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New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

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Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#41

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

elhudy wrote: post #5

I am close with someone who has chronic high cholesterol, in addition to a 6-pack abs. She exercises 5x/week and eats .5kg of animal products/week at most, usually white meat. She just visited her heart Dr and was told that her cholesterol is too high and that she needs to cut out animal products entirely as a next step. I am thinking...is this really the modern answer to someone's high cholesterol if they consistent…

It may not. Her doctor could be erring on the side of caution. Also, cutting out animal products completely could demonstrate that her high cholesterol is due to something besides her diet which should open up referrals to a specialist and other kinds of testing.

In my experience, as a patient with some unknown problem, the less experienced a physician is, even if they are a specialist, the more likely they are to try to match up your issues with what they know and hand wave away any inconsistencies. When you get to an expert, if there are inconsistencies they will straight up say they don't know what's going on and will start looking into it (running tests, trying different meds, etc).

Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#42

Post by Matrixik »

elhudy wrote: post #5

I am close with someone who has chronic high cholesterol, in addition to a 6-pack abs. She exercises 5x/week and eats .5kg of animal products/week at most, usually white meat. She just visited her heart Dr and was told that her cholesterol is too high and that she needs to cut out animal products entirely as a next step. I am thinking...is this really the modern answer to someone's high cholesterol if they consistent…

We know a lot about heart disease but it looks like most look for magic drug instead of underlying process.

Check Dr. Malcolm Kendrick long series on "What Causes Heart Disease" (list of all posts from drmalcolmkendrick.org):

https://www.emotionsforengineers.com/2018/01/dr-malcolm-kend...

Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#43

Post by draw_down »

dv_dt wrote: post #36
wirrbel wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my family all the cooking/frying is done with clarified butter. Butter, cheese, definitely no margarine/crisco, plant oil only for salads. So far no cardiovascular problems.

The interesting side effect to me here is using butter one might keep the cooking temperatures a little bit lower. Butter burns at a lower temp than many plant oils.

Not clarified butter; it's clarified so that it can be cooked at higher temps (it also keeps longer). Clarified butter has a higher smoke point than several plant oils.

Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#44

Post by ve55 »

I'm glad to see new approaches to this problem being discussed, because even after researching about lipids for quite awhile, I was unable to come to a full conclusion on them myself. There's so many confounding variables, and attempting to control for all of them just isn't really feasible in an RCT (not to mention most studies are correlational and nowhere near an RCT to begin with).

I think it's likely the case that sometimes high LDL is good, and sometimes it is bad, and this may depend on many other factors related to yourself and your diet. But disentangling these cases is very difficult, and the food supply of nations has changed so much that we keep seeing very misleading correlations. These misleading correlations are why we sometimes hop onto bandwagons like 'fat is bad for you', 'high salt is bad for you', or 'animal products/red meat are bad for you', and then after more research and RCTs, we realize that this is not the case (if the press would stop reporting correlations to everyone as important research that you need to act on right now, that would certainly be nice).

I'm looking forward to more progress here, but until then I don't mind eating saturated fats myself, although I do avoid certain sources of them, such as in fried oils high in linoleic acid. I also don't focus a ton on LDL precisely, but rather some other related measures (different types of cholesterol, low inflammation, and coronary calcium scans if possible)

Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#45

Post by mywittyname »

elhudy wrote: post #5

I am close with someone who has chronic high cholesterol, in addition to a 6-pack abs. She exercises 5x/week and eats .5kg of animal products/week at most, usually white meat. She just visited her heart Dr and was told that her cholesterol is too high and that she needs to cut out animal products entirely as a next step. I am thinking...is this really the modern answer to someone's high cholesterol if they consistent…

I'm in a similar situation (granted, I do eat meat 5-6 days a week). And I have no idea what to do about it except go vegan.

I suppose there's a genetic component, as no man in my known family lineage has made it past 60.

Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#46

Post by chiefalchemist »

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't one of the founding / influencial "cholesterol is bad" studies found to be bad science, and that ultimately it was the result of "financing" by Big Sugar? They were Harvard profs / researchers I believe.

The point being, much of collective knowledge on this subject is based on misleading / false assumptions. That is, you're going to struggle to find results that align with conventional wisdom because that wisdom is flawed.

Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#48

Post by sgtnoodle »

wnevets wrote: post #4
hpoe wrote: post #3

This is why I have three things I never trust the experts in. - How to be healthy - How to educate - How to raise kids It seems like every decade we find out everything we did last decade was bad and wrong but now we've finally for sure got it figured out, and this time we know we are right because we have fancier gadgets and more citations in our name. From Frued to the Food Pyramid it seems that the experts always…

I'm always confused when I read/hear people say things like this. Do people think there is a skyscraper downtown with a giant sign on it that says Expert HQ on it or something where they release their findings from?

I think a lot of people think that sociopaths and narcissists have a tendency to rise to power in politics, business and media over time, as well as have a tendency to lie and cheat to the general population to advance their agenda. "Science" is one of the topics that the average person reveres but doesn't really understand, and so is readily weaponized for less than altruistic reasons.

As a recent relevant example with the pandemic, there was a widespread effort by the media and politicians to discredit various well understood, several decade old drugs known to effectively regulate inflammatory problems. The primary objection was an appeal to "science" claiming that the drugs were untested for their effectiveness specifically against covid, and sensational claims that they are dangerous. Meanwhile, you have pharmaceutical companies injecting mRNA purposefully designed to essentially cause a temporary auto-immune disease into anyone they can, enjoying the fact that they were able to skip a decade of best practices for vetting new treatments. It just seems like maybe there's some unscientific human bias in there...

Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#49

Post by didibus »

> saturated fat in the vast majority of people increases their LDL and that this in turn will increase their risk of cardiovascular disease

I still don't understand this. I thought the cause and effect had never been proven, but only the correlation.

Like people who have heart disease often have high cholesterol.

But was it shown that if they lower their level of cholesterol they can revert their condition?

Or was it shown that it was the increase which led to heart disease?

Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#50

Post by sradman »

graeme wrote: post #34
sradman wrote: post #23

PROBLEM #1: High saturated fat diet correlated to high serum cholesterol ANSWER #1: Serum cholesterol is transferred back-and-forth between the blood and cell membranes to maintain a constant cell rigidity; normal behavior PROBLEM #2: High serum cholesterol correlated to cardiovascular disease ANSWER #2: Chronic inflammation associated with metabolic disorders upsets the various regulatory systems I find the second a…

> This can be measured non-intrusively by measuring the Ankle-Brachial Pressure Index Huh. Is this something one’s GP could do or does it require specialized training? The article says it’s unpopular at general practitioner’s offices.

You can do it at home with a standard blood pressure monitor with an arm (brachial) cuff but not a wrist one. Ask your GP.
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