Thread by @DaveKeto

1/ How to Lower Your LDL Cholesterol when Low Carb
(if that's your thing)

*** This thread is not medical advice ***

While it's true I like to say I'm "cautiously optimistic" with regard to high LDL in a healthy metabolic context, there are many who would prefer to lower it...

2/ First, you should know that I believe the reason for this higher LDL when metabolically healthy is generally due to being powered by fat, which "ride shares" with cholesterol inside these "boats" called lipoproteins. You can find out more at CholesterolCode.com/model

3/ This is important to note, because it can explain why the most dramatic changes I've made to my own LDL in experiments were in the context of swapping out fat calories for carb calories. My most dramatic experiment demonstrated this effect last year cholesterolcode.com/the-tandem-dro…

4/ This isn't say it's a perfect, linear shift. There seems to be a kind of "tipping point" for many (including myself) at around 100g of carbs/day*. As in, if I swap out fat and in carbs, I'll see a substantial drop in my LDL. I showed this 2 years ago: cholesterolcode.com/energy-status-…

5/ (*And for the geeks, I believe this is due to bringing up my hepatic glycogen stores to a threshold where it has less demand to circulate triglyceride-rich lipoproteins in the bloodstream. The "buffering capacity", as it were, is covered now)

6/ So yes, my most common tip is:

<1> Simply reduce fat calories to bring up carb calories. Swap, don't add.

7/ Another pretty obvious one for me is:

<2> Get more resistance training, or pretty much anything else that induces muscle repair and growth.

See my experiment and explanation on this here: cholesterolcode.com/resistance-tra…

8/ This one is a little more controversial to me, but is in my second tier list:

<3> Reduce saturated fat in favor of mono or polyunsaturated fats (M/PUFAs).

I'm conflicted because I want to confirm the mechanism behind the lower LDL is this context is proper.

9/ For instance, it's one thing to have some M/PUFA dressing. It's quite another to have the majority of your fat calories from these in the form of oils and I wonder if there's a more substantial risk of per-particle oxidation of LDL.

10/ In short, I wonder if there's lower LDL total due in large part to more of them becoming oxidized and being cleared by scavenger receptors. That's hard to test for, but I have an experiment I may be doing soon to help find out.

11/ <4> Increase fiber (both soluble and insoluble).

It is suggested the reason this works well is due to the demand this puts on the liver to produce more cholesterol for bile salts to help digestion which results in greater LDL receptor uptake.

12/ <5> Gain more fat mass.

No, I'm not kidding. Again, this fits the energy model. If you have more fat mass vs lean mass, there's less need to traffic fatty acids globally as target tissues have more available locally (or least, this is my model hypothesis).

13/ <6> Get less exercise.

Again, I'm not really kidding, as this too fits the energy model hypothesis.

14/ Naturally, there's also discussion of getting your LDL down through use of a cholesterol-lowering medication, like a statin. That topic is between you and your doctor.