Is it good to have high good cholesterol?

Fatty alert

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Is 60 mg/dL actually considered "high?"

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Just means you are likely a woman.

The ratio is the most important metric

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Is it good to have high good cholesterol?

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Excellent question. Good piece about it today in the Telegraph. LINK

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Test results just came back in. Other than testing positive for HIV, my HDL came back at 60 mg/dL. Apparently the standard range, according to the test results I am looking are >45 mg/dL. From what I have read, the higher your HDL, the lower linked risked to heart disease.

Is 60 mg/dL actually considered "high?"

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In the absence of a lot of other blood markers, the most telling/relevant metric will be your ratio of triglycerides to HDL. Ideally, you want that lower than 2. People with severe insulin resistance and/or metabolic syndrome almost always have a bad ratio (it's essentially a proxy for bad particle numbers.)

More broadly, your cholesterol (as commonly discussed) is nearly entirely irrelevant. e.g. your LDL or "bad cholesterol". Just ignore whatever number they gave you for that. What you need to find out is: LDL particle count, small LDL, LDL particle size, HDL particles, HDL size, large HDL-P, large VLDL-P and VLDL size. You can get all of these by ordering an NMR panel. Just know that all-cause mortality correlates very poorly with blood cholesterol. It's a ridiculous bill of goods we've been sold off of the back of terrible research and corruption over the past 70 years.

More holistically, this blood stuff doesn't matter very much. If you are eating properly (and I would argue that low carb is the only way to go), then you will know if something substantial is going bad for you without having to examine blood work.

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Triglycerides 63 mg/dL (35 to 150 mg/dL standard range)
HDL 60 mg/dL (>45 mg/dL standard range)

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So, your ratio is 1.05:1...that's pretty excellent my friend!

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I take 4 fiber pills daily. I read that sugar is a large part of cholesterol. And eating a high fiber, low sodium and low fat diet can help with cholesterol. This is about all I know at this time.

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It's true that ingested sugar/carbs is what causes metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. It's not true that high fiber, low salt and low fat are good for you. What's mostly true is that cholesterol is largely irrelevant (at least these headline numbers.)

I would stop the fiber pills - no use. I would eat low carb and high fat. And I'd probably keep my salt on the higher side than the lower side.

Like I said, if you want to go deeper with the NMR Panel, then that can give you some more numbers. However, I don't see anything to worry about here.

Yea salt doesn't matter so long as it's consistent. More problems arise from drastic swings on sodium and usually when people drop to a low sodium diet suddenly

Why would you admit to a + hiv test on here

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In the absence of a lot of other blood markers, the most telling/relevant metric will be your ratio of triglycerides to HDL. Ideally, you want that lower than 2

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I did mine from my test last August

Triglycerides 150
HDL 39

what bigscrub said too. just saw that. sry.

I can't remember. My numbers were high the year before. I changed diet, increases red wine, and they improved. I think total was still like 210. But she said she wasn't too worried.