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All right, guys. Going to get into a
long-overdue cholesterol update video, starting right after this. Hey, everyone! Welcome to another video.
My name is Aaron. I'm a weird dad. I eat a keto diet. If this is your first time here, and
you want to know if that keto product is worth checking out, if you want to learn some really
easy keto recipes, if you want to see how keto can fit into your weird life like it fits
into mine, then start now by subscribing, and when you do be sure to click the bell so you
never miss a thing. All righty, guys. Going to get into a video about my cholesterol. It's been a bit
since i talked about cholesterol on this channel. The first time i did — it's actually the most
popular video on this channel — my experience with cholesterol keto, and statins.
You can find
that right up here. I made that video late in 2017. Since then, i've been keeping track of my
cholesterol. I get yearly blood draws — at least once yearly — so i've got some data to present
to you. Before I get into anything, i just want to make it crystal-clear that i'm not a medical
professional. I'm not any sort of expert in this field. I'm just some dude on the internet, trying
to take control of his own health. So with that said, I'm gonna bring in some stuff here on the
side.
Let me just adjust my mic here a little bit. Um, these are the things that are measured in a
typical blood test. When you go to the doctor, when you have your blood work done, you'll get
numbers back, and they will account for total cholesterol, LDL-C, HDL-C, and triglycerides.
So here's what my stuff looked like. You can see I weighed about 285 pounds back in the fall/winter
of 2016. My total cholesterol was under 200, which my doctor was pretty thrilled about.
I was on statins at the time. Again, check out that other video for my experience
with statins.
Uh, HDL-C was around 47, LDL-C was 119, and triglycerides were 138, which
is a little on the high side. So I started keto in January of 2017, and then 11 months later,
when I had my blood drawn again, these were the numbers. Do I need to slide over here? Not
yet. So I had dropped close to 70 pounds. My total cholesterol, though having gone off statins
and started a keto diet, skyrocketed to 373. It kinda threw my primary care physician for a
loop. He didn't quite know what to make of it, because look at my other numbers. HDL was high,
which is great. LDL-C was 270. Triglycerides had dropped to 72. These are the numbers I was getting
for a standard lipid panel. This is before I found the work of Dave Feldman, who is amazing. He
does a lot of N=1 experiments. He did a lot to set my mind at ease with regards to cholesterol,
and was the reason I went and got an NMR test the next time I had a blood draw. That stands for
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, and what it does is it measures not only the number of particles, but the
consistency and size of the cholesterol particles. It's really a lot more information to work with.
So you can see in April of 2018, when I had one of those NMR tests done, cholesterol
continued to rise — total cholesterol, but HDL-C was 86.
HDL-P, which is a
measure of total particle concentration, which a number I hadn't had before, was 39.4.
LDL-C was as high as it had ever been, at 293. LDL-P, again the number of particles was 2479.
This alarmed my doctor. Like, I got red flags all over my blood work, saying 'you need to go on
a statin again'. LDL size is 22.3. The size of the particles is important. You're looking for large,
fluffy, buoyant particles that don't adhere to the walls of your arteries. So that's good.
That's a
large size. Triglycerides were as low as they'd been, at 48. And the important thing, another
thing i kind of gleaned from Dave Feldman's talks, was this idea of remnant cholesterol. And remnant
cholesterol is basically total cholesterol minus HDL minus LDL. And there are studies out
there that say that that number, that remnant cholesterol number, the higher that number is,
the more likely you know, a cardiac event will be. So you want that as low as can possibly be, and
mine is super-low. In fact, Feldman talks about what he calls the triad. If you have high LDL
cholesterol, high HDL cholesterol, and low triglycerides, that is a pretty good indicator of
a low risk of cardiovascular event. Again, check out all of his work, particularly this video right
here. I'll link to it. It is his presentation from Low Carb Denver in 2019. Again, just fantastic
information and important information. Go check it out if you have concerns about your cholesterol,
and what it might mean. So i'm going to bring up the the next couple years here.
I might have to
slide like… Do I have to slide all the way out of the picture here? This is what my numbers
looked like for the next couple years. Again, high total cholesterol, high LDL, high HDL, low
triglycerides. You can see my weight up there, kind of corresponding to when i started more of a
carnivore protocol. You know, I've been about in the low 200s, as far as weight goes.
But again
high HDL, high LDL, low triglycerides. Kind of what i'm after. You can see my most recent blood
work. I was 209 pounds, total cholesterol 413. You can imagine the emails and messages that i
got from my doctor, saying 'you should really go on a statin', because again, my other numbers
are kind of sparkling. Low triglycerides, low, low remnant cholesterol. Yeah, LDL-C particles are
high, but that's not something i worry about too much. I'm gonna get rid of these numbers here,
so i can center myself back up. Again, I talk about it in that other video, but i got myself
a cardiac calcium scoring test back in 2018, on which I was hoping for a zero score, but i
got 14, which is pretty low.
And i'm due for another one, I can get another calcium scoring
test in another year. So I'm very much looking forward to that, to see if the calcification in my
arteries has diminished a touch. I will say again, reiterating that i'm not a professional in this
field, but I've come to believe some things over the last three, four years, since starting this way
of eating.
And that is that I like the feeling of not being inflamed. The ketogenic diet
is fantastic for reducing inflammation, reducing the… you know, risk of cardiac event.
I also have come to… sort of the belief that my body makes what it needs, as far as cholesterol
is concerned, to get energy where it needs to go. My cholesterol is high, and I'm okay with that.
There are studies out there that say that higher cholesterol actually promotes longevity, and
every cell in our bodies is made of cholesterol. It's necessary for life. It's not something
that should be treated like the boogeyman, that we need to drive down at all costs,
particularly when you're talking about it in conjunction with a low carb / keto diet.
So that's my cholesterol update. Again, if you haven't seen that other video that I did,
do check that one out. Check out the work of Dave Feldman. Check out the work of Ivor Cummins.
I'll
leave all those links down in the description. Thanks for watching this video,
guys. I will see you in the next one..
