My current thoughts on cholesterol

(Robin) #21

Oh, how I wish. I simply cannot stand any sort of fish or seafood. I think I will vary my meat more tho. I’m almost exclusively eating beef now. But will do in chicken and pork again and more eggs and cheese.
I am going to experiment with adding in a veggie at a time too… very well cooked and chewed… and see how that goes. My numbers were better when I was strict keto, not carnivore. Can’t hurt to try.

(Bob M) #22

Hmm…This is actually Alec’s quoting of Paul.

Anyway, one aberration is FH (familial hypercholesterolemia). The theory there, which I think is probably true, is that heart disease is related to clotting effects, unrelated to atherosclerosis (or tangentially so). But since FH = high LDL, LDL has been considered to be the culprit.

#23

Hi Robin, I think that’s a very good idea. I find, I’m fine eating broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and green beans, all of which I steam, and I am wondering about bringing back in those. And the almonds. Raw peppers and cucumbers I never feel that great eating. But if I were you with a history of diverticulitis, yes, I would be bringing one vegetable back at a time. Also, if you’ve been cooking with butter you could try cooking instead with olive oil? And see how your body tolerates it. I don’t believe in stamps and labels when it comes to our WOEs, because it is all about the individual taking charge of his or her health. And we continue to learn new things about ourselves. It’s all about following our bodies’ signposts on that journey to health.

#24

Hi Bob. My mom is saying high cholesterol runs in my family, that she has it and her mother had it. And now she’s majorly concerned about me on the carnivore WOE which is why for the last few days I’ve been pouring over all the information I could find about cholesterol and whether it raises the risk of CVD. And I’m considering bringing back in vegetables, as I actually can tolerate them if steamed or cooked, I just like the simplicity of carnivore more, I’m a rubbish cook. And I have begun to use olive oil to fry my eggs and meats. As from what I understand LDL does not become as elevated on keto.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #25

Nobody is saying that atherosclerosis does not cause cardiovascular disease. In fact, it is cardiovascular disease. The argument is about what causes the atherosclerosis. The fact that more than 50% of people with FH never develop cardiovascular disease would seem to argue that elevated LDL is not the cause. (So does the fact that 75% of people having their first heart attack have normal or low LDL.) The people with FH who do develop cardiovascular disease all have abnormalities of clotting factor VIII and fibrinogen that make their blood clot more readily than normal. This, too, would seem to argue in favour of a cause other than LDL, but the researchers who discovered all this back in the 1960’s were shouted down by Keys and his friends.

Apparently there is reason to believe that blood clots can cause atherosclerosis directly (though I don’t understand how, exactly), and we know that a sclerotic artery can easily be plugged by a clot that gets caught in the narrowed part of the artery.

(Alec) #26

Paul/Bob
Do you guys know how they define FH? How high does your LDL have to be to be considered to have FH? Me, my bothers and my sister ALL have “very high” LDL, but our parents were never tested and died at a ripe old age! :joy::+1::+1:

I am now doing some tests to see what’s happening on carnivore, and the doc obviously saw some results yesterday and has called me in. I am pretty sure my LDL is going to be high.

I am not concerned, but I think he will be. I am doing a CT scan tomorrow, so we will see if there is any calcification in my arteries from 57 years of unhealthy eating (I am 58 with 1 year on carnivore).

But I am intrigued as to whether he might start going down an FH diagnosis route and we might start gene testing or testing for the clotting factor.

Apparently my doc tested my LDL 3 years ago and it was 7.2 (or 278 in US units). Knowing what I know and hearing some numbers quoted by others in social media, this does not sound that high. For example, I am pretty sure that Dr Berry has quoted his LDL at a similar level.

But would this kind of level, along with knowing all my siblings have similar “high” levels, be considered FH?

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #27

The used to be specific diagnostic criteria, but nowadays those criteria have been replaced by a genetic test. There may be some discussion about this on Dave Feldman’s site, because they want to exclude people with FH from participating in the study he’s recruiting for, since FH and being a hyper-responder are very different conditions.

Good luck dealing with your doctor. I’ve got an appointment with a new guy today, but I have hopes he won’t freak out, because this is the same practice from which the old guy is retiring, and the old guy was very pro-keto.

(Alec) #28

Thanks Paul. I don’t really need luck as I am well practiced in dealing with doctors who think they know everything and are plain wrong.

I just need him to sign the forms to get me the tests I want. I will listen to his opinion on any test results but I will be doing my own research on any results that I get that I don’t understand.

And he is certainly not getting me on statins. He has already said he thinks I should be. But I will use my normal statement: I am making an informed choice to refuse statins, he will write it in my notes, and he is covered if I do drop dead from a heart attack. Unlikely in my view, but always possible. I did have 57 years of eating plants, so I have a poor dietary history.

If he annoys me, I think I am gonna tell him I am carnivore and let’s get it on!! :joy::joy::joy:

(Bob M) #29

FH is genetic, like what I have (very high Lp(a), also genetic). Not much you can do about them.

It would be interesting to see someone with FH take the cholesterol drop test by Dave Feldman, though. Or maybe his white bread test (where his LDL plummeted). PART of the test must be influenced by the energy model; I wonder how much?

And I wonder if you have FH and eat keto, would you have even higher LDL, particularly if you’re lean? Or does the energy model get supplanted somehow?

I don’t understand about what the genetic error is in FH enough to even hypothesize what would happen.

(Robin) #30

Totally agree. I actually don’t use oil or butter. Most food is cooked in my air fryer. So meat makes its own juice… which I often drink cuz it’s so yummy.

(Robin) #31

Is there a test specifically for clotting factor?

(Robin) #32

I am anxious to hear what you think 0f your new doc!

(Bob M) #33

Here’s the main study in this area:

Unfortunately, they don’t list the coagulation factors, so there’s no way to see if you can test for them.

This looks like one possible test:

Another one:

It’s too bad they didn’t say what coagulation factors were important.

(Robin) #34

Well, thank you! You have provided the bread crumbs for me to follow and hopefully end up with an answer. I’ll let you know!

(Bob M) #35

If you find out, let us know. While I’m not concerned that my (extremely) high Lp(a) will cause atherosclerosis, I am concerned that the genetics that provides me with high Lp(a) might also cause errors such as coagulation. But I can’t really test anything, because I don’t know what to test.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #36

There must be, because those researchers in the 60’s were able to determine the clotting problem, but what kind of test is involved, I have no idea, sorry. :slightly_frowning_face:

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #37

He took the low-carb diet in stride. It helped greatly that my pulse and BP were low.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #38

The paper from the 1960’s mentioned fibrinogen and clotting factor VIII, but I’ve seen mentions of clotting factor IX (I think) and some other protein involved in the clotting cascade. Excessively glycated haemoglobin is supposed to be another coagulation factor. (There’s inevitably some glycation of haemoglobin, so the body must be able to cope with that amount; presumably the problem comes with diabetic levels of HbA1C.

#39

I keep an eye on it, at one point it was really high, while I don’t give any credit to the reference ranges, I don’t ignore it and pretend that it doesn’t matter like many do. The amount of threads here with people with super high cholesterol, people asking what they should do, yet never even attempting to track what they eat and play around with their diet to see what happens is nuts. I backed off on my fat, and my cholesterol dropped huge. So clearly it has way more of an effect than what a lot of the keto community seems to think.

I don’t care if mine is around 200 or not, but it’s its super high I’m doing something about it. I changed how I eat, am doing better off over all in basically every way, and if anything my cholesterol is low now, and I still eat plenty of good fats vs “normal” people. No reason to worry in either direction now.

(Michael) #40

I believe the genes lower the ldl receptors in the liver such that the increased ldl is due to a lack of clearance and thereby also much longer resident time for glycation and oxidation.someone can clarify if I over generalized.