I thought it was particle size, not particle number that mattered. If the number is high but the particle size is big and fluffy, that is a good thing. But if the particles are small and dense, they are the ones that cause the plaque build up which leads to heart disease. The was pointed out in the Cereal Killers Movie. Dolan's doctors were concerned about his rise in cholesterol until the found that he had no small LDL particles and no inflammation in his body.

That is my understanding as well.

Dr Dayspring is one of the leading lipids doctors and he feels that particle count matters even if LDL is light and fluffy. He talked about this in an interview with Jimmy Moore on Ask the Low Carb experts in the past year or two.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...021915006002590

I like the particle size concept myself. But I believe I heard Peter Atilla also say the particle number is the main problem.

This analysis of MESA data includes some statistical jargon which I don't understand, but their conclusion is that the small particle data somehow hides the relevance of large particle effects, and that they are both important.

You should watch this. For me, it is much more important to keep sugars out of my diet, all sugars-carbs. I am betting on a very low, ketonic way of eating making me much more healthy than I was....



This is Dr. Peter Attia explaining this in human terms
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAWdHYSrh7M

27:40 in the Peter Attia talk (graph titled "The greater the metabolic derangement, the greater the discordance between LDL-C and LDL-P") goes well with the assertion around the 56 minute mark I think it was, in the Cholesterol Conundrum video that particle count and triglycerides associate with heart disease much more strongly when insulin is high than when insulin is low.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuj6nxCDBZ0

There's four slides here breaking down some of the findings from the Quebec Cardiovascular Study that both these presenters used in their videos;

http://www.lipidsonline.org/slides/...lar+study&dpg=3

Reminds me of all those studies showing a detrimental effect from saturated fat... which was somewhat true when carbs are high, but not when carbs are low.

The people I alluded to were refugees from a LC/VLC WOE. It was switching to the PHD that improved their health.

Am I detecting a trend here? Seems like everything gets worse when insulin is high.

Right now, it seems research is headed this way, but who knows? Anyway, Petter Attia thinks intake of sucrose and fructose causes inflammation-insulin caused? Maybe..... But it seems no particles, fluffy or not, stick if there is not inflammation in the vessels.

Right. And what causes that inflammation? Is it insulin? Is it cortisol? Is it something else entirely?

ApoB/apoA1 ratio is a better predictor than either alone yet Dr. Dayspring doesn't seem to address it. The best way to increase Apo A1 is to eat fat. Chylomicrons contain apo A1 and are actually better than HDL at reverse cholesterol transport.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9714128



http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15102891

How well-established is this? Has the research been applied to different study groups, in different countries, during different time periods, for different genders, over different age ranges, for those with heart disease and those without, controlling for the "healthy subject" effect, etc.?

http://www.r3i.org/pg/1/LS_21.asp

Sorry, no. That's a popular logical fallacy. Found at the scene, therefore guilty. Also, haven't found anything else, don't understand what else we found, can't fix most of it, therefore the thing we found, the thing we understand, the thing we can shoot, must be guilty. It's an even worse fallacy when we think we found something, when in fact we found something else: Cholesterol vs lipoprotein, see bold quote above. The topic of particle size applies to lipoprotein particle size, not cholesterol particle size. Cholesterol is cholesterol is cholesterol. The same cholesterol found in atherosclerotic plaques is also found in bile and a bunch of other essential stuff. It's cholesterol. There's only one kind. There's only one size. A genuine cholesterol expert would know that.

Look at the description of cholesterol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesterol


Now compare that to the description of lipoprotein: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipoprotein