[streblo]

Counterpoint: I've heard from a lot of people that ketogenic diets have made their LDL and apo B shoot through the roof. This is how you get atherosclerosis (aka clogged arteries) and eventually heart disease/heart attack/stroke. A lot of these people look great and say that they feel great.

[mendelsd]

You may be putting the cart before the horse there. Cholesterol is a complex subject, and mainstream wisdom is under threat [1]. The lipid hypothesis holds that cholesterol promotes heart disease, but cholesterol could also be something the body uses to combat atherosclerosis caused by infection say.

Regarding LDL elevation on keto diets, this is true but not necessarily a reason to abandon the diet [2]. I recall listening to a podcast interview with keto researcher Dominic D'Agostino (I can't find it anymore) in which he expressed the following opinion on this: so many biomarkers improve on these diets, so if LDL gets elevated don't sweat it, because cholesterol is so poorly understood anyway.

[1] http://wapo.st/1vh4cc3 [2] http://bit.ly/1IAPAyz

[mikeytown2]

Thanks for bringing up this important point. Getting blood work done before & after is important when doing a diet change. Rob Rhinehart from soylent fame gets his blood drawn fairly regularly if I remember correctly. The community over on /r/keto is pretty good with helping out, see http://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/1j5yi8/help_me_rketo_h.... Due to genetics keto can be a bad idea for certain people.

[kolev]

LDL numbers themselves are meaningless unless you do fractioning, which your doctor doesn't do (mostly for cost purposes).