I Have Low Cholesterol (How Can I Raise It?)

[Bushido1]

Hello everybody,

I have been eating a strict Peat diet for 5 months now (meat, gelatin, liver, oysters, eggs, coffee, OJ, lots of fruit, milk, cheese, coconut oil, butter, vitamin D, K, etc.).

I am a 26 year old male, average weight/height. In this whole time my cholesterol hasn't moved from 135 fasted and I don't know what else to do to raise this. I heard from Haidut and Peat that milk, sugar and vitamin D should raise cholesterol but it hasn't been the case for me. Anyone has any idea on what else I could try to raise my cholesterol?

@haidut your advice would be appreciate it!

 

[lampofred]

A lot of people are suddenly having this issue, including me. Even Peat doesn't seem to know what else can be done besides increasing fructose intake.

 

[gaze]

do you have low cholesterol symptoms? if you feel in good health there’s no reason to care really. too high cholesterol is much more of an urgent issue

 

[Gone Peating]

I would like to know as well, haven't found anything promising, my cholesterol is 160 and I'd like to see it closer to 200

 

[tca300]

@Bushido1 Are you taking thyroid? Or other supplements that can lower cholesterol? One of the main reasons I stopped taking thyroid a few years ago was it tanked my cholesterol to 135. When I'm not taking thyroid, my cholesterol is between 160 - 180.

Low cholesterol in my opinion is risky.

 

[Bushido1]

do you have low cholesterol symptoms? if you feel in good health there’s no reason to care really. too high cholesterol is much more of an urgent issue

Yes. Depression and even suicidal thoughts, but this come after my girlfriend broke up with me, not sure if just cholesterol. I am also experiencing massive shedding and hair loss.

Low cholesterol is a bigger issue than high cholesterol and it can lead to cancer and suicidal thoughts/depression. You can find that info online.

I am planning on changing something from my Peaty diet. Either reducing sugar or cutting of dairy. What would you guys recommend from those 2 options?

 

[Bushido1]

@Bushido1 Are you taking thyroid? Or other supplements that can lower cholesterol? One of the main reasons I stopped taking thyroid a few years ago was it tanked my cholesterol to 135. When I'm not taking thyroid, my cholesterol is between 160 - 180.

Low cholesterol in my opinion is risky.

I stopped taking thyroid a few months ago when I realized that it uses cholesterol for producing the protective hormones. The cholesterol hasnt changed in that period tho, still at 135 the whole time.

 

[lampofred]

Yes. Depression and even suicidal thoughts, but this come after my girlfriend broke up with me, not sure if just cholesterol. I am also experiencing massive shedding and hair loss.

Low cholesterol is a bigger issue than high cholesterol and it can lead to cancer and suicidal thoughts/depression. You can find that info online.

I am planning on changing something from my Peaty diet. Either reducing sugar or cutting of dairy. What would you guys recommend from those 2 options?

Sugar is known to increase cholesterol, and I'm not sure if reducing dairy would help... Maybe adding salt, starch, meat, especially gelatin instead of taking out fructose/dairy would help? Things that reduce nervous stimulation and are sedative would probably increase cholesterol. It might be the over-stimulation from the high water content that's reducing cholesterol for so many people who follow Peat. This is completely a guess though, Peat has never said anything besides increasing fructose/carbs.

 

[tca300]

Yes. Depression and even suicidal thoughts, but this come after my girlfriend broke up with me, not sure if just cholesterol. I am also experiencing massive shedding and hair loss.

Low cholesterol is a bigger issue than high cholesterol and it can lead to cancer and suicidal thoughts/depression. You can find that info online.

I am planning on changing something from my Peaty diet. Either reducing sugar or cutting of dairy. What would you guys recommend from those 2 options?

I think dairy fats, as well as sugar ( sucrose or fructose ) would be very supportive of cholesterol production, especially when the dairy fats are by themselves ( butter, cream ). Replacing fruits with starches would probably make things worse, as starch is terrible at supporting cholesterol production.

What supplements are you taking? Also, do you eat a lot of fiber?

 

[Bushido1]

I think dairy fats, as well as sugar ( sucrose or fructose ) would be very supportive of cholesterol production, especially when the dairy fats are by themselves ( butter, cream ). Replacing fruits with starches would probably make things worse, as starch is terrible at supporting cholesterol production.

What supplements are you taking? Also, do you eat a lot of fiber?

This is the advice that I keep hearing and that I have been following for the last 6 months with no improvement.

Can someone point something else that I am missing? Because this is not working for me and I know that it hasn't work for other people in this forum neither.

I am eating the diet that I posted above: meat, gelatin, liver, oyster, coffee, lots of fruits, milk, cheese, coconut oil, butter, eggs, vitamin D, K, E. No fiber nor other supplements.

 

[Jman]

Peat has mentioned a few times on Kmud that its important to keep the intestine clean to keep cholesterol production up. If the liver is being burdened by endotoxin it can interfere with cholesterol production. So raw carrot or boiled mushrooms or cooked bamboo shoots are things to try.

My cholesterol was 135 a couple years ago, at the time I was experiencing bouts of severe depression with suicidal ideation, as well as a lot of other hypothyroid symptoms. At the time I wasn't eating any fiber, my diet was basically the same as what you listed ( and It still is, its a good diet) but I wasn't eating the carrot at the time, because it seemed to give me anxiety and headaches. I decided to try introduce it very slowly, one bite of a carrot, well chewed, per a day for a week, then the next week 2 bites per day, etc. Until I got to about half a carrot which is what I do to this day. After the first few weeks it started working how it should, anxiety way down, migraines gone. I think my cholesterol was still low though because when I tried to introduce a little cynoplus and cynomel Id become depressed by about the 4th day. So I decided to try Progesterone, progest-e at 2 to 4 drops orally per day. That completely stopped depression and anxiety, and bought my resting pulse from 68 to 78. After 2 months of progesterone I decided to try thyroid again, and tolerated it just fine. I had my cholesterol tested about a year after starting the thyroid and it was 160.

You can mitigate allot of the bad effects of the low cholesterol by supplementing with pregnenolone and or progesterone. Though I don't use pregnenolone because Ive found it irritates my intestine strongly.

Also its good to consider that using supplements orally could be irritating to the intestine, so using them topically is another idea, you need to use about 10 times the amount on the skin to match the oral absorption. It makes it more expensive and inconvenient but for me Ive found its been worth it.

Also Peat has mentioned somewhere that little bits of t3 like 1 - 3 mcgs is very supportive to the liver and can help it produce more cholesterol.

So yeah, bit of a brain dump of a post here but in summary; Clean intestine = happy liver = better cholesterol production, supplementing with progesterone can help compensate for the low cholesterol.

 

[Rafael Lao Wai]

Hello everybody,

I have been eating a strict Peat diet for 5 months now (meat, gelatin, liver, oysters, eggs, coffee, OJ, lots of fruit, milk, cheese, coconut oil, butter, vitamin D, K, etc.).

I am a 26 year old male, average weight/height. In this whole time my cholesterol hasn't moved from 135 fasted and I don't know what else to do to raise this. I heard from Haidut and Peat that milk, sugar and vitamin D should raise cholesterol but it hasn't been the case for me. Anyone has any idea on what else I could try to raise my cholesterol?

@haidut your advice would be appreciate it!

Have you tried increasing your comsumption of maganese? Amazoniac posted a study showing this mineral to be important for endogenous production of cholesterol.

Top 10 Foods Highest in Manganese

Trying out a supplement of mangansese could be useful too.

 

[broozer]

@Bushido1 Are you taking thyroid? Or other supplements that can lower cholesterol? One of the main reasons I stopped taking thyroid a few years ago was it tanked my cholesterol to 135. When I'm not taking thyroid, my cholesterol is between 160 - 180.

Low cholesterol in my opinion is risky.

how much thyroid did u take? and how did u quit it? i was on 50mcgT4, went 37,5, now 25. reducing 12,5mcg evry 2 weeks, i hope it will restart throid smoothly.

 

[CLASH]

I think increasing fat directly increases cholesterol, especially saturated fats. I use coconut oil and beef tallow to increase cholesterol.

Randomised trial of coconut oil, olive oil or butter on blood lipids and other cardiovascular risk factors in healthy men and women
“LDL-C concentrations were significantly increased on butter compared with coconut oil (+0.42, 95% CI 0.19 to 0.65 mmol/L, P<0.0001) and with olive oil (+0.38, 95% CI 0.16 to 0.60 mmol/L, P<0.0001), with no differences in change of LDL-C in coconut oil compared with olive oil (−0.04, 95% CI −0.27 to 0.19 mmol/L, P=0.74). Coconut oil significantly increased HDL-C compared with butter (+0.18, 95% CI 0.06 to 0.30 mmol/L) or olive oil (+0.16, 95% CI 0.03 to 0.28 mmol/L). Butter significantly increased TC/HDL-C ratio and non-HDL-C compared with coconut oil but coconut oil did not significantly differ from olive oil for TC/HDL-C and non-HDL-C. There were no significant differences in changes in weight, BMI, central adiposity, fasting blood glucose, systolic or diastolic blood pressure among any of the three intervention groups.”

Effect of feeding cooked ground beef on serum lipid and lipoprotein bound cholesterol concentration in male swine — University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“The consumption of the beef diet, however, elevated (P<.01) serum cholesterol levels and HDL-cholesterol levels from week 2 through 10 while the tallow diet increased serum cholesterol levels from week 2 through 8. Serum low density lipoprotein (LDL) + very low density lipoprotein (VLDL) bound cholesterol levels were elevated (P<.05) at 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 weeks of the experiment for the basal + tallow treatment”


*Endotoxin actually increases cholesterol production by the liver as a protective measure.

JLR : Journal of Lipid Research
“In the present study we demonstrate that both low (100 ng/100 g body weight) and high dose (100 micrograms/100 g body weight) LPS increase serum cholesterol levels in hamsters. The increase in serum cholesterol is first observed 16 h after LPS and persists for at least 24 h. This increase is primarily due to an increase in low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. High density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels decrease after LPS treatment. Both low and high dose LPS increase hepatic cholesterol synthesis (low dose 85%, high dose 205%) and total HMG-CoA reductase activity (low dose 2.97-fold, high dose 9.96-fold).”

*lipoproteins are protective against endotoxin and used to detoxify it and other pathogens/ toxins.

*I think this is why fructose by itself increases cholesterol; by increasing endotoxin. If its with glucose I think it will be ok.

 

[ANDREW CHIN]

Hello everybody,

I have been eating a strict Peat diet for 5 months now (meat, gelatin, liver, oysters, eggs, coffee, OJ, lots of fruit, milk, cheese, coconut oil, butter, vitamin D, K, etc.).

I am a 26 year old male, average weight/height. In this whole time my cholesterol hasn't moved from 135 fasted and I don't know what else to do to raise this. I heard from Haidut and Peat that milk, sugar and vitamin D should raise cholesterol but it hasn't been the case for me. Anyone has any idea on what else I could try to raise my cholesterol?

@haidut your advice would be appreciate it!

Ray Peat likes using OJ to increase cholesterol production. I know you're already drinking it, but maybe you should try increasing your intake.

5T of coconut oil per day can raise your cholesterol levels - it's the lauric and palmitic acid that does it. I used to be a dedicated raw foodist, and Gabriel Cousens, my former teacher, counseled a lot of raw vegans who had cholesterol levels below 150-160. Usually, it took 5T of coconut oil per day to get back up to that level. I know, it's a lot of coconut oil, but that's what it took. He used to recommend 3T per day, but that didn't work for everyone. You might want to start at 3T, and see how it goes. :)

 

[tca300]

You said " lots of fruits " that equals lots of fiber, unless you meant fruit juice. Also @Rafael Lao Wai has a good point about the manganese, have you plugged your diet into a website like cronometer to make sure everything is adequate?
Manganese balance and clinical observations in young men fed a manganese-deficient diet. - PubMed - NCBI
Supplements can have weird side effects, even if you think they are beneficial and pure. Maybe take a break from the K and E. I have also noticed that gelatin/glycine has a cholesterol lowering effect. Do what you want, you seem determined to change your diet, so self experiment, and find what works for you.

Best of luck @Bushido1

 

[Bushido1]

You said " lots of fruits " that equals lots of fiber, unless you meant fruit juice. Also @Rafael Lao Wai has a good point about the manganese, have you plugged your diet into a website like cronometer to make sure everything is adequate?
Manganese balance and clinical observations in young men fed a manganese-deficient diet. - PubMed - NCBI
Supplements can have weird side effects, even if you think they are beneficial and pure. Maybe take a break from the K and E. I have also noticed that gelatin/glycine has a cholesterol lowering effect. Do what you want, you seem determined to change your diet, so self experiment, and find what works for you.

Best of luck @Bushido1

Thanks for the feedback @tca300. I am just a bit desperate for change because my hair loss has speed up since I started Peating 5 months ago and I think fixing low cholesterol is the culprit in my situation.

How would you go about raising Manganese? Most of the food containing manganese are anti Peat.

Here I attach my Cronometer diet in case anybody wants to make any observations.

 

[Rafael Lao Wai]

Thanks for the feedback @tca300. I am just a bit desperate for change because my hair loss has speed up since I started Peating 5 months ago and I think fixing low cholesterol is the culprit in my situation.

How would you go about raising Manganese? Most of the food containing manganese are anti Peat.

Here I attach my Cronometer diet in case anybody wants to make any observations.

Mussels are okay, according to peat, aren't they? There is also maté tea.

 

[RobertJM]

Does coffee lower cholesterol? I drink extreme amounts that yield a caffeine intake, per day, of about 1g.

I’ve tried cutting down various times in the past but haven’t particularly noticed any benefits of any kind. I’m going to be getting my cholesterol levels checked soon.

 

[Bushido1]

Does coffee lower cholesterol? I drink extreme amounts that yield a caffeine intake, per day, of about 1g.

I’ve tried cutting down various times in the past but haven’t particularly noticed any benefits of any kind. I’m going to be getting my cholesterol levels checked soon.

Yes, I believe caffeine, snd starches lower cholesterol.