It was pointed out to me that I should post this to this subforum -- although this isn't a large experiment, just my own N=1. That said, It's been a very intensive and reproduced process.

While my cholesterol jumped up after going ketogenic, the patterns I observed over 15 NMRs at various dietary fat levels showed:

The more fat I eat, the lower my Total Cholesterol (87% inverted correlation)
The more fat I eat, the lower my LDL-C (90% inverted correlation)
The more fat I eat, the lower my Triglycerides (61% inverted correlation)
The more fat I eat, the higher my HDL-C (74% correlation)

The complete post is at cholesterolcode.com .

Brilliant. Bookmarked. Strange how just a few days of experiment can refute decades of expert opinion, yes? Doesn't matter that your experiment is just n=1, what matters is that experts say everybody should see the same results without exception. So now, all those experts must scramble to explain why your n=1 shows opposite results, see? You'll probably hear things like "he lies", or "he's a genetic anomaly", or some other flippant argument like that. The truth is, these experts have no clue. Remember that all those experts rely on a single observation - intentionally deceitful - as the basis for their "expertise", i.e. Ancel Keys 7 country study. Well, don't need to be an expert to figure out how a single n=1 can expose the deceit, right?

Thanks for posting.

I'm well aware my story and data will be heavily scrutinized -- and to be fair, I'd expect that.

While I'll be detailing it more in a separate post, I've been both logging (via MFP) and taking photos of everything I've eaten since the end of November for redundancy. There's a solid auditing trail between this and the bloodwork which is done by a remote lab of which I've had no contact with.

But while my cholesterol baseline is very high since starting a ketogenic diet, there's no mistaking the mechanistic factors that show the inversion. My hope is this will be further retested with others moving up the N in this experiment.

Interesting. I've got 3 out of 4 with much lower Triglycerides, higher HDL, and no (not able to be measured) small particle LDL. Total Cholesterol is slightly higher, and I know why. I agree, this is not a genetic anomaly, and no one is stretching the truth here. Some of us, and more likely many of us, react this way to higher doses of healthy fats. I'll look forward to your detailed post.

Dave, back to the point I was making in reply to your original post, I think what you are presenting here will confuse people because your observations and the inversion phenomena you describe do not explain why your 'cholesterol baseline' has increased so much (i.e. TC from 186 to 357)

It is a baseline increase that most people observe and are sometimes alarmed about when they go low carb.

DaveKeto, I suggest you talk to Mike Eades about your experiments. The idea is that in the diet-heart hypothesis, cholesterol and lipoproteins are not the end-point, they're intermediates, the end-point is mortality. Even there, according to that hypothesis, we don't die from cholesterol or lipoproteins, but from atherosclerosis->blocked artery->heart failure. So the next thing to measure is atherosclerosis. Mike Eades uses what he calls a calcium score or something like that, check his blog for more details on that. Anyways, just refuting the first link in the chain of the hypothesis refutes the whole hypothesis already, refuting the next links is just icing on the cake.

Well done, keep it up, we're all very interested in your results.

That's my guess at this point, but it is still early to make a strong hypothesis in that area as it is still unclear whether it is genetic or behavioral. (But I certainly lean toward the genetic right now)

I'm aware my data doesn't explain the baseline change, but I'm not obscuring it or minimizing it -- I make it clear at the beginning. In fact, had my numbers not jumped in the first place, I wouldn’t have collected all this data to begin with.

I don't want anyone to be confused that there is indeed a risk their cholesterol numbers will climb (like mind did) when adopting a low carb diet. Whether this is a net positive or negative is a separate debate.

Yes, I'm familiar with Mike Eades and hope to dialog with him at some point.

I'm doing another blog post soon that will break out my own risk assessment as it stands right now and indeed I'm currently more leaning toward the Response to Injury Hypothesis over the Lipid Hypothesis with regard to atherogenesis.

Ultimately, the only thing I care about is all cause morality -- is my current course of action increasing the likelihood I die sooner? For example, if I were convinced my WOE increased my chance of CVD by 10%, but decreased my risk of cancer by 50%, I'd take that spread given it would be a net decrease in all cause mortality. (That said, I doubt such obvious trade off numbers will ever been that clear)

My mistake, it's not Mike Eades, but William Davis who uses the calcium score to check for atherosclerosis.

I'm not trying to detract from your very interesting results and perhaps I am nit-picking but your story did confuse me at first and I had to think about it very carefully. I think it is just an issue about presentation and emphasis.
As you say, had your numbers not jumped in the first place you wouldn't have been prompted to collect all the data - which is another way of saying, "I started collecting all this data because I wanted to find out why my numbers had jumped". Now all the data you collected is interesting in its own right but it doesn't provide an explanation for the observation that prompted you to collect it.

Your point is well taken. I might see if I can make a better change for emphasis on an edit pass. Thanks!

The jump in cholesterol that many people experience when going on low carb (myself included) bothered me for a while until I read the book 'The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living' by Jeff Volek and Stephen Phinney because that book appears to have the answer.
Quoting from the book:
“There is an anomaly in clinical testing ….. a transient rise in serum total and LDL cholesterol that can occur with major weight loss…. our research revealed the cause ….. our fat cells contain a small amount of dissolved cholesterol. After about 30 pound of weight loss, the shrinkage of these cellular fat droplets proceeds to the point that some of this cholesterol has to be released into the serum. The amount of cholesterol involved is 100-200 mg per day in someone losing 2 pounds of adipose tissue per week”

However, the book goes on to say:
“But once a person’s weight loss ceases, this expulsion of cholesterol stored in adipose tissue stops and serum LDL cholesterol returns to its new post-weight-loss baseline …. So don’t panic … wait until your weight has stabilized in maintenance for a month or two and then test your LDL level again to be sure it has come back down”

Now in my own low carb experience my weight loss averaged 1.75 lbs per week for the first 6 months and 3-monthly blood testing showed that my TC and LDL jumped about 15% to 20%. According to Volek and Phinney my rate of weight loss would have added 100 to 200 mg of cholesterol per day to my blood. Assuming a total blood volume of 5 liters this could potentially have increased serum cholesterol concentration by as much as 2 to 4 mg/dL each day. That seems a good enough explanation for the jump in my TC/LDL cholesterol levels by 15% to 20%, which equates to a total increment in serum cholesterol concentration of 40 to 50 mg/dL.

So far so good but after one year and a cumulative weight loss of 56 lbs my rate of weight loss is less than 0.2 lbs per week and very close to ceasing. Therefore I have been expecting (based on Volek and Phinney) that my cholesterol level will start coming down but a test done just this week shows that it has continued to rise over the last 3 months.

So either Volek and Phinney’s explanation is only partially correct or else I have not waited long enough for the return to baseline to occur.

Thanks for posting. I'll be following.

I found this comment by someone with familial hypercholesterolemia interesting as well:



https://profgrant.com/2016/06/14/th.../#comment-28033

Given my data from Part I, you can see why I'm now very skeptical of virtually all collected cholesterol data (pro or anti low carb) since there's such a large part of it that is variable given the 3 days preceding the blood test.

While it might be more likely than not that people were consistent in their diet for those 3 days with respect to the mean average of all the days before, there's no way to confirm this.

In other words, a shift of 2 to 4 mg/dl due to weight loss/gain would be completely overshadowed by other shifts in my data if I passed on a meal or two in the day before the blood draw.