What could go wrong with eating an extremely high-fat diet of beef, cheese, and sticks of butter? Well, for one thing, your cholesterol levels could reach such stratospheric levels that lipids start oozing from your blood vessels, forming yellowish nodules on your skin.
That was the disturbing case of a man in Florida who showed up at a Tampa hospital with a three-week history of painless, yellow eruptions on the palms of his hands, soles of his feet, and elbows. His case was published today in JAMA Cardiology.
[...]
his total cholesterol level exceeded 1,000 mg/dL. For context, an optimal total cholesterol level is under 200 mg/dL, while 240 mg/dL is considered the threshold for 'high.' Cardiologists noted that prior to going on his fatty diet, his cholesterol had been between 210 mg/dL to 300 mg/dL.The cardiologists diagnosed the man with xanthelasma, a condition in which excess blood lipids ooze from blood vessels and form localized lipid deposits.
[...]
Xanthelasma—especially xanthelasma palpebrarum—is not always associated with high cholesterol and heart risks, but having high total cholesterol is strongly associated with coronary heart disease.
[...]
the case "highlights the impact of dietary patterns on lipid levels and the importance of managing hypercholesterolemia to prevent complications."
Related stories on SoylentNews: lipid search
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Sunday January 26, @11:42PM (4 children)
Florida man. 'nuff said.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday January 27, @08:41AM
My first reaction was "is this a story about just one man from Florida, or all Florida men"?
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Monday January 27, @08:48AM
In any case it's easily cured: Colloidal silver. When you're bright blue no-one will even notice the yellow smegma.
Or possibly it'll come out green. Who knows.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 27, @02:32PM (1 child)
Hey, dietary disasters aren't limited to Florida: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Karason [wikipedia.org]
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28, @02:38AM
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/warren-buffett-diet-mcdonalds-coke-junk-food-soda-ice-cream-2023-4 [businessinsider.com]
https://www.mashed.com/240851/this-is-why-warren-buffett-really-eats-so-much-fast-food/ [mashed.com]
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27, @02:02AM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by sgleysti on Monday January 27, @02:12AM (4 children)
My Mom is a doctor and has told me on at least one occasion that you never want to be an interesting case.
Hope the dude sorts out his diet and is ok.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aafcac on Monday January 27, @02:19AM
Yep, being an interesting case is usually not a good thing, although occasionally it's something benign just novel. I used to donate plasma for research and I'd be taking a lot of riboflavin for unrelated issues. It turned my plasma roughly the same color as mountain dew. It was completely benign in every way, it just gave it an unusual color.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday January 27, @08:45AM (2 children)
It depends, if it's "holy f---, do you have horse genes in your family?" then most guys wouldn't mind being the interesting case.
(Score: 2) by sgleysti on Monday January 27, @03:16PM
I don't consider that to be particularly interesting :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30, @05:24PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by KritonK on Monday January 27, @05:40AM (5 children)
Indeed. My mother had xanthelasmata under her eyes, but never had a problem with her heart. The only thing she did about them was to go occasionally to a dermatologist, to have them cauterized for aesthetic purposes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27, @09:24AM (4 children)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday January 27, @11:11AM (3 children)
Brain uses fat for insulating those axons and avoid short circuits in your brain.
One class of statins side effects [mayoclinic.org] are neurological. I'd rather die of heart diseases than become a demented medicated vegetable
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday January 27, @04:09PM (2 children)
Give me a widow maker heart attack and just done, before becoming a vegetable on "life" support.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 27, @06:12PM
Oh, mate, stop being lazy, you can take it yourself :large-grin:
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27, @11:10PM
Just heard a story today, a friend of a friend (in his late 60's) just survived a major heart attack (the person telling the story described it using that word, "widowmaker"):
They had been driving north after he and wife spent a few weeks in one of the southeastern states...and wasn't feeling quite right. The next day his wife was about to go out and he asked her to wait a bit. Not long after he had severe trouble breathing. Called 911, ambulance was there in 4 minutes. Diagnosis-a completely blocked major artery (not sure which one). He was out of the hospital in a day with a stent and was fine.
Would not have had such a nice result if the episode happened along the road (in some very rural areas).
It seems that widowmakers aren't what they used to be...?
(Score: 1) by justsomeguy05 on Monday January 27, @10:06PM
My father had several Lipomas (fat blobs encased in skin), including a large one that hung off his wrist. As far as I know, his cholesterol was "high normal"). But I wonder if they develop during "high cholesterol" periods, and don't go away.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 28, @05:09PM
That study is super aggravating because total cholesterol is pretty much numerology.
High HDL seems to mean a lack of exercise and seems to have little to no relationship with CHD
High LDL usually seems genetically driven (diet has little to no effect) and seems to have minimal but not zero effect on CHD. Its a U shaped bathtub and lowest overall mortality rate is around 140 mg/dl but the bathtub bottom is pretty flat up to darn near 200, more or less matching the article summary.
High trigs seem to be a result of eating too much carbs, makes people very fat, and fat people die very young from CHD, so this is the really bad stuff.
The numerology is trying to make life decisions based on the result of a combined function that is exercise + genetics/meds + diet/weight.
I suspect the only thing the "total cholesterol study" is really reporting is fat people, eat sugary fat people food, and as a result die young.
As a point of comparison the risk ratios in the study are pretty much shit despite being described as "strongly associated", like 1.1, compared to stuff like smoking that runs "around two digits" like around ten-ish. You'll see numbers like 7 for lung cancer (that was a BMJ article) or 20 for all cause mortality (can't find that one) and it's all about defining and redefining what "smoking" means, non or not is easy but what's "heavy"? Well hard to say. The analysis in the study is correct, there's no relationship between strokes and cholesterol that RR is almost precisely 1, although I wouldn't read too much into CHD being a tiny fraction over 1.
It is mystifying that we get intense propaganda drilled into us that blocked blood vessels in the brain can essentially never be caused by high cholesterol as borne out in numerous medical journal articles but the same blood vessel closer to the heart can somehow magically be blocked by the same total cholesterol by mere proximity or similar false belief. Wondering why, or why we're told that, is double plus ungood because a lot of money is made selling statins. I have my own theories about high total C mostly actually being high trigs from being very very obese, comorbid with high A1C, which Fs up oxygen supply to the heart, and chronic low O2 to the heart eventually kills it although it takes awhile. Low O2 to the brain means you're 5% more dizzy than most and people self correct and it never hurts them, also brain O2 demand is more constant than heart O2 demand. The whole false paradigm is built around the idea that whats in the blood destroys the blood vessels over decades, however in practice the statistics show the blood magically knows how far away it is from the heart. Clearly the existing paradigm is hopelessly wrong; unclear what the correct paradigm actually is, other than it's not whats being shoveled at us.