Back to Doctor Bashing

Those who followed my VeganMoFo posts for the first half of the month might remember the day I mentioned my doctor's appointment to get some lab results. I wrote a long post about being overwhelmed when I finally got all the results.

Well, I did have some blood drawn to repeat some of those labs and got the results last Thursday.

The good news is that the ESR and CRP were well within normal limits, so no excessive inflammation that would indicate lupus, many other auto-immune diseases, or rampaging cardiovascular disease.

My total cholesterol was down to 176 - much better but still not in the heart-attack proof range. VLDL was up a little, but took me just one point over the normal reference range.

My triglycerides level is what shocked me - 237! They went UP even after eating from the 2 heart-healthy books for the 2 weeks prior to the blood draw and strict McDougall/Esselstyn since July 8th when my husband first told me of his chest pains! WTF?!?!?!

Then I looked back over my journal entries to see exactly what I was eating, and saw that for more than half of the entries in the first half of the month I had flour products, and what wasn't mentioned in those entries were the (whole wheat, unsalted) pretzels I was eating most nights. One day I had a load of fruit as a night time snack, and most mornings I had raisins or dried dates in my oatmeal. Most days I was also having a few ounces of POM juice, as recommended by Dr. Fuhrman in his autoimmune protocols, and once or twice some fruit-based salad dressing.

Between the flour and fruits I can see why the trigs were up.

My doc doesn't believe too much fruit has anything to do with triglycerides, that it's only saturated fats that raise it, "anything you can buy in a bakery, including whole wheat bread" is bad, everything else is fine, (here it comes) in moderation." (sigh)

My doctor went into immediate pill-pusher mode and had the student doc start looking up meds to lower triglycerides and wrote a prescription for Lovaza, a purified fish oil pill to raise Omega-3's, even though I told him I'm not going to take it, especially when the web site say it's for trigs over 500, and mine are less than half that. I can take more crushed flax seed and chia seeds to raise Omega 3's, like Dr. Esselstyn says to do.

He told me I'm eating too many carbs on my food plan, to switch to the "heart healthy" Mediterranean diet, to replace all those carbs with protein foods.

I looked him right in the eye and said: "You want me to stop eating my whole food plant based, no sugar-oil-salt food plan and start taking fish oil, eat fish, chicken and beef, and start pouring olive oil over everything so my triglycerides go down? What do you think my total cholesterol is going to do if I do that?" He and the student just shrugged. 

I also reminded him that many people with MCTD eventually wind up with kidney failure and on dialysis, and he wants me to load up on kidney-killing animal protein? He shrugged again.

He told me if I don't want to take the Lovaza, at least take fish oil pills from another source, but make sure they're fresh. I shrugged. Now I know he's just not listening.

I told him I'm going to cut the rest of the dried fruit out my diet and stick to only 1 serving a day of either blueberries or apples, and he shrugged.

I told him I'll cut out the processed carbs - the whole wheat flour and cornmeal - and he shrugged again, telling me I should also cut out the beans and potatoes, so I shrugged again.

He didn't even ask if I saw the rheumatologist yet to start treatment for my MCTD, the one thing my husband was most concerned about. I had to come right out and ask how my ESR and CRP results were. He shrugged and said they're fine, then went back to telling me how horrible my diet is.

So here I am, debating whether or not to shut him up and take Lovaza (probably not), other fish oil pills (ditto), grab a bottle of the EPA-DHA or OmegaPure that Dr. Fuhrman sells, or just go with other comments by Fuhrman and Esselstyn, that as long as one is following the whole foods plant based/plant perfect food plan, don't worry about the trigs, because they're not going to be normal until all the excess weight is off, especially if you already have a lot of belly fat, which I most certainly do. 

Dr. McD has a few tips, besides cutting down on fruit and eliminating flour products (meaning, go on MWLP instead of the regular/heart healthy program) that includes increasing exercise and eating an extra quarter cup of oat bran, and a few cloves of garlic every day.

So, no to Lovaza or fish oil, yes to more oat bran, garlic (Yum! Really!) and ground flax (I have to remember to drink more water now), no to flour products (Goodbye, pizza and pasta - sniff) and try increase my aerobic exercise a bit without causing any more pain to my already achy joints and muscles (Now attibutable to MCTD and not my fat and degenerative arthritis).

I'm now 60 years old - time to nip this in the bud so I can live to see 70 and beyond.