Hi, I'm a 35 year old Asian American male with no family history of diabetes, although some relatives have had high blood pressure/cholesterol. Over the years I have eaten a good deal of junk foods and sugared beverages, but have primarily eaten an Asian diet (white rice, vegetables, light meat).
My BMI is 23.6 and for the past 6 months I have been exercising regularly (walking or jogging 3-5x a week for 30+ minutes a day) and for the past 8 weeks I have eaten 1lb of raw salad every weekday (no dressing, no iceberg lettuce, just raw and uncooked tomatoes, beets, broccoli, spinach, corn, etc). I also get much of my protein from tuna and nuts. This is rare for me to be doing all of this and the impetus was higher cholesterol numbers:
4/5/11 1/27/12
Cholesterol, Total: 168 192
HDL Cholesterol: 37 41
Triglycerides: 105 128
LDL-Cholesterol: 110 125
Chol/HDLC Ratio: 4.5 4.7
I also drink about 8-12 cups of water a day and rarely drink sugared beverages and rarely eat fried foods and red meat. I also take a 500mg Niacin pill everyday to boost HDL.
So my issue is that even though I am living a pretty healthy lifestyle, I still have a slight addiction to potato chips and will eat a lot in one sitting (4-5 servings). Total guess, but I eat chips maybe 8-10 days a month. This seems to be my biggest weakness. The only good thing is I've been eating healthier chips.
I notice that occasionally when I eat something bad (chips, hamburger, etc) my right index finger will start to go slightly numb and go back to normal maybe 30 minutes later. This has been going on for at least a year if not years. Is it possible that all my years of bad eating and my current potato chip vice has caused this? That would be horrible as I'm trying to live a very healthy lifestyle and to have something this stupid derail that is bothering me.
Please help!