please empty your brain below
Moderation, DG, moderation. And if I wasn't 12,000 miles away I'd have those eggs off you in the time it'd take you to open the fridge door.
Meanwhile, if you can't eat chocolate, how about cocoa? It's not exactly a cream egg, but it is chocolatey, and doesn't have any cholesterol if you make it with soy milk.
Porridge (or unsweetened muesli, but I'm not convinced you'd like that) is like little cholesterol hoovers in your veins. One Nice Lady I recommended it to recently reduced her cholesterol by 1.0 in 6 weeks by eating porridge every morning (although alongside other changes too).
And olive oil (good fat) for everything needing oil.
And red milk for everything.
Unless you know what your cholesterol levels have been in the past, it's hard to judge whether how it is now is due to diet, the effects of medication, or something else entirely. Middle age for example
Or perhaps it's always been that way (didn't they test it on any of your other recent medical appointments)?Unfortunately, in this country, they only routinely test for many things when they suspect problems, and by then it's much harder to rectify anything that's been going wrong for years. Preventative medicine on the NHS? Don't make me laugh.
And don't get me started on how many lives could be saved if there were proper lifelong screening programmes for prostate cancer, breast cancer, bowel cancer, heart disease, diabetes... or, actually, if people took responsibility for their own health from the outset. Today's teen and 20-something binge drinkers, junk food eaters and smokers have it all to look forward to - in about 20 years time. And while the NHS is paying to mop up their past sin, it won't have money for proper screening programmes, so we're into a vicious circle.
No-one ever thinks these things will happen to them until they do.
And then there is individual variation over time... if I tell you that I had 3 sets of blood tests over a month last year and the cholesterol level varied by 1.8 between them, even though I'd done absolutely nothing different, it might make you think you can go back to crisps, pie and chocolate. And you can't - because I am a Witch and apparently they metabolise differently to other people
Just a thought...........
Second rate medical researchers (there are no first rate medical researchers) find large associations in statistically flawed studies (aka circumstantial evidence) and conclude that, say Agent Z causes splugitis.
A whole host of third rate medical researchers then conduct numerous follow up studies to replicate the findings and explain why Agent Z is so awful. The purpose of this is to demonstrate that they are worth their salaries (in terms of publications per year). In the process they neglect that many people have splugitis even though they have no links to Agent Z, and many people have a lot of links to Agent Z but do not have splugitis. The reason for this behaviour is that (1) studies that address these issues are harder to publish and (2) thinking about these issues would fuse their brains. This research strategy is known amongst psychologists as 'confirmation bias' or 'positivity bias'.
A raft of confusing, contradictory and poorly conducted published studies are then interpreted by fourth rate medical researchers (i.e. those employed by the government) and their overall conclusions disseminated to fifth rate medical researchers (GPs).
If conclusions might impinge on commercial profits, e.g. from the food or drug industries, they will step in at some point of the process, and subvert the scientific process still further (if such a thing was possible).
Then there's your Worcestershire sauce crisp habit and your Becks beer intake (they are right: Life is What You Choose), both of which are probably more harmful than a wee bit of artificial chocolate.
Your reading of 5.5mmol/l is in the same bracket as my 225 mg/dL, which is only listed as borderline high risk. Obviously, it would be excellent to get it down into the desirable levels, but panicking could be counter productive.
The odd indulgence (with moderation), however, probably does far more good for your psychological well-being and that saves the NHS heaps of money from not needing to send you to a shrink, or in reducing your levels of stress so that you don't add that further toll on your heart. (At least those are MY excuses.)
But all joking aside, do everything you possibly can to avoid getting into "drugs", even if they are of the prescription variety, because I'm convinced that's when you start down the slippery slope of needing to take a tablet to counteract the effects of the tablet you took to cure the outcome of the last tablet ...
Until you rattle. Which, to me, seems like a recipe for an unholy cocktail of chemical overload, worse than a whole boatload of creme egg gloop!
Keep your mind on what you are gaining and not what you are giving up and give yourself permission to treat yourself, say one day a week. Stick to it: allow yourself to choose only ONE treat. Savor it, enjoy it. Life's short anyway.
On the other hand, whilst the link between cholesterol and heart disease may be a subject for debate, maybe the problem is not one of "poor diet," but is due to a simple lack of kittens? See: Cat Owners May Be Less Likely to Suffer Cardiovascular Disease. I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist!
However it does raise the obvious question of does it really exist or is it merely the psychologists that think it does. However if the psychologists think it does and believe their own theory as a result then obviously it does !
I know that the NHS always seems to be short on funds, even though it has endless amounts poured into it from the government. However, does that give them the right to sell off our health to the highest bidder?
You'll be eating chocolate again soon, DG, don't you worry.
The thing is, 'positivity bias' is a description of behaviour, not an explanation or a theory. Not surprisingly, when seeking evidence, people can show a 'positivity bias' or a 'negativity bias'. The tendency is massively towards positivity bias.
On the other hand, the reasons for a strong tendency towards positivity bias are not fully understood. Last time I looked, it seems to be to do with people having a natural difficulty with thinking about negative instances or information. It is very difficult for you to obey an instruction along the lines of "Do not think about what you had for breakfast this morning".
The result is, that when medical researchers believe that cholesterol causes heart disease, they focus attention too much on the positive instances that support that connection, but have difficulty attending to (or even comprehending) the importance of the negative instances that do not support the connection.
Go with the oats, porridge is good, commercially available flapjacks may have too much sugar, & even too much of various kinds of fat.
Go with the high octane chocolate too. & Fair Trade is good for everyone.
& try to get out walking more - outside London, or any other traffic-infested & fume-filled place.
All the best, DG!
I'm intending to stick to the diet for two months, just to see if it makes a difference or not. I'll tell you if it doesn't.
Under this theory DG has a mysterious illness. His body recognises it and activates his defence mechanism which is choresterol. Obviously people who have this disease will have high levels of choresterol. Its the same when the fire brigade fight a fire. Fires tend to be associated with lots of water but they don't cause the fire - they are the solution. So obviously the solution is to eat more cream eggs to build up the choresterol so that it can fight the real underlying disease.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/...icles/
89385.php
Last Summer, my Mother had a quadruple heart bypass. She was dying and you could see it before your eyes, if she didn't have it then (despite being promised it 6 months earlier!) she would have been dead, most likely before Christmas. They thought that it would sort out her high blood pressure and perhaps help with her very high cholesterol levels. Alas, six months later her blood pressure is just as high as it was before, and despite a radical change in diet her cholesterol is still disturbingly high. Sometimes there is not an answer to these things.
However, she now no longer looks as though she is dying, and she can walk across the room without almost collapsing. She now exercises a lot and has a proper life that she has not been able to enjoy, pretty much since I was born. If you ever need some advice on nicer parts of Essex to visit for walks, I'm happy to oblige!
I hope the change in diet helps you
Just to say: a mate was diagnosed with serious cholesterol issues and he did two things which has lowered his cholesterol - permanently:
1) He cut out coffee and caffeine
2) He cut out stress - which involved quitting his job
He now has low cholesterol. No idea if there's any correlation, but hey, trying it can't hurt, right?
Really sorry to hear of your diagnosis. The creme egg thing sucks big ass time.
Seriously, I wish you well with it
oat porridge everyday, she makes it with water not milk, and for lunch, plus usual things like fish and veg... erm, i can imagine most people not going for that, but it makes a good subsitute for rice or congee.
good luck with the health and longevity.
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