Get on a statin, STAT!

Gonna attempt to do it all natural first by diet. The good thing is that there is tons of places to eat well out in DC these days. In fact I think we need a thread dedicated to healty choices at some of the places here. I am a firm believer that you don't have to give up your social life and love for food simply because you are watching what you eat.

That might be easier to do in L.A. than here in DC. But good luck to ya, is all I can say. For me, an extremely low-fat diet and quality of life don't equate. But my cholesterol level is okay, cause I loves my Lipitor.

I'd suggest integrating some oatmeal and hawthorn berry tea (Today, many health care professionals use hawthorn to help protect against heart disease and help control high blood pressure and high cholesterol.).

synthasia is right about oatmeal. you may want to incorporate flax seeds into your routine as well, not the oil but the actual seed.

And with instant oatmeal (yes, it works) and flax seeds that you can buy in a grinder readily available, it's super convenient to get these beneficial things into your diet.

Omega 3 and Vitamin B! Hey, it rhymes too.
Mr. MV is rather statin intolerant and now is taking the above, in addition to an increased emphasis on diet; low fat protiens, fish, fiber etc. I'm looking at it as a challenge to my cooking and eating paradigm too. I'd love to start a "heart healthy" thread so we can share ideas for great food that doesn't sacrifice taste.
One change which I implemented today is buying ground buffalo (Cibola) for burgers. We'll no doubt indulge in a Ray's burger, and soon. It just won't be something we do as often as I would like.

Appreciate the thoughts, and I am doing all that too. But I am unwilling to give up eating out. I think that there are things that you can choose on menus that are better than others, of course. For example last night we had dinner at Rasika and I stuck with the lentil patties and tandoori chicken. Not sure if that was good for me or not, though. I am never really sure how Indian food is prepared.

I have been told that the quick oatmeal (the kind in the package) does not have the same beneficial stuff that the more traditional oatmeal has. When I was being good, I started using the Irish cut oatmeal that would cook in 5 minutes. To speed up the process I would use my electric kettle to bring the water to an initial boil. In addition to flax seed, I would add a handful of blueberries or other fruit to my oatmeal.

Hmm... might have to start eating oatmeal again. I totally burned out after a few months.

Most traditional curries and dals are built on a base of ghee--clarified butter. And in upscale restaurants, the dishes with creamy sauces like kormas have --guess what-- heavy cream in them.

Four syllables: Metamucil.

One thing I discovered while making Ethiopian food at home is that it, too, uses a large amount of butter.

When I lost a lot of weight on a lowfat diet several years ago, my husband (who did not need to lose weight), lost weight too, and his cholesterol dropped from a bit high to the normal range. We hardly ate out at all, since I was being careful and there was no way to know what was going into restaurant foods. My one splurge would be to go to Montmarte, which, at that time, had salmon with leeks and wheatberries on the menu, a preparation that seemed healthy enough that I didn't concern myself with the amount of fat that might have been added in cooking.

I need to dig out my lowfat recipes again. There were some pretty good ones I relied on. There's a Mayo Clinic/Wms Sonoma Cookbook that has some nice lowfat recipes, a lowfat Moosewood cookbook I liked, and a few spa cookbooks (hit or miss overall but with some good recipes).

My recollection is that for meats I used a lot of ground turkey (breast with some thigh meat, since otherwise there's no fat at all) and pork tenderloin. I also employed a tasting menu approach, making small amounts of different lowfat foods (and a few pieces of "good" fat items such as avocado and nuts), all artfully arranged on the plate.