In preparation for yet another appointment with my dietician, I underwent blood tests this morning. I already have most of the results and they make for confused reading. As far as I, the amateur nutrionist, can figure out, there are three major areas being tested, as follows...
Glucose: as far as I am concerned, this is the most important test. I am pleased to see that the glucose in blood level decreased to 'only' 100 mg/dL. This is just below the beginning of the pre-diabetic range (101-120 mg/dL) so this decrease is good. I'm not sure as to what could be the cause of this decrease, but never argue with a good result.
Triglycerides and cholesterol: there is an increase in all of these parameters, which some would say is not good. There are no dangerous levels here, but lower is definitely better; in fact, all of the levels are reasonable, but they have increased, especially the free triglycerides. One of the nutrition books that I read in the earlier part of the summer encouraged the eating of some saturated fat, but I think that I am going to ignore that advice from now on. I think that the increase can be attributed to buying cheese with a higher fat level (15 or 22%), so I'm going back to eating cheese with only 5% fat.
Iron: this is the most confusing area. On the one hand, the haemoglobin level is 15.6 g/dL, which is a good mid-range level. On the other hand, the ferritin level is very low and the transferrin level is very high. Ferritin is a protein that acts as an iron store, and if it is low, then the body doesn't have many iron reserves - apparently I am suffering from iron deficiency, although not anaemia. The iron level itself is 81 μg/dL, which is at the low end of the scale, but still within the realms of normalcy. Transferrin is another protein that binds iron and transfers it to cells; an over-abundance of transferrin means again that there is an insufficiency of iron. Broccoli is quite a good source of iron, as well as a few other nutrients, but I've been ignoring it lately in favour of cabbage. So it's back to eating broccoli, not that I mind. Recently I've also been eating poached chicken breast that, whilst being a high protein and low fat and sugar food, is also a low iron food, so that will have to stop.
I'll see what the real dietician says when we meet in another week.
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| 14 | Something special - Delphi rules! | Programming, Delphi, Randy Newman | |
| 289 | Malta log #1 | Holiday, Malta | |
| 290 | Malta log #2 | Holiday, Father, Malta | |
| 636 | Reading books | Films, Literature, Beatles | |
| 637 | More afterwords (My gap year, part 8) | Gap year, Old recordings | |
| 1075 | Train journey to Karmiel | Trains | |
| 1176 | Walking the dog leads to epiphanies | DBA | |
| 1261 | Understanding the UNLINK command in Priority | Priority tips |
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