After writing about Jimmy Moore’s markedly improved cholesterol numbers from undergoing a 17.5 day fast, I learned that he decided to do another fast in December with another pre-fast lipid panel. Of course I watched and took notes on this Periscope episode.
If you’d like to learn more about Jimmy you can check out his blog at LivingLaVidaLowCarb.com or read his books Cholesterol Clarity and Keto Clarity which I’ve reviewed here and here.
Here are some of the previous posts I’ve written about his blood tests:
- Thoughts on Jimmy Moore’s Latest Health Test Results (From Fall 2014)
- Thoughts on Jimmy Moore’s Summer 2015 Health Test Results
Jimmy Moore’s Periscope Notes:
- He is fasting this time in an attempt to improve his lipid panel to help get a good life insurance and health insurance rate.
- It turns out that you only need to get tested at one point in time. They come to your house, draw your blood, get the results, and depending on where your results fall, that is how they determine your rate.
- During this fast, like his pervious fast, he will only eat bone broth with sea salt, water, and kombucha, consuming 100 calories/day
- People ask if he has a hard time not eating, and he responds by saying no. He even cooks for his wife and is able to avoid eating. They have a holiday party coming up and he plans on attending but not eating (Good for him! Free food placed right in front of my face is my greatest weakness! I’m looking at YOU holiday treats that my coworkers thoughtfully bring in!)
- Someone asks if he eats fat during the fast to which he responds NO.
- And then goes on to say that he disagrees with Dave Asprey’s claim that you can still maintain your fast with the fats in Bulletproof Coffee, but Jimmy emphatically says, “NO YOU DO NOT!”
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He received the results of his pre-fast blood test on day 2 of his fast. Here they are as compared to his September 2015 Post Fast numbers:
Total Cholesterol: 195 —> 278
Triglycerides: 68 —> 86
HDL: 50 —> 61
LDL: 131 —> 200
- He anticipates that a few weeks of fasting will help bring these numbers down.
My Thoughts
Again, I’ve tabulated everything for your viewing pleasure:
Jimmy never mentions what he’s been eating between when the September fast ended and when the December fast began, but I assume he’s been continuing to do some sort of keto. I’m sure he goes into it in all the intervening Periscope episodes, but I don’t plan on watching them.
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The thing that catches my eye is that his December Pre Fast lipid panel is almost identical to his September 2015 Pre Fast lipid panel. This leads me to believe that his fasts aren’t really a permanent solution. It doesn’t truly address why his cholesterol is high.
it looks to me like fasting just deprives his body of the substrate needed to make cholesterol (remember, he’s not consuming any fat during the fast), and the moment it’s added back in, things just go back to normal for him… which is a high cholesterol. At least in his case, fasting doesn’t appear to fix the underlying issue.
Is he a hypersynthesizer? Is he a hyperabsorber? (If you want to learn more about these terms, check out this post). He’ll probably need to get this sorted out eventually.
In the next post, we’ll see what happens after this fast…
If you want to see Jimmy’s full video for yourself, check it out here:
You can’t make any assessment without ldl-p and small ldl data.
While I think you’re correct in stating this, if you look back at Jimmy’s numbers you’ll see that his LDL-C and LDL-P are concordant. That means when is LDL-P goes up, his LDL-C will follow… if LDL-P goes down, so will his LDL-C. At least it’s done that consistently for the past 7 years, except for his first NMR measurement in 2008.
This is as opposed to a discordant relationship between LDL-C and LDL-P some folks can have.
So I think it’s reasonable to use LDL-C as a rough gauge to see what’s going on with Jimmy’s cholesterol. Of course LDL-P is optimal, but it can be expensive to get, so sometimes surrogates need to be used.
Might fasting have a positive effect on ldl p, which is a much better marker than ldl c? We don’t know. I hope he starts getting this data again post fast.
We’re not sure yet, at least with respect for Jimmy.
What we know is that fasting for 17.5 days had a good effect on his LDL-P.
That’s all.
Hard to extrapolate any further with just this one data point.
It looks like he’ll continue to post his numbers, which will help all of us.