On Mon, 30 Jun 1997, Dean Esmay wrote:

> Your serum lipid picture is clearly mixed.  It's not entirely clear that
> what you've got here is worse than what you had before.  Having
> triglycerides go from 160 to 97 is a massive improvement, having
> triglycerides under 100 is just about ideal.  Your HDL cholesterol is
> trending upward and that is a good thing.  By any chance, were your Lp(a)
> numbers measured?  Probably not but worth asking.

No, I don't think so.  My doctor, who knows nothing of low-carb
diets, said that he had never seen such a satisfactory weight
loss accompanied by such a rise in total and "bad" cholesterol.

> The jump in your LDL cholesterol level is disturbing.  The next question
> would be, what exactly are you eating?  Describe your diet for the last
> week in as much detail as you can give.

Well, I ran out of pemmican a couple of weeks ago, so I haven't
had any of that more recently.  I typically have 2 "organic eggs"
for breakfast, fried in a bit of olive oil, plus two or three
pieces of "organic" sausage, and a piece of fruit: usually a kiwi
or an orange.

Lunch is erratic, but tends to be something like salami or
leftover broiled chicken drumsticks, which I have quite often.
Plus a salad with olive oil and lemon juice or some fruit again.
When I have some "hunter's sausage" around, I like to have a
couple of them for lunch, too.

For the past six weeks, dinner has been erratic too, because I
have been teaching nights from 6:30 to 9:45 and don't like to
feel too overfed when lecturing.  But this is the meal where I'm
most likely to have a piece of red meat or a pork chop, plus some
steamed cauliflower or zucchini fried in olive oil.  I was using
coconut oil liberally too, as a substitute for butter.  Hmmm...

For snacks, I use mostly jerky and/or nuts, with occasional
indulgence in grapes.  As I look at it, the diet is a bit low in
fiber, which could aggravate the problem I suppose.

> Over on Paleofood Mary Enig and Sally Fallon recently suggested that
> cholesterol is an irrelevency, which I found fascinating.  I hope to get
> them to defend that statement.

Yes, I saw that.  Their claim is that it is the *oxidation* of
LDL that is dangerous, and this is unlikely unless one is eating
lots of polyunsaturates that oxidize readily in the body.  And it
is good motivation to use antioxidants, if your LDLs are as high
as mine.  I am somewhat reassured by what they say, but my
numbers are still way out of line with the results that others
are getting, so I'm by no means completely reassured.

The blood was drawn after about 16 hours of fasting, by the way.

Todd Moody
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