PI in the Sky – Paul Irvine

“Whatever” is her first new CD since Tribal Rage/Momentum ten years ago. Go get it! JenniferBatten.com. If you are local to Portland, OR, Jennifer is playing a one-woman show at Mississippi Studios. This is an amazing opportunity to see one of the world’s most talented and innovative guitarists in an up-close-and-personal setting. MS is a small recording studio with a teeny living room-style performance room. This is a one-off. It could be ten years to the next CD release party!

Just found out… there is a youtube post of one of thenew tracks, Hooligan’s Holiday. It definitely delivers.

It wasn’t something I was expecting to hit, but cholesterol issues can hit anyone. And its getting worse across the US it seems. My case wasn’t especially bad, 40 on the HDL (the good stuff) and 150 on the LDL (the bad stuff) put me up over recommended levels (40/130) for my height and weight (5′10″ and about 170lbs). But at my annual checkup, it was enough for my doc to compare to my family history (dad had three bypasses), and declare me at risk and I needed to do something about it.

The goal was to get to to 130 within eight weeks through diet changes. The doc reckoned I’d need to work hard at it, and if I missed the next check-in, it was statins (like Lipitor) for me. I’m not a huge fan of being on medication long term. I’d rather avoid it if possible. My wife is predominantly vegetarian anyway, and I don’t often eat meat, but I must confess that for the last year, I had probably had more junk and high fat/high cholestorol food for lunch at work than I realized.

I actually went back for the blood test after six weeks. My HDL was still at a good level of 40, liver function was fine. My LDL (the bad stuff) had plummeted to a mere 97. My doc must have been having a bad morning, as he looked at the results and mentioned “hmm… the drugs appear to have worked very well…”. Nope… no drugs. Not even aspirins, which he’d said might be a good idea to start on. As he reviewed the results in some surprise, he asked “so what is the secret? what did you do?” and then confessed that he himself was stuck on Lipitor to to try to help control his own LDL levels.

So I thought I’d share it with anyone who is interested. Here we go…

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