Could eating way more fat consistently lower your cholesterol?
If you are interested in ambitious self testing, tons of fancy graphs and some surprise conclusions check out @DaveKeto's blog at CholesterolCode.com. Like this:
To summarize Dave's findings it seems like even if an LCHF diet can result in higher average cholesterol values in the long term, the shorter-term effect is the opposite.
So, whenever Dave eats a higher amount of fat, his total and LDL cholesterol values go down during the next few days. And when he eats less fat his cholesterol goes up. The same thing happens for his sister.
It seems counterintuitive at first, but I think it's not.
Short-term and long-term effects
When eating a lot of fat this gets transported to the cells via chylomicrons. This reduces the need for the liver to produce LDL particles during the next few days. Eating less fat apparently has the opposite result. But this is the short-term result.
This seems to be the opposite of the long-term average results. As the body adapts to a LCHF diet it relies less on carbohydrates and more on fat for fuel. This can result in a higher average LDL cholesterol level, as more VLDL particles are produced to supply fat fuel to the cells.
So - the long-term result could be higher average LDL on a higher-fat diet. But the short-term fluctuations go in the opposite direction, as chylomicrons with fat from our food replace the need for LDL production.
Does that make sense to you? Let me know in the comments below.
If you're interested in Dave's highly ambitious self experimentation there's much to be learnt on his blog CholesterolCode.com. I've added it to our newsfeed page, so you can follow his updates:
