Cholesterol

Today, for no particular reason, myself and SWMBO had a cholesterol test done. It’s something we’ve been curious about for a while and, since there was someone doing the tests locally this morning, we decided to go for it.

Before I state the results, I should say that I consider myself somewhere in between ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’: my diet is pretty reasonable and (apart from the last month or so with the dodgy wrist) I do get plenty of exercise biking to work and back. So, I guess I was expecting something reasonably OK from the test, but perhaps not very impressive.

To put the test results in context, a level of below 5.2 mmol/l is considered desirable; 5.2 to 6.2 is “borderline high” and above 6.2 is “high” and thus a cause for concern. I think I was probably expecting my result to be around the first threshold, 5.2.

SWMBO went first and was hoping to get a good result and got 3.7 – this is obviously well below the “desirable” threshold and she was very pleased with it. Having a hard act to follow, I stepped up to taunts of “Mummy’s going to win!” from the eldest BOFHlet and was reluctantly expecting her to be correct. So, imagine my surprise when my result came up on the machine: 2.9. Had there been space in the small room where the test was conducted, I would probably have done a lap of honour; I made do with a simple One Man Mexican Wave.

As you will no doubt suspect by now, I have been unbearably smug about this all day. And quite reassured too. We both are, of course.