Yay me

Remember how I had all those cholesterol problems last year? Personally I always thought it was from all the IVF meds.

At the end of July, I got my total cholesterol down to 190.  From a scary high of 264 in May that almost gave my doctor a heart attack, let alone me.  I tell ya, I'd have been straight on L.ipitor if it hadn't been for the whole "trying to get pregnant" thing.  Then I did an IVF cycle.  Next time I took it after the cycle it was 236, then 212, so my theory was holding out, but in a huge blow to scientific research around the world, it then bounced up again to 247 at the beginning of November, before my next cycle.  So I thought maybe it really wasn't the IVF cycles after all but was just bouncing around dependent on my diet.  My HDL cholesterol never got above 33, and several times was lower than the meter could register (25 is its minimum value).  If I'd been really dedicated to science I'd have measured it a lot more often on my handy dandy home meter but cheapness and laziness won out.  It would be interesting to measure it all through an IVF cycle though, just to see what happens.

Anyway, lately I've been trying to follow that infertility diet, you know, with the full fat milk.  Even though I'm good elsewhere, have oatmeal for breakfast, lots of almonds, am vegetarian, blah blah blah, I have cringed at the thought of what my cholesterol might be.  I meant to test it before starting estrogen patches for the FET but I was too much of a scaredy cat.

So this morning I decided to be a very brave girl and just see what it was before I start ramping up the patch dosages.

Total cholesterol = 164

HDL cholesterol = 42

I thankyouverymuch.  Hell yeah, am I fabulous or what?  OK, so the HDL is not as fabulous as it was before all this IVF nonsense (67 with a total cholesterol of 165), but at least it's above the level of 40 required for "good".  Yay me.  It definitely makes me less worried about possibly having insulin resistance, because I know that off-balance cholesterol readings and triglycerides are one indicator of IR.  Hey, maybe even the whole milk diet actually helped to bring the levels more into balance even though it's hardly a low fat diet?