Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: After five years of eating a ketogenic low carb diet, we went and got our blood work done.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Inquiring minds wanted to know.
[00:00:09] Speaker A: They wanted to know. So we went and got them done. What is our cholesterol done? What has our glucose done? Let's take a look.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Welcome insteadters episode 37 of the Duster Mud podcast. Today we're going to look at our numbers, and we're going to talk a little bit bit about what we believe, what we think of cholesterol, and where we think medical research is going now and has gone the past couple of years. And we're also going to end the episode with a discussion of why we do this ketogenic and farming lifestyle, how they go together.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Yeah. One of Rebecca's friends asked her specifically, what's up with all the keto stuff? I thought they were a farm. And a farm YouTube channel. Why do they do both of those things? So we really kind of want to address that a little bit, too.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: Okay, well, what do your numbers say?
[00:01:05] Speaker B: I don't want to tell you.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: I want to talk about what the science says.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Okay, let's talk about the science.
How deep are we going into science?
[00:01:21] Speaker B: Not terribly deep, I don't think.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Okay. Because it gets boring.
[00:01:26] Speaker B: Okay. Just wanted to talk just a little bit about cholesterol because I think it's a little bit confusing to folks. So we all know that there's a total cholesterol number, and then they talk about good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, good cholesterol being hdl and bad cholesterol being LDL.
But there are some misnomers in that discussion. So the low density lipoproteins, LDL, and high density lipoproteins, HDL, are neither one cholesterol. They're both lipoproteins. They have a lipid inside and a protein outside, and they're both responsible for carrying cholesterol within our blood. The LDL are responsible for carrying cholesterol out to our cells, and the HDL are responsible for carrying cholesterol from our cells back to our liver. So they often refer to HDL as a good cholesterol because that lipoprotein is responsible for gathering up excess cholesterol and bringing it to our liver, where our liver then uses it or excretes it.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: The LDL are typically referred to as bad cholesterol because those lipoproteins are the ones that are taking cholesterol out to our cells and can be responsible for buildup of plaques okay, so that's a little bit of a misnomer. The numbers for the cholesterol, what's good and what's bad, you often hear you want your total cholesterol to be less than 200, is just a round number that's thrown out out there. And really, I think even from what our doctor said when we went and chatted with him about the blood, I.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: Warned him, I said, we want our blood work done. He said, we'll do a cholesterol, let's do a cholesterol. But we eat a ketogenic diet, and it's going to come back higher than what you're going to like it.
We know that.
[00:03:34] Speaker B: I said, my prediction is mine is going to be slightly elevated, but probably at the high range of normal. Shelley's is going to be elevated, probably just on the high side of normal, just outside of normal.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: We'll get to the reasons why here.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: In just a minute. That was what my prediction was, what we would find out. So back to the numbers.
A better indication of overall health really has to do with ratios. So you're really interested in the ratio of hdl to your total cholesterol and the ratio of ldl to hdl. So really, those ratios are a better indicator of health. And then those numbers associated with your triglycerides, which is the amount of fat that is free floating around in your bloodstream, those put together then, are a very good indicator of your overall health, especially when it comes to heart health. So triglycerides, you typically hear you want them less than 200, and that's a milligrams per deciliter type number. There was a study that showed that the greatest risk was observed in subjects with an ldl to hdl ratio of over five.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: And triglycerides, over 200.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: So we'll keep that in mind as we look at our cholesterol numbers, then, to say, not just looking at big generic numbers that are the same for everybody, 200, really, it's a better indication to look at the ratios of your specific numbers and how it applies to you. Okay, so there's a little bit about the numbers, okay.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: In terms of fat and cholesterol that we ingest and both produce within our body.
If you don't want to talk about that, we can skip it.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: Yeah. There's some research that shows that the cholesterol that you ingest has very little to do with your overall cholesterol levels. In some people, they call them hyper responders.
The ingested cholesterol may actually raise their ldl, sometimes hdl, but that's a fairly limited population. The current research is showing so ingested cholesterol, that cholesterol that you eat, say, in an egg.
For years we heard that eggs were bad. The research has shown now that that's not necessarily the case, but the cholesterol that you're ingesting does not necessarily raise your cholesterol levels.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Okay, cool. Okay, so let's get to our numbers.
[00:06:44] Speaker B: All right?
[00:06:46] Speaker A: Since we've been talking about cholesterol, let's just keep down the cholesterol path. Okay? Now, you were correct in your assessment or your prediction about whose cholesterol was what. I was listed as high. My total came in at 205, and.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: My total came in at 184.
[00:07:06] Speaker A: Okay? Now, the thing that the doctor said to us was, I'm probably not going to be worried about your totals because I have a feeling that your good cholesterol is going to be higher than normal and higher than your bad cholesterol. So your ratio is going to be good, and I'm not going to worry about your total. Now, that said, he was correct as well.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Yeah. My hdl was 82 and mine was 81.
And what do you want it to be like? If you look over here at the very right hand side of the column where you want your hdl is greater than 39, according to this particular lab.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: And the hdl is our good.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: That's correct.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: Okay, so we both got really good numbers on the HDL. Well above the. Greater than 39.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Good.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: And that leads to then a cholesterol to HDL ratio also. And you want that somewhere between zero, obviously. And this says 4.99, so somewhere between zero and five. And my total cholesterol to HDL ratio is 2.27. So right, basically right in the middle. And yours is 2.5, so basically right in the middle. Right smack dab in the middle.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: Perfect.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Then that leads us to LDL.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Yes. That's the bad stuff they say, right. My ldl was 116, and it is recommended on my sheet here that it's less than 130.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: And mine was 87. And less than 130 is the recommended.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: And then now we know LDL and hdL. So that leads us then to the LDL to HDL ratio, which you want to be less than 3.3. And mine is 1.1 and mine was 1.4.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: So fantastic ratios.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: On the numbers. So while the number might sound big for me especially, it isn't. It's perfectly wonderful.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: Correct.
And we know that because we're looking at your specific numbers, the rest of them, not just the overall, should be less than 200.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: But your specific numbers. Now, you look at the ratios there of your high density and your low density, and the ratios are looking great.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: All right, one of the things, whenever I called and got the numbers from the doctor's office, just over the phone, and she was reading off the blood work, she said, and your triglycerides, she goes, oh, my gosh, those are, like, perfect.
My triglycerides were 34, recommended to be.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: Less than 150, and mine were 82.
[00:10:05] Speaker A: So our triglycerides, the fats floating around in our blood, are really, really good.
[00:10:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Really good for heart health, right?
[00:10:16] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Yeah, really good. So now, if you go back to that first conversation and you look at what we're wanting to compare is the LDL to hdL. We want that ratio to be good. And then the triglycerides, less than 200. Right? Those are the two things that we're wanting.
The article that I was reading was talking about, you want your tries less than 200.
[00:10:43] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: So you want your ldl to hdl ratio to be less than five, and your triglycerides, less than 200.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: When you get outside of that range, you're at serious risk of. The studies show serious risk of heart disease.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:59] Speaker B: And so with ours being 1.1 and 82 and 35, we're, like, way healthy as far as on the heart risk.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: So for friends and family who have been worrying for the past five years, we're good.
[00:11:17] Speaker B: Yeah, we are good. We're way on the good side.
[00:11:21] Speaker A: We're way on the good side.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Our triglycerides are normal levels for people who are between the ages of, like, ten and 18.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: Right. We have the triglyceride level of a ten year old.
[00:11:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: Cool. I don't feel like a ten year old, though.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: No.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: Okay, let's talk about glucose. We just did a couple of podcasts about glucose and whatnot. So, fasting blood sugar numbers on a very low carbohydrate diet, what do we got?
[00:11:51] Speaker B: Mine was 91.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Good. And mine was 89. So, pretty much the same.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: Pretty much the same. We eat the same things.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: We really do.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: That isn't surprising to me that the blood glucose levels would be very similar.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: We do eat the same things.
Almost every single meal that we eat. You have a little bit more than I do. And we eat exactly the same things. We drink coffee, basically, at exactly the same time. We eat everything. If I make me a glass of water, he gets a glass of water. If you make a yogurt I get a yogurt. There's rarely a time when sometimes you'll be like, I'm hungry. I'm having some pork rinds, and I'm not. But outside of that, we pretty much eat and drink the same thing at the same time during the days. Right.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: So the differences in our numbers really show that individual bodies do react differently. Right.
[00:12:45] Speaker A: Because why is your cholesterol lower than mine?
[00:12:48] Speaker B: I take a really old school cholesterol medicine. It's a cholesterol, or cholesterol, generic in brand names.
It is an old cholesterol medicine that wraps around fat cells and helps usher them out of your body. And I do that because about not quite eleven years ago, I had the very, very end of my small intestine removed surgically due to it was in really, really bad shape and bleeding because of Crohn's disease, which I didn't know that I had at the time, found out because of anemia, and then was subsequently diagnosed with Crohn's disease. But they had to remove about half of what they call your terminal ilium. That is the very end portion of your small intestine. And that's a really important portion. I don't know if there are non important portions, but.
[00:13:52] Speaker A: Well, I think it's all necessary, but it does have a specific function.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: That one, for me, was very important in that area of your small intestine. Right there at the end is where your body reabsorbs bile. So it takes the stomach acid that went into your system and has now traveled with your food all the way down till the very end of your small intestine. That portion of your small intestine pulls the bile back out and sends it back up to your gallbladder, liver, and then gallbladder, liver and gallbladder. And it also is where your body absorbs b twelve. So those two things, rather important things. Well, I found after surgery that my body was not reabsorbing enough of the bile, and that leads to some very significant diarrhea.
If the bile goes into your large intestine, instead of pulling water out of the waste, it actually pulls water in and to flush the bile out of the system. So it led to extreme bouts of very painful diarrhea. So in order to compensate for that, I take that cholesterol medicine, which works wonderfully. It wraps around the bile, actually, as it is wrapping around the fat, it also wraps the bile because they're joined at that point. And so it wraps around it. And my body then is able to pass it without it. So I figured that my cholesterol was going to be slightly lower than shells just because of the fact that I do take that medicine.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: Yeah. And it was true, and it has been true pretty much since then. On our last blood work, yours was slightly lower than mine. Other numbers. So we've talked about cholesterol. We've talked about the glucose blood pressure. I used to take blood pressure medicine because my blood pressure was elevated enough to warrant it. After we started eating this way, after about a year, six months, I went off of that blood pressure medicine and haven't needed it since. So that has been a huge benefit to eating like this.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: Yeah. And our blood pressures were both normal this time.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: Our weight is within normal range for our height and our age. Our blood pressures are good.
[00:16:17] Speaker B: Yeah. We'll find some photos, and I'll try to stick them right here, some before keto photos. And for me, I was typically just outside, right on the very top edge of normal weight and overweight for my height, five foot ten. That is right at that 175 pound range. And throughout the years, I would typically bounce between 170 and 180, maybe 185. So just inside of normal to just over into overweight. And right now, I bounce between 155 and 165 is my normal weight range. So, like, right smack dab in the.
[00:17:10] Speaker A: Middle of normal as a 510 guy.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: As 510, yeah.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Okay. I'm five. Five prior to this. Well, I fluctuate somewhere between 145 and 165 somewhere through the years. Typically somewhere right around the 150 mark. But eating like this has kept me more in the 145 range and in the size pants that I want to be in and able to do all of the activities that I want to do all of the time. So that is the most important thing. And I carry more weight because I have a lot of muscle mass. I always have. So I'm not going to put myself against another five, five female just simply because of the amount of muscle mass that I carry. So I have to just kind of ignore numbers like that. But the fact that I do what I want to do when I want to do it, those are the key factors when we're talking about this lifestyle, not just the numbers. Yeah.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: And I think it's very interesting that our bodies have basically found a homeostasis, a place where it is happy with the weight that we have. And anytime I drop down towards 150, it'll come back up to around 160. And if I go up to about 165, it'll come right back down to 160. So same. This lifestyle, this way of eating, we don't calorie restrict at all ever we eat until we're full. And this is just what happens. These are the blood work numbers. We eat low carbohydrate, what we consider healthy whole foods. And we don't restrict our intake at all.
[00:19:00] Speaker A: At all.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: This is the blood work. Those are the numbers. And this is our weight and our how we are, our health.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so whole food, you just mentioned whole food. This is why the whole food that we eat, this is why we have created the lifestyle that we are currently living. We built a farm for this.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: Yeah. The majority of the food that we eat is meat.
And we wanted the best that we could have and decided that we thought we could do that.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: Yes. And so that's why we farm. That's why we farm. All of the things that we farm the way that we farm, and they go hand in hand. We started eating healthy. We tried to find good food. We found a little bit of it, decided we could do this ourselves. So all of it goes together with one big package of yes, we farm and we eat healthy. We cook healthy, and we like to talk about it so that other people might be inspired, like yourself, to eat healthy whole foods as well. Even if you don't farm, find the local farmer near you who's farming in a way that you would align with.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: Yeah. For us, all of our meat comes from our farm. And a lot of the fat that we use, which is a lot on a ketogenic diet, a lot of the fat that we use comes from our farm also.
You've seen the pantry. So we buy some coconut oil, some olive oil, and a little bit of avocado oil.
Really, most everything else is from the farm, from the butter that we use to the pork fat, the lard, the tallow.
Really, it's all here, all from us. And because we raise the food the way that we do, we know that it's either grass only or it's fed a GMo free feed, and we know it's as high quality as we can make it.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: The cows and sheep live on the pasture, and the pigs live in the forest, like the chickens are in the pasture or in our garden.
They're outside scratching. Everybody is pretty much where they're supposed to be eating, pretty much what they're supposed to eat.
The reason that we do that, though, is because of the lifestyle.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: So, really, I looked at it and mentioned to you earlier, it's two sides of the coin of our life, is really how we eat what we eat and then making that thing, that's pretty much what we do now.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And if you homestead, this is a great. This is an absolutely great way to eat because you can grow all your own food.
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Most everything.
You can definitely grow yourself some keto friendly vegetables. And we talked about that in a podcast. And you can can those or freeze them or put them away somehow and have those throughout the year. And then you have your meat and fats.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: And that's pretty much it.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Kind of it, yeah. And cheeses and butters and all that.
If you're the types that have a cow.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: Anyway.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: Hey, if you don't have a cow, check out our video that we made on how to make farm cheese without the farm. Yeah, that one was a fun one.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it was.
[00:23:04] Speaker A: Okay, well, I think that takes care of our blood work for the next couple of years. I hope, and I hope this has been informative for you. If you're enjoying these videos, please make sure to subscribe. And, like, that really helps us out here on the farm. Also, share it with your friends and your family. And until next time, bye, y'all.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: Bye, y'all.
