On Wed, 3 Jul 2002, Tom Bridgeland wrote:

> tsayonah wrote:
>
>   What was
> > the carb intake for these folk?  How is your own?  If you
> > have been paleo for a while, go get your own cholesterol
> > measured.  Reducing your carb intake should have it going
> > down...
>
> I am not so sure this is the whole story. I went from years of
> cholesterol in the 180-200 range, to 250+ after going low carb. So low
> carb definately did NOT reduce my cholesterol, it increased it 25%. At
> the time I was doing Atkins with its high saturated fat and milk fat,
> so that is probably the culprit, but just low carbing is not enough. I
> am more paleo now, I suppose I should go get my blood checked just to
> see what happened.

It's *certain* that carbs are not the whole story about serum
cholesterol.  In at least some people, certain saturated fats
downregulate hepatic LDL receptors, slowing LDL reuptake and
causing serum LDL to rise.  In my own case, paleo in the
Neanderthin style caused my total cholesterol to go from 226 to
302, with most of the increase in LDL.  In the five years since
then, I've done a lot of experimenting, and there is no question
that my LDL fluctuates according to the amount of animal fat I'm
eating.  My HDL did slowly go up, from 32 to 50, though, over a
period of about two years.  It has stayed at about 50 since then.

It's a complex subject, and even more so when you ask whether the
cholesterol level has any real health implications.

Todd Moody
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