So in this scenario, is it eating saturated dietary fat which causes unhealthy levels of cholesterol in the blood?

Or is it because the person's diet has caused them to become overweight/obese and therefore the body's cholesterol levels have increased as a result?

In my own experience, I lost 20% of my body weight (57 lbs) by eating a high fat low-carb diet, supplemented by intermittent fasting. I was on statins (cholesterol medication) and an ARB (for hypertension), and was able to stop taking these meds 18 months after losing the weight.

There are lots of reasons to avoid saturated oils/fat. I think it's misleading and overly simplistic to say or imply that dietary fat leads to high cholesterol.

https://peterattiamd.com/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-pa...

My blood chemistry is better than it ever has been. My A1C is great. My LDL and VLDL are very low. I eat saturated fat and olive oil. I eat fish 2 or more times a week. Some white fish (cod) but mostly salmon and a little tuna. I have more weight to lose, maybe another 40 lbs. I was trending towards metabolic syndrome before keto. I exercise for 40 to 50 mins a day, 5 days a week. Strength training walking and more.

Since going keto (2 years ago) I have had no colds, no ear infections, no sinus infections. I have had the flu once. That is it. I used to get a lot of ear infections and colds and more. Several times a year.

I have heart disease. I had 4-way bypass more than 10 years ago. I take a statin and aspirin.

I am under two doctors care, a primary and a cardiologist. They support my keto diet. My primary says my systemic level of infection is very low resulting in less sickness.

I am a sample size of one so take that for what it is worth.

But the causal link between saturated fat consumption and blood cholesterol levels is very well established. See my earlier comments for links. There are a lot of people out there with very questionable agendas out there trying to confuse people on this issue.

"The total body of evidence suggests that attention should be shifted from the harmful effects of dietary SAFA per se, to the prevention of the accumulation of SAFA in body lipids. This shift would emphasise the importance of reducing dietary CHO, especially CHO with a high glycaemic index, rather than reducing dietary SAFA"

http://www.njmonline.nl/getpdf.php?id=1095

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"A meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD"

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009...

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"High intake of cholesterol results in less atherogenic low-density lipoprotein particles in men and women independent of response classification"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15164336

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"A high-fat, high–saturated fat diet is associated with diminished coronary artery disease progression in women with the metabolic syndrome."

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/80/5/1102.full

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n=1 https://denversdietdoctor.com/lchf-15-years-coronary-artery-...

Yes, saturated fat can raise cholesterol (in some people).

> And the correlation between high cholesterol levels and CVD has been known for decades.

Correlation is not enough!

By the same logic:

Building fire stations (eating saturated fat) leads to more firefighters (cholesterol). Firefighters are highly correlated with burning buildings (CVD). So firefighters cause CVD? The body is way to complex for such a simple statement.

There are also literally hundreds of studies that show the opposite.

Can you cite some? Actual feeding experiments and not self-reported diets?

http://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/a-decades-old-stud...

You can easily find more yourself.

Heart attack is caused by the "plaque" that "breaks off". So I'm thinking it wouldn't be a plaque with just the cholesterol alone. It needs the calcium to really turn dangerous.

I think everyone needs to do a CAC test. But it seems most doctors believe only the US president and astronauts are good enough for it.

This documentary on it is a good one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WygYk81gXXk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwri-0rTweI https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3209544/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulemSPBA3DA

I have had really bad luck finding a doctor that will discuss natural solutions. A nurse friend was suggesting I find a functional medicine doctor or lab scientist.

The thing in those studies, and many others, is how they handle the carbs intake. I would like very much to read about metabolic ward studies in the following terms

Baseline Macros and Overall Isocaloric Intake Baseline blood levels (Cholesterol, Insuline, Lipid curve, triglycerides, etc) Baseline BMI or any measure that could gave information of the subject energy reservoir.

Macros and Overall Isocaloric Intake during study and duration

Resulting blood levels after study and BMI.

If anyone can provide links would love to read that

Ray Cronise has done some interesting work on the body’s metabolic priorities:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5326984/pdf/met...

In short, you’re basically right that eating fat along with carbs or protein will cause your body to store the fat and burn the other fuels it has available instead because storing fat is cheap.

saturated fat intake <-> CVD

All the "blue zone" diets are low in animal protein and saturated fat:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/04/11/398325030/ea...

Eat mostly plants, especially beans. And eat meat rarely, in small portions of 3 to 4 ounces. Blue Zoners eat portions this size just five times a month, on average.

Story one:

High cholesterol --> higher rates of plaque deposition -> heart disease.

Story two:

Inflammation --> plaque deposition that is highly sensitive to cholesterol levels --> heart disease.

No Inflammation --> no plaque deposition --> no heart disease.

If story one is true, inflammation is unimportant. If story two is true then inflammation is what's important and going after cholesterol levels is treating a secondary cause instead of the primary cause. One gets fooled by the dose/disease relationship in the context of inflammation.

You'd need to study the relationship directly. Otherwise, your ignoring the whole range of effects that eating saturated fat may have that would counteract CVD. You're just picking one effect (cholesterol) and making invalid transition from that to correlation between saturated fat and CVD.

Your rebuttal is good in as much as it points to study but surely the reappraisal of these more modern meta analyses carry some weight or are you refuting by appeal to authority?

The guardian article says the peer review had misgivings so obviously the epidemiological aspects of this are up in the air. I'm not on statins but I wouldn't stop if I was. I might however take heart that moderate exercise and med diet appears to have upsides?

What's worse, "studies" like these are used as excuse for people to adopt diets very high in saturated fat and animal protein which are not only disastrous for the environment and animal welfare, but have also been shown to be the absolutely worst diets in terms of overall mortality risk:

https://www.elsevier.com/connect/controlling-protein-intake-...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3988204/

I believe that's the fancy terminology for "We fed people with substance X and blood marker Y went up", correct me if I'm wrong. How is that in any way reliable unless it's proven that elevated blood marker Y causes CVD? It's only reliable if you want to prove that food X causes elevated Y.

Also, I find it amusing that you're deriding observational studies, yet the study you're quoting is observational. And a big problem with a study like this is that it wouldn't discern between a high-protein diet consisting of bacon/sausages and one consisting of grass-fed beef. Processed meat contains all kind of shit, it's a major staple in people's diets and it's not surprising to me at all if people eating that have more health problems.

Of course the elephant in the room is that it's ecologically impossible to feed the Earth's population a diet high in animal protein so even if you have convinced yourself it's healthier it's really not an option for the long term.

One would also hope that the monstrous cruelty of industrial animal agriculture would factor into your considerations at least a little bit.

Simple, lock lots of people in a building, feed them the same thing for 50 years and then measure :) That's impossible, of course, which is why I try to take all these studies, no matter what the type, no matter which side of the argument they are on, with a monstrous grain of salt. When trying to find the perfect diet, I think it's better to look into the diet of our ancestors and to refer to the works of Dr. Weston Price and Vilhjalmur Stefansson. What they did might not be considered technically "science" because it's not peer-reviewed, doesn't have confidence intervals, mortality rates and whatnot but I consider it much more valuable as they spent years on the field studying people's diets and their health, not sitting in a comfy chair measuring blood cholesterol levels.

Inuit lived practically on very fatty meat only. One can only imagine their LDL. Why weren't they dropping dead of cancer, diabetes and heart attacks at 30 years of age? Dr. Price says that in all his travels he didn't come upon a group that thrived on plant food only. If I remember correctly there was a community in the Swiss Alps that lived exclusively on wholegrain rye bread, cheese + some meat once a week and they were very healthy. That's was the diet closest to vegan that he described. Of course, these days with all the nutrition science advancements, with the addition of supplements, it's may be possible to thrive as vegan but I'm not willing to be the guinea pig.

And yes, I'm well aware that feeding everyone animal protein is not sustainable in any way but that doesn't have much to do with the discussion whether animal protein is bad for your health or not. Given the problems with modern agriculture, it's questionable whether the Earth can sustain 9 billion vegans in the long term either.

I try to take into account the cruelty of industrial farming when choosing my food, at least to certain extent. However, you need to note that the very fact of my existence means hundreds/thousands of critters are being killed. From ecological point of view, the best option would be for me to kill myself, not become a vegan. I just have to draw the line somewhere.

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/omega-3s-and-the-eskimo-fis...

IMO all creatures have a right to fight for their survival, including killing and eating meat if necessary. But humans don’t have to so why should we?

I checked all the studies in your link and didn't see anything to contradict the notion that they had healthy enough lives. First study is behind a paywall so it's hard to comment but the most damning thing in the abstract is "The mortality from all cardiovascular diseases combined is not lower among the Inuit than in white comparison populations". Shouldn't it be significantly higher when you consider the copious amounts of "unhealthy" food they consume (allegedly 5-10 pounds of meat per day).

The paleopathology study involves a grand total of 3 mummies, that all died from trauma, 1 of which was 53 year old woman with signs of atherosclerosis but otherwise no evident heart problems, 1 apparently healthy young woman and 1 woman with severe heart and other health issues, some of which the researcher suggests are the result of a bacterial infection.

The Canadian Eskimos study mostly talks about ailments related to their way of life - worn teeth (which were still in excellent condition!!), snow blindness and the like. No mention of degenerative diseases. In fact you'll see a comparison between "traditional" Eskimos and "civilized" ones. If you intended to prove how unhealthy the traditional diet is, this study says just the opposite.

Exactly, correlation.