Vegan Nutrition with Jill Nussinow, MS, RD

Jill Nussinow is a Registered Dietitian, culinary educator, cookbook author, speaker and consultant and all around proponent of a plant-based diet. She teaches vegetarian and vegan cooking at Santa Rosa Junior College in California and other places around the US. She has a son who is almost 15. One of her greatest joys is sharing her enthusiasm for vegetables and pressure cooking with anyone who will listen.

I am a 56 year old vegan male (vegan for about 17 years). I am fairly active, ride my bicycle about 3-4000 km. per year. My only problem is high cholesterol. 239 total 38.61 HDL 168.09 LDL and trig. of 162.9. I eat lots of raw veggies in salad, drink wheatgrass juice with other veggies about 3 times per week, eat very little processed food, absolutely no junk food like pop or chips. I do have about 4-5 alcoholic drinks per week. My MD suggested niacin instead of cholesterol lowering drugs and I have been taking them with an occasional flush. I have not had my blood retested after the niacin.

I am 6'1" tall and weigh 202 lb. so I am overweight by about 15 lb. I eat lots of nuts and ground flax seed every day. I stay away from soy cheeses and other hydrogenated oil sources.

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It sounds to me like all the activity you do is going to be a big plus for you but in addition to your cholesterol being elevated, your triglycerides are also high, and they are an independent risk factor for heart disease. The overall goal needs to be for you to lower your total cholesterol, boost your HDL and lower your LDL.

You may be genetically predisposed to having higher cholesterol but that shouldn't stop you from doing what you can to make changes.

You can, of course, first see if taking niacin has helped by getting your cholesterol rechecked. Usually it takes at least 3 months to see significant cholesterol changes. If it hasn't been that long, then perhaps tweaking your diet a bit will help you lose the "extra" 15 pounds which will may drop your triglyceride levels but drinking alcohol tends to make it rise. Eating a lot of fruit can also contribute to high triglycerides.

What really got my attention in your question is that you say that you eat lots of nuts. I am not sure what lots means but most people who eat 1 to 2 ounces a day do just fine. More than that could be helping you keep those extra pounds and may just be too much fat for your system to handle.

Being an active vegan will benefit your overall health and having cholesterol might not present problems for you. I still want to encourage you to make dietary changes in addition to cutting down on nuts, and that would be to include foods that contain a lot of soluble fiber. Some of these foods are oats, apples, beans, barley and flax, which you already do. Include them daily if you can and see what happens in a few months when you get your cholesterol checked again.

Jill Nussinow is a Registered Dietitian, culinary educator, cookbook author, speaker and consultant and all around proponent of a plant-based diet. She teaches vegetarian and vegan cooking at Santa Rosa Junior College in California and other places around the US. She has a son who is almost 15. One of her greatest joys is sharing her enthusiasm for vegetables and pressure cooking with anyone who will listen. Her cookbook The Veggie Queen: Vegetables Get the Royal Treatment and her new DVD, Pressure Cooking: A Fresh Look, Delicious Dishes in Minutes are both available on her website www.theveggiequeen.com.

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Visit Jill's website TheVeggieQueen.com and her blog theveggiequeen.blogspot.com.

Disclaimer: The advice given here is for eductional purposes only. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat a health problem or disease without consulting with a qualified health care provider.
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