Life change and test results

It will be end of coming week before I hear anything from Dr. LaPrade.  He will have both my Xrays and MRI arriving before he comes in on Jan. 2.   

Previously with my other knee injury, I trained on it for almost 2 months before surgery but not this time.  I'm doing nothing really except pullups, pushups, rubber tubing shoulder rotations, weighted bicycle crunches, ab wheel, but nothing to raise the heart rate near max and run the engine hot.  I fear it may affect my CV health and promote faster aging.  The best thing to do would be to get into the pool but it's closed til 1/13.   I could probably bike or row with no pain but I don't want to make my meniscus worse.  It will be already a difficult enough repair, assuming it can be.

During my normal lifestyle when training, so many things are centered around this.  What and when I eat, when I go to the bathroom, the weather (wind direction, rain, etc...), what type of workout I will do, what my goals for the session are, etc... It is a total life change.  It has brought me back strongly to guitar practicing where I'm playing so much more.  I played a community concert in FL on xmas night with a guitar I purchased and had sent to my parents house.  It turned out to be a spectacular guitar, a 48 yr old Takamine C136s in near mint condition, worth 3 or 4x the $500 I paid for it.  Definitely among the best guitars I own.  Astonishingly loud and easy to play.  

LIPID Blood work

I had the blood drawn for 4 lipid tests and I have results of 3 of them:  Apolipoprotein B1/A ratio, standard lipid panel, and MMR Lipid fractionation.   (They screwed up and didn't take enough blood for the Lipid ion mobility fractionation test).

Results were generally ok, some good and bad.   It had only been 8 weeks since my previous blood draw and I tried 3 things:  500mg niacin, bergamot juice and capsules, and cutting down on espresso coffee.  

Here is the standard lipid panel - first number Oct 18 blood draw, second - Dec 12.

Total Cholesterol: 215 - 169 

Triglycerides: 152 - 107 

LDL: 158 - 113 

HDL: 42 - 35 

Ratio: 5.17 - 4.8 

Slight improvement, but the HDL dropped with the LDL, which always has been a problem.   Overall, improvement, showing the supplement regime working.  Odd that all three indicators:  Total Chol, LDL, and TriG all dropped by the same exact amount, 45-46 points, which is significant - especially in just 8 weeks.   

My Apolipoprotein B/A1 ratio came in at 1.05. B was 104 - considered borderline high, A1 was 99 considered too low (under 120). Any ratio over 0.9 is considered higher risk (Mayo C).   Pretty much confirms the bad ratios I've always had, around the borderline risk area.   

A study showing this as the best prognosticator of CVD risk: 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8277048/

The lipid fractionation MMR came in with mixed results, but mostly that I have more small dense LDL and less large molecule HDL.   

Confusing because the small LDL-P came in at 853 nmol/L which is high risk, however, the overall LDL size was in the normal range - 20.9 nm (over 20.5 is good).   

HDL-P, Large HDL-P came in low, which is considered high risk,  especially the Large HDL-P.  The overall HDL size was just into the high risk level (8.4 nm, anything under 8.7 is high risk) 

My most anomalous reading was VLDL-P (Large VLDL particles).   Elevated levels of large VLDL particles is bad.  Anything under 3.7 nmol/L is considered optimal, mine was off the charts low, listed as <1.5 nmol/L ...  which is very good.  My overall VLDL was also good, anything under 47.1 nm is optimal, mine was 43.8 nm, also good.  

Very hard to understand what all this means.  It's a very complex science, a lot of intangibles.

I also found another interesting food supplement I'm going to try.  It's called mangosteen juice.  I read some studies on it and heard some anecdotal testimonies from someone I know that it is has strong anti-malignancy and anti-inflammatory properties.  Recent study on that: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104366182200576X 

  

I met up with my friend Jeff for dinner, a multi-millionaire physician.  We again went to his facility and looked at our carotid arteries with the ultrasound, we both were clear.  No sign of calcium on the walls of the artery, just a tiny amount on the outside.   He and another physician friend of mine are really against statins for non obese people.  He insists that it won't do much to extend life.  But I think it has for my parents.  

I visited my parents in FL last week.  I did gain a few lbs but by today I was back just under 141 lbs.  The worst thing I ate was a cannoli.  I snacked mostly on fruits and nuts besides my one meal / day.  

I think my parents look great.  Mom will be 83 in a month, dad 85 in April.  My dad is 25 lbs lighter than last yr at this time, weighing about 205 lbs.  My mother is definitely a bit overweight at 5'4" 140+ lbs.  My parents... they eat steak and potatoes, processed food like store-bought cookies and pies (with mile-long lists of ingredients), artificially flavored and chemically sweetened beverages and foods, they don’t read food labels, they eat butter, eggs, ice cream …. all the stuff I would never eat.  My mother at least eats vegetables, my father eats nothing really that is healthy.  He hates all the good stuff, berries, cruciferous vegetables, greens.   They are both on statins, my dad had a CAC scan Agatston score of over 1200 12+ yrs ago, they both have had a stent installed. Me, age 64, no beef or pork in 33 yrs, Mediterranean diet, only organic chicken and wild caught seafood, organic produce. I try to get my parents to eat better, but they say…"But we’re 85."   What can you say to that? 

We celebrated their 65th anniversary day after Christmas.  They were married Dec 26, 1959.   My mother was a month away from her 18th birthday, and my dad was to turn 20 that April.  Growing up in a hurry.