Philip wrote:
> That's a very different story than the figures you reported in your intial
> post, Todd. When you look at all three sets of figures instead of just the
> first two, the picture looks much better:
>
>                 Jan. 1997   June, 1997	Around March 98
> Weight          252         217		?			
> Total
> cholesterol     226         302		250
> HDL             32          35		48
> LDL             120         246		~180?
> Triglycerides   160         97		<97
>
> That HDL increase was actually significant--it brought you up from an
> unhealthy level to an average level. The subsequent dropping of LDL is also
> interesting, though you would still have had far to go to reach the levels
> of HG's (30-70). 
>   
I agree.  When I started paleo, I had already lost most or all of the 35 
lbs.  I don't know what my weight was in '98, but I doubt it was much 
different from what it was in June 1997.  I maintained that weight for a 
number of years.  As I recall, my BF then was consistently about 17%, 
sometimes a bit more.  I've never been able to get much below that 
without significant caloric restriction.  The premise (or promise) that 
I might eat as much as I like of strictly paleo foods, and automatically 
shrink down to 10% or so BF has never worked for me.  I have on occasion 
been able to get my BF that low, but only by going hungry a lot.

Concerning the lipids, it's interesting to me that my tests last fall 
weren't worse.  My weight was back up.  I'm older.  I had been eating 
SAD with a kind of vaguely lowcarb emphasis (i.e., I never went back to 
eating bread, for example, unless it was a pizza crust.  And I didn't 
bother with sweets.) for a couple of years.  And yet my HDL of 55 was 
*higher* than in '98 after a year of pretty strict paleo.  My TG was 
higher too, but not astronomically.  My LDL was a bit lower.  I don't 
know what my Hba1c was in '98; wish I did.  Maybe I can dig up the 
actual lab report somewhere.  It's probably on there; I just wasn't 
paying much attention to BG issues then.

> The two people I know whose LDL went up on a NeanderThin-type diet didn't
> stick with it, so I wasn't sure if that was a permanent or temporary
> phenomena. Your experience suggests it might be temporary for at least some
> people, though one case is not solid evidence. It looks like if you had
> tweaked the diet a bit by reducing SFA's you might have achieved fairly
> healthy numbers in another year or so, and even with the high SFA levels
> your numbers were beginning to improve significantly.

One case is not evidence, except as it concerns that one individual!  My 
belief is that the LDL rise in response to dietary SFA is indeed 
temporary for a lot of people, particularly if the reason for the 
increased SFA is a sharp reduction in carbs, as opposed to just eating a 
greater proportion of SFA in a high-carb diet.  So many clinical studies 
of SFA and LDL are just a few months in duration, and they involve 
*replacement* of MFA and PUFA by SFA in "normal" (i.e., high carb) 
diets.  Then these studies are used as "evidence" that lowcarb diets 
cause longterm "dangerous" changes in LDL.  Wolfgang Lutz followed 
patients for years and charted cholesterol levels as he put them on his 
72g lowcarb program.  He documented a common rise in cholesterol, 
followed by a drop to about what it was to start with, or lower 
(especially in younger people it would go lower).

My hypothesis is that combining very lowcarb, near-paleo, with daily IF 
will change these numbers more dramatically than lowcarb or paleo alone 
ever did.  We'll see in a few months if I'm right.

Todd Moody
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