small steps

This article is a little hard to read.  It's about Ronald Krauss. He's a researcher who has done most of of the work on identifying that LDL cholesterol in and of itself is not a marker for heart disease. What's important are a subset of those cholesterol molecules that are particularly dense.  He also says that triglyceride counts are a marker.

Let's review what I've written before.

• Triglycerides are a function of your carbohydrate intake. Due to the insulin response the body will convert carbohydrates into triglycerides (fat) to be stored.
• Dense LDL is a function of a particular biochemistry mechanism originating in the liver due to the breaking down of fructose (sugar) molecules.

So it should be no surprise that Krauss goes on to say that when they did clinical studies that the low carb high protein and lower carb and high fat diets did the most in terms of reducing the dense LDL profiles of those patients.  

Also interested is that saturated fat did in fact increase the overall LDL in the blood but it did NOT increase the dense LDL.

Do you hear that?  That's the sound of "no shit".  To reiterate,

• Excessive carbohydrate consumption will increase both triglycerides and dense LDL in the blood which are markers for heart disease.
• Excessive saturated fat will do nothing to triglycerides and dense LDL.

Skip your carbs, eat more butter and fatty meat.