u/Meeting-Icy

Before I start taking these I want to see how common they are. My endo never really says much honestly.

Trying to figure out what happened here and hoping someone's seen this before.

April labs: HDL 56. Everything else looked good.

Three months later: HDL 32. LDL basically unchanged, and the rest of the lipid panel still looked fine.

The problem is that two things changed at once during that window:

1. I started levothyroxine (Hashimoto's, confirmed positive TPO antibodies)
2. I switched to a vegan diet

I've read that untreated hypothyroidism can inflate cholesterol numbers, which would mean my April 56 was artificially high and the 32 is closer to my actual baseline now that I'm treated. That would make it a correction rather than a decline.

But I've also read that very low fat intake can tank HDL, and going vegan cut my saturated fat and overall fat intake substantially. So that's a plausible explanation too.

Has anyone with Hashimoto's watched their HDL move like this after starting treatment? Or is a drop that size more likely diet-driven? A 24 point change in three months feels like a lot to me, but I don't know what's normal.

For context: also rowing regularly and in a calorie deficit, if either of those matters here.