Cholesterol levels

[dennis]

AFAIK statins don't make people suicidal so I expect its your mental health deteriorating.

there are drugs that do make you suicidal if you need to try a reference.

[dennis]

If it reduced mine by 4 its would be negative. (There are other reasons for statins than cholesterol.)

[polygonum]

However "depression" is listed as a possible side effect - sure that is not written as "suicidal ideation" as per some anti-depressants.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not sure dennis is worh commenting on.

Te affect is of general fatigue, inability to get things done, that is depressing because jobs pile up and stuff isn't attended to. As I said its like driving a car with seized brakes. You just want to get to the end of the journey.

All I can say is that mood vanished within days of stopping, and I started to get stuff done again.

Now I feel 10 years younger.

[Jim Hawkins]

Does anyone know how much the NH reckons to be the cost of carrying out a proper cholesterol assessment ?

[docholliday93]

That agrees with my recollections - and the fact that the semi-skimmed which my milkman delivers has a red and silver striped foil. I remember the crown capped bottles as being sterilised, but I was never forced to try it so I can't comment...

[Steve Eldridge]

I absolutely concur with that. I became sluggish - couldn't be bothered to do things any more. I felt older and worthless. Yes depression too. I can't say that the statin actually made me depressed but the effects from taking it certainly did.

When I stopped, things got better quite quickly.

Not all people suffer but the effect on me was so severe as to not even wish this hell on my worst enemy.

[polygonum]

This is a home test from a reputable company. By using the home test approach, there is no phlebotomy cost.

Cholesterol home blood test kit (Full Lipid Panel)

Home blood testing kit for Cholesterol (Full Lipid Panel) - The lipid profile is a group of tests that are often ordered together to determine risk heart disease. They are tests that have been shown to be good indicators of whether someone is likely to have a heart attack or stroke caused by blockage of blood vessels or hardening of the arteries. Our lipid profile includes total cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and Triglycerides.

Turnaround time is 1 day from sample receipt at the laboratory.

£66.75 inclusive.

NHS will be considerably cheaper - would guess somewhere around £20 (possibly even less) excluding phlebotomy costs, etc.

There are loads of testing kits of various types on, for example, Amazon

- with highly varied reviews. Take care.

[Man at B&Q]

There have *always* been concerns. Nothing new.

MBQ

[polygonum]

Certainly rhabdomyolysis was reported at least as far back as 1988.

At least the Patient Information Leaflets and Summary of Product Characteristics documents have been enhanced massively over the years. In that sense, yes, increasing concern - but in my view that is mostly a matter of the issues being better known and more widely written about - not that they haven't been known within the field and occurring regularly.

[Chris Hogg]

Most recently

[T i m]

Hehe

Mum worked at my primary school in various roles (cleaner, dinner lady, taught *every* child to swim over several years ... not allowed to do any of that now of course, 'Not qualified' or some such) but a (dubious) bonus to that for me was that I often had the options on several mini- bottles of 'milk' (as you say, sometimes less that 'nice' at different times of the year).

I do have one bad memory of said milk though. I wasn't allowed to walk on the corridor floor after it had been cleaned so used to walk down the forms. One day I did so carrying a bottle of milk, slipped and landed face first, smashing the bottle on the floor as I landed. It was interesting to watch the red and white mixing together ... ;-(

Luckily I only needed a couple of Steri-strips (sp?) and another life lesson learned.

Cheers, T i m

[polygonum]

You then understood the barbers' poles?

[Tim Lamb]

In message , Tim Streater writes

Fair bit of green splashy stuff ended up in a hand milking bucket in

1950. Vacuum pump, TB testing and hygienic cooling arrived here around 1955. >

[T i m]

I did indeed. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[geoff]

Nothing like the feel of that 1/3 pint of milk hitting the back of the throat at near zero Celsius

lovely

[Steve Firth]

it is one of my favourites - made with caciotta, half cows milk, half sheep.

My lovely neighbour Elena just saw me off on the slog to Stansted with some nice stew on the grounds that I won't be able to eat properly for at least a fortnight.

[Huge]

LOL. I was in a coffee shop in Milan (the entire office went out for espresso twice a day...) and the guy behind the counter asked me "Englessi?" (the spelling may be a bit off) and when I replied in the affirmative he made a disgusted face, the expressive "warding off" gesture with both hands and said, in a disgusted tone of voice "Spaghetti toast!" (I agree with him, as it happens...)

Almost as good as the ticket vendor at the tram station who insisted on teaching me how to pronounce "Cernusco" while a long queue of Italian commuters waited behind me ...

I liked working in Italy. As far as they were concerned "Mañana" was a frenzied pace. I imagine trying to get anything done must be frustrating. I may still have a DEC RM03 disk in customs in Milan. They confiscated it and wanted a lot of money to return it, so we shipped another one and abandoned the first...

Happy days.

[stuart noble]

Wops have no manners and their cuisine (wow, more pasta) is a joke

[Steve Firth]

The Milanese can't talk about food. I still work up there from time to time and a good friend has a perfectly preserved 60s style apartment overlooking the Duomo. When I go Elena offers me a food parcel with a warning that food in Milan is "orribile" because it is all "riso e polenta".

She's not far wrong but my friend knows a place that does a perfect "fiorentino" steak and the Motel Giove out near Monza has (or had) one of the best restaurants in Italy with a rather nice layout of apartments that look like town houses with a lockup garage for your car on the ground floor and a duplex suite with Spa bathroom over it. Jolly nice after a day of staring at cars going "zoom".

[snip]

Oh somewhere between difficult and impossible. I pointed out to Mrs F that we would have trouble with the builders. She said they were working hard to take timber and bricks off the truck. I led her to the back of the house where they used the bricks and timber to make a card table and two benches with a handy brick-built sweat cooled beer chiller.

Mrs F still can't cope with social customs. We had to travel on Tuesday to see a business partner. Arrive at 11:00, talk business for 30 minutes, family for 30 minutes. Out to lunch at 12:00 back to the office at 15:00. Total business content could have been done in a text message.

Farmers OTOH work grindingly hard. Elena's husband starts at dawn and works until 10PM every day. Real hard physical graft in all weathers and in full sun. And he's fast approaching 70. Still has time for a bottle of (his own) red before bedtime though.