SEARCH
The Dynamic Influence of a High Fat Diet on Cholesterol Variability: Dave Feldman’s Nerd Research on Diet vs Cholesterol
Related: atherosclerosis, cholesterol, cognitive dissonance, dietary fats, health, nutrition
Legal disclaimer: since we are not doctors, do NOT follow anything based on health-related topics on this or related sites without first consulting with your doctor or other trusted health professional. This is NOT medical advice and we are not qualified in any way to offer medical advice.
See prior posts:
- Can an Extreme Endurance Athlete Have an Early Heart Attack? CT Coronary Calcium Scan, HDL Cholesterol, LDL Cholesterol, Statins, etc (UPDATE with a cardiologist viewpoint)
- Relationship Between Lifelong Exercise Volume and Coronary Atherosclerosis in Athletes
As far as I can tell, Dave Feldman (an engineer like myself!), has a better mind for research on dietary fat vs cholesterol than the entire medical research community! Fresh eyes of an engineer free of dogmatic thinking and free of cognitive commitments and cognitive dissonance go a long, long way.
What follows is what I can grok from Feldman’s presentation. If you are an MD, watch it and tell me where I got it wrong, if I did. The main point here is that accepted “knowledge” looks to have a huge gaping hole in its understanding.
Feldman gets right down to showing a direct inverse correlation of dietary fat vs LDL-C/LDL-P cholesterol, showing that large changes can be seen in just a few days (HDL is a direct correlation). And he claims a 100% success rate across more than two dozen individuals in repeating the same inverse correlation.
The correlations and inverse correlations are so predictable and so strong that some of his study participants used the findings to “get their doctor off their backs” and/or to reduce life insurance premiums!
===> MORE FAT = LOWER LDL-C
Feldman’s findings are so transparently presented and so contradictory to what the medical establishment regards as correct that it ought to flummox you if you are a doctor, that is, if you can avoid severe cognitive dissonance.
I am not surprised. Research on how diet actually affects cholesterol for an individual* is so absent in showing the link between diet and cholesterol that at best it makes the whole thing seem a farce. Not to mention a host of other factors*.
My hunches on my own cholesterol vs diet vs how good I feel fall right in line with what Feldman is showing (though I don’t follow a Keto diet due to extreme exercise load, I have a very high aerobic capacity which means I am adapted to using fat for energy).
Feldman’s data is persuasive because a direct mathematical correlation in an individual and consistent across individuals is as close to a proof as you are going to get. Compare that to averaging millions of people with dozens of confounding variables—the 8.873% pregnant pseudo-science stuff.
Seems to me that Feldman is doing science as science should and must be done to be persuasive: formulating a hypothesis, directly testing the hypothesis while varying the hypothetical causal factor, and repeating the results with more and more subjects.
Medical establishment claims that cholesterol takes months to change meaningfully is refuted directly in Dave’s research, showing that cholesterol levels not only can change dramatically in just a few days , but those levels are strongly and inversely correlated with high fat diets (the opposite of accepted thinking).
The data Feldman presents is so compelling with such strong and repeatable correlations that one has to presume that extreme cognitive dissonance must be in place in the medical establishment. Or more likely, willful ignorance driven by money—you find what you look for so don’t look for other stuff since the funding isn't there.
Bottom line from what I can tell: medical establishment thinking on cholesterol is fundamentally ignorant of actual physiological response. At least in the short term. That calls into question the entire body of claims about diet vs cholesterol. I see only a huge pool of ignorance out there, trying to give advice based on averaging millions of people over dozens of variables—research hubris. The medical community needs to get down to basics and prove (or disprove) the link between dietary fat and cholesterol, as Feldman shows so persuasively.
See also Podcast: Dave Feldman & Alan Flanagan – Debating LDL Causality & the “Lipid Triad.
* Actual diet, genetics, epigenetics, gene activation, exercise, etc are all just averaged away for a net total effect that is an absurd mass average finding.
