Smash Notes

Back to Exercise, Nutrition, Hormones for Vitality & Longevity | Dr. Peter Attia, with Peter Attia.

Why Doesn't Food Cholesterol Change Blood Cholesterol?

On Huberman Lab, dietary cholesterol plays no role in serum cholesterol and has no bearing on it. Ancel Keys acknowledged the finding in the 1960s, and the American Heart Association acknowledged it another 60 years later. Saturated fat is a separate molecule, and saturated fat consumption raises LDL cholesterol in many people.

Cholesterol in food is esterified, and an esterified cholesterol molecule cannot pass into circulation the way non-esterified body cholesterol can. On Huberman Lab, the body probably de-esterifies ten to fifteen percent of dietary cholesterol. Small amounts do reach circulation, yet they remain a small fraction of the total body pool. Saturated fat is a fully saturated long-chain fatty acid with no double bonds and can sit alone, in a triglyceride, or in a phospholipid. Fat in food is saturated, monounsaturated with one double bond, or polyunsaturated with two or more double bonds.

The observation that eating saturated fat raises cholesterol is generally correct, so serum cholesterol and LDL cholesterol move with saturated fat even though dietary cholesterol does not set the serum level.

Grokipedia·Ancel Keys·American Heart Association

Transcript

Exercise, Nutrition, Hormones for Vitality & Longevity | Dr. Peter Attia ·

Huberman Lab

More from this episode

  1. Why Does Peter Attia Check Lipoprotein Little a Once?Peter Attia calls lipoprotein little a the single most prevalent genetic driver of atherosclerosis.
  2. Why Does Women's Bone Density Beat Body Fat at Fifty?On Huberman Lab, body fat is the least interesting of the four results a DEXA scan produces and ranks fourth for health.
  3. How Did Australian Women Who Never Lifted Start Deadlifting?On Huberman Lab, a study done in Australia took older women who looked to be in their sixties or seventies and who had never lifted weights, and put them on a…
  4. How Did Last-decade Questions Let Peter Attia Design a Program?Peter Attia defines the marginal decade as the last decade of life and says everyone will have one.
  5. How Did Low Cardio Fitness Raise Death Risk Fivefold?On Huberman Lab, cardiorespiratory fitness shows a profound link to all-cause mortality.
  6. How Much Did Weekly Exercise Cut Alzheimer's Risk?Going from completely sedentary to 15 metabolic equivalent hours a week produces probably a 50 percent reduction in risk, equal to half the benefit of going…
  7. How Did Peter Attia Cycle Nicotine and Feel No Withdrawal?Peter Attia has cycled nicotine on and off for the last 10 years and calls it a concentration enhancing substance.
  8. How Did Armodafinil Leave Huberman Lab's Host Unblinking?On Huberman Lab, half a recommended dose of armodafinil, prescribed by a doctor, was a powerful stimulant.
  9. How Did a Little Progesterone End Premenstrual Syndrome?On Huberman Lab, a low dose of progesterone through the last half of the luteal phase, and sometimes through the entire luteal phase, makes all premenstrual…
  10. How Small Was the Estrogen Progesterone Breast Cancer Rise?On the show, the relative risk increase of breast cancer in the estrogen plus synthetic progesterone group versus placebo was 25 to 27 percent.
  11. How Did Estrogen Alone Lower Breast Cancer Risk?On Huberman Lab, estrogen plus synthetic progesterone reached one breast cancer case in a thousand and just hit statistical significance at a p-value of 0.05.
  12. Why Does Peter Attia Swap Progesterone Pills for an IUD?On the show, hormone replacement therapy for a woman is preferred from her gynecologist, with an endometrial ultrasound every year and a pap smear every year…
  13. Why Does Cutting Carbs Lower Free Testosterone?On Huberman Lab, insulin suppresses sex hormone binding globulin.
  14. How Did Swallowing Anavar Triple a Liver Test?On Huberman Lab, a clinician stopped using Anavar to lower SHBG. The question was whether Anavar was still used because Anavar is too potent.
  15. How Did Peter Attia Leave Most Supplements Unjustified?Peter Attia gives patients who arrive on a long supplement list a homework exercise: answer seven questions for every supplement.
  16. How Did Peter Attia Get Ripped With Low Testosterone?Peter Attia says the only purpose of fixing testosterone is to give someone the capacity to work harder, recover more from workouts, and experience more…
  17. How Did Semaglutide Help Before the Full Study Dose?On Huberman Lab, semaglutide is catabolic across the board, so patients lose fat and also lose muscle.

People

More answers like this

More with Peter Attia

More with Andrew Huberman

Related episodes

Plays from this note through the rest of the episode.

Note

Weekly highlights

One letter a week.

The notes worth hearing, with the minute they were said.