Re: Decent cholesterol, high triglycerides, what am I doing wrong?

I agree. Possibly Mirek gets this ideal cholesterol value 200 from the Seven Countries Study where the Cretan people had an average total cholesterol of 200. I think that one can not generalize those results as the Cretan diet is so unique.

Well, it might be one of sources. Anyway, it is well known that total mortality / cholesterol relation is U shaped - below 180 mortality starts to grow once again.

Of course, as usually, many ad-hoc hypothesis try to explain this phenomenon, but in fact, you can apply similar ad-hoc hypothesis to LDL - CVD relation. So in the end, before exact biochemical mechanisms involved are explained (and they are NOT explained at the moment, in fact even simple saturated fat -> TC level relation is completely unexplained), all you can do is to rely on hard empirical data....

One thing that people tend to forget when dealing with TC levels is that CVD is not the only cause of death.... Even if LDL levels might represent risk factor for CVD mortality, its relation to other diseases is much more complex (despite many unwarranted claims proposed by "reports"). In fact, I think that hard data just suggest that if your TC is over 200, you will more likely die because of CVD, if it is below, then you will die because of something else, but have a little to do with "WHEN" :) (BTW, personaly I would prefer CVD over cancer as the cause of my future death :)

Mirek
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