I wonder if you can give me some information.

We have been eating low carb for 2 months now. My husband has lost 21lbs which has taken him to a healthy weight. He has taken statins for a couple of years as he has a heart condition.

At the start of going low carb he had his blood checked and his cholesterol was 6.1 (we’re in the UK and i think it’s measured differently over here, but 5 or less is what the Drs recommend).

He stopped taking the statins when we went low carb, one of the reasons for trying this way of life was to try and get him off them. His blood was checked again last week and had gone up to 6.6.

My question is does this happen to some people, as all the blogs, books, personal stories I’ve read have always had a positive result, bloodwise.

We have kept to the way of eating 98% of the time and he’s very disappointed that it looks like he will have to go back on the statins. I wondered if you had heard of this before?

By the way, I read the all the US blogs etc, with envy. We have a fraction of the low carb items over here.

Jackie

Hey Jackie! THANKS so much for writing and sharing about your husband’s success on low-carb the past two months to get his weight down. But let me assure you about his cholesterol levels–that is COMPLETELY normal. All the research that has been conducted on low-carb diets generally shows a slight elevation in LDL initially before it comes back down. More importantly, though, is some of that “increase” in his total cholesterol could be coming from the HDL cholesterol which is something that is VERY good. A statin drug artificially lowers your cholesterol while doing nothing to protect your husband from a cardiovascular event. Watch this recent YouTube video my wife Christine and I did on this subject: http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/?p=4853

–Jimmy