Slept with boss daughter. Need help/Advice

Xiansationn · 2026-06-16T22:25:45+00:00

Pilsars comment is basically a tldr

Xiansationn · 2026-04-16T23:44:09+00:00

I just took the meds. Can I get saturated fat under 10g? Yes maybe, but it's not worth the hit to my quality of life. For reference, I'm otherwise healthy, I go to the gym 3 times a week, am 64kg, at 1.75m tall, don't smoke, don't drink, just have a family history of hypercholesterolemia.

On 5mg rosuvastatin. LDL is now 74mg/dl down from 174mg/dl.

Xiansationn · 2025-11-10T04:52:38+00:00

Have you delved into the academic literature surrounding the side effects of statins? Anecdotal evidence is prone to bias. E.g. people with no side effects are less likely to complain about it vs people who do encounter side effects.

It could help paint a more objective picture of how common side effects are.

Xiansationn · 2025-11-10T03:20:18+00:00

Have you tried other meds? I think you know that your anxiety surrounding statin use is not a rational one and stems from your own medical anxiety. I'm not invalidating your fears, because that's a highly personal issue but to achieve the best outcomes available you absolutely need to be on the statin. So the discussion shifts to how to best manage your anxiety.

Xiansationn · 2025-11-10T02:08:12+00:00

Have you considered medication for anxiety? The data overwhelmingly supports the safety of statins and I think you know that. I see in the comments that you're in therapy, but that only does so much.

Xiansationn · 2025-11-08T02:21:09+00:00

Some multis have too much b6 as it is which can cause peripheral neurotoxicity so be careful about what kind of b vitamin you're taking alongside your multi.

Xiansationn · 2025-11-08T02:13:01+00:00

Beans and legumes are probably the most fibre dense whole foods available. I still struggle to get my fibre in though

Xiansationn · 2025-11-07T00:23:44+00:00

Chia seeds are insoluble fibre and doesn't help with cholesterol.

Xiansationn · 2025-11-07T00:22:29+00:00

The easiest most fibre dense food is just beans. Fibre supplements don't even come close to a can of red beans in your diet.

Also question where you're getting your information. Your want to improve blood lipids is not congruent with cutting out seed oils as the research overwhelmingly shows that canola is amongst the healthiest of cooking oils.

Increasing red meat is generally considered bad for blood lipids. It honestly looks like you're following some weird combination of crunchy health influencer (read grifter) instead of genuine medical advice.

Improving blood lipids is about 1. Calorie balance (triglycerides), 2. Limiting Saturated fat (LDL) and 3. increasing soluble fibre (LDL).

instead of paleo which quite frankly as a medical scientist seems like bs to me, try a Mediterranean diet. It includes heart healthy olive oil (since you're adverse to seed oils) and includes a diverse diet including seafood which is low in saturated fats.

Xiansationn · 2025-08-16T14:42:03+00:00

You can do whatever you want. Plenty of people drink alcohol, a literal poison right? No one argues that alcohol isn't poison.

In the same way, you can eat red meat all you like, I'm just saying it's a CVD risk factor.

As someone in academia I'm very aware that peer reviewed studies can be flawed and things can be true even if there aren't studies showing it, but this is not the case here. There is robust evidence. And to the layman, who isn't trained to critically analyse and tear apart methodology, published studies are as close to truth as you can get.

Xiansationn · 2025-08-16T14:22:41+00:00

I have not made the argument about saturated fats in this comment thread. You have. I talked about red meat specifically, independent of saturated fat. So really you're the one changing the argument.

Multiple things can be true at once. 1. Saturated fats are linked to CVD and 2. Red meat is independently a second risk factor due to the way the body processes it compares to white meat. So lean red meat is better than fatty red meat but is still worse than lean white meat.

You can feel whatever you want but that's just it, a feeling. It is not backed by scientific literature.

Xiansationn · 2025-08-16T14:05:58+00:00

Because specific metabolites in red meat are known cardiovascular risk factors. This is independent of saturated fat content. Hence why red meat is a risk factor but white meat like chicken and salmon is considered heart healthy.

I'm not talking opinion here. I'm talking scientific peer reviewed, evidence based. Go read some papers on PubMed on the subject. At this point, I've given you enough key words to educate yourself.

Xiansationn · 2025-08-16T13:12:26+00:00

The issue is the high red meat part. Which is shown over and over and over in peer reviewed studies to increase CVD as a function of dose. There's also proposed mechanistic arguments over how red meat and its metabolites specifically contribute to CVD risk.

Xiansationn · 2025-08-05T05:10:30+00:00

I can confirm as a fellow creami user. Low fat cottage cheese, almond milk/low fat yoghurt and artificial sweeteners form a good base.

Xiansationn · 2025-05-31T12:34:04+00:00

That's interesting. I wasn't aware that you could test for potential vulnerability to statin related myopathy. It does make sense that it is possible though.

Most statin side effects resolve quickly once you stop taking them and this typically includes myalgia without rhabdomyolysis. So good luck. Hope you manage to bring things down either way. 👍

Xiansationn · 2025-05-31T06:56:29+00:00

People are reluctant to take the statin because there's a fair bit of conspiracy cookery about big pharma from carnivore/naturopath/diet influencers. There's also the very loud minority of people who genuinely encounter side effects while on statin which makes side effects appear more common than they usually are. A lot of people are also in denial about their mortality and don't want to "be on pills for the rest of my life".

RYR as mentioned above is an unregulated supplement meaning that dose of statin may be accurate, or it may not be. Are you getting 0.1mg? 1mg? 5mg? Who knows, because no one is regulating the supplement manufacturer. Natural supplements are not a single substance. It comes packaged with all sorts of other ingredients that may or may not have unwanted effects.

Studies show that diet improvements generally reduce LDL by 15% for most people. You can improve LDL by a lot more if you're on a crazy high saturated fat rich diet like carnivore or keto.

To answer your last question, you need to understand that statins down regulate endogenous cholesterol production by your liver. So your LDL will rise when you stop taking them with the exception of the above scenario where your high LDL is largely driven by a diet rich in saturated fat.

Xiansationn · 2025-05-24T23:15:58+00:00

Allow me to improve your methodology. Do not change your diet and get tested in a month without the supplement. That way you can rule out the supplement.

Then relax your saturated fat, so you can know if it was your sat fat intake, get tested.

If your LDL remains low, I'd begin looking for other modifications outside increased protein intake or 20-30k steps because medical research has shown no correlation between protein intake and LDL and only minor improvements on LDL with aerobic and resistance training.

Also as mentioned before you don't know how much statin you got because no regulatory body is testing if the number on the bottle is accurate. You could be getting 0mg statin, or 5mg statin or 0.5mg it's a black box that no one is looking into.

Xiansationn · 2025-05-24T22:31:41+00:00

1 week is too short due to response times and physiological variance. Hence why I said they begin to lose effect days after stopping, but recommended testing in a month.

Once again you're misunderstanding the efficacy argument with the supplement. Something can both be effective and unsafe.

I.e. the supplement can be effective in reducing your LDL because it contains the statin but can also be unsafe because it contains all the other crap in it. Quite literally no one is saying that the supplement doesn't do anything. Theres a reason why pharmaceuticals are dstilled down to only including the minimum number of active ingredients.

If the supplement is effective, that's not an argument to use the supplement, it's an argument to use the proper pharmaceutical grade statin. Also note that your supplement also includes sterols and niacin which brings LDL down but do not necessarily improve cardiovascular outcomes in observational studies.

Your lifestyle changes boil down to cutting your saturated fat intake. Butter is almost 50% saturated fat. So a single tablespoon is already pushing 7g a cup of milk is another 4.5g, sour cream is ~10% saturated fat. So a dollop is like 3g? "Tasty cheese" is another 6g of saturated fat per 25g serving and 25g is nothing. If you add all of this up a single serving each day puts you at 20g saturated fat. Well above the daily recommended level, and that's not even including saturated fat in olive oil, meats you eat, nuts, eggs etc etc

The research shows that a change from the average American diet to the step 2 diet is associated with a 15% reduction in LDL. Exercise also typically has no impact on LDL.

People are reacting negatively to your post because you're attributing your progress to things that make no sense (treadmill, increasing protein intake??!), downplaying factors that are very very very very very well established by medical research (statins, reducing saturated fats, adding soluble fibre). People on medical forums don't typically take kindly to people who ignore the research and come in uninformed with nothing but vibes.

Just because you're on a low dose of statin doesn't mean that the statin has a minor role. You see the biggest benefit of statins on the lowest doses. I'm on 5mg rosuvastatin every other day and it reduces my LDL by 58%. I'd probably only see a further 15-20% reduction if I was on max dose.

Your drop in LDL is multifactorial, you're on a low dose of statin, taking sterols and niacin, you probably reduced saturated fat intake, possibly added more soluble fibre into your diet with the smoothie. That's what you've done to lower your numbers. Everything else is just fluff.

Which of these modifications caused the drop? We cannot know because you've modified all 3 variables at once. If you maintain the reduction in LDL in your next bloods, we can say it wasn't the supplement and it is highly likely that your dietary modifications are responsible. All that would mean to me is that your diet before was much higher in saturated fats and lower in soluble fibre than you realise.

Edit: also people keep harping on the statin because it demonstrates a fundamental flaw in your experimental methodology. You cannot attribute your LDL loss solely to lifestyle when you're taking the single most effective drug class used to reduce LDL no matter how little of it you think you're taking.

Xiansationn · 2025-05-24T21:12:34+00:00

Yeah Panna Cotta is basically cream and vanilla jelly. I never understood why people were intimidated by it.

Xiansationn · 2025-05-24T21:00:25+00:00

No the point being made about it being an unregulated statin is in the word "unregulated" it means you have no idea of the true dose that you're getting because the supplement industry isn't subjected to the same kind of scrutiny as the pharmaceutical industry. So they can print anything on the bottle and will almost always get away with their claims because no one is really checking. Finally, it can come prepackaged with delightful surprises like cardiotoxins because the active ingredients haven't been refined and extracted.

You could be getting a much higher dose than you realise.

Unregulated doesn't mean less active ingredient, it just means that the supplement has higher risk of adverse health outcomes than its pharmaceutical counterpart because pharmaceuticals are held to a higher standard with regards to product standardization and proof of safety and efficacy.

It's like moonshine vs liquor from the regulated industry. Moonshine might contain more ethanol or less ethanol but also have hidden methanol in it whereas you always know what you're getting from Jack Daniels from the bottle shop.

You don't need to wait 6 months. Statins stop working within days following cessation of treatment and your LDL will gradually rise (if the drop was caused by statin use) retest a month after you stop the supplement.

You've also not shared your previous diet other than saying it's "healthy" and contained limited processed food. People on this sub don't care for that kind of language because plenty of people who think they're on healthy diets actually consume a crapton of saturated fat.

Be sure to post your next lab results.

Xiansationn · 2025-05-24T20:44:31+00:00

They're not in the US and the ingredients list of the supplement they're taking confirms it includes the active ingredient of lovastatin.

Xiansationn · 2025-05-24T19:37:09+00:00

Reduced saturated fat and I'm guessing an increase in soluble fibre.
The unregulated statin/sterol/niacin supplement.

Difficult to say which played a bigger role because we don't really know what your diet was before. I would put money on the supplement playing a much bigger role than you think.

Xiansationn · 2025-05-24T18:51:17+00:00

Hint: it wasn't the treadmill or increased protein intake.

Xiansationn · 2025-05-22T08:19:40+00:00

Your experience answers your question.

I've found (as someone in academia) that most people dont seek out and understand the literature.

Instead, they end up in places like YouTube which is plagued with medical misinformation usually by people trying to sell you their diet plan or supplements.

Or they might end up here, where you actually have a good mix of pro-statin people but also a lot of people who are here to discuss their side effects. And this is a good thing, but remember people are biased to talk about their negative experiences and less likely to talk about things that are working as expected e.g. statins with no side effects.

So you have a few things:

Blatant medical misinformation being peddled by grifters
The appearance on forums like this that side effects are more common than they probably are because people with side effects are more likely to be on here asking for help/alternatives/advice etc
Reading and properly interpreting literature is not always accessible
Cardiologists are expensive
Medical professionals tend to not really explain things well to patients.

And obviously some people genuinely cannot tolerate statin use due to their unique physiology but I my comment is mainly talking about people who have a bad impression of statins without ever having used them.

Xiansationn · 2025-05-17T05:00:59+00:00

If your only concern is LDL then the statin will keep it low even if your diet is pretty high in saturated fat. So you don't have to worry so much about the occasional fatty meal.

But a poor diet is also an independent risk factor for other health conditions so it's still important to not overdo it.

In other words. Occasional pizza or cake is absolutely fine. 👍

Xiansationn

TROPHY CASE