Cholesterol Watchers!
Cholesterol Watchers!
Hi, Greg:
The new Cholesterol drugs (Lipomed, Lipitor, etc.) all have a good purpose which is to lower the bad LDL cholesterol levels. A sure-fire way to up the good HDL stuff is exercise. Mine is rising due to exercise, but I'm still battling the LDL war.
Although my doc believes in a drug therapy of some sort, he also believes in a natural approach and has me on a Red Yeast Rice supplement and I have recently started to add a daily fix of 25 grams of Soy Protein powder. I hope it works. I have until end of this year to get the numbers down or I will likely have to go on the prescription stuff which I dread! It's bad enough taking these high-priced drugs: Toprol, Altace, Digoxin and Coumadin!
At this point, I feel I am still a Coumadin newbie and although I've been on it for 14 months, my education and personal tracking of my PT's and Coumadin related factors didn't kick in until early this year when my doc got a Coumadin Clinic started at the hospital I take the tests at. I no longer maliciously say I have to visit the "vampire bats" as the full time clinic nurse is incredibly knowledgable and caring and the head of pharmacy is my education channel.
I started the rice stuff 3 weeks ago. It has a combined co-enzyme which bothered the pharmacist so she requested a new PT. I re-tested this last Tuesday and it dropped 1 point. I am testing again the end of next week to see if the added 2.5 of Coumadin helps and to also see where my added Soy Protein takes it.
Boy, what I've learned about consistency in diet. You try something new or do too much of something and pow!, the INR gets wacky. I've never gone way above or below board like some folks seem to be going on this forum, but I've sure been tripping around the dance floor! My INR's were steadily consistent for 6 months, dropping one time because some new vitamins contained a little more Vit-K than what I get naturally. I gotta hand it to some of the folks here who have been doing Coumadin for a long time and thank them for their confidence and knowledge.
Greg, I hope we can continue comparing our cholesterol watching on this forum. I re-test for Cholesterol in about 3 months and will post my results here. In the meantime, I wish you the best of luck with your own LDL war and I hope I may meet you at the reunion.
Sincerely,
Perry Anderson