A lot of the research I have done on what I write below is both the effort of my doctor, what I have fed back to him based on trials on my ownself as well as several hours of reading. However I am not a qualified medical professional and therefore confirm with your own physician before following my advice.
A lot more Indians suffer from high lipid levels than do
most races. However the lipid profile of indians(especially high carbohydrate eating vegetarians especially from the the south of india) tends to be somewhat like this.
1. The highest values are noticed in Triglycerides
2. LDL is near normal sometimes high
3. HDL cholesterol tends to be below normal.
The lipid profile of indians described above tends to
be so.primarily driven by high triglycerides. This is
what happens.
1. Triglyceride values are high(I will explain why)
2. That drives down the HDL values
3. eventually LDL starts going up due to low HDL values
Just for the uninitiated, HDL is High Density Lipoprotein and is called Good cholesterol and the highher it is the better. LDL is called Low density lipoprotein
and is called Bad Cholesterol and the lower it is its better. Finally Triglycerides are what I call very bad
cholesterol and they need to be low as well.
When we see a high cholesterol reading what we tend to do is cut down on fat, go and exercise and drink wine to
increase HDL values and then go and do a lab test to find that our triglycerides have gone up even higher and that the HDL has gone even lower.
What happens is this, Triglycerides go up not so much
because of fat intake, but because of intaking refined sugars, alcohols and carbohydrates. It somehow seems also
to be tied to a lower than normal protein intake.
Lowered fat intake does nothing in this case, because
the carbohydrates that you eat get converted into fats anyways and get stored in your gut(if you have a big gut go check your lipids and see what your TG looks like). The effect of exercise is also not visible because higher triglycerides compensates the good effect of exercise and has a bigger effect it seems in lowering HDL.
What needs to be done is as follows
1. If you have a high lipid reading driven by TG, treat
yourself like a diabetic and cut down on sugars and
excess carb intake
2. dont drink wine.wine increases triglyceride levels
which in turn reduces HDL values(which wine is supposed
to increase) so it has the opposite effect
3. exercise regularly
4. If none of this works, go and ask your doctor if you
can take 1 to 2 gms of slow/extended release niacin
It is better than medicines like lipitor because it
has fewer side effects and it lowers triglycerides
which is what you want
5. If you have any lipid problem insist that your doctor
test for homocystine. High Homocystine levels are
another special problem for indians. You may need upto
4 mgs(my doc says Homocystine metabolism is messed
up for indians so the usual max of 2 mgs does not
always work.this was my case also).
6. High TG levels is also the road to diabetes, since one
of its effects(and cause too) is insulin resistance.
So ask for a Glucose Tolerance test(Glycosalated Hemoglobin test is useful to diagnose diabetes.GTT can
give you trends sometimes).