Help! I'm Fat - *** Official Exercise and Weight Thread ***

[RagingCloner]

Hit a nice milestone today. All since July last year.

View attachment 149937

Holy ****. congratulations!

 

[PineClone]

The vast majority of this is correct, couple points I would like to add:

1. Typically those tests are ordered when not responding to medications such as statins or if you have family history of EARLY heart disease. Often if your history doesn’t indicate heart disease from an immediate family member at a pre 65 age it won’t be brought up. This topic is currently being debated and a general consensus of who should get the test has yet to be determined outside of those presenting factors.

2. In addition to forming blockages LipoA also causes increased clotting factor which makes blood clots harder to break down naturally by the body.

Unfortunately there arent any any approved medications that show the ability to significantly manage LipoA and as the post said it is entirely genetic and is unlikely to change over the course of your life. Getting the number can be important for those with a family history of early heart disease but the lifestyle changes aren’t any different then someone with a lower LipoA who is at high risk of heart disease.

Finally there are actually two ways to measure this either in mg/dl (below 30 is goal) or nmol/L which you want below 100.

Quick update on my Lip(a) journey. Back in March my APO(B) was down to 56, Direct LDL 66 (after being on a statin). The discovery of the high Lip(a) resulted in a CT scan for a calcium score (result - 149). The CT measured my aortic root at 4.6 cm. Not good. So, that lead to an ECG and then an MRI. ECG supported the measurement at 4.6cm. MRI - 5.0cm. So, aneurysm. Yay....

Met last week with a cardiothoracic surgeon (who I really liked). We will be monitoring in 6 months to see if there is growth. If not, monitor annually. This is definitely something that is genetic on my dad's side (he monitored an aortic aneurysm for quite a few years before surgery).

I exercise religiously and have a relatively decent diet. I've never smoked. A cocktail or three about once per week. This just goes to show that its all pointless! (just kidding...i think).

Oh, and the MRI found some kind of small growth in my abdomen. So now i'm scheduled for ANOTHER MRI! I have a good friend who is a GI doc. She said that is the problem with imaging...they always find something. She called it an "incidentaloma". It sucks getting old.

I guess the moral to the story is, I wouldn't have known about any of this stuff had my doc not sort of randomly asked if I wanted to get the lip(a) test.