Cholesterol is a passenger, not a driver - Dave Feldman

[TheresaB]

Dave Feldman's presentation "Cholesterol is a Passenger, Not a Driver" from Low Carb Breckenridge presented in March 2018 is now available on You Tube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LuKwsz ... e=youtu.be

For those unfamiliar with him, Dave is one of our own with an ApoE4 allele and a hyperesponder. Cholesterol is his fascination/obsession. Unconstrained by medical training, he is an engineer who recognizes the lipid system as very similar to distributed objects in networks. His website is "Cholesterol Code: Reverse Engineering the Mystery" http://cholesterolcode.com/

[shenmen100]

Hi Theresa,
I wanted to thank you for posting this talk. It makes a lot of sense and I had never heard about remnant cholesterol before. I then went to his website and plugged in my numbers and was in the lowest risk quintile (APOE3/4) ketogenic diet
TC 257
HDL 98
LDL 149
TG 48

I then plugged my husbands numbers in from 2009 and he was in the highest artherogenic plasma risk group and indeed he had a collapsed LAD with a stent placed within 6 months after that test. He also got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes late onset afterwards. He is a lean extreme exerciser and his doctor at the time did not think he looked like he had any metabolic issues!!! (APOE 2/3)
TC 164
LDL 101
HDL 37
TRG 128
We both are ketogenic now and I we’ll soon get his latest cholesterol test and will re-enter his numbers.

Anyway thanks again for posting this information and all your past posts which are always informative

[Tincup]

Here is the calculator and Dave's blog post on this.

When I did it for T & me while at the talk, our remnant actually came out negative

Here is T's:

--==== CholesterolCode.com/Report v0.9.2 ====--
...<Unspecified time and/or diet> on - ::: 12 hours water fasted...
Total Cholesterol: 227 mg/dL 5.87 mmol/L
LDL Cholesterol: 139 mg/dL 3.59 mmol/L
HDL Cholesterol: 93 mg/dL 2.4 mmol/L
Triglycerides: 45 mg/dL 0.51 mmol/L

--CHOLESTEROL REMNANTS--
Remnant Cholesterol: -5 <-- ERROR: this score cannot be negative. Please doublecheck your values.

--ATHEROGENIC INDEX OF PLASMA (AIP)--
AIP: -0.673 >>> Lowest Risk Third
Go to https://tinyurl.com/ycccmmnx for more on Atherogenic Index of Plasma

--CONVENTIONAL MARKERS AND RATIOS--
Friedewald LDL-C: 125 | Iranian LDL-C: 92
Total/HDL Ratio: 2.44
TG/HDL Ratio in mg/dL: 0.48 | in mmol/L: 0.21

and mine:

-==== CholesterolCode.com/Report v0.9.2 ====--
...<Unspecified time and/or diet> on - ::: 12 hours water fasted...
Total Cholesterol: 195 mg/dL 5.04 mmol/L
LDL Cholesterol: 129 mg/dL 3.34 mmol/L
HDL Cholesterol: 67 mg/dL 1.73 mmol/L
Triglycerides: 55 mg/dL 0.62 mmol/L

--CHOLESTEROL REMNANTS--
Remnant Cholesterol: -1 <-- ERROR: this score cannot be negative. Please doublecheck your values.

--ATHEROGENIC INDEX OF PLASMA (AIP)--
AIP: -0.446 >>> Lowest Risk Third
Go to https://tinyurl.com/ycccmmnx for more on Atherogenic Index of Plasma

--CONVENTIONAL MARKERS AND RATIOS--
Friedewald LDL-C: 117 | Iranian LDL-C: 94
Total/HDL Ratio: 2.91
TG/HDL Ratio in mg/dL: 0.82 | in mmol/L: 0.36

[TheresaB]

I wanted to thank you for posting this talk. It makes a lot of sense and I had never heard about remnant cholesterol before.

You’re welcome. Yeah, I’d never heard of remnant cholesterol either, but it does make sense.

I found Dave’s quote at 27:16 interesting:

I don't believe any lipoprotein is atherogenic. I believe broken systems are atherogenic. So remnant cholesterol is a far stronger indicator of risk of both heart disease and all cause mortality than LDL-C and finally remnant cholesterol typically drops on a low-carb diet. I think the reason there hasn't been a lot of attention to remnant cholesterol is because there's not a drug for it yet. It's just my opinion.

[MarcR]

I agree with Dave that "broken systems" are the real issue. Here's how I put it in another topic about six weeks ago:

For my part, I continue to believe that the lipid hypothesis is incorrect. Once I understood that CVD begins on the outside walls of our arteries, there was no way to square the stories we are told by mainstream authorities with reality. I grew up hearing that my arteries are like pipes and that saturated fat and cholesterol clog them like hairballs. Then, later, I heard the grownup tale of burrowing particles, foam cells, lesions, and calcium deposition. None of these stories can be correct if CVD starts on the outside walls of our arteries, so the lipid biomarker relationships in population studies are pure correlation. [...] I think the bulk of chronic disease risk accrues from poor metabolic health, and the various lipid tests are just elaborate ways of imperfectly detecting metabolic impairment.

[Orangeblossom]

On this subject, I have been reading a lot on stress and the Type A personality recently (think husband might be one) and how that might impact on e.g. heart disease and cholesterol etc. Type A's can be highly stressed, workaholics, people who blow a fuse in queues. road rage, that kind of thing. Anyway, it showed how when they are constantly having the fight or flight response over every little thing, the cholesterol and blood sugar goes right up, in response, as well as other factors causing inflammation etc and this together is linked to risk of heart attacks. So, in comparison to cholesterol being the main culprit, it is far more complex...I did read somewhere stress and Type A personality can be linked to AD as well...

[TheresaB]

hen they are constantly having the fight or flight response over every little thing, the cholesterol and blood sugar goes right up, in response, as well as other factors causing inflammation etc and this together is linked to risk of heart attacks.

I’ve been listening to various speakers from the Keto-Edge summit that just took place https://ketoedgesummit.com/, although all the talks are being made available again this weekend.

One of the guests was Jimmy Moore on keto and cholesterol. He relayed how he’s always had high cholesterol. A while back his dentist told him he had lots of inflammation from where his root canals had gotten infected. Jimmy went to a holistic doctor, got it fixed and his total cholesterol went down 100 points! He said the cholesterol is just putting out the fire of inflammation and when you take a statin, you’re shutting down the fire station. He said he’d rather have high cholesterol.

If unfamiliar with Jimmy Moore, he’s struggled with weight issues his whole life. He has a very popular podcast Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb, wrote Cholesterol Clarity with Dr Eric Westman, The Ketogenic Cookbook, The Complete Guide to Fasting with Dr Jason Fung and Keto Clarity with Dr Eric Westman. Plus he's always enjoyable to listen to, just a regular guy, not a doctor/researcher, who's trying to understand his own health journey and help others along the way.

[Orangeblossom]

hen they are constantly having the fight or flight response over every little thing, the cholesterol and blood sugar goes right up, in response, as well as other factors causing inflammation etc and this together is linked to risk of heart attacks.

I’ve been listening to various speakers from the Keto-Edge summit that just took place https://ketoedgesummit.com/, although all the talks are being made available again this weekend.

One of the guests was Jimmy Moore on keto and cholesterol. He relayed how he’s always had high cholesterol. A while back his dentist told him he had lots of inflammation from where his root canals had gotten infected. Jimmy went to a holistic doctor, got it fixed and his total cholesterol went down 100 points! He said the cholesterol is just putting out the fire of inflammation and when you take a statin, you’re shutting down the fire station. He said he’d rather have high cholesterol.

If unfamiliar with Jimmy Moore, he’s struggled with weight issues his whole life. He has a very popular podcast Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb, wrote Cholesterol Clarity with Dr Eric Westman, The Ketogenic Cookbook, The Complete Guide to Fasting with Dr Jason Fung and Keto Clarity with Dr Eric Westman. Plus he's always enjoyable to listen to, just a regular guy, not a doctor/researcher, who's trying to understand his own health journey and help others along the way.

Yes, I have heard of him. and agree. So, yes in a similar way this book on stress talked about the higher levels od cholesterol being in response to a stress, it showed all these men working towards a work dealing and their levels going up and down after it passes, it was like the body supplying it and the sugar as if needed to 'escape' or for fuel...or for inflammation to help it...I have also read of people having this reaction due to surgery for example. Makes you think of it all in a different way..

[Julie G]

Interesting talk from Dave. I used his calculator and got a remnant cholesterol of .01. Not as good as Tincup and Theresa, but I’ll take it .

For my part, I continue to believe that the lipid hypothesis is incorrect. Once I understood that CVD begins on the outside walls of our arteries, there was no way to square the stories we are told by mainstream authorities with reality

I still think there may be some overlap between mainstream thinking and Subbotin's hypothesis although I suspect cholesterol isn't the driver. The tunica intima (New Latin "inner coat"), or intima for short, is actually the innermost tunica (layer) of an artery or vein. It is made up of one layer of endothelial cells and is supported by an internal elastic lamina. The endothelial cells are in direct contact with the blood flow so I’m not sure the assault is happening on the OUTSIDE although it may originate from there. It’s also worth noting that arteries are actually porous and there’s bidirectional movement between the outside and inside of our arteries mediated via cytokines allowing LPS, and other toxins access that may begin the assault that eventually leads to thickening of the tunica intima as a defense. Cytokines are the sentry guards of the immune system, always in "fight or flight" mode. When activated, they can make arteries more porous. Given that we carry the pro-inflammatory allele, I suspect this inflammatory aspect of our gene is what really predisposes us to heart disease, not our higher levels of cholesterol. I like Dobromylsky's interpretation that hyperinsulinemia is driving the process by thickening the tunica intima. I think its a part of the process, but not the whole story.

[cpatr922]

While AIP is testing HDL and TG for IR, I believe the most important factor is small LDL-P and ApoB.