Time for a cholesterol update

Managing cholesterol with diet is a lifelong project.

My substack dashboard tells me there are quite a few new subscribers. Hi! In case you got here by accident, Cruciferous is a plant-based food, health, and cooking newsletter by me, writer Joy Manning! 

If you are new here, you may want to check out this post as well as this one for background before I dive into what I have for you today—a cholesterol update. 

Story time!

OK, so back in October, following my layoff, surgery, and first bout with COVID, I got some dispiriting blood work back after a checkup. 

My total cholesterol was 214 (it should be <200), and my LDL was 134 (ideally <100). I knew I had not been eating exactly the way I wanted to.

There had been a lot of comfort eating, vegan baked goods, coconut oil products, etc. 

I could chalk up the increase in total and LDL cholesterol to that. But what really struck me as off were my triglycerides—154, double what they had ever been. In the past, even when LDL snuck up, triglycerides never followed. 

Something was weird, and I was going to figure out what it was.

I hate pills

The only major thing I was doing differently was taking the birth control pill. The nurse practitioner at my GYN’s office told me it would prevent any new polyps in my uterus, and I definitely didn’t want to go through that again.  

Could the pill increase triglycerides? I put on my health writer hat and turned to PubMed. I learned that yes, in fact, they do.

Add this to the very long list of things I am astonished my healthcare providers never told me. 

So, after thinking about it for a month, I stopped taking the pills. 

Small tweak, big change

Fast forward to today. My triglycerides are down to 92, and my LDL came down to 110! Turns out that birth control pills can raise LDL as well! 

Of course, I would like to get my LDL under 100, so I’ve been focusing on using less oil, avoiding packaged vegan convenience foods, and eating very few vegan pastries (though over the weekend, I had Curiosity Doughnuts vegan doughnuts, which are truly incredible).

Naturally, I’ll let you know what happens when they test my blood again in the fall :) Managing high cholesterol with diet and lifestyle is a long-term project.

Cruciferous recommends

I also want to share my current plant-based obsession: Derek Sarno’s bonkers YouTube channel. 

Derek is one of the brothers behind the Wicken Kitchen brand. I own their Wicked Healthy cookbook. 

I’ve watched Derek’s videos for a while without being a superfan, but my casual viewer status changed when I watched this specific video. 

I am not on the birth control pill anymore, so it may have been crazy perimenopausal hormones, but I cried my eyes out when I watched this. It really affected me! I’m still thinking about it.

It made me want to meditate more and to cook for others more. Plus, it makes me so grateful for my 22 years and counting with the love of my life.

Though my initial motivation for switching to a plant-based diet was for the health of it, Derek’s video reminded me of the value of putting empathy and compassion at the center of my life.

Thank you, Derek! (He’s not a reader, but you never know what people will see!)

Watch it and let me know what you think.