Chips & Cholesterol

My wife and I just finished participating in a CHIP (Coronary Heart Improvement Project) program in our area. We initially decided to look at this program because my father just had a heart attack and it seems to run in both sides of my family. I figured why not take a look at my cholesterol and see how much changing my diet would change. I wasn't sure that it would change that much since I am mostly a lacto-oval vegetarian, that is if someone offers me cheese or dairy I will eat it but we don't use it in our house. I also figured that since I'm in my 30's it would be a great time to educate myself and start experimenting to see what things I can do to reduce the likelihood of having a heart attack.

I really enjoyed the program because the information was presented from a scientific point of view, without the guilt trip, and the program looks at your whole life style not just diet.

Here are my lab results so you can see for yourself the improvements:

	Before	After
Glucose Fasting	77	83
Cholesterol	162	133
Triglyceride	71	59
HDL	32	26
LDL	116	95
VLDL	14	12
Cholesterol/HDL ratio	5.1	5.1

I would suggest that the reduction in oil, which was moderate before, processed foods, and increase in fiber was the reason for the change in the numbers. We did exercise during the program but it was usually only 20 minutes a day which I don't think was enough. Over the next couple of months we are going to try and get some more exercise to see how that changes the LDL.