Lurisia Dale wrote:

>"Despite what anybody tells you--despite the outrageous claims of the
>low-carbohyrdate, high-fat diet doctors--if you eat a lot of the saturated fats
>found in cheeses, butter, and bacon and don't cut you overall calorie intake,
>your cholesterol will go up.  The medical community has known this for more than
>fifty years.  It's been demonstrated in hundreds of clinical trials, including
>metabolic ward studies, in which people are locked into a hospital wing and only
>allowed to eat foods that have been carefully weighted and analyzed.  Many of
>the low-carbohydrate diet doctors claim that these clinical trials are invalid
>because none of them reduced the carbohydrate content sufficiently.  These
>doctors should know better; low carbohydrates don't guarantee low cholesterol.
>
>

Cordain actually makes 2 claims in this paragraph.  1.  High SFA +
normal calories = higher cholesterol.  2.  Low carbs don't guarantee
low/lower cholesterol.  I think the second claim is indisputably true,
especially with respect to total and LDL cholesterol.  As for the first
claim, I think the evidence is equivocal.  It is true that a Nobel Prize
was awarded for the research showing that SFAs (certain ones, not all of
them) cause an increase in LDL by causing a downregulation of LDL
receptors in the liver.  That is an established fact.  But the vast
majority of these studies are fairly short term (like the Phinney
study).  I think longer term studies show that over the course of a
year, cholesterol tends to return to its orginial value.

While it seems to be the case that *some* people on lowcarb high-fat
diets see a reduction in LDL cholesterol, I think it's safe to say that
plenty of us won't, and many will see an increase, possibly only for 6
months or so.  In my own case, my total cholesterol went from about 230
to about 300 after five months on Neanderthin.  Some of that increase
was HDL, from about 30 to 50.  The rest was LDL.  Over time, the LDL
dropped back down, and today my total cholesterol is stays at about
250.  HDL remains at 50.  TG about 90.  LDL is... 202 I guess.

Todd Moody
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