With No Drugs

Now I realize for many of you that cholesterol is no big deal.  But sometimes a medical doctor needs to be appeased.  I thought you’d like this story because it is a great example of how to do it right.  This is NOT something you will ever hear from a hospital or clinic.  I have permission from this patient to tell her story because she is really proud of her results.

This is the story of Eleanor Miller.  It started about 6 months ago.  She has been a long time patient for chiropractic care, but one day she stopped me after a regular adjustment and asked about how to improve her cholesterol.  I thought for a moment about all the factors that can come into play with someone with an advancing age.  I gave her a little quiz on her dietary habits.

1. What did you have for breakfast?  Some of you may have had this quiz

It was a quick confirmation of what I suspected.

1. Toast
2. Cereal

The usual suspects.  I really didn’t want to make this hard, so the only advice I gave her was to start eating something else for breakfast.  Maybe some eggs, fruit, yogurt, or any other veggie or meat.  It took about 3 months for the bread to almost disappear.

As of yesterday, here are her results.

• Cholesterol dropped from 209 to 179
• Triglycerides dropped from 244 to 152

The cholesterol doesn’t concern me at all, but the triglycerides are a much better predictor of heart attacks.   It was really nice to see those drop.  After doing significantly more research into heart attacks, my suggestion to you, is really watch the triglycerides.  This was the first time ever that her cholesterol was below 200.  She was pretty impressed.  Unfortunately, her M.D. was not.

So what did she actually change?

1. She cut out all bread except 1 slice per week.  (fair enough)
2. NO sugar
3. Increased her fruit intake.  At every meal she asked to have the bread option switched out for a piece of fruit.
4. NO pop.  She used to drink some everyday.
5. Exercise every week

Let’s break it down piece by piece.

Bread:

I would say bread is the hardest thing for people to give up.  I think the crust is laced with cocaine sometimes.  I’ll have a patient with diabetes come in and I tell them they need to give up bread to get better.  You’d think I stuck a wooden stake through their heart.  I also think the air itself is made of bread sometimes, it is part of every meal of most every person.

Sugar:

Next to bread this is the next most sacred cow, like fried foods at the State Fair or Lambeau field.   Lets say I have a warehouse that stores sugar.  Let’s call it Dr. Altman’s Sugar Shack (cue the Beach Boys music).   The Sugar Shack is your muscles and liver, they are the store houses.  When the Sugar Shack is full and there is more sugar on its way down your throat, where is it going to go?  This is where triglycerides come in.  They are the excess storage for sugar NOT fat.  When you eat too much sugar they are stored as triglycerides.  Not once in 11 years has a patient ever come in with lab results and ever been told how to lower triglycerides without medications.   This paragraph should be cut and pasted on the bottom of every cholesterol test.

More Fruit:

No arguement there.  Pretty universal.  Eat more natural fruit, not processed fruit juice, “fruit” roll-ups, or canned fruit.  Get it fresh, eat it raw.

Soda:

This is some addicting stuff.  The ONLY way I’ve seen to break this habit, is to not have any in the house.  I used to be a popaholic.  Even after years of not drinking any, if I see one in my house that someone brings over I start feeling the cravings for one.  I find it quite fascinating how that happens.  This is just another sugar source.  If you are drinking diet soda and are concerned about weight you may want to hear what Purdue University has to say about artificial sweenters.  Researchers concluded that artificial sweenters accelerate obesity by making people hungier.  They disrupt fullness signals so people consume more calories.  -Behavioral Neuroscience, 122, 2008

Exercise:

I know, shocker.  Exercise is good for you.  If you have your exercise routine you like, super.  If you are inconsistant, can’t remember, or really don’t know alot, afraid of gyms, or the people there, then I would encourage you to visit our exercise site www.area365.com.  I have put close to 1000 hours of work into it.  I prefer to be a naturally healthy guy and exercising on a machine won’t do that.  I exercise at home with one weight and my body, and a few other miscellaneous pieces that make exercise a little more interesting.  I have exercised for the last year and a half and NEVER done the same exercise routine twice.  Eleanor is not in our program, it is a bit much for her.  She does a more senior appropriate program.

I’m proud enough of her to share this with you and I hope you can learn something from her success.  Start by doing one thing above.

I started this article about fixing cholesterol the easy way.  In theory, it is easy.  Changing some habits, can be very difficult, though.  Do your best.

P.S. I made a killer potato / dill soup last night.  If you are interested in me posting the recipe just post a comment below.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Better eating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.