Taking the steeper path
I can't believe I'm writing this, but I actually talked to Dr. Esselstyn on the phone yesterday! Here's what happened: At my last cardiologist visit, I asked her to put in an order to get labs on my cholesterol levels. Surprised I had to ask, but my sense is that the conventional docs have so much faith in the statins that they don't even bother to check. The results showed a total cholesterol of 112, which was up a bit from my results in October. LDL was down, though, and both my cardiologist and PCP had already told me that LDL is the only thing they look at. I'm not buying that. The main thing I was/am concerned about is that my triglycerides went from 101 in October to 245. Even though I know I haven't been doing a perfect job eliminating oil from my diet, my thoughts immediately went to the preferred idea that maybe something else was affecting my triglycerides. After all, I'm on steroids (still) and I like to blame them for everything. So I'm in