood because my brother has diabetes and has just had a stroke, and the last time I had a blood test I was told I had sticky blood, so could he please just test everything, because what I read on the internet is worrying. He agreed. Of course, he probably should have told me to stop reading the internet, but he's a nice man and clever enough not to demand the impossible.
Strangely enough, visiting the Doctor in itself made me feel better, so I forgot to phone back for the results for a week, and when I finally did, the receptionist told me that there was something 'wrong' with my kidneys (Panic! How will I manage those insulin shots?) and that my cholesterol was very, very high, so I collapsed, sobbing, and so she promised to get the Doctor himself to phone me. Which he did while I was merrily espousing on the whereabouts of the Higgs-Boson to several colleagues who I am convinced must be interested by this, and why neutrinos may be able to take short cuts through space in the presence of mass, and I had to run to the phone; the Higgs really doesn't want to be found, does it?
Anyway, it turns out that whatever-it-is with my kidneys is only at the high end of normal, so I must stop worrying about that (ha!) but that I should try to get my cholesterol down and he'll test me again in three months. He told me the number, as well: 7.2.
Now, I love cooking and most especially, recently, I have been loving masterchef-with-added-cream style cooking. I love sauces made with double cream and risottos laced with butter and three-cheese pies with flaky pastry on the top and creamed spinach and chicken stew made with bacon fat and roast potatoes with extra goose and shoulder of pork cooked so slowly so all the fat melts into the flesh instead of away and you can pull it apart with a spoon and omlettes and cheescake and buttery breakfast croissants and biscuit base and LARD. So, it's not suprising, really, that my cholesterol is high. Not that high, actually - well, higher than recommended , but not in the panic zone, although it's getting there.
Now, cholesterol and its effect on heart disease isn't really understood very well, and the advice keeps changing, and there are some hints that actually, in older people (a group that I belong to), some cholesterol may actually have a protective effect on all sorts of things; what all sources seem to agree on is that what matters is the LDL:HDL ratio. LDL is the bad cholesterol, the one that clogs things up, and HDL is the good cholesterol, the one that actually cleans the bad cholesterol up.
My numbers for LDLand HDL are 4.82 to 1.58 This site gives numbers about the recommended ratio of one to the other as well as the required ratio of HDL to the total. The good news is that I'm actually just in the right range for the required ratio of HDL to the total (although it would be great if I could get further into that range) but clearly I've got way too much of the bad stuff and it would be a Good Idea if I could get that down.
I've had my eye on cholesterol science-stuff for years, having always had a slightly higher cholesterol level, and I'm pretty convinced by this HDL: LDL thinking. What the Doctor should have said to me is: You need to get your LDL levels down and your HDL levels up.
Hence this blog, which will be a record of what I am going to do to try to get my HDL levels up and my LDL levels down. Me experimenting on me, if you like. Anecdata.
The real problem, as I see it, is that the nicest food, the cream-laden, LARD-serving, lip-licking, butter-ridden luscious food is the food that raises, apparently, the LDL.
Good-for-you food, on the whole, sucks.
The challenge is to make the food that lowers the LDL and raises the HDL brilliant food, food that you want to bury your face into, and hoover straight to your taste centres. My mother would eat fruit with a fixed expression of enjoyment on her face, making great noises of appreciation, and I knew, and she knew that I knew, that she was only doing it to be good; eating good to be good and appease that great Daddy Doctor in the sky. I mean, there's only so often that people go to the fridge, open it and turn it upside down looking for that last bit of apple that they may have forgotten about yesterday and that they've been thinking about all day while at work, and that really isn't that often at all.
So that's the main thing I'm going to be doing with this blog. I'm going to a. keep a record of what I'm eating, and possibly what I'm drinking (although I may lie about that) and b. invent recipes that, according to research, may help lower LDL and raise HDL and c. blog about my biking (Well, I've got to put c. somewhere).
