You will see on my home page some of the other changes I have made. A chicken crust pizza is a great alternative to traditional pizza, and is so easy (although a bit more time-consuming). You will need a blender, but by adding diced chicken (uncooked) with a little oil and grated parmesan you can make it into a dough, part bake in the oven for around 15 minutes until the chicken is going brown at the edges, remove from the oven, add tomato puree and whatever topping you like. I love goats cheese and feta cheese and these seem to be better choices than the cheddars/cheshire’s/red leicester’s we know and love (think mediterranean!)

The good thing about making your own base (or home-made anything) is that you can add your own flavours/seasonings and all the ‘good stuff’ we already know about such as ginger, garlic and turmeric.

I’ve also started making home-made soup, which you can also adapt and add to without the additives and preservatives.

I am always on the lookout for fructose/sucrose in everything I buy as these seem to be big no-no’s when it comes to cholesterol (and of course diabetes) so this has been pretty much eliminated.

I do love my bread but have changed to wholemeal only and seeded wherever possible. As I only have one marker of metabolic syndrome (raised blood triglycerides) I adhere to the ratio of 1:10 fiber:carbohydrates wherever possible as recommended in Dr Phil Hammond’s book ‘A Life Without Statins’, (if you’ve read my other blogs you’ll have guessed by now this has been my bible for the last few weeks). Incidentally, current recommendations are below 1.7mmol/l for triglycerides and ideally a ratio of 1:1 or less for HDL:Triglycerides (on my last blood test mine was 1.75 so I am working to bring it down to 1 or less.

Other metabolic syndrome markers are blood pressure, pre-diabetes, low HDL (less than 1 mmol/l) and increased waist circumference.

Look out for other people’s stories, I would like my Blog to help others by sharing what I have learned and sharing other people’s stories. If you would like to share your story, whether it’s your experience with statins or how you improved your HDL/triglyceride levels please email me at mycholesteroljourney.com

I am still at the guinea pig stage, I am hopeful that my next blood test will show improved levels, please keep looking out for my Results Blog to see the effects of my dietary changes.

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