Is high cholesterol a result of diet or genetics?

Question

I'm 42, in very good health, not overweight, eat right, exercise and my doctor says my cholesterol is in the highest 5 %. He tells me to stop eating red meat, pork, ice-cream. I tell him I don't eat that stuff anyway (very little), then he says it's not diet related but genetic and that I need to start taking this prescription. Also, he sprung this blood test on me during a visit for something else and I've been told you have to fast for four hours before a blood test. I can't remember if I ate or how soon before this surprise blood test. Is my doctor whacked or what? It's the first time seeing him.

Answer 1

It's both! Haven't you ever seen the Vytorin commercial? j/k
Yes, fasting blood tests are important to tell if you truely have high cholesterol. Treating hyperlipidemia with medications is meant to go hand in hand with lifestyle changes like exercise and diet control. Your doc isn't completely crazy.

Answer 2

High cholesterol can be caused by bad diet and by genetics. I had a bad flare up of colitis a couple of years ago. It hurt to even drink water, so I really wasn't eating much of anything at all. My doctor did some bloodwork and found my cholesterol was fairly high. It's because it's in my mother's side of the family. But even if you don't have it in the family, you can still get it by eating lots of fatty foods and not exercising properly.

As for the blood test, the one we use here in Canada requires a 12 hour fast. I'd question the results of the blood test you're doctor gave you. I'd ask for a proper cholesterol test. Eating too son before the test could certainly throw the results off.

Answer 3

80% of your cholesterol is produced by the liver and 20% comes from your diet. So eating no cholesterol will fix part of the problem.
Your doc will probably prescribe a statin drug like Lipitor which is designed to block the liver from producing cholesterol by affecting the HMGR enzyme. The problem here is that this will disrupt other biochemical processes such as CoQ10. CoQ10 is critical to producing energy in the body and no CoQ10 will lead you to being run down.
My best friend from college went on Lipitor 2 years ago- he was 48 at the time. His cholesterol dropped like a rock but his energy was screwed up. He said he could barely get out of bed in the morning and so he ditched the Lipitor. He is taking niacin and flaxseed oil to lower it naturally.
I am going to use an analogy here that sports fan would understand. If you want to get as big and strong as possible, you have to take steroids and they do work. However they have serious side effects such as feminization of men, shrinking of the testicles, etc.
If you want to lower your cholesterol as fast as possilbe, take Lipitor but they have side effects such as low energy. I saw this week that a doctor just wrote a book on how Lipitor caused him to have memory blackouts. To me, that is scary.
Look into niacin- see my website for an article or go to Amazon. There is also Chinese red yeast, fish oil and a few other options.
If you take Lipitor, make sure you supplement with extra CoQ10. Hope this helps.

Answer 4

cholesterol is a steroid...Cho-le STEROL...your liver handles this.Anyway if you eat alot of Avocado pear/peanuts/peanut butter, other butters, soya, then this can jump your high cholesterol level...
Also you may use alternatives like - fish oils...
High cholesterol is not heavily influenced by genetics except from the point of view of the make-up of your liver...
See what the doc's results say...
Also - the doc may have been actually testing for something else.

Answer 5

Either
Both

Answer 6

both