Saturday 7

Published: Sat, 01/27/24

Good morning!

Here's your Saturday 7 roundup!

🥩 What I omitted:

Last week I shared this picture comparing steak and fake steak.

Steak has 1 ingredient, fake steak has 15+...

What I left out is that real steak actually has about 50,000 "ingredients" that the fake steak doesn't.

Red meat has ~50,000 unique nutritional compounds. (r)

Good luck trying to mimic that.

🔬 What I'm getting checked:

After about 7 years of carnivore, I'm going to get my second round of blood work.

There's more test I'd like to get, like a complete vitamin and mineral panel and more in-depth lipids and hormones, but as you can see, the costs add up.

That said, Own Your Labs pricing is MUCH better than other testing with the added benefit of supporting Dave and Siobhan's research!

Once the results are in, I'll do a video and/or a compendium to my previous blood work that was done over 5 years ago.

😲 What shocking experiment I'm participating in:

Speaking of blood work, new lipids research (i.e. cholesterol) continues to shock the nutrition world.

Nick Norwitz, Oxford PhD and Harvard MD student, is a Lean Mass Hyper-Responder (LMHR).

He eats a low-carb diet, is lean and active, and has sky-high LDL cholesterol, but low triglycerides and high HDL (i.e. "the good cholesterol").

He published an eye-opening self-experiment, showing how Oreos lowered his LDL cholesterol more so than statin drugs. (r)

Coincidently, I'm doing a similar "experiment"...

My last blood work put me as a borderline LMHR.

Total: 313
LDL: 185
HDL: 111
Triglycerides: 72

The criteria for LMHR is:

Total: >300
LDL: >200
HDL: >80
Triglycerides: <70

While I haven't been doing an Oreo cookie experiment like Nick, I have been doing a carbohydrate experiment by adding in raw milk for the last 18 months during my carnivore bulk.

Further, I've gained 30+ pounds, and I'm not nearly as lean as I was when I got my last cholesterol reading of 313.

Between the carbs and the extra body fat, my cholesterol this time should be down according to the Lipid Energy Model.

Could adding in one of the most cholesterol-rich foods (raw milk) and putting on body fat actually decrease my cholesterol?!?!

We'll know in a couple of weeks!

The question remaining would be: if you're on a very low-carb diet, and your cholesterol goes up, is that going to cause cardiovascular disease?

The answer is that we don't know.

Should you just add 50-100 grams of carbs to mitigate this risk if you are a LMHR? Maybe.

But a study published just last month by Dave Feldman (same Dave mentioned above with Own Your Labs) and colleagues sheds some light on this...

They compared 5 year LMHRs to a matched control group.

Results: There was no relationship between LDL levels and arterial plaques. (r)

P.S.

I'll continue to update my Carnivore and Cholesterol article with this new research as it continues to develop.

💡How to read more books:

A rule of thumb: 1 minute / day = 1 book / year

Think about the time you spend just between waiting and commuting...it probably equates to dozens of books a year.

This assumes a book takes about 6 hours to read, which obviously doesn't apply to all books, but you get the idea. (h/t Michael Nielsen)

🧠 What quote I've been thinking about:

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind.

– The Dhammapada, on the power of your thoughts

📊 What I'm listening to:

I made a new friend the other day, Natalie Brunell, prominent bitcoin podcaster, interviewer, and media commentator.

She recently moved to St. Louis and joined the same gym I go to.

This week she had one of my favorite bitcoiners on her podcast, Preston Pysh, discussing why bitcoin is the real Great Reset, the new spot ETFs, and what to expect this next bull run.