Mar 28, 20195 min read

Dave Feldman on a New Way to Look at Cholesterol and Increasing Health Markers with Fat

Updated: Jul 22, 2020

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Dave Feldman is a senior software engineer, lipid and cholesterol investigator, and self-experimenter. He’s done a ton of tests on himself over the past 4 years that are making huge waves in the nutrition world. He’s helping the world rethink cholesterol and go away from the standard lipid hypothesis to the energy model of how our lipid system works. He’s got a great facebook group with an active audience of Lean Mass Hyper Responders. He also travels around the country speaking at conferences.

This is a must-listen if you have high LDL cholesterol on a high fat diet or still think that cholesterol is bad. You should also go back and listen to the Ivor Cummins episode in season 1 which gives more of a foundation of knowledge and a bunch of other great info on the topic.

We jump straight in and get technical in the beginning, but stick around. We backtrack and give a lot more context and explain things more clearly. You’ll want to keep going even if we get into the weeds because we come out again and go over a lot of useful information and ideas.

This might be the last time you hear from me before the Food Lies Indiegogo campaign ends. This is the last chance to preorder the film and support us. The crowdfunding ends Monday, April 1st at midnight. We have a ways to go, but if we get support in these last few days I think we’ll hit our goal. We’re still looking for private investors who want to get equity in the film by contributing $15k or more. Please reach out or pass this along if this is a possibility.

Thanks so much, I’m really in love with this community. You’ve all been so supportive and it looks like we’re going to be able to make a super high quality film to get this information out to the world without any outside interests or producers stepping in and influencing the message. Click through the link in the show notes or from FoodLies.org. Now let’s hear from the great Dave Feldman.

http://indiegogo.com/projects/food-lies-post

Show Notes

We jump straight into his carnivore experiment
He unexpectedly had very high triglycerides after a short time eating only beef products
How much things like fasting affect lipid tests
New blood test protocol doesn't even ask you to fast even though if you're eating a low carb diet and eat a fatty meal before your blood test you're loading your body temporarily full of triglycerides that will throw off the test
We back up a bit and start from the begining with his story of how he got into this cholesterol world
Cholesterol is like a distributed systems network
The less fat he ate (on a keto ratio) the higher his cholesterol would go. So to lower his cholesterol he would just have to eat more fat before his test
This is disrupting the whole standard medical community in 2 ways - they don’t think it can change that much over the course of a few days, and it’s also the opposite of what they say - they believe more fat should be bad
What is the lipid hypothesis?
There’s no study that really confirms this hypothesis
He thinks LDL particles have 2 purposes - first to deliver energy, then to patrol
The energy delivery might only be an hour, but they can “patrol” for 2-4 days
There’s other purposes we haven’t even studied much like immune response
They can bind to pathogens or can provide alpha tocopherol to reactive oxygen species to turn them into non-reactive products
Ambulances, accidents, and aliens
All cause mortality and lower LDL does NOT correlate as the standard narrative suggests it should
People go on low carb or keto diets and every single thing in their life and lipid panel improves except for this 1 factor - LDL
He’s been developing what he calls “the energy model” for how lipids work
He runs a Facebook group called Lean Mass Hyper Responders for a certain type of people who are lean and fit on a LCHF diet who have super good HDL and triglycerides but super high LDL
He polled the group and the vast majority report they feel better to significantly better
This “cholesterol is bad” stuff has been hammered into him for so long he may never believe anything otherwise
He did a 3.5 hour podcast with Peter Attia (who was in ketosis for 3 years straight) who still looks at cholesterol in the context of a Standard American Diet of trash
The group of LMHR people is really interesting to study because they also have super low cardiovascular disease markers
The podcast with Peter had some positive outcomes
His CIMT (Carotid intima-media thickness) tests that he does regularly to measure his CVD risk factor
It actually got a lot better since transitioning from his SAD diet to keto, even though doctors say that’s not even possible
He then made his score get worse eating white bread, pizza, and a high carb + high fat killer combo diet and gaining a lot of weight
He then got it to drop back down again on a keto diet all while having 200+ LDL-C and 2000+ LDL-P
Doing exactly the opposite of what the literature says should happen
ALSO on the unhealthy Standard American Diet test where he was gaining weight his LDL went back down to good levels that a normal doctor would like WHILE his CIMT score got worse
Join the facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/LeanMassHyperResponder/
He thinks LMHRs experience a higher level of autophagy - they’re in a blended fasted state - so it’s hard for them to do extended fasts (which is true for me)
Your cells need to time to rest and repair
Basically, don't always be eating!
Let’s talk other diets - he has too longtime friends who are vegan and they eat from when they wake until they sleep
You can get away with eating trash while you’re young - he was skinny as a rail while eating rame, Totinos and chugging Coke
For the vast majority of people it eventually catches up to them - it could be alcohol, smoking, excessive sunlight - they seem immune to it and then all of a sudden they fall off
We both haven't been sick since being fat adapted/eating a nutrient dense diet
I actually got a tiny but sick though, for the first time, by assaulting my body with stressors for 3 days straight and then working out
More on how LDL plays a big role in the immune system
He has an interesting theory about people with familial hypercholesterolemia having lower total mortality rates despite having high cholesterol because of these high LDL numbers that serve them in times of need. These people have survived pandemics
Let’s talk N of 1 studies
If you’re feeling good 24/7 you're probably doing something right and shouldn't worry about a single number or theory
Find dave on Twitter http://twitter.com/daveketo
His website is http://cholesterolcode.com
If you’re a lean mass hyper responder (LDL 200 or higher, HDL 80 or higher, and triglycerides 70 or lower) join the group https://www.facebook.com/groups/LeanMassHyperResponder/