ASCVD: My Personal Case

Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease. A mouthful.

The following is from a journal entry - Sunday, December 26, 2021.

Email this morning from Peter Attia. Opened and clicked a generic “Nutrition” link. One article was entitled “Ketogenic Diets: Not For Everyone?” and started reading. As suspected. In many people the lipids blow up.

So I did more homework. Searched Promethease and discovered the culprit in my SNPs. Note the images (markup mine):

From Peter Attia, M.D.:

So this is the major concern. ApoB is atherogenic; the tiny particle can lodge in the artery, trigger an immune response, and incite inflammation and macrophage activity, resulting in plaque. This is apparently why I did not have a clean calcium score.

From Peter Attia, M.D.:

Note the subject circled: Male, 52 years. Close to me in age. What’s up with TG on low fat? My guess is other variables.

From my genetic data, parsed with Promethease:

The culprit: rs693(T:T) single nucleotide polymorphism. Key is that it increases susceptibility. Couple that with the normal ApoE variant I have (2/3), is it not possible that the unfavorable variant expresses under high fat diet conditions, and not under low fat? Seems plausible to me. See next image.

From SNPedia:

That belongs to me. Elevated lipids.

From Wikipedia:

Clearly from this article, even with a normal phenotype (Apo e2/e3), there is still the unfavorable allele present, which has a poor binding capacity to receptors. Poor binding means challenged uptake into cells, meaning poor clearance from circulation. This is my problem without question.

My theory is that the high fat diet perturbs the lipid clearance process so badly for me that the apoB cannot clear circulation while on the diet, and takes a long time to recover after the cessation of the diet. I think blood tests demonstrate this.

My hunch for the solution? Keep dietary fat well below 100 grams per day. Preferably around 60 grams on a more sedentary day and no more than 100 on a very active day. If I am exercising a lot, the extra dietary glucose (and/or protein gluconeogenesis) will not become a problem. It is a matter of tweaking and testing at this point.

Does this mean I can never have beef again? Certainly not. Beef may even be preferable, so long as it is low fat.

There is still a lot of work and a long way to go on this. But I am learning every day.

Comments

TOXIC SQUASH SYNDROME

What a curious title, eh? Are any of your favorite foods written about with descriptives like, "...toxic XXXX syndrome"? Like, "Toxic Beef Liver Syndrome" or "Toxic Venison Steak Syndrome"? This was not a deep dive by any means. A cursory look into the Google and Duck Duck Go repositories yielded results to the point of milk-out-the-nose hilarity (to me) when the basic line of questioning went like this: does this food contain toxins? And I don't mean pesticides or herbicides. It's just a matter of what is endogenous to the plant. Like our beloved avocado, which contains natural toxins that can muck up the mammary glands of animals that eat them — leaf, stem, and fruit. I know this is a nearly religious topic for many. I get it. We love our food. But in the end, we have to face the science — the broad, full, complete knowledge of what we are (biologically) and what we need to operate as best as possible. Alice In Wonderland -ish dreamy ideas about

AW, SNAP!

Good morning world! This is my first blog post. I've made feeble attempts at blogging before, and maybe this is another. I'd like to think not. I'm too old to keep starting over! Needless to say, this is a work in progress. I'm hoping there will be some rhyme and reason to this project over time, with some form and function. For now it's baby steps. Currently in my life: a torn (partially I think) right soleus calf muscle from overtraining. I'm a runner, and the injury occurred yesterday morning. Fun. Presently laid up in bed with ice on the leg. I will continue to post more on this. So why not just use Facebook? Everyone else does. I wanted something more personal. Facebook is fine, and I have an account. But I wanted to fool around with something else, and experiment with it. My goal is to have this be my personal space on the web, as a website but better as a blog - so that there can be commenting and collaboration. Now off to the races. The challenge that

THE REST OF MY LIFE

A desire of mine is to curate and share all of the timeless scenes from movies that I've enjoyed over the years. Many come to mind; Jurassic Park is full of them. One such I'll share on my birthday (there will be many to come) that is apropos. It's a quote from the President of the Galaxy himself, Zaphod Beeblebrox . After a long quest to find the answer to the meaning of life, his inquiry to the great computer returns a simple sum: 42. Distressed, he turns and pronounces his next move: "Great. I'm gonna go and find something else for my entire life to be about." That's how I feel today on my birthday. What to do? I had a session yesterday with my therapist / coach. Her one idea offered to leave the session was for me to ponder what peace looks like for me, right now. I told her that days ago I confessed to my sister that, "I just want peace." I meant that I'd really like for the rush and busy (meaningless) activities to calm down and rest

samuel ashford

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