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New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

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Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#91

Post by lazyasciiart »

arkitaip wrote: post #7
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…

So who do you trust on these matters?

Most people end up trusting their family historical wisdom.

Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#92

Post by tharkun__ »

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 have high cholesterol. Used to eat normally. Was on statins. Highest dose doctor would prescribe. Got muscle problems. Doctor took me off statin coz it might be the heart muscle at some point.

Unrelated to this I tried Keto a bit later. I did actual real keto with less than 20g of carbs. Probably higher on the protein side than normal but loooots of fat definitely and eggs and bacon and all the other cholesterol stuff.

All of my other bad blood values completely normalized. Cholesterol went down slightly but not much but LDL/HDL ration improved. I didn't get the test to check for size and makeup of the cholesterol molecules done (not covered/done here) but I bet you it would've confirmed that I had a lot of but mostly the fluffy type of cholesterol (the good type).

Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#93

Post by tharkun__ »

Ekaros wrote: post #70
josefresco wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both my parents are vegan, thin, active, eat basically the same things but one has "bad" cholesterol numbers and one has good. We know so little!

It could be entirely genetic. Worst case could be that some groups just tend to die earlier from these diseases... There could be some somewhat invasive medications to fix thigs. But they are likely very far away...

Define earlier. My great grandpa was vegan too. Since WWI. Thin (but not tall :))and had high cholesterol. Died in his 70s.

Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#94

Post by tharkun__ »

viraptor wrote: post #88
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…

Could be also something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familial_hypercholesterolemia where it's just due to genes and bad luck. You can do generic tests for it, but they're relatively expensive. Statins mostly help bring the numbers down.

Emphasis on mostly. Check my post above. It's genetic for me most probably (I'm the 4th generation w/ high cholesterol and we cover most of the combinations of vegan/carnivore/fat/thin). Statins have bad side effects that can kill you outright. To think I'd been on statins since 16 years old (for round about 25 years... )

Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#95

Post by tharkun__ »

elhudy wrote: post #67
nradov wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that someone "eats healthy" is so vague as to be meaningless.

can't please everybody :)

I think specifying meat vs other sources is more of an inaccuracy thing and can be corrected easily without involving interpretations.

"eats healthy" on the other hand is an exercise in assigning values to one way of eating over another. If you talk to a keto guy and you tell him you "eat healthy too" he might assume you're doing keto too. Talk to a vegan they probably think you're vegan as well etc. :)

Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#96

Post by viraptor »

tharkun__ wrote: post #94
viraptor wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be also something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familial_hypercholesterolemia where it's just due to genes and bad luck. You can do generic tests for it, but they're relatively expensive. Statins mostly help bring the numbers down.

Emphasis on mostly. Check my post above. It's genetic for me most probably (I'm the 4th generation w/ high cholesterol and we cover most of the combinations of vegan/carnivore/fat/thin). Statins have bad side effects that can kill you outright. To think I'd been on statins since 16 years old (for round about 25 years... )

In this case I meant mostly as in "out of things they do, the big effect is on the cholesterol numbers". We still don't really know if they help with heart diseases or not. As far as I understand it, that still relies on the unproven hypothesis that lowering cholesterol numbers does improve the outcomes.

Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#98

Post by tharkun__ »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #13
nofnziti wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't trying to nitpick your comment. Even excluding animal products it's still possible to eat a diet high in saturated fat.

But dietary cholesterol itself only comes from animal products, which is probably why the Dr. said to cut out all animal products.

What I have found and read recently-ish about as well is that dietery cholesterol will actually not have any bad effect on the cholesterol in your bloodstream. If I eat eggs and bacon my cholesterol basically stays the same as if I don't and my body just manufactures more of the bad stuff.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/how-its-made-cho...

> In fact, cholesterol production is so important that your liver and intestines make about 80% of the cholesterol you need to stay healthy. Only about 20% comes from the foods you eat

Re: New model could explain old cholesterol mystery

#100

Post by robwwilliams »

mrkeen wrote: post #85

A: saturated fats B: LDL cholesterol C: heart disease studies show saturated fats increase LDL cholesterol A => B People who get heart disease are more likely to have high LDL cholesterol C => B > Researchers have thus drawn a logical conclusion: a lot of saturated fat in the diet produces more cholesterol, which in turn increases the risk of heart disease. A => B /\ B => C > But this has been surprisingly difficult…

Great book on this topic: Judea Pearl’s Book of Why. He discusses causal models in great depth. And a highly amusing read.

Mendelian randomization can sometimes “rescue” causality from large epidemiological studies. Pearl explains how.

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