Long story short…nothing remarkable to see. Just the way I like it. LDL-C still toggling around low 30s (32 mg/dL). Trigs low 50s. HDL 60.
Discussion a little different. The first of the Lp(a) lowering meds are predicted to be available soon. Of interest only to us members of the exclusive club, of course…along with subsequent generations. Diet still on point (as it has been for, lo, the last half century or more) Exercise…a change from the running dialog to my deadlift weight (mentioned by dh…nearly 90lbs)
“What are you training for?”, asks DrM
“Just Life, fighting sarcopenia, maintaining bone health, staying strong. Usual stuff”, sez I. I also mentioned that, if I’m entering the last 5 years of my term (as my mum was at this age) I don’t want them to be plagued by frailty.
“OH, aren’t you running any more?”
You can’t win!!
P.S…I pulled a 100lb dead for 6 reps absolutely clean yesterday. I did not expect this 18 months ago.
Wendy
P.S. After my mother died in 2001 at age 72 I felt like I had a “sell by” date stamped on my derriere. That’s the reason I took early Social Security. Now I’m 72 and “tuned up” by various surgeries (including cancer and heart). My cardiologist says I could live another 15 years. Gemini calculates 20 based on my blood tests and hand stand. So…given your immense efforts and proactive self-care, you might outlive your mother by quite a lot.
Well, the cardiologist dismisses our idea of the earlier sell by date … for the two of us. We’re the pediatric patients on his docket, apparently. Even after the almost failure of dh’s valve from the HALT, now that’s been determined to be a clot and not a dodgy leaflet, he’s thinking long term.
That mention of us being in the “younger” category, given the increase in interest in earlier intervention rather than waiting until there’s actual pathology. Smacks of the failure at primary care level to my mind…1950s care in the 2020s
Good thing both of us do our own research and plot our own course in the keen awareness that (1) doctors aren’t necessarily the sharpest knives in the drawer – I was pre-med in college so I can attest to this – and (2) even the smartest doctor has at best limited time to do in-depth research. I sometimes tell a doctor, “You have a thousand patients but I only have one ME. And I’m a professional researcher.”
That was why I paid for my MRI out of pocket in 2013 when a mammogram discovered four pinhead-sized microcalcifications in a row. An obscure research article in the National Library of Medicine said that MRI was the gold standard for breast cancer detection, especially in dense breasts. I wasn’t about to argue with my doctor or my insurance company.
Cash on the barrelhead the same day.
Bilateral invasive ductal carcinoma on both sides. Both < 1 cm. Given my family history of breast cancer (great-grandmother, grandmother, two aunts, 3 cousins) I can guarantee that my quick, decisive action saved my life.
I have a similar situation now. A recent 2025 article showed that people with Parkinson’s Disease do better with supplemental Vitamin B-3 (niacin) but not with the non-flushing derivative, niacinamide. I started 100 mg of daily Vitamin B-3 about 6 months ago. My symptoms disappeared within a couple of days. My doctor never heard of this obscure research. I’m sure my neurologist (who really seems like a dim bulb) didn’t either. But it’s safe, dirt cheap and effective. There is absolutely no excuse for a vitamin deficiency to be tolerated in this day and age due to doctors’ ignorance.
But there it is.
Fortunately, we can do our own research. I subscribe to Medical News Today. We all have free access to the National Library of Medicine which has articles from around the world, including countries with national health care and therefore population-scale data.
Many people use the age of death for parents, grandparents as a guide for their life expectancy. But keep in mind life expectancy doubled in the last century.
Many of us can expect more years than parents. With good genes and reasonable care many of us might reach 100.
I would say that about 20% was Beast Mode. The remainder, the 4 Ps … Patience, Perseverance, Process (and trusting it) … and Protein.
Although I’ve always been as much of a “process” person as a “project”/goal chaser, I decided that it was a good idea to focus even more on the journey than the destination. Far too easy to overshoot when remembering what you used to be able to do. I have to credit my daughter with pushing me to work with a trainer…and this trainer in particular. I wouldn’t have gotten to this point unaided.
LDL-C low 20s - 22, Tri around 80, HDL also 60
Scheduled for a CT Angiogram in November
Asked about the Lpa lowering drugs. He snorted and said I would still be taking Repatha.
My guy wasn’t suggesting it as a medication instead of Repatha…but I reckon Lp(a) is such a risk multiplier that, even with the need for aggressive treatment of the other risk factors, it’s likely to be of value to those of us specially blessed!
^ I’m in the LPA club and my cardiologist told me the same thing as you. She said the upcoming treatments were “promising.” In the meantime, keep all the other risk factors as low as possible.
AGE garlic is getting more and more interesting to me.
I just had my blood drawn.
add
A1C down to 5.7
I had plenty of fluid in this heat. My hematocrit was slightly off.
I have not seen the other numbers yet. The office has to load them.
Interestingly enough, I also had a visit to my cardiologist this week. If you recall, back in January or so, the cardiologist told me that I will need to begin taking a statin. After discussing it further with him, he agreed to give me a few months reprieve to see if I could lower the lipid numbers without medication. I modified my diet beginning around then and did new bloodwork last Friday. It worked! My total cholesterol is now under 200 (was 228), my triglycerides are 41, HDL is 61 (up from 58), VLDL is 7 (down from 13), and LDL is 128 (down from 144/162). The cardiologist ran the calculator and my 10-year probability is now under 5% and he doesn’t recommend medication anymore. He said it is now optional, and if I want to take it, he would prescribe it, but it isn’t necessary.
So I remain in a state of ZERO medication for now. I mean literally zero, I don’t take aspirin, tylenol, or advil or any of those things. The only drugs that I take are ones that a doctor tells me are absolutely necessary to preserve health. For example I did a course of topical chemotherapy on my scalp last year (interestingly enough, it is the exact same drug that my dad was given intravenously for his colon cancer in the mid 90s). And another example is the flu vaccine each year. And the Shingrix vaccine a few years ago (2021, I remember because it was one week after my first COVID shot, and then the second one 4 months later). And antibiotics when necessary, though very rarely, last time was prophylactically before shoulder surgery in 2022.
That’s great! That was me until just over 4 years ago at age 69. My ASCVD 10 year risk estimate was also below the cutoff for treatment. Then I had a full workup and discovered that the risk estimate didn’t factor in my personal risk enhancers…which none of them do, of course…and the elevated Apo-b and Lp(a) discovered in advanced lipid testing weren’t just “risk factors” to be controlled for disease prevention, but rather an explanation of why I had pretty advanced coronary artery disease in spite of reassurances.
That is my biggest problem as an “aging athlete”. I’ll be working out with a weight/exercise/whatever and it is hard. Then I stop and think that used to be my warmup/beginning weight 40+ years ago. Slightly depressing in a way. Even Masters/Senior category competitions are harder because people don’t just show up to give it a try like you might if you’re 20. They train for it.
Had a co-worker feel something similar. Always swam competitively and continued on in masters competition. He said it got a little frustrating because all his yearly best times do is get slower.
I guess the best thing to do is keep trying new things. That way you have the opportunity to set and then beat personal bests while you’re getting better at that skill.
Indeed…if, in fact lifestyle choices are the primary driver of any dyslipidemia and downstream consequences. Better yet…to not make the craptaculous lifestyle choices in the first place. That way, the sub clinical pathologic processes wouldn’t be happening in the first place. It would be someone with a very rare genetic gift to be able to eat themselves into a state of dyslipidemia, maintain that situation for a measurable amount of time, finally shape up and find they’ve avoided the problems that the excess of atherogenic particles cause.
One of the reasons why you get the nonsense from the statin phobics… quoting the numbers of folk who start taking the meds and get a heart attack anyway. Pretty much what you’d expect to happen if a treatment has started to late in the disease process, and is inadequate to boot …for instance my situation. Lowering my LDL-C from about 130 to just over 100 on statin alone would be a bit like someone starting to brush and floss diligently when their teeth were already mobile from advanced periodontal disease.
So, I’m currently proof reading dh’s review series on MAFLD/MASH forsome journal or other, and stumbling across more stuff in the “…what you know that just ain’t so” realm of knowledge. Specifically, the role(s) of insulin resistance in both skeletal muscle and the liver (which I tend not to think of quite so much…obviously, dh does)
Prompted by the mention of an A1c of 5.7 in a post upstream (strong indicator of some degree of insulin resistance…unless proven otherwise) and the coincidence in timing, I’m thinking and now reading about it a bit more. Along with the very sciencey details, there’s a reasonable explanation here…
Hepatic selective insulin resistance at the intersection of insulin signaling and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease - ScienceDirect https://share.google/kUtAxeExAyN58PreB
I did ask my new to the practice PCP about a fasting insulin measurement along with the Apo-b and Lp(a) plus CAC scan four years ago and she didn’t hesitate to do the add on. The only thing that wasn’t off. In fact, quite the reverse with an HOMA-IR calculated by dh of a hair over 1…nicely insulin sensitive.
