So how do you interpret cholesterol tests, a lipid panel? Lipid just means
fats oils and usually when it - your doctor says, he's gonna order a lipid
panel, he's talking about cholesterol tests. There are other fats in there
besides cholesterol. There's the LDL which is bad cholesterol, and HDL which
is good cholesterol, total cholesterol, and then the other lipid in there is
usually triglycerides. But we'll talk about that in just a minute. Let me just
tell you how we're gonna do this. I'm gonna use my own study. We just had the
Healthy Life Summit part II, the second event in Orlando, March of 2019. It's
probably going to be a month or two before you see the video because we've
got so many in the queue, but it was a great event. We had a lot of YouTubers
there. The YouTubers distinguished themselves. They knew their stuff. It's a
very very good group of people, in fact what they did was convince us that
we'll - well - we'll be starting a series of of events on our own, probably Louisville
near us which - which has some good access in terms of airports; but that's
for that's for some for another time. One thing I do want to say is that we did
get reminded many times that YouTube's just not sending out notices and I
looked it up, it's less than 20%. Even if you click subscribe and you click the
bell, less than 20% your probability you're gonna get all of the - the videos.
So what I would ask is you go to our - the description underneath, click on join the
community and actually join the community. Basically give us your email -
email address. We'll send you information so you can get all the videos you want.
We're also developing a library so another piece of feedback they gave us
is that it's hard to find. There's 500 videos and we haven't tried to
organize them that way. You could try the the playlists but
they're not - they're not well-organized either and there's junk in there.
So again, please join us, give us your email list and we will - we'll start
helping you find the information that you need.
So I've done another video using my own labs from the Healthy Life Summit that
was on inflammation panel. Again, you can google that, look it up or give us any
your email list and which we should have that in part of our new library
functions that we're sending out. Remember the most important one was
microbial creatinine ratio, microalbumin is the protein you are spilling in the urine. So there's -
most of the lab tests that we got from the old CHL quests derivative now. I'll
start it off with microalbumin but even if you know to look for a microalbumin,
there's about 3 or 4 and then 5 and then you're trying to figure
out what which of these do I look at. It's this one micro albumin creatinine
ratio random urine and again that shows us the protein we're spilling. Not going
to get any deeper into that. That's on another video. We'll probably look at
what's called a metabolic panel. You usually don't see that much on it but
again it's always there. It's cheap for the lab to do and sometimes you pick up
stuff on that. In addition, the OGTT is a big deal.
As you see, I've done a lot of work in terms of working out, resistance training,
sauna which may or may not work, low carbs, and high intensity intervals. And
as you see, my number's a little bit better especially in terms of the
fasting number of 86 but after a shot of 75 grams of fructose, my number goes
right up to 183 and 200 is one of the definitions for full-blown diabetes so
I've got it. I've got a good lifestyle. What's causing it?
Aging! I'm 62 years old and after another hour it only gets down to 114. Perfect
numbers would be starting out at 80, in the 80s, like I did. Not getting any
higher than 120 after that 75 gram fructose or glucose challenge and then
getting down significantly below 100 after the second hour. That's not where I
was. This next section has to do with thyroid
which is a very common problem as we age and it also has to do with the blood
panel. Again, other information for another time period. So we were talking
about lipid panels, quest, and CHL. There - CHL the old Cleveland Heart lab division
of quest now puts this out and for the most part tends to label it as cardio IQ
and they give you a little bit more than the standard lipid panel. I can tell you
and I continue to tell all my patients, I don't need anything other than the
standard lipid panel. However, that's not what they give you anymore. It's - they've
done it so many times. They start giving you lipoprotein fractionation and
apolipoproteins and stuff like that; and sure enough we'll go through that just
to provide some more information. The top number is the total cholesterol. The most
important number that I look at is actually a ratio of 2 numbers. It's the
next 2 numbers. Its triglycerides over HDL. If you're in the one area, you're
doing great, you're in good shape, you're not burning a lot. You don't have a
constant insulin push going on. If on the other hand your insulin resistance and
or you're eating a lot of carbs on a regular basis which can have it happen
even with young people with obesity or diabetes problems that aren't recognized
or treated, insulin does 2 things. It - it pulls sugar out of the blood and puts it
into the muscle or liver cell where it's not dangerous and number 2,
here's where this comes in. It stops burning fats. It stops
triglyceride burnings. Triglycerides are the fats that you have. I've got some
down here. I'm some - and they're small of hands but I got some love handles and
that's where the fat - that fat is. I've got it elsewhere, but insulin will stop
your body from burning that. So what will happen is, as your triglycerides will begin
to elevate. Meanwhile, as those begin to elevate you start burning your
HDL cholesterol more. So HDL cholesterol drops down into the 40s, sometimes lower.
Triglycerides go up 100, 150 and so what happens is you get a ratio of a hundred
over 50 or 45. That shows that you've got insulin resistance. That's in fact the
first thing that I look at on the lipid panel. As you see from my numbers, I'm in
good shape. And it's because of the lifestyle that
I'm leading, not eating carbs and doing plenty of exercise. So just as a summary
and in case you didn't pick up on it, the first thing I look at in the - in terms of
the cholesterol or lipid panel is not really cholesterol or lipid. It's back to
insulin resistance. So LDL cholesterol is usually calculated. There's several
different methods that they have from, for calculating it. Most common and
simplest calculation has to do with a little bit more complicated version than
taking the total cholesterol and subtracting the HDL. As you see, if you
did that simply here, you'd get a pretty good estimate of my LDL. They are looking
on ways to actually measure it and some labs are getting there. Bottomline is my
LDL is 107. Am I worried about that? No. What's the standard? Well they say the
standard is less than a hundred but that's typical labs and lab standards. We
really want it less than 70. So should I crank up, as I've shared with you many
times. I did bite the bullet 3 or 4 years ago and start taking crestor.
Should I bite the bullet and increase that crestor? Increase it from what? I
started at 5 mg a day and I went to every other day and then at this
point I'm down to 2.5 mg of - of resuvastatin
or crestor twice a week. I will - I might because when you go back up, you may
remember I've got a tiny bit of - of inflammation going on as well. So I've
got a little bit of an increase in my LDL. I've got some mild inflammation. I'm
doing what - you can always do more in terms of lifestyle. I - I'm working on that.
I may go back up an increase to 5 mg, 2 or 3 times a week on
my crestor. So again those of you that are statin haters, we're not talking
about very much. The other thing I'm considering doing but we got, we got an
influx of patients and Michelle's very busy. She and I are considering setting
me up on lavalla. Lavalla is now getting to where it's -
it's available through some Canadian pharmacies, Potavastatin Generic, and
it's a much more manageable price than it's been in the past. What's the - what's
the interest in lavalla? Well it is the - it was developed in Japan. It's net - it's
the only statin and it's now again, now before getting affordable, it's the only
statin which decreases insulin resistance, all the other ones including
crestor have a negative impact on insulin resistance. So what we've done in
the past is try to manage inflammation with crestor, use small amounts of it so
you don't get that push on insulin resistance but it certainly doesn't help.
So those are a couple of things that I'm thinking about increasing my crestor
dose just a little bit and/or when Michelle gets beyond this flurry of
activity for Healthy Life Summit II in Orlando,
she and I'll get me set up and where she can help our patients, including me, get
the Lavalla. Cholesterol low HDL-C ratio, that's really - I mean that's not
that helpful. If you look at the things that we've looked at already, you're
gonna get 90% of what you need out of your cholesterol tests but you know what,
they do these other tests, they get these numbers and because they do patients
perseverate over it. They focus on it. They're worried about it. So let me just
tell you a little bit about that. The LDL particle number for me is a little bit
high and we've got small LDLs. Those 2 things go hand in hand. You're gonna have
the same amount of LDL. If you've got the big the big fluffy - here's what the the
issue is, the big fluffy LDLs don't go through that injured intima layer. The
holes in it, they're too big. It's the small dense LDLs that go through. So you
want to get more of the large LDLs, in other words medium here and less of
the small, and many people and many labs will call that a pattern B that I have,
in other words, more of the small dense LDL. The other thing is you want these
larger HDL particles which is again what I've got there. So I've got a little bit
too much LDL and it's too many small particles. Again the pattern that many
labs will call Pattern B. Apolipoprotein A1- that's the FO that's
the protein itself that wraps but it forms a ball, wraps around cholesterol
such that you don't get big blobs or an embolus of liquids -
I mean liquid lipids, the fats. As you remember, when you hold
the - you pour oil in a glass of water and you shake it a little bit, it can form - it
forms a large blob. That large blob could cause heart attacks stroke or other
injury and in fact it does. In medicine when you have, routinely, when you have
large bones break, that's what lipoproteins are all about.
The Apolipoprotein is that the protein part without the lipids in it so
you're looking to see which protein is in there. Apolipoprotein A1 is the
good one in the - in the HDL particle. Apolipoprotein B is the one in the
LDL particles. So what you - you can see, you want to have more of the
Apolipoprotein A and less of Apolipoprotein B and that's my LP(a). So
it's, you know, it's a little bit higher than that won't but I don't worry about
my LP(a). So you may be looking, you may have a question, "Well Ford you
know I look down there and you've got an MPO of 542." As I said that's the most
common false positive and I'm not - I usually don't worry about that unless I
see a major pattern with multiple significantly positive inflammation
markers. As usual I went longer than I expected but as you can tell I'm
passionate about this and if you've made it this far, thank you so much for your
interest! Thanks and if you hit that subscribe or a like button, it makes a
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