Can you imagine eating 700 eggs in a month? Well, this may sound strange, but recently a medical student from Harvard conducted a strange study and ate around 700 eggs in a month to study the effect of ‘the fowl’ diet and its impact on his cholesterol levels. Here’s how his body reacted to it and all you need to know about this bizarre experiment.
The experiment
Dr.Nick Norwitz, a Harvard medical student had almost 700 to 720 eggs in a month to study the effects of the ‘fowl’ diet and its effect on his cholesterol levels. Unlike the common expectations, following this diet actually helped him lower his LDL levels and saw a drop of LDL levels by nearly 20 percent.
Interestingly, Norwitz had expressed on his Youtube video that he had ‘hypothesized’ several things before embarking on this rare experiment of consuming around 60 dozen eggs would not increase his LDL (low-density lipoprotein) or bad cholesterol by the end of this month.
How the study impacted
What made the whole experiment unique yet daunting was that he had to eat around 24 eggs per day on an average of one per hour. In fact, Norwitz’s dietary intake of cholesterol had quintupled. It was found that Norwitz’s intake of a perceived 133,200 milligrams of cholesterol went over the month, he said in a video posted to YouTube. What’s more, Norwitz’s LDL levels declined by 2 percent in the first week of his new diet before dramatically decreasing by 18 percent in the latter two. Norwitz’s normal LDL levels were around 90 mg per decimeter while he was following a standard American-style diet prior to going for a keto.
The right balance
According to a report published in a digital journal, Healthline, it was found that eating two eggs, or half a cup per day, as compared to an egg-free high-carb breakfast saw no change in blood cholesterol levels.
The study also found that those with health issues, including diabetes, who are eating six to 12 eggs per week didn’t have a negative effect on the total blood cholesterol levels or heart disease risk factors; rather, it increased high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, or “good” cholesterol.
How it works
Dietary cholesterol simply attaches to the gut receptors, stimulating the release of the hormone known as Choleson, which further combines with a receptor on the liver that inhibits “endogenous cholesterol synthesis,” maintaining homeostasis or equilibrium.
“In lean, insulin-sensitive people who go on low carbohydrate diets, especially ketogenic diets, it’s common for LDL levels to rise as part of a lipid triad,” Norwitz explained in his video.
What’s more, according to him, the lipid triad consists of “high LDL, high HDL and low triglycerides, which constitute a metabolic signature of an egg-treme shift from carb-burning to fat-burning.”
In fact, as per his video he had shared that adding carbs back into the diet of the “lean, mass hyper respondents” can lower the LDL.
The twist and decline
Norwitz tweaked his egg diet with some healthy foods in the last two weeks; he chose fruits, including blueberries, bananas and strawberries, to eat in the final two weeks, resulting in the dramatic drop. In fact, sixty grams of net carbs per day weren’t enough to reverse his “lean, mass hyperresponder phenotype” but had a significant enough effect to “ebb and flow out” of ketosis. “The extra dose of carbs dominated over the insane amounts of cholesterol I was consuming,” he said.
Lastly, the Oxford University PhD recipient says he was eating 75 grams of saturated fat or 100 calories and about 5,000 milligrams per day of dietary cholesterol. The American Heart Association recommends no more than 6 percent of the daily caloric intake should be saturated fats.
What is your take on this?