cholesterol

42 Days of Keto Chow – Day 08 – Beginning Grape Seed Oil and a dissertation on PUFAs

This entry is part 8 of 44 in the series 42 days of Keto Chow Experiment

Today I’m starting the first day of the “real” experiment (last week was a “washout” period to normalize everything). I’m starting with Grape Seed oil. Why Grape Seed Oil? well, it has the highest Poly Unsaturated Fatty Acids (PUFAs) of any oil I could find, including Soybean oil (ok, technically I think Walnut oil has a slightly higher amount but walnuts give me canker sores and I didn’t want to go there). Why am I going to be doing a week of PUFAs? let’s recap in case you missed it:

In my earlier 4 week test, I did a week of avocado oil and I got some really weird results with my triglycerides. I asked Dave Feldman about it and he suspected that part of the cause may have been that I went from using heavy cream as a fat source to avocado oil – which is going from primarily saturated fat to mostly mono-unsaturated fats with a little poly-unsaturated. My body likely wasn’t used to that much PUFA so it may have been the cause. The only way to be certain would be to isolate out an oil that was exceptionally high and compare it to saturated, and mono-unsaturated (MUFAs) fats.

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So what’s the big deal about PUFA vs. MUFA vs. Saturated? Some of it is simply the way the molecules are set up, a major part is that seed oils (which are typically very high in PUFAs) aren’t something humans have consumed for very long, less than 100 years and often shorter. Our metabolism really doesn’t know what to do with them and the high Omega 6 causes inflammation and oxidative stress. By definition a poly-unsaturated fatty acid is a chain of carbon and hydrogen atoms that have multiple double bonds, Mono have a single double bond, and saturated have only single bonds:

Saturated Fats are exceptionally stable and resistant to oxidation (“Reactive Oxygen Species” is a term you’ll hear a lot) – this is why your grandma kept a bucket of lard on the counter and it never went bad. MUFAs do oxidize, though they’re quite good – Olive Oil is primarily MUFAs. PUFAs oxidize like crazy – in heat and even in light! But because the Diet-Hear Hypothesis that fat = bad, cholesterol = bad depends on the ideal that lowering cholesterol is the end-all-be-all, the fact that PUFAs lower cholesterol (while causing inflammation but that’s ignored) means they are “Heart Healthy” and recommended for consumption if you absolutely MUST have fat in your diet. Problem is: our bodies LIKE saturated fats because they know what to do with them so we have companies modifying PUFAs to look, feel, behave, and taste more like saturated. Thus Trans-Fatty Acids were born. We artificially add hydrogen atoms to make PUFAs into Saturated. “Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil” is code for Trans-Fat and fortunately everyone agrees that trans-fats are awful. In part thanks to the work of Nina Teicholz. If you’d like to go down the rabbit-hole on the history of fat, I highly recommend reading “The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet” which Nina wrote. It’s absolutely fantastic.

Anyway, I got my first blood test of the experiment today. I feel sorry for the poor employees at the Draper, Utah LabCorp location. They used to be a walk-in only location but ever since I’ve been going there, you can make an appointment online (which is what I’ve always done). Well there were 3 of us doing blood tests together so we all just carpooled. Well, some people had been there waiting since just after 8 and they took all 3 of us with appointments right at 9 – ahead of the people that had been waiting. Conveniently there’s a card with info to call to express your displeasure and the phlebotomists encouraged the people to do so. I thought there was goign to be a riot =(

It’s finally happened: we’re doing advertising for realsies

We’ve had a few ads here and there on Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit. We’ve done booths at Keto Con and will be at Breckenridge 2018, plus an appearance at the HVMN get together in San Francisco in a few weeks. Today our ad on the Livin La Vida Low Carb show went live. Best part: I totally got “jimmylovesketo.com”

On a side note, I have 3 suckers subjects that are going to be repeating part of my earlier experiment involving living on just Keto Chow, this time for 3 weeks but importantly, they’ll be doing a week of Keto Chow with Avocado Oil and we’ll see how that affects their triglycerides. I am going to be starting my fatty acids n=1 experiment this Friday with the final test just before Breckenridge, should be cool!

By |2018-01-02T21:58:09-07:00January 2nd, 2018|Categories: Keto Chow|Tags: , , , , , , |0 Comments

N=me experiment: 4 weeks of *ONLY* Keto Chow – 3rd week tests back

This entry is part 108 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

I have the second-to-last test results from my experiment back. To quickly recap: I’m doing a test where I’m only eating Keto Chow and only drinking water. Nothing else. No snacks, no diet soda, no gum, no nothing. I am taking the Keto Chow fish oil pills as they are required to get the right EPA and DHA Ω3 fatty acids, and I was taking a magnesium malate supplement (I need more than normal) but I recently stopped that because the version of Keto Chow that I’m testing (v2.1rc2) has additional magnesium malate in it and the supplement I was taking had a gram of dextrose (which sucks). Here’s my complete food log and information from Cron-o-meter for the experiment so far, and here are my blood tests, updated with the results of my latest blood test.

The week proceeding this test was interesting. The short version is: I was at a tech conference with no refrigeration so I was using avocado oil instead of heavy cream. Because of this, I was getting around 2g of net carbs (or lower) A DAY. On the test, my insulin was low, my glucose showed in the red because it’s so low, my LDL-P is below 1000 and my triglycerides are higher. It’s almost like my body is using lipoproteins to transport energy (adding another data point to Dave Feldman’s hypothesis).

The last 5 days since this blood draw, my ketones have come down from the 4.5-5.5 range to the 3.0-3.5 range and my weight loss has slowed a bit too. I’m guessing this is due to using heavy cream as the fat source. Starting today through the end of the experiment, I’m switching from all heavy cream to half heavy cream, half avocado oil. Avocado oil is OK but not nearly as yummy as heavy cream, so I’m hoping that by splitting it I can get the good taste plus lower net carbs. Even with 100% heavy cream, I was still under 10g net carbs though. Protip: heavy cream has half the calories as oil for the same volume. If you’re replacing heavy cream for oil you use 1/2 as much (roughly).

A few days ago a post showed up on the Keto Chow Subreddit: Full month on KetoChow – 13 lbs lost and loving it and this showed up last night: Week 1 with Keto Chow and not much else . . .– looks like I’m not the only one doing this, N=3 then =)

 

On a final note, I’d like to illustrate one of the interesting challenges with this experiment. The evening after I got this blood draw, I was in charge of preparing the food for a neighborhood game night (I was also in charge of bringing the Raspberry Pi with the 4 player arcade version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles). I had previously prepared a brisket with my sous-vide (recipe and more coming =) so I just needed to smoke it, along with the chicken legs and the bratwurst. I also made pulled pork using the InstantPot. It was a truly glorious sight to behold once it was all done.

I didn’t eat any of it.

I had thought about eating some before, but I decided that there were too many variables shifting around (coming back from a trip, switching back from avocado oil to heavy cream, etc…) plus I wanted to keep the inputs clean. I fully intend to do a press release after all this is done announcing that I lived for 4 weeks on JUST Keto Chow and I didn’t want to have to add a little asterisk footnote: “*except that one meal where I pigged out on brisket” (on an aside, anybody know how to do a press release? =) Really, it was just like cooking any other meal I didn’t eat these last 3 weeks (like the CavemanKeto chili I made Sunday). Once committed to this course of action, I just keep going. It’s a little like fasting in some respects. I’m not the only one cooking though, my awesome wife has been feeding the kids some really great keto meals too.

Don’t worry: I put a bunch of the meat in the freezer for lunch on Friday after my final blood draw =)

N=me experiment: 4 weeks of *ONLY* Keto Chow – 1st week tests back

This entry is part 124 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

Way TL;DR: eating only Keto Chow & drinking only water for a week and a half has brought down my fasting insulin to 3.7 μIU/mL and raised my ketones to 3.2 mmol/L. I’ve also lost 9.2lbs but that’s not on the graphs below.

On October 22nd, 2017 (3 years and 2 days after I started Keto) I began an experiment: I was going to ONLY eat Keto Chow for 4 weeks and see what it did to some blood tests. Today I received my first blood test after starting the experiment. I took a baseline test before starting to establish a control to compare against. Leading up to “test 0” I was very much eating keto (and consuming Keto Chow 1-2 times a day) but I was not actively tracking my carb intake. Most (including me) would likely call it “lazy keto” – I know from my own experience that if I do strict keto and write down everything I eat BEFORE I eat it, I’ll invariably get on track and lose weight. But with this experiment, I wanted to go for the nuclear option: absolutely no food except Keto Chow. No drinks except water. No treats. No snacks. No confounding variables.

This would also serve another purpose in allowing me to do a validation test on the upcoming Keto Chow 2.1. I like to have absolute confidence in my product and this is a great way to do it. For the most part, the recipe for 2.1 is the same with some notable differences:

  • Switching from whey protein isolate to milk protein isolate [see footnote 1]
  • Switching the form of Selenium, this change removes a weird smell that goes away after a few minutes. Functionally it’s the same but I like the way it smells and tastes better.
  • One flavor (Natural Strawberry) will be available sweetened with Monk Fruit instead of Sucralose [see footnote 2], another flavor (Savory Chicken Soup)… well it’s savory and doesn’t need a sweetener.
  • A bunch of new flavors are coming, though that doesn’t affect the nutrition.
  • If I can pull it off: we’ll be switching all the magnesium from citrate over to malate.
  • We’re officially recommending using avocado oil as an alternative if you don’t want to use heavy cream (I still primarily use heavy cream).

In the same spirit of open data that Dave Feldman uses in his experiments – I’m publishing the complete blood test results from my experiment. You can view the blood results on this online spreadsheet. Currently, there are only two entries – more will come, there’s a 5-6 day lag between the test and me getting it. I’m also going to be posting my complete Cron-O-Meter logs so you can see exactly what the input variables were. Here are the first 11 days so far. I also did a test on my second day where I tested postprandial glucose while drinking Keto Chow.

So, how’s it coming along so far? The most obvious change I’m seeing is my blood ketone level which has gone from 0.4 to 3.2 mmol/L (I measure each night just after I brush my teeth – measuring in the morning is a bad idea). That rise makes sense since I’m getting exactly 10.54g of non-fiber carbohydrates per day. My fasting insulin has also gone down from 6.7 to 3.7 μIU/mL.  I asked Dave Feldman about the results so far, he said: “The insulin change actually looks even more interesting in the context of everything else being practically the same (including lipids!)” – I’m going to try to get Dave to do a written analysis of all this at the end of the experiment, he’ll probably do one anyway because he LOVES DATA! My small LDL-P has gone down by half, which is also interesting. Personally, I’m not concerned at all about my lipid panel because I do not believe that high cholesterol (or more properly: Elevated Lipoprotein) is something bad. Dave uses a really great analogy about lifeboats on cruise ships… hang on, I’ll just let Dave explain:

OK, that’s the blood part of my experiment. How has the experience been so far?

Before I started this, I was doing Keto Chow for at least 2 of my meals on most days, you’d think that going 100% wouldn’t be a big change but it seems to be. Maybe it’s all the ancillary things I also eliminated like sugar-free gum, diet soda, and anything else that wasn’t Keto Chow and water. Warning, poop talk ahead. First thing I noticed was Bristol type 7 stool, don’t worry though I took a probiotic and it went over to a 4. After a few days, as all traces of other food left my system it’s settled on a 5. I think this is due to everything getting digested and metabolized except for the acacia gum – and that gets metabolized by my gut bacteria into short-chain fatty acids (bonus fat!). The volume has gone down significantly. I’m still regular, there just isn’t that much there. OK, done with poop talk.

Not chewing anything anymore has also been very interesting. I think I need to drink more water – I keep getting a sort of film on my teeth. A quick swish of water in my mouth removes the film but it eventually comes back. I don’t think this would be a problem if I was chewing gum – but I wanted to eliminate ALL variables, including other non-nutritive sweeteners. Maybe I could find some unflavored and unsweetened gum…

Another interesting thing is the “no thanks, I’m just drinking this for now” aspect in social situations. I used to think politely declining carbage was an issue doing Keto. Man – that’s NOTHING compared to trying not to have to explain why I’m not eating bacon right now. For Halloween, we have a yearly neighborhood potluck. I mentioned to my kids a month ago that I could just wheel down the griddle and cook bacon (not thinking that it was SMACK in the middle of my experiment). They ultimately convinced me to do it – I cooked 10lbs of bacon, it was all eaten. Just not by me. Dinner with the family is also kinda weird. I’m cooking food that I’m not going to eat all the time.

Next week will be especially interesting as I’ll be at a tech conference in San Francisco without refrigeration. I have a solid game plan to cope but it’ll be a lot of work.

 

So. There you go. I have test #2 tomorrow, we’ll see what further changes come! (Test #4 will be a comprehensive test just like #0 instead of the subset I’m doing for 1-3)

 

 

[Footnote 1] So what’s the deal with Milk Protein Isolate (hereafter “MPI”) compared to Whey Protein Isolate (hereafter “WPI”)? MPI has a bunch of advantages over WPI and overall is simply a better product to use. I actually tried to get MPI back when I first started doing Keto Chow but nobody would take me seriously – they do now =). Advantages: first and foremost, MPI is the protein from milk, isolated out – this means the protein is in the same ratio as milk: 80% casein 20% whey. Casein is slower digesting, for bodybuilders that just finished a big workout that may not be optimal – but for people on a ketogenic diet, it means you will likely have a much smaller insulin response. WPI is a byproduct of the cheese making process, the supply goes up and down with the demand for cheese. MPI is a primary product, so the supply is consistent and reliable. It’s also coming from Idaho which makes for awesome lead times getting to Utah. MPI also contains a significant amount of calcium and phosphorus in extremely bioavailable forms, this allowed me to kill Calcium Phosphate from the ingredients. Overall, MPI is a slam dunk!

[Footnote 2] Monk Fruit and “natural” sweeteners. For some people, the sucralose we use in most of the flavors of Keto Chow is the end of the world… ok not really =) but many people do want to avoid sucralose completely. Some rat studies (note: humans are not rodents – it’s true, look it up) have indicated sucralose may cause changes to gut bacteria composition. We will be using 80mg of pure sucralose per meal in Keto Chow 2.1 (20% less than 2.0, that’s 0.08g – or 62.5 meals worth is the weight of a US nickel) with the exception of 2 flavors: Savory Chicken Soup and Natural Strawberry – the savory flavor won’t have any sweetener and the Strawberry will be using Monk Fruit extract. I tested Stevia instead of Monk Fruit and the taste wasn’t very good. I also tested Erythritol and blends of Stevia, Monk Fruit, and Erythritol – problem with those was the mass. To get the right sweetness we needed to use 43g of erythritol. That change would nearly double the weight of Keto Chow. No way man! I was toying with making all the flavors of Keto Chow with Monk Fruit but taste tests with people that aren’t me, along with surveys of our customers indicated that wasn’t a good idea (especially since Monk Fruit + Chocolate tasted REALLY weird). I still wanted to have a non-sucralose option available for those that wanted the option. Monk Fruit lends its self well to fruity flavors so we decided to have an additional “Natural Strawberry” flavor.

Eating Keto to Save the Planet (I’m serious)

A lot of people have concerns when they start keto that “well sure, it’s healthy for me but what would happen if everybody started eating like this? Wouldn’t it destroy the environment?” There is a simple thing you can do to stop desertification, lower atmospheric CO2, improve soil health, AND your own health: increase your consumption of ruminant agriculture products. Wait, isn’t that the opposite of what everyone says? Don’t cows destroy the planet, lick your dog, and emit greenhouse gases that will destroy the world? (seriously, you gotta watch that clip!)

Not even close, quite the opposite, and it turns out you’ve been taught that way because John Harvey Kellogg and others pushed a vegetarian agenda way back in the 1800s.

Look, they were wrong about fat being bad for you, carbs being good for you, cholesterol causing heart disease and much more. Why would they be right about this? What if it’s ALL been a lie? OK, so this is going to be a bit of a dive down a rabbit hole, I’ll take you through it in the order I ran across the pieces, I recommend you visit each link and come back here for the next one.

  1. On the first stop of our journey, we have this audio recording of a presentation by Dr. Peter Ballerstedt, given at the 2016 Low Carb USA conference.
  2. I listened to that recording on my drive to work one morning, it was thought-provoking enough that when I got to work I tried to search for stuff I had heard and ended up on this page.
  3. Dr. Peter Ballerstedt also did a variation of his talk at the Low Carb Breckenridge 2017 conference – it’s a video so you can see his slides.
  4. Then the 2 Keto Dudes interviewed Dr. Ballerstedt on their podcast.
  5. He was also interviewed by KetoGeek, it was long enough it had to be broken into 2 parts: Part 1 & Part 2.
  6. Now comes a really fun one: 2 Keto Dudes also interviewed Dr. Gary Fettke who had just given this presentation regarding the ACTUAL history of the US dietary guidelines. The podcast was interesting enough to keep me wide awake driving to Idaho at 3 am to see the solar eclipse.

If you go through all of that you’ll discover some interesting info about some of the “narratives” (as Dr. Ballerstedt likes to call them), the history behind them and the truth. Is grass-fed beef better for you? Sure but not by much, likely not enough to justify the expense. Indeed, grass-fed beef does have MOAR omega 3, but the difference is so little that 1 ounce of salmon gives you more than 3lbs of grass fed beef. If your concern is over omega 3:6 ratios then you should never eat poultry or pork and if you get some soybean oil in your mayo then you’ve likely negated a LOT of grass-fed beef eating.

Then you get into the amazing effects of ruminant agriculture on soil health and how effectively it can sequester carbon, stop desertification and completely change the climate (for the better). I now have a burning desire to save the planet by eating more beef and using more milk products. Happily, the macronutrient sources in Keto Chow come from ruminant agriculture (whey/milk proteins and heavy cream FTW!).

Specifically, I think Dr. Ballerstedt does an amazing job at articulating his points and his “discussion” topics. He’s very deliberate in what he says and how he says it. That first link was so good that I made my kids listen to it one day while we were driving for a few hours. You should check out his Facebook page.

By |2017-09-22T06:04:50-06:00September 15th, 2017|Categories: Weight Loss, Ketogenic Diet|Tags: , , , |2 Comments

Dave Feldman – Cholesterol research reality check

This entry is part 105 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

In case you aren’t familiar with Dave Feldman, you may want to check out:

At KetoCon he unveiled the results of his new experiment. He hasn’t done the full-write up on the experiment and results yet, though if you purchased the KetoCon presentation video download, they just posted all of the presentation videos late last night and you can watch the presentation. I’m not going to spoil Dave’s big reveal so you may have to wait for him to do an update.

So what does all this have to do with Keto Chow? Way back in October 2015, Dave ordered a week’s worth of Keto Chow. In April 2017 he tried doing an experiment using keto meal replacement shakes to reduce variables and picked Ketolent instead of Keto Chow but said he would try Keto Chow later, which he did (Dave actually got the very first shipment of Chocolate 2.0)  I made sure that there was absolutely no expectation of favoritism or quid-pro-quo – more than that I saw it as an excellent opportunity to get some detailed feedback on how Keto Chow affected insulin levels. Dave reported back that he didn’t see a spike in insulin in his preliminary testing, SCORE! We got to meet up with Dave at KetoFest and talk about his experiments, which is always fun.

In Dave’s Keto Con presentation he thanked PTS Diagnostics, Ketolent, and Keto Chow for helping out with his experiment:

And on his experiment diary slide, well you can see what he was eating:

Straight up ketogenic meal replacement shakes. It allowed him to hit exactly 3000 calories a day including the days that he was adding in the “mystery ingredient” he used to drive down his cholesterol – it was still 3000 calories a day just with a different macronutrient mix. It’s pretty cool to be helping out with some really cool science and making Dave’s experiments easier and more accurate!

By |2017-09-08T10:16:16-06:00September 8th, 2017|Categories: Ketogenic Diet, Keto Chow|Tags: , , , , , , |0 Comments

Fun Videos – Coconut Oil will (not) kill you & Low Fat food will make you fat

First we have JP telling us how the American Heart Association has to be right about Coconut Oil killing you

And then we have Adam ruining low fat food

Weird thing is: Adam uses a lot of references from Taubes and Teicholz about sugar being bad but fails to follow through on what you should eat. If you watch the entire episode the clip above comes from the nutrition advice they do give is more of the same “eat less, move more” – guess they decided telling people fat is good was a bit too much.

By |2017-07-28T09:34:09-06:00July 28th, 2017|Categories: Ketogenic Diet, Weight Loss|Tags: , , , , , , |0 Comments

NMR Cholesterol Blood Test Results: I’m still alive (what a relief!)

This entry is part 59 of 131 in the series Ketogenic Diet

Several months ago I got a letter from my health insurance company telling me that they thought I should start taking statins.

Number A) That’s crazy!

Number B) No freaking way am I taking statins, given what I know about their side effects.

Number C) Are we looking at the same results? Because the ones I’m looking at are awesome.

It was time for me to go to my doctor and I had decided it was time to get either a VAP or an NMR Lipid Profile done. Why? LipoProtein particle count is important. Far more important than the density of the lipids within the protein so far as being an indicator of likely cardiovascular disease (CVD).

So I went to my doctor a few weeks ago, told him about the letter and told him I wanted to do an NMR or VAP. His initial response was “how on earth do you know what those are?” Next he pulled up my previous results and was rather confused since according to him my numbers were fine “are you sure they got the right person?” Anyway, he asked which one I wanted (NMR or VAP) – I wasn’t picky so I just said “Whichever one is more expensive.” I figure if they’re saying crazy stuff about me taking statins, they need to pay for it. So I got an NMR, the results took about 2 weeks to come back. Turns out that 2 years of a ketogenic diet is treating me just fine. So, let’s compare my “regular” lipid panel numbers!

March 2014 was 3 months after I started People Chow (high carb). January 2015 I was 3 months into keto. May 2015 I was 7 months into keto. September 2016 and I’m very close to 2 years of keto. I’m at less than half my previous triglyceride number, HDL continues to climb. Total Cholesterol and LDL are up as well but that’s why I wanted the NMR.

3/20/2014 1/6/2015 5/4/2015 9/8/2016 target
Cholesterol 142 135 161 174 0-200 mg/dL
Triglycerides 160 96 75 70 0-200 mg/dL
HDL Cholesterol 43 45 49 53 40-60 mg/dL
LDL (calculated) 67 71 97 107 0-160 mg/dL

lipid_graph

OK, now for the NMR numbers:

Test value target
LDL Particle Number by NMR 943 <1000
LDL Cholesterol 107 < 100
HDL Cholesterol 53 >39
HDL Particle Number 32.3 >=30.5
Small LDL Particle Number 212 <=527
LDL Particle Size 20.7 >20.5
Large VLDL Particle Number 1 <=2.7
Small LDL (Particle Number) 212 <=527
Large HDL Particle Number 3.3 >=4.8
VLDL Size 43.1 <=46.6
LDL Size 20.7 >=20.8
HDL Size 8.6 >=9.2
LP Insulin Resistance Score 46 <=45

Conclusion from my doctor? “Great on LDL number. Size is good. HDL is good, particle number is a little low but not alarming alone. Overall, I would NOT take a statin at this time. Insulin resistance is slightly elevated.” He’s talking about that last number. It’s a score LabCorp assigns based on a couple factors as explained in their test detail document:

Metabolic Syndrome Markers. Three parameters (average LDL size and pattern, large HDL particle number, and large VLDL particle number ) are reported that are closely associated with insulin resistance and increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Well yeah, Back 2 years ago I decidedly had metabolic syndrome and was well along the path of developing “type 2 diabetes mellitus” as they say. Not any more =)

On a final note, I used the numbers I got from this test to complete a “Healthy Living Assesment” for my health insurance (hey, $70 is $70!) the computer recommends I eat less fat to be more healthy. –SIGH–

By |2017-01-10T09:20:29-07:00September 21st, 2016|Categories: Ketogenic Diet|Tags: , , , , , , , |0 Comments

Sous Vide Update: Yeah, it is yummy.

Completely unrelated to Keto Chow but still quite relevant to ketogenic diets. The chuck roasts I had cooking for 44 hours with my Sous Video “Precision Cooker” finished cooking (like yesterday but whatever, I was going for awesome overkill). Turned out awesome. (more…)

By |2021-09-20T13:24:04-06:00May 19th, 2016|Categories: Ketogenic Diet, Keto foods|Tags: , , , |0 Comments