u/Imprettystrong

Hello r/Cholesterol

I am looking for some help with lowering my cholesterol and to help me understand it all a bit better.

in 2025 my LDL cholesterol was very high, around 210. I am a physical active/fit person so I just kind of didn't care about it for most of my 20s and just assumed, "I'm active, I'm healthy"

After my doctor said I really need to try and bring it down without meds, I did my best to lock in and stop eating junk as frequently as I did in the past, mostly stopped buying candy and avoided high fat fast foods as much as possible, I still ate out but maybe once a week.

Cue my next bloodwork and doctors visit 4-5 months later I am pleasantly surprised to see my LDL cholesterol had dropped to around 160.

And I just recently did some more bloodwork again just last week and was hoping to see a similar trend but I am actually trending back up, it was 170.

I remember what I did to drop my cholesterol down by 50 points and I basically avoided eating as much fat as possible. I thought I was doing that still for the most part but clearly I am not.

When really trying to lower cholesterol, what should I be looking to avoid on nutrition labels? Is it the fat and saturated fat or the literal 'cholesterol' on the nutrition label? Or both?

thanks

I am not finding anyway to increase the amount of fetchers I have. I 28 pirates total currently but only 2 are fetchers. I assume I want to turn some of my drifters into fetchers but I don't see how I can do this? Any help would be appreciated unless I am miss understanding

I am always torn when playing league. Have played on an off for years and I really like certain champs that I will not do great with and then other champs I win a lot with but don't really enjoy playing them.

Some examples that come to mind that seem to be 'S tier' and just win a lot if you aren't braindead. Sona, Janna, Tryndamere

But then I really like Zilean as a champ but I rarely win on him and it always feels just loads tougher to lane as support Zilean

What do some of you guys do? Just pick the S tier champs all the time or play the harder to win with champs you like?

I sold a item via eBay standard envelope, it shows delivered in the system and tracking details but the buyer is saying it isn't.

I am the only purchase from this buyer, clearly a new account. I asked the buyer to wait a few more days to see if it shows up but what is the call here exactly? Should I wait for them to file something in the system or is there a more proactive approach to handle this?

edit: Thank you for the responses 👍

Wanted to make a post about my experience with pericarditis as a healthy and physically active man in his early 30s and hopefully give some insight or helpful words of advice to any other young folks that unfortunately get to experience this condition as I found myself scouring the internet for support/advice and found mostly bleak and depressing posts.

Some background on me, I have never been healthier in my life at this age, I'm at a healthy weight, the last year I managed to lower my LDL cholesterol by 50 points, I'm physically active and love using my body to lift weights, run, climb, frisbee, etc. Being active and using my body and pushing it to its limits is a passion of mine. So when I had this seemingly random bout of pericarditis in the beginning of 2026 I was really thrown for a loop.

Sometimes I push it too hard, which I know now believe is partly how I gave myself these episodes of pericarditis.

Another thing is I believe there were multiple factors that led to this as well. The first is a tendency I had to try and 'crack' or 'pop' my sternum or breastbone. I would occasionally get pain or pressure in my sternum or breastbone and feel like I had the 'need' to crack it, like you would crack or pop a finger knuckle. Usually would happen when I am sitting at my desk at work, I would do specific movements like raise my arms over my head and throw them backwards, sometimes getting that satisfying pop/crack in my breastbone. I believe this added to my case of pericarditis in someway and have made sure to stop dong this.

I also believe posture plays a role in this as well in some way. I would slouch a lot in my 20s and working a desktop is brutal on posture. In recent years have made daily/weekly efforts to not slouch when sitting at a desk and limit my time sitting at a desk as much as possible. I also would do movements and exercises to help with posture. Doing these too forcefully or intensely may have added to the potential of getting pericarditis.

I also believe suppressing sneezes can cause issues with this or add to the potential of pericarditis. I have always suppressed my sneezes and it causes a lot of pressure in the chest/region that pericarditis occurs.

In no way do I know any of this for sure, these are just observations I have made about my body that I believe culminated in my pericarditis.

Especially since I felt very much 'on my own' with this. Most doctors doctors I've spoken with have not provided much help at all. If anything they made things more confusing for me.

There is very little data/information on pericarditis (for whatever reason). Most of what I got from them was

'were you sick recently?', No I haven't been sick.

"Okay, its idiopathic then.'

Idiopathic chest pain? I respect doctors for the most part, its one of the most challenging professions out there but man did this idiopathic response piss me off.

To me it really came off as another way for them to say 'there is a cause but we just don't care enough to figure out why.'

I asked my doctor 'so are you saying, if I became sedentary tomorrow and just sat around all day and did nothing, I would still get this chest pain?"

Of course I wouldn't, especially not being sick recently, there is always a cause or trigger. So don't rely too heavily on doctors to help you with this (unless you have one that seems to really care and understand and is actually taking time to try and help you), most seem to be not well informed about pericarditis, and just really don't see to care about actually understanding the cause in my experience.

So far, I have had 1 true episode of pericarditis, my first experience with it in January 2026. A quite painful one that left me unable to sleep and in pain for 12+ hours. Went to the ER and the doctors took EKGs and gathered data confirmed I had a case of pericarditis. They asked me all sorts of questions but hit me with the 'its idiopathic' bs. Discharged with anti-inflammatories and was back to normal 3-4 weeks later.

I had a second similar episode, although less painful, 3 months later. Same exact symptoms but less severe, was able to sleep but it wasn't really going away the next day, so back to the ER to document what felt like a second case of pericarditis.

Strangely, during this second episode the doctors told me this was not pericarditis, my heart was fine and healthy and was discharged with some more anti-inflammatory drugs and a diagnosis of 'inflammation of the lining of the lung'.

The common trigger I realized both of these times? An intense abdominal workout. Why this second episode wasn't identified as pericarditis, I believe, was because of how much less severe it was that it didn't show any of the markers for it but it was the exact same pain, location and symptoms. I was also doing my sternum/breastbone popping during this time period as well, suppressing my sneezes and sitting at a desk with bad posture.

After I did these abdominal exercise (the first one was a bunch of sets using an ab wheel, the second time was doing a bunch of hanging leg raises), a day or two later I would get this strange sickness feeling in my chest and I actually recognized it during the second episode and I knew I was going to get the chest pain and the next day the pain in my chest started.

Now that I believe I know what triggered it, I have some sort of control over it. so for now I need to make sure to take it easy when doing abdominal workouts. I've been easing my way back into lifting and climbing. Have no issues doing cardio based exercises (running and biking mostly), I am currently avoiding doing abdominal workouts until I see my primary care doc and see if he can shed any sort of useful information besides 'its idiopathic'.

So hopefully this helps someone, if you are experiencing pericarditis, observe your patterns, your body, there had to be some kind of trigger, our bodies would not do this for no reason at all, in my experience.