Talk to your doctor. You are young and shouldn't have levels that high however much saturated fat you eat. Total cholesterol of 550 mg/dl is not normal or healthy whatever particular types of cholesterol you have.

It is possible you have Familial hypercholesterolemia

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/121298-overview

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familial_hypercholesterolemia

I had a similar experience about a year ago. I'm 27, female, normal weight, and my results were:

Total Cholesterol: 334 mg/dL Triglycerides: 59 mg/dL HDL: 66 mg/dL Fasting Blood Glucose: 85 mg/dL

That was when I was still eating a fair amount of fast food (throwing out the buns of course!) and I've since made a big effort to cut out industrial seed oils, so I'm betting my HDL has gone up since then... My doctor's reaction at the time was to suggest that I clean up my diet and re-test in 4-ish months. I tried replacing some saturated fats with mono-unsaturated for those months, but the test scores were nearly identical. Anyway, my doctor then referred me to a dietician or something, who over the phone tried to prescribe STATINS after I told her I wasn't going to cut back on the animal products or add in whole grains... Anyway, I've decided to ignore the results and not change anything for now, since I wouldn't have even gotten the test if I hadn't just been plain curious. And of course I'm in the process of switching to a new doctor...

When I started digging around online, of the other people in a similar situation that I found, they all seemed to be female and relatively young. I'm starting to wonder that maybe it is "normal" or at least acceptable for us, because no one knows what normal is- we just have standard ranges of people eating a western diet. Plus, so many cholesterol studies focus only on men... Hopefully with the new doctor I can get a lot more tests to see if my hypothesis is correct.

With such low trigs, your LDL are likely to be big and fluffy, which may indicate significantly lower risk of CVD. Thus, it may very well be the case that you have little risk of CVD. However, I don't think anybody knows to what extent this new principle holds true for people with such high cholesterol levels. After you get the additional results, you may try emailing Petro at hyperlipid and Dr. Davis at heartscanblog to see what they say. Petro is smarter but Davis has more clinical experience. I would also use the opportunity to get a full battery of lipid test -- Lp(a), full particle count and size measurements, etc. You may want to leave low-carb land too...

I'm not sure what test you took, exactly, but keep in mind that LDL is typically calculated and not measured directly, and that in people with low triglycerides (like you), the calculated number can apparently be massively wrong. So you need to get a direct cholesterol test to figure out what is going on.

Reference: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3725/is_200103/ai_n8944645/

You can get a blood workup for a NMR test at done here:

http://www.prepaidlab.com/index.php?/vmchk/NMR-LipoProfile.html

or a VAP test here:

http://www.anylabtestnow.com/Tests/Wellness_Tests.aspx See if they have a facility near you. Each location is a franchise. They all send the blood samples overnight to labs to run the tests. Scroll down to the bottom for VAP Cholesterol test. This test is overnighted to http://bit.ly/1rqbFi thevaptest.com

Anylabsnow have a coupon for $10 discount.

Getting your testing done by yourself may be cheaper than your copay with your insurance through your PCP.

Cholesterol is VERY mis-understood. You really NEED to do some research on all the Cholesterol myths that are out there - Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD is a great place to start as is Jimmy Moore's blog. he just posted an article on why Doctors don't understand Cholesterol. Paleo diet and foods low in Omega 6s will improve your health better than any doctors advice or drug. Take control- don't let a doctor do that- this isn't the 1950's.

I'm in a similar position - my highest total cholesterol was around 400, but my HDL has always been pretty good, and my Trigs quite low, so it's an LDL thing. It would be wrong to say I am not worried about it at all, but I definitely look at it in a new light following some of the mythbusting recent research. Free the Animal has some good posts on cholesterol. I also found (from that site) that taking relatively high doses of (the right quality of) fish oil daily reduced my markers quite substantially - worth looking into.

I have a similar problem with high LDL, on the negative side, but hight HDL, low triglicerydes and low VLDL, on the positive side. My test was recent, so I haven't retested yet. But I'm doing three things that I hope will fix the problem by next test:

I'm getting in the SUN as often as I can, assuming that this high LDL might be a response to an (unknown) inflammation, and thus made available by my body in order to produce VITAMIN D with sun exposure, which in turn should fight the inflammation. Better still is to find out if you do have some form of inflammation with a CRP test.

Second, I've cut DAIRIES, which are a source of inflammation, at least for me (acne). I never gave it so much thought because I love them, but I suspect they may be the starters of a chain reaction leading to high LDL. Fat in dairies is little understood, but I'm pretty sure it is not very good in high amounts, and from non-pastured, non-organic, grain-fed sources.

Third, I'm increasing my carbs intake, in the form of veggies and fruits (no grains legumes cereals). I went too low on carbs, even when I craved some fresh and juicy vegeteables, just to induce ketosis. I suspect it was not a good move, as vegetables are too important for acid/alkaline balance, vitamins, sugars, anti-oxidants, and easier digestion of more dense foods (like fish and meats). At least it works for me. I think an easier transit in the digestive system helps with LDL.

Hello, I'm new here, and these numbers are real. 12,000 trigs, 2000 TC.... The riddle is, how does it ever get this high, and how is one able to survive in this condition for over a decade. I even saw a blood sugar spike of 400+. The blood looks milky when drawn. I don't want to hear anything about changing the overall diet... Been tried. Something is wrong, and I'm aware of this. I'm looking for real answers b/c the docs have none. Is there a some silver bullet I'm missing in all this? Are the superhigh readings connected to each other, or is there some hormone causing all this mayhem....maybe lepton resistance? Either way, I'm currently searching for the cure for this before its too late. I've never even heard of cholesterol this high. Have a nice day everybody!

Either way, the LDL will likely just be an aggregate count, not taking into consideration the further density subdivisions of LDL. I believe you have to get it run through a centrifuge to get an accurate breakdown. Very small dense LDL is bad, big fluffy LDL is OK.

A LDL/triglyceride comparison would be helpful though. Typically, low HDL along with high triglycerides is a bad thing, regardless of the total LDL count.

I'm an athletic female I've got the same problem. What is it about paleo that cuts out 2-hydroxyestrones? This (eliminated by flavenoids and DIM) seem to be the one connection that I can find.

Take a good read of this. It is sound information.

http://robbwolf.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Paleo-Solution-151.pdf

Sometimes "anything goes" is not the healthiest approach and can lead to unecessary and serious problems.

Best of luck to you.

Follow up!