Comments on: Mouse Study Claims Low-Carb Diet Leads To Atherosclerosis In Humans! Do They Really Think We’re That Stupid?

By: Alejandro

Alejandro — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 20:04:12 +0000

There is one other small detail. The high carb diet did not have any added cholesterol while the low-carb and SAD diet had .15% (of energy) as added cholesterol. Feeding cholesterol to rats and other herbivore animals is a guarantee for atherosclerosis since they don’t have the same type of mechanism we (humans) have to clear cholesterol. Feeding saturated fat by itself does not create atherosclerosis in rats, rabbits, etc. Take a look at these studies:

Relative Failure of Saturated Fat in the Diet to Produce Atherosclerosis in the Rabbit
http://circres.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/20/6/658
Saturated fat without cholesterol = no atherosclerosis. Saturated fat + cholesterol = atherosclerosis

Effect of high fat diet without cholesterol supplementation on oxidative stress and lipid peroxidation in New Zealand white rabbits.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20032571

Effect of palm olein oil in a moderate-fat diet on plasma lipoprotein profile and aortic atherosclerosis in non-human primates.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12492629

Comparison between the effects of dietary saturated (16:0), monounsaturated (18:1), and polyunsaturated (18:2) fatty acids on plasma lipoprotein metabolism in cebus and rhesus monkeys fed cholesterol-free diets.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1728820

Thankfully, humans can deal with dietary cholesterol since we evolved eating cholesterol-containing foods.

By: BlackPhase

BlackPhase — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 03:29:53 +0000

What I would REALLY like to know is not necessarily the ratios of the macronutrients (which, as Jimmy stated, absolutely nothing like a true low-carb healthy diet) but, rather, What the INGREDIENTS list looked like.

I am sure that it was not fresh meats and green veggies that’s for sure, but probably instead was powdered “egg” proteins, rancid or hydrogenated soy oils (or other rancid highly processed franken-oils).

Basically, I’m willing to bet that those mice were not fed REAL food at all, but “foods” that had been reduced to an unrecognizable form.

Sad….. really sad…..

By: rachel allen

rachel allen — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 15:47:29 +0000

they can produce studies till the cows come home, publish scathing media pretties for all to read. but the bottom line is, people are finding health by letting go of the lipid hypothosis. real humans, with real medical tests to prove what they already knew, they are benefiting and regenerating with more healthy fats, and dietary cholestorol finally being able to do its work and rebuild the cells. i love it when a “belief” is proven in the lab, and it has to become “fact”.

unless a persons preconcieved notions of reality are simply too entrenched in incoming grant money to be changed. some things are just too painful .

By: Richard Feinman

Richard Feinman — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:13:29 +0000

ApoE (short for apolipoprotein E) is one of the protein components of the cholesterol and fat-carrying particles known as lipoproteins (LP) that circulate in the blood. It is required for efficient clearance of some of these particles. What should have been written in Jimmy’s article is ApoE knockout mice, that is, mice that have been genetically engineered to have no ApoE. Such mice are naturally prone to atherosclerosis because of the poor clearance of the LP particles. So the mice in this study were ApoE-KO mice (genetically referred to as ApoE-/-) which have to be used to study atherosclerosis (or more precisely the role of Apo-E) because normal mice don’t generally develop atherosclerosis possibly because of very high HDL.

It is rare for humans to be deficient in ApoE but those people who are, do have high cholesterol but I believe are not particularly susceptible to atherosclerosis.

Is this a good model for human lipid metabolism and the effect of low carbohydrate diets (LCD)? One suggestion that it is not is that the triglycerides went up on the LCD which almost never happens in humans when they reduce carbohydrates. One tries to be collegial in research but this work, or at least the authors interaction with the press, seems very biased and somewhat hostile and I am pretty much at a loss as to what to say.

By: diana

diana — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:36:57 +0000

What’s an ApoE mouse? What’s an ApoE human?

By: Anton Crocek

Anton Crocek — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:30:27 +0000

Nathan Pritikin was riddled with leukemia. He committed suicide at age 69. Apparently, his leukemia had been in remission, but returned even after many years on his low-fat diet. (He was rabidly ant-fat, but also anti-sugar.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Pritikin
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20090134,00.html