Atttaboy

This happened to my sister about 30 years ago. If your appt isn’t in the next day or 2, find a friend or relative with diabetes and have them come over and test your blood.

My cousin came over and tested my sister and she went straight to the hospital and stayed for a few days.

No, I wasn’t put on anything. I saw a different doctor in the practice in 2023 and he didn’t think anything of it.

It was only earlier this year that my regular doctor saw the results from ~18 months earlier and became concerned.

Prior to the calcium score results, he mention that he might want to put me n statins to reduce total cholesterol, even though my LDL is low.

Lots of strength training and a bit of a pickleball addiction kind of keeps me shredded…

Plus no junk food and don’t drink my calories.

I can’t find the studies that I originally found but they were conducted in South Korea, Germany, and Emory. Here are a couple of quick references to the high HDL being bad story.

LINK

LINK

My PCP told me in my last visit that he’s concerned that I’m a cardiac ticking time bomb. I was pretty shocked.

He’s concerned that my HDL (good cholesterol) is extremely high, which some recent studies have shown can be very bad.

Here are my numbers from 18 months apart:

Late 2023:

Triglycerides: 104
LDL: 69
HDL: 109
Total Cholesterol: 197

Early 2025:

Triglycerides: 60
LDL: 67
HDL: 101
Total Cholesterol: 182

He’s submitted me for a calcium cardiac scan which is scheduled for early June.

FYI - I’m 62 years old, 5’7”, 135 lbs. I do strength training, pickleball and yoga and have a super healthy diet.

I’ve done InBody scans for 4 weeks straight to get a series of readings. It places me as a D-type body, with body fat percentages ranging from 7-9%.

I read the studies that he referenced, and they looked legit. I then read a study that countered both of those.

I’ve researched how to decrease HDL and I can’t find a single reference on how to do that.

Any thoughts/comments if there’s a real concern here?

I had this issue big time in the mid-80s when I was in college. The rash covered my chest to back- I tried everything and it continued for months until I switched to Sure Regular Scent.

I’ve been using that ever since.

Having grown up outside of NOLA but living in the Atlanta metro for more than 30 years, the Atlanta metro has a ton of affluent and middle-class blacks that socio-economically fit with white suburban voters.

If that portion of the black voters can be swayed by a few percentage points, then that could change everything.

Last summer in Atlanta was one of the nicest ones in a long time. The crazy heat stayed way to our west.

I had family come in from NOLA and Texas for a couple of weeks last August just to escape the heat.

They were in disbelief how much cooler it was here. We could comfortably eat lunch and dinner outside.

Most summers, Atlanta is 10+ degrees cooler than NOLA, Houston and Dallas every day. The 1,000 feet of elevation doesn’t hurt.

I did it yesterday for the first time ever at 61 years old. No weighted vest.

I screwed up and thought it was 300 pushups and 200 squats, so I had to go add another 100 squats when I thought I was done.

I did it over about 1:45, and threw in some other exercises to break it up a bit.

I’ve never done more than 55 pull-ups in 1 day, so hitting 100 was a giant PR.

I do a good bit of pushups on a regular basis, so that was the easiest.

Check tickets to Asia from LA, SFO, & SEA and book that separately from OKC to the coast. You’ll find much cheaper fares.

I do the same thing from ATL to Europe. I check flights from NYC, BOS and MIA which are typically much cheaper Biz Class than ATL.