Q: I submitted a question about elevated cholesterol and creatinine after I switched to a paleo diet. And here are my results.
A: It looks like your creatinine is still within the normal reference range. It's 1.02 and 1.1 is the cutoff for women. Generally, the amount of protein that you take in is going to cause increased levels of this. This might be perfectly fine for you, or it could mean that you might need to adjust your protein. You might need to take in a little bit less protein.
Then the cholesterol is also going to potentially be impacted by the amount of protein and fat that you're getting from your food. 217 is not excessively high. I would also look at your levels of HDL, which is the healthy cholesterol. I would look at that to see what level it is, and then look at your level of LDL, which is the not so great cholesterol, in order to break that down further. You want to make sure that your LDL is under 100. You want to make sure that it's the optimal number for you. You can also work with your diet a little bit more. We have these dietary templates for everybody, but you want to make sure that you adjust the diet to your body to see what works best for you.
Making more cholesterol isn't necessarily a bad thing. There is healthy cholesterol, and cholesterol is a precursor to various hormones, including adrenal hormones. That creatinine is basically showing how you're breaking down protein as well. Some issues that I have found in people with thyroid conditions is that they may tend to have excess cholesterol and worse kidney function when their thyroid hormones are not optimized. This essentially makes it more difficult for the body to extract nutrients from our foods. I would also look at your thyroid hormone levels; look at your TSH, free T3, and free T4 to see if you might potentially need to adjust your medications to make sure that everything is working well.