[blueSky1989]

Twelve years ago I had read too many peer-reviewed papers to know that low-cholesterol diets were a bad idea, and useless from the point of view of having a good blood-cholesterol profile.

Useless because, for example, population study after population study showed that low-cholesterol diets did not improve blood-cholesterol. Furthermore, it was common to find populations with high-cholesterol diets that had an excellent blood-cholesterol profile, and, conversely, populations with low-cholesterol diets and a bad blood-cholesterol profile.

A bad idea because, among other things, low-cholesterol diets will immediately lower your blood Testosterone. Recall that cholesterol is the most basic steroid; from it, all other steroids, including anabolic androgenic steroids such as Testosterone, are metabolized. A diet with a good amount of cholesterol is a necessary condition to achieve good levels of Testosterone.

Why would a hacker care about his Testosterone levels?? Some examples:

Males with high Testosterone perform better in arithmetic and mathematics than males with low testosterone. Males with high Testosterone levels have better short-term-memory. Males with high Testosterone have good mood; whereas low Testosterone causes depression, mood-swings, and angry reactions to minor things.

So, for at least 12 years, I have made it a point to have two jumbo eggs for breakfast. And that's not the only source of cholesterol and saturated fat in my diet. I do, however, make sure that I do not ingest too much saturated fat ... and there are too many more details to my diet to discuss here.

[paupino_masano]

It has also been found that diets high in cholesterol and/or saturated fat also lowers testosterone [1,2,3]. I think the best course of action is to reduce rather than eliminate. i.e. "control" your intake of cholesterol and saturated fats. Blindly increasing your intake of either (above acceptable levels) goes against many scientific studies.

[1] http://www.drmirkin.com/men/1008.html [2] http://www.ergo-log.com/toomuchcholesterol.html [3] http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/study-of-t...

[sandGorgon]

This is incorrect. I'm citing a NIH study that shows just the opposite.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6298507

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6538617

[mamp]

This kind of thinking is simply not medically correct. The idea that eating a will lead to increase in b and then improve all these functions has no basis in evidence. The body is way more complex and the relationships between different proteins etc. is very complex and not well understood, yes, even despite all the work on micro-arrays and rapid DNA sequencing.

High blood cholesterol for example, has a large endogenous component, which is why statins work. It would be nice if the body was simpler and obeyed simple rules of cause and effect. But it's very complex and simple thinking like this aren't based in fact.

Trust me. I'm a doctor :-)

[JohnsonB]

>This kind of thinking is simply not medically correct. The idea that eating a will lead to increase in b and then improve all these functions has no basis in evidence.

Well, sometimes it does, and I don't think the parent post made any sort of general point asserting that this was a universal principle. So if A is a necessary precursor to B and cannot be manufactured from more base components, we have a situation where low levels of B can impair some performance metric, and up to a point an increase in A will increase that metric. The body will maintain endogenous control of the various systems so long as it has the base inputs it requires. As an aside, even if A can be manufactured by cells e.g. cholesterol, there is the whole issue of whether the cells have enough energy/capacity to produce this compound in sufficient quantities at a given time along with all the other demands of them.

>Trust me. I'm a doctor :-)

You basically oversimplified the parent's post and presented it as a straw man, noting generically that we have low understanding of many processes in the human body without refuting his specific argument. That is not a well structured enough of an argument for you to be asking anyone to trust you just based on some imagined superiority in rank. (Hint: being an MD, even a PHD is not a refutation of an argument)

[niels_olson]

Non-correlation between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol would most likely be due to the fact that blood cholesterol, and blood lipids generally, are more strongly related to total caloric intake.

The correlation with testosterone is equally invalid. Low-hanging fruit: it is not the simplest steroid (1). But lets go a bit further: by this logic, men with hypercholesterolemia should be bulls among men. Clinically, this is not the case (FWIW, I'm a physician and have diagnosed a few of these). Yes, cholesterol is a precursor to testosterone. But it is also a precursor to estrogens. Most cholesterol is synthesized by the cells themselves. There is no essential dietary minimum of cholesterol. You can't really avoid it in your diet either, because all cells have cholesterol (broccoli, beef, rice, you choose). Never mind the thermodynamic equilibria of the various enzymes involved, the hormonal regulation of the adrenals and gonads, etc, etc. And if you want to walk the biochemistry back further, the cholesterol is derived from lipids, which can easily be assembled from carbohydrates, especially in an anabolic state (i.e.: growing).

Counterpoints on your "males with..." theories. Spatial reasoning differences disappeared in the only known study of two genetically identical societies where one was matriarchal and one was patriarchal (2). From a more consequentialist perspective, vegetarianism increases with income in developed countries. (3)

The cholesterol in arterial plaques is a red herring. That cholesterol represents something less than a rounding error compared to total body cholesterol, and even less when compared to the total flow of cholesterol that must pass over the plaques in named vessels. A plaque is like a scab of the arterial wall. The plaques are more likely due to repetitive macroscopic injury potentiated by weak connective tissue, due to the connective tissue molecular injuries (collagen cross-linking, glycosylation, etc) caused by excess free radicals and other high-energy intermediaries (introduced from, e.g., smoking, excess dietary calories).

The answer remains the same: eat less. If your weight is outside the normal range according to wolfram alpha, you probably need to visit bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov.

I assure you, many of your forefathers on the Serengeti lived long lives without jumbo eggs, and still had some wicked hacks (like wheels, music, property rights, etc).

People want to hack their bodies. Hack your relationship to the society you're in, that's the problem: figure out how to eat in moderation despite all the messaging. Get rid of Earl K. Butts' stain on the farm bill. Get rid of the farm bill entirely. Quibbling about tenth-degree issues like the relationship between eggs and testosterone is just a win for Monsanto. They got you to talk about something other than the problem. The problem is there's too much food.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Steroidogenesis.svg

(2) http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/08/19/1015182108

(3) https://www.econstor.eu/dspace/bitstream/10419/50169/1/63222...

[manmal]

You rant about non-correlations and such, and then end your post by jumping to a conclusion of your choice ("The problem is..."). Either you allow arguments by others (you are no biochemist either I guess?), or you stick to it, and leave it where it is - there is no scientific consensus about what "is the problem in our society". We can only argue about that, without facts.

I can't find the paper, but I read that high insulin levels are the new devil. If that's true, then bread (remember, mass production started only during the industrial revolution), corn, and especially sugar, are to be restricted as much as possible. Alas, you in the US have a massive corn lobby (real sugar became scarce during the Cuba crisis), so it would be difficult to do away only with corn.

IMHO the root of the problem is not that there's too much food, but the industrialization of the food processing industry. Everything has both advantages and disadvantages - we can choose from 1000 bread sorts, but many of them are heavily processed and freed from all micronutrients. And like every system, the food industry can go haywire, and I think it already has. E.g., look at what kind of chickens KFC breeds for use in their products. Food has therefore become a comodity, and people treat it like that. We are just not used to paying large parts of our income for food anymore, but we really should be - it's an essential part of life, just like housing. They key is quality, and being nice to both animals and environment is important.

[MDS100]

Regarding Insulin, you'll probably love reading this: http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=319

Agree, but eating healthy isn't that much more expensive than eating processed foods. Or at least doesn't have to if you buy the right things (bulk frozen veggies, meat etc.).

[manmal]

Oh, by healthy I also mean that the animals I eat have eaten healthy :) E.g., beef quality is really bad if cattle are not fed grass, but corn and soy instead (or animal meal, shudder). Same with chicken/turkey which are fed mostly corn instead of grains, seeds, worms, etc.

If organic is too expensive for you (here in Austria organic farms have a huge financial overhead because of cert. programmes -> products are almost twice as expensive), you can still by meat of good quality, e.g. grass-fed beef. Because you will find residuals or even large quantities of their fodder virtually everywhere - mostly stored in the fat.

Another thing is the way animals are kept - if they are kept in crowded rooms, then you need antibiotics for them to survive until they are slaughtered. Those antibiotics residuals reportedly act like estrogens in our bodies, reducing sperm count and testosterone level. That's the actual reason why I consider organic meat the only meat worth buying - at least in Austria, organic means there is a minimum of available space for animals, they have to be fed a certain percentage of natural fodder, they must not be fed antibiotics, etc.

[niels_olson]

>You rant about non-correlations and such, and then end your post by jumping to a conclusion of your choice

You want to stick around for the decade of training in between?

The 'stain of Earl K Butts' is the outrageous corn and grain subsidy.

That really is the biggest problem, by a massive factor. TV is probably second.

[ramses]

Guys, please notice that I said that "a diet with a good amount of cholesterol is a necessary condition to achieve good levels of Testosterone." I did not say that it is a sufficient condition.

In other words, good cholesterol intake + "other things" (such as resistance training) = good total Testosterone levels. Sub-optimal cholesterol intake + "other things" != good total T levels.