45y/o Dutch male, 1,93, 85kg, normal/skinny fat posture wc 94cm. High LDL, High normal HDL and low normal TG.
Last year I got bloods and got outcomes as above. I was always thinking i was pretty healthy. Mostly complex carbs, no sugars, no sodas etc.
3 times a week HIT training. On the other hand i have a sedentary occupation and could walk more. If i lose more weight i will be too skinny.
Because i don’t want to take meds i am searching for a low carb way of eating (woe) but also get enough calories. I have read here the high LDL-bias, that LDL is not bad. On the other hand, there are so many papers and Dr’s who say the completely opposite. This makes me hesitant to go full keto and feels like Russian roulette. I was wondering is it possible to do a keto woe, with just unsaturated fats? Anybody doing this way?
Welcome to the Forum You can relax here. Your among friends.
I’m not a doctor so wouldn’t comment on most things but I think all modern research suggests there’s no connection between high cholesterol and ill health.
Check cholesterol under health on the pages here.
The dangerous fat is unseen, it’s on the inside, around your organs. Luckily it’s the first fat we burn.
Fats are our fuel source for most people here. It’s highly prized!
Please check YouTube Dr David Unwin … then report back
Low Carb combined with Intermittent Fasting is how many of us here got healthy but also maintain good health. It’s a lifestyle.
Everyone here has a different diet but you’ll find many common ideas
Welcome Ruffneck. All natural foods that contain any fat normally contain a mixture of saturated, mono and poly unsaturated fats, and even trace amounts of natural trans fats. In order to do only unsaturated fats, you would need to consume essentially nothing but oils and vegetables, mostly oils. While this may be possible, I highly doubt it is sufficiently healthy or enjoyable. If you are concerned about saturated fats despite the scientific research noting the health benefits of coconut oils ( pure Sat fat), perhaps it would be more reasonable to look for foods like salmon and avocados that contain much more unsaturated as compared to saturated fats.
The short answer is probably not, nor is it a really good idea.
If you want a good outline of the history of our current nutritional dogmas, permit me to recommend two books: Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes, and The Big Fat Surprise, by Nina Teicholz. (The second book goes by a different title in Europe, but I don’t remember what it is, sorry.) I like these books because they cite extensively from the scientific literature, and they show how our fear of saturated fat was created mostly out of whole cloth, partly from the influence of economic interests and partly out of scientific ego.
Okay, so now you don’t need to read the rest of this post. But I’ll leave it, in case you’d rather not run right out and buy those books, lol!
However, while you could use vegetable oils instead of animal fats, they are likely to make you queasy, and there are health consequences to consuming all those ω-6 fatty acids. At the very least, stick with the fruit oils (avocado, coconut, olive, and palm) and avoid the industrial seed oils (soybean, canola, cottonseed, corn, cornflower, sunflower, etc.), which are much lower in ω-6.
The fear of saturated fat is actually not well-founded on data. In fact, a number of large, well-funded studies done to provide such data ended up showing exactly the opposite. Lower cholesterol is associated with increased rates of cancer, lowered immune system activity, and a host of other problems. People past a certain age, especially women, tend to live longer and be healthier, the higher their LDL is.
A number of studies assessing cardiovascular risk say that the correlation between LDL and cardiovascular risk is negligible, but the ratio between triglycerides and HDL is actually quite a strong predictor of risk. So in European units, you want your ratio of triglycerides/HDL to be 0.9 or less (in American units, it’s 2.0 or less). Alternatively, your doctor could order a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) analysis of your LDL, and if you have the healthy Pattern A, your cardiovascular risk would be minimal.
So it sounds as though you are fine. If you’d like to post the actual test results, we could look them over (if you post a scanned image, be sure to block out all the personal information first!).
And actually, on a low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diet, most people’s LDL comes down. There is a specific group of people whose LDL goes up instead, but it has not been shown that high LDL on a ketogenic diet is a problem, so long as the ratio of triglycerides to HDL is good. (Be warned, however: do not get your lipids tested before you’ve been eating a ketogenic diet for at least six months, because tests taken before that point can look quite alarming. However, by six months, the lipid numbers will have settled down. That’s the point at which to freak out, if you need to, lol!)
There is a whole history to our fear of saturated fat. Some of the early evidence was distorted, and has been shown to be erroneous. But the fear has become so entrenched that everyone just “knows” saturated fat is going to kill us. But actually, a number of randomised, controlled trials have shown the opposite, in addition to the large epidemiological studies I mentioned earlier. The American authorities discovered, decades ago, that there is actually a significantly greater cancer risk from lower cholesterol, but they decided not to mention it, because they didn’t want to “confuse” the public.
There’s no bias, only people that actually read those things, context matters. Higher fat intake doesn’t present a concern in a low carb context. Mix high fat and high carb, then you got a problem.
You have to remember, those studies aren’t based on what we’re doing, their based on people who eat “normally”.
Cholesterol Code is a great website with tons of info and links to studies and resources. Meds are your choice, the only ones IMO people should stay away from is Statins, many others can be the bridge to get you where you want to be with better results and less effort. Then hopefully you wouldn’t need them anymore. Others are beneficial either way. Like everything, pros vs cons.
Additionally, the standards/norms for cholesterol numbers are also based on people who eat the standard diet. Even my regular doc admitted they are not applicable to keto/carni folks.
I had the same thought like yours when I saw my LDL level after 6 months of keto diet. My thought was to use unsaturated fat to replace saturated fat, for example, eating fatty fish, avocado, olive oil. But after reading lots of different studies on the LDL things, I chose to believe that high LDL levels are not blamed for cardiovascular disease.
Actually, my uncle (60) just had a cardiovascular event month ago, he just fell down and couldn’t talk, and his right or left arm couldn’t move. But his LDL level was in the normal range after being sent to the hospital, but his trig was quite bad.
What might be more appropriate for my Keto Diet? For the first time I’m looking at my figures!
(Sorry to hijack thread)
Triglycerides 1.8 pre keto
HDL was 1.23 pre keto
What is an appropriate measure to indicate cardiovascular risk? The ratio of triglycerides to HDL. For example, your pre-keto ratio is 1.8 ÷ 1.23 = 1.43, which is high. Ideally, you want it under 0.9. Eating a low-carb, high-fat diet rich in saturated and mono-unsaturated fats will help you achieve that goal. A high triglyceride level is a sign of excessive carbohydrate intake, nothing to do with fat.
And for the record, if your ratio of triglycerides to HDL is below 0.9, you don’t have to worry about whatever your LDL decides to do.
If you weren’t a little hesitant I would be surprised. A surgeon told me to eat keto and I can honestly say I never would’ve considered it otherwise. Hesitation is a form of wisdom imo. Keep researching and you’ll figure it out.
It depends more on your diet than the fact that you produce more ApoB.
I’m old enough to have seen the concern move from fat to no, it’s saturated fat, to no, it’s your cholesterol level, to no, it’s your LDL cholesterol level, to no, it’s the particle size/count, to no, it’s the oxidised particles or this or that bad particle.
The idea that fat/cholesterol intake/level causes heart disease was pushed in the 1960’s for reasons of economics (the AHA had to justify why they supported Crisco oil) and ego (Ancel Keys), and enough people who believed the idea got into positions of power to make it standard dogma. And they threaten people who challenge the dogma, even though there is actually plenty of evidence to the effect that cholesterol and lipoproteins don’t cause heart disease.
At most, they are affected by the same causal factors and can serve as markers of disease. But manipulating the marker usually leaves the root cause unaddressed. If we are right and hyperinsulinaemia is the root cause, then addressing the insulin level by changing diet will improve both our cardiovascular health and our lipid numbers. Simply manipulating cholesterol levels with drugs does nothing to lower the hyperinsulinaemia that is the real problem.
Do you think that higher ApoB is a concern as compared to lower ApoB in the presence of 1) high trig 2) high inflammation 3)hyper insulinemia or 4) endothelial damage and therefore is the reason studies on SAD populations reveal (and revel) higher ApoB is a problem, while the LMHR directly contradicts the higher AppB notion due to the lack of instigating factors? If so, we may be agreement.
I also like to think of ldl as over reacting to endothelial damage when the damage is persistent and the higher concentration of ApoB leads to this over reaction. Without the insults to the lining there is no over reaction, almost like an allergic reaction.
Of course here is the rub, what if you low carb now, but you metabolism is very damaged and insulin resistance causes hyperinsulinemia despite low carb, and you , like me are an ApoB hyper-responder. Unfortunately, I think the study on IR LMHR people will not happen in time for me, still decade away I would think.
The hyperinsulinaemia is what causes the high triglycerides, inflammation, and arterial damage. It may do something to your ApoB, as well; I don’t know. But lower the insulin by eating a much smaller quantity of carbohydrate, and the triglycerides and inflammation will certainly decrease, and you will be giving your arteries a chance to heal from the damage.
There is no evidence to show that elevated LDL in lean-mass hyper-responders is either beneficial or harmful (though, looking at other studies, it is possible they might benefit from their high LDL). David Ludwig has just published a paper asserting that it is clearly not harmful, but I haven’t looked at it yet. Dave Feldman is recruiting for a study of lean-mass hyper-responders to see what gives with the high LDL level. However, while there are more hyper-responders out there than anyone guessed before Dave started collecting data, it is still true that most people’s LDL goes down, not up, on keto.
In that case, your lowered carb intake, if sufficiently low for your degree of insulin-resistance, will stop triggering hyperinsulinaemia, allow your body to get into ketosis, and permit it to start healing all the damage. Inflammation comes down fairly quickly, as do blood pressure and heart rate, but reversing metabolic dysfunction/insulin-resistance takes a year or two.
It’s the carbohydrate intake that triggers the major portion of our insulin response. Protein in the absence of carbohydrate triggers a matching glucagon response, so that the insulin/glucagon ratio remains low. And fat never triggers more than a negligible insulin response, which is why we want it as our main source of energy.
The point is that elevating serum glucose by eating a great deal of carbohydrate (as the government tells us we should), is what causes insulin resistance. In the absence of that kind of carb intake, insulin has no reason to rise all that much, though it takes a long time before someone might safely be able to eat a bit of extra carbohydrate.
Alfred Pennington wrote up a number of cases of du Pont employees he helped to lost significant amounts of fat on a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet, and one of those patients was an executive who normalised his weight, but who would start to regain if he ate a single extra apple. I suspect that today, we would consider that guy highly insulin-resistant. It would certainly have been interesting to study him further and see if he later on became able to tolerate a bit more carbohydrate.
You can relax here. Your among friends.
