EllingFamily:TogetherWeThrive

For some reason, they yet to have determined, when a man gets diagnosed with testicular cancer they also usually have a greater incidence of high cholesterol, unfortunately, I am one of those men. As I posted a few years ago I had a total cholesterol of 285 before I started using Crestor to lower my bad cholesterol. Crestor, fortunately, worked to lower my bad cholesterol (LDL) and my total cholesterol now sits around 128 but Crestor did not have any real affect on my HDL that continued to hover around 16.
After talking with my oncologist, he stated that there was really not a lot of options, exercise had been shown to raise HDL but I already was exercising quite a bit. I then asked him about niacin, a water soluble vitamin that had shown to raise HDL levels in some individuals but with the side affects of flushing, a red, itchy, burning sensation on a person's skin that lasts for a 15-30 minutes (at least for me). The niacin worked for me, taking fairly large does spread throughout the day with food I was able to raise my HDL to upper 30s, but the flushing side affects turned out to be too much for me and I had to stop taking regular over-the-counter niacin. I then turned toward flush-free niacin (inositol hexanicotinate) that was supposed to have no flushing side effects, which turned out to be true, unfortunately, it also did not raise my HDL. Finally, after over a year of looking for ways to raise my HDL and trying many different options I decided to try Niaspan, a slow release prescription Niacin pill that you take once a day. I take a 1000mg Niacin pill at bedtime daily along with a baby aspirin to lessen the flushing symptoms and I have been able to raise my HDL to 42. I have blood work to make sure my liver is functioning properly every six months but now over a two year time frame I have a solution to keeping my cholesterol under control and a overall cholesterol ratio of 3:1.

*Update on Niaspan - After being on Niaspan for six months and reviewing my latest blood results in August, my primary care physician and I decided to stop taking Niaspan as it wasn't showing to make a difference in my HDL numbers.