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Tuesday, September 9, 2014

A Raptured Calf and Statin Experiment

On June 14th DH ruptured a calf muscle which resulted in 3 months of resting.  He had to keep his leg up for ten weeks and not much walking happened during that time.

We blame the ruptured muscle on his statin drugs, but of course, we haven't asked the doctor for his opinion.  Healing was slow until he took himself off of the statins for a time. 

Within a week after stopping the statin he was off of his crutches and walking without assistance. 

Because he was off of the statins for four weeks, we decided to go get his cholesterol tested to see if the diet was the cause of his good numbers these past two years. 

To our delight the diet was a huge player in the numbers.  None of his numbers were diagnostic and his total cholesterol was 149. 

He wants to be further below 149 so he has since gone back on a half dose (10 mg.) of Lipitor). 

However, I wonder how low his cholesterol would have been had he been able to exercise those weeks that he was sitting with his leg up.  I'm delighted that even with his inactivity, his cholesterol was below 150 and he continued on his steady weightloss course, having lost seven pounds and one shirt size since rupturing his calf.

We will test again in a month and see how things are going.  Our opinion, independent of a professional opinion is that he doesn't need the full 20 mg. that the doctor ordered for him because he is on a low fat plant based diet. 

We'll report back again in a month and tell you how it went.