Does Marijuana affect LDL cholesterol levels?

Hi pawless... i actually googled the question "does marijuana cause high ldl level?... and your post popped up...i read it, and although i don't have an answer for you, i can tell you this...i am a 29 year old male who lives a healthy life style(eat right, exercise, sleep right etc) however i smoked marijuana everyday after work to relax and i recently went to the doctor to get all bood levels checked and everything came back great except my ldl level, and like you, i can't think of anything that may have contributed to it except for the marijuana smoke...after receiveing my results i was very disappointed and on the verge of depression because like i said i live a healthy life style, i don't eat red meat or pork, but i must admit that i was slipping up a little with chinese food because of a busy lifestyle...i have since quit smoking marijuana cold turkey and have a follow up appointment in 4 months...if you happen to learn anymore on this issue i'd like to know...good luck with everything!p.s my ldl level was 176...

What was the result? mine is 'high' too and i smoke most nights.

Hi. am very interested in what the outcome was?

i' m 32 and I have same situtation.

I am 33 and I started up again this past year, I have always high LDL, and the lowest ever was last year 8/11 the LDL was 128, only change was smoking and today 8/12 my LDL is 177. I have are check in 3 months. I hope it will be a lot lower with out the smoke.

I actually started smoking regularly pretty recently. I don't know of any facts or even studies from what I've been reading. Last year I was lower 100's in LDL's. Granted I haven't been eating perfect or exercising a lot since last year. About 5-10lb weight gain. Went in this week and my LDL is 330. So I started googling cholesterol lowering items to try to lower my ldl's back to normal, and came across this post. Now that I've seen this and a few others I'm going to try to research it a bit more.

Hi. I've got the same issue/question. I'm a 31-yr-old female, 5'5" and 130 lbs, am fairly active, live in the mtns and hike a lot, and eat pretty good, rarely any red meat or whole milk, etc. But I do smoke MJ every day. Got my Cholesterol checked for maybe the first time in my adult life, and my LDL is 196!! I was also pretty depressed, as I have a number of health problems already, and I assumed this was one I was in the clear on! I also have quite high Lp(a), which is an inherited risk factor, but I'm really wondering about the weed smoking. Information online seems inconsistent.

I'm going to try to switch the majority of my intake to vaporizing and edibles, take fish oil, eat even better, and do some more intense exercise more often. I'll come back here and report when I get it checked again in 3 months.

I am a 34 year old male, a longtime smoker, and my cholesterol has been so high for so long that I now take cholesterol medication. I am active, I eat right (no red meat), but nothing brings my numbers down aside for medication. This would explain so much...

Im a 23 year old medium/heavy marijuana smoker who eats poorly and doesnt get enough exercise. I had a biometric reading done the other day (for insurance purposes at my job) and i had an HDL reading of 71 and my total cholesterol was only 149. My father in law, who eats mostly bacon, is a very heavy marijuana user and is 52 years old, had similar readings when he was admitted into the hospital for a gall bladder issue. My point is, you cant blame pot, its mostly a genetic issue.

Previous guest gets it mostly right. The only part of marijuana that effects your cholesterol levels is its tendency to drop blood sugars, causing you to get the munchies, which encourages you to eat less healthy food. If you're not prone to high cholesterol, then you have nothing to worry about in the first place.

I have been concerned about my high LDL levels for years... not TOO bad, around 150, but this post has me thinking... from lots of reading, and from the "Master" Linus Pauling (King of Vitamin C) cholesterol is NOT the problem... it is inflammation or abrasions of the artery walls... that is HEALED by LDL cholesterol sticking to the bad parts of the arteries... and, if the inflammation/abrasions are not stopped... the LDL "patches" eventually clog the artery.  Pauling claims that taking 1-3 grams of both Vitamin C and L-Lysine will eliminate (or reverse) the problem of artery damage and therefore clogging! Additional sound measures are taking GLA (Primrose, coconut, Borage oils), take at least 400mg of Folic acid too... the big tests for health are not the Cholesterol (unless over 350 total) but the Homocysteine and "CK" tests to see if you have the inflammation.  Best to you all, do your own homework on this!  PS:  the best supplement for both blood sugar and cholesterol is FENUGREEK

I just had my LDL levels checked and were high but Doc told me most times that LDL is high in most people who have good life styles is due to your LIVER

Everyone. Keep in mind that medical tests often gives you results to make you feel that you're sick. It's typically a part of the game no different than stating that meat is required for your diet. So in terms of natural health, I would steer clear from the western medical institution to tell you what that is. If you wanna test your health, ask yourself how you're feeling, go on a run, play sports, etc. and see how your body responds. =) Don't let the fear of tests results sicken you because like placebo, that can easily do that as well.

All,

This is a great thread about a topic that is surely on the minds of  health conscience cannabis smokers/eaters :-)  Let me share my experience with the masses.  I visited my doctor about 6 months ago and sure enough, high cholesterol (254), decent HDL (45) and horrible LDL (182).  Cholesterol problems run in my family (the post above about genes is very true - your genes decide whether or not you have to worry about cholesterol)  So, like everyone else, I was depressed for a minute... then I took control of the situation and did my due diligence.  I researched and researched until I came up with a plan to increase my cardio exercising and completely change the way I ate.  I just told a woman today that I was then living the college lifestyle, drinking and smoking almost everyday, and today I am living the go green lifestyle, almost vegan :-)  Nonetheless, point is, I started off right on top of the ball, worked out hard for about 2 months, switched from hard liquor to wine and ate better.  After that I went into maintenance mode, started smoking every other day again, worked out maybe 2 - 4 times a week for at least an hour (20 - 30 mins cardio and the rest weights).  I even went on vacation for a week and drank like crazy... during these recent holiays I drank moderately, again focusing more so on beer and wine, than the hard liquor.  So I just went to the Dr to cehck my lipids last week and, drum role..... :-) All of my numbers were down.  Cholesterol dropped 16 points, HDL dropped 3 points, LDL dropped 10 points and triglycerides dropped 10 points... As a result I'm very encouraged to do even better. 

So all in all, I found out I had high cholesterol, I changed stopped smoking and changed cold turkey for 2 months, then went it maintenance mode and started smoking for the next 4 months, and m numbers improved nicely... obviously we're talking about blood here, so it's not like  the oil in your blood si going to change overnight. 

Today I went out and bought a multi-vitamin for cardio vascular health (I was only looking for Niacin, but the lady that worked at the vitamin store had family cholesterol problems too, so she gave me the inside scoop on what I should do, which was 

1 - Take my multi vitamin for cardio vascular health vitamin

2 - Eat fiber in the morning (e.g. oatmeal, fig newtons) beacuse it traps the cholesterol before it circulates through your veins.

3 - And obviously eat healthier, do more cardio exercises, and drink and smoke in moderation.

All in all, I don't want to take medicines like statin to fix something that I can fix with a bit of diligence, discipline and natural ingredients.  I wish everyone VICTORY in the fight against high cholesterol while staying faithful to Mary ;-) ... How I feel about Cholesterol can be defined by listening to the song by Young Dro - FDB, go ahead and listen to it and have a good laugh!