Lannigan on Cholesterol

Cholesterol

When your doctor says you have low cholesterol don't believe him (or her). What your doctor believes is "low cholesterol" is (proabably) not low enough!

Caldwell B. Esselstyn and Dr. Ornish are two doctors that go on record saying that a sustained total cholesterol below 3.9 mmol/l (150mg/dl for Americans) makes you virtually "heart attack proof". Isn't that cool?

The problem is that most of the institutions (e.g. Heart and Stroke Foundation, Health Canada, U.S. Heart Association, etc.) state that having cholesterol levels below 5.2 mmol/l(200 mg/dl for Americans) is desireable. These same associations also state that having your fat intake at 20-35% of calories is ideal whereas Esselstyn and Ornish say fat should only make up 10% of total calorie intake.

My Personal Cholesterol Challenge

To get my cholesterol lower than 3.9 mmol/l (150mg/dl) I had to turn vegetarian and make fats less than 10% of my total calorie intake. It was hard at first but I'm really enjoying it now. My turning vegetarian is not political and I think that we are designed to eat meat and a good amount of fat. That said, we are now living in a world where we sit on our asses a lot. Yes—I exercise (one or two bouts of high intensity exercise a day) but it doesn't take a whole lot of figuring to calculate that I still get far less exercise than my ancestors did. So, an all-plant diet is how I roll now.