{"id":37,"date":"2016-06-15T16:36:07","date_gmt":"2016-06-15T23:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cholesterolcode.com\/?p=37"},"modified":"2018-07-05T10:33:29","modified_gmt":"2018-07-05T17:33:29","slug":"cholesterol-code-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cholesterolcode.com\/cholesterol-code-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Cholesterol Code \u2013 Part I : More Fat, Less LDL-C"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve thought a lot about how best to get this information out and knowing it will have many possible audiences. So I decided to just put it in a multipart series. This first installment will have some extremely surprising data with regard to dietary fat and its effect on LDL, HDL, and Triglycerides on a low carb \/ ketogenic diet.<\/p>\n

Before we get started I wanted to emphasize two things:<\/p>\n

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  1. A\u00a0big THANKS to all the doctors and engineers I swore to secrecy on the deeper data I was sharing. I really appreciate you keeping a lid on this until I had verified and re-verified. (With extra special thanks to the collaboration of Dr. Sarah Hallberg, Dr. Jeffry Gerber, and Ivor Cummins.)<\/li>\n
  2. My cholesterol numbers are certainly high, and this might be distracting. I’m well aware of this and it is part of what started this data journey in the first place. But they’ll be more to this story by the time I get to my latest data.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The Brief Backstory<\/h4>\n

    In March of last year, I got a marker for prediabetes from my blood panel, an A1C of 6.1. I was intent on avoiding future Type 2 Diabetes, so I researched and then began a low carbohydrate diet the month after. I lost 35 pounds, it raised my energy levels and seemed to improve my health in almost every way.<\/p>\n

    However, seven months later in November, I got back my first bloodwork and saw my total cholesterol had gone from 186 to a whopping 357, with LDL-C cholesterol climbing from 137 to 271. Given how incredibly great I felt the entire time, I was in complete disbelief. I heard some low carb dieters had exploding cholesterol, but assumed I wouldn’t, given I didn’t have higher than usual to begin with. From there, I began learning everything I could about Cholesterol Homeostasis.<\/p>\n

    The Idea<\/h4>\n

    And this is where it got interesting for me. As a senior software engineer, the more I learned about the lipid system, the more I saw a familiar pattern \u2013> a distributed network of objects. I read with particular interest on the assignment and apportionment of apolipoproteins and their potential role as a proxy for an information feedback loop to the liver.<\/p>\n

    Anyway, I\u2019ll lay the general theory in more detail in a later post. Just know that if true, there should be two key presumptions:<\/p>\n

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    1. The cholesterol transporting lipid system would prove to be agile<\/em> — much more so than is typically believed<\/li>\n
    2. Discreet patterns should emerge between the diet and serum cholesterol now that disruptive inflammation<\/em> is lower<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      So I went about testing these two points with my own blood starting in late November taking regular NMRs (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance \u2013 an advanced cholesterol test that directly measures lipoprotein particles and their sizes\/classifications). Likewise, I kept meticulous track of my diet and nutrition values, both logging and taking pictures of just about everything I ate and drank. With blood taken every one to two weeks, I would make key changes between tests to see the outcome. Of course I was told over and over again that this was too frequent and that I needed to give the body more time to see results.<\/p>\n

      Initial Data<\/h4>\n

      Sure enough, in eight tests over just three months I saw rapid changes, enforcing presumption (1). And yes, very discreet patterns<\/em> did emerge, bringing evidence to presumption (2). In fact, both these behaviors were more pronounced than I could have imagined.<\/p>\n

      The tightest correlation appeared with total fat in my diet and LDL-C cholesterol. Now hearing this, you might not be surprised given that conventional wisdom seems to agree with the assumption higher fat (especially saturated fat) tracks with higher cholesterol in the blood. But that\u2019s the first big twist \u2014 this isn\u2019t a positive<\/em> correlation, it\u2019s a negative<\/em><\/strong> one. And get this \u2013 \u00a0the strongest time tracking appears to be not months or even weeks, but a three day<\/em><\/strong> rolling average.<\/p>\n

      \"fat3_vs_ldl_first8\"<\/p>\n

      Let\u2019s use an example to illustrate. Imagine I took a blood test on a Friday morning, which we\u2019ll call Day 0. Tuesday is Day -3, Wednesday is Day -2, and Thursday is Day -1 just before that Friday. If you took the dietary fat average I had between those three days, you get the score in the yellow line above. Put another way \u2013 all the days before<\/em> that Tuesday (Day -3) appear to have very little to no relevance to my LDL cholesterol<\/em> \u2013 I can practically ignore them!<\/p>\n

      To better show the correlation, I\u2019ll flip the vertical axis of this same graph for the three day average of fat. (I\u2019ll be doing this a lot moving forward)<\/p>\n

      \"fat3_vs_ldl_first8_reverse\"<\/p>\n

      At this point, I took my data to the Low Carb Vail conference and met with a number of great doctors there. I also had a particularly good conversation with Ivor Cummins who is likewise very versed in the subject as well as being a fellow engineer.<\/p>\n

      I explained the next obvious step was to do a \u201creproduction test\u201d and see if I could replay the experiment to get anywhere close to the same results. Except this time, it was going to be even more controlled with a tighter timeline. (And frankly, very unenjoyable<\/em>!)<\/p>\n

      Reproduction Test<\/h4>\n

      The plan was to have my blood drawn every single day<\/em>, five days in a row (Monday-Friday). On the preceding days (Sunday-Thursday), I\u2019d have a specific day of meals that matched the two of the extremes in my testing for LDL-P. The highest LDL-P score (3073) was Dec 19th<\/sup>, when I had just 68g of fat the previous day, which we\u2019ll call the \u201cLow Meal Plan.\u201d The lowest LDL-P score (1967) being on Feb 19th<\/sup> when I had 222g the previous day we\u2019ll call the \u201cHigh Meal Plan.\u201d All day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I didn’t have a prescribed meal plan and just ate generally \u201chigh\u201d fat. We\u2019ll call this period the \u201cGeneral Meal Plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

      The pattern would be:<\/p>\n