Why is this
a news and notes update? Because I’ve tried writing on some topics longform and
my health doesn’t support it. I get too dizzy, my arms go too numb, my head
hurts too bad. So I’ve pieced together short snippets over weeks until I had
enough to post. Big TBD what happens going forward, as I’m less and less
willing to hurt myself to write at length on here:
The Fasted 50K and Heavy Cream Cholesterol Experiment Follow-Up –
o
The
run went really well. We can start there. 50K, 3000ft vert, in the snow,
9:30/mile, fully fasted, felt good and easy the whole way. Feel I could have
run 100k fasted at that pace, but obviously tough to know for sure.
o
This
was fairly disappointing, frankly, because one of the main predicted effects
was not observed – my LDL-C was not elevated after my fasted run. I had
considered writing in the preview about the degree to which your body can use
fat “directly” during exercise, as opposed to that fat trafficking through the
liver first. It’s the trafficking through the liver that increases LDL-C. I
knew a lot of the fatty acids I burned would by that more direct path but I
honestly thought enough would pass through the liver first to raise LDL-C a
good amount, and that it was fine to skip that nuisance in the preview.
o
My
baseline LDL-C on the morning of the run was only 105 mg/dl on an approximately
pure carnivore diet. I suspect the two reasons it was lower than expected were
1) higher weight/body fat than most previous measures. This is basically a
proxy for less body fat breakdown, and 2) cheese, which has a few carbs, a more "potent" insulinogenic whey protein, and was consumed a bit more liberally the week prior to this test.
o
My
LDL-C only increased to 111 mg/dl at the end of the 50k run. It more or less
literally did not change. As just mentioned, this was very surprising to me. I
thought enough stored body fat would traffic through the liver to cause a
noticeable increase.
o
Triglycerides
(108 mg/dl) and HDL-C (58 mg/dl) were, in my opinion, not super great at
baseline before the run. Triglycerides decreased to only 97 mg/dl during the
run but were down all the way to 61 mg/dl the next morning. HDL-C was still 58
mg/dl the next morning.
o
On
the other hand, my LDL-C did drop significantly, to 85 mg/dl, by the next
morning. This was one of the major predictions of the experiment – that the
induced muscle damage of such a lengthy run would demand the increased uptake
of LDL particles to aid in cellular repair. Because LDL particles are formed
from the exact same phospholipids that also from cell membranes, it follows
(and appears to have been demonstrated in this case at least) that these
particles would be taken up (and LDL-C thus decreased) as a source of raw
materials.
o
LDL-C
remained stable below 90 mg/dl during the fat binge phase over the following
days. This was also predicted, as the massive intake of dietary fat would negate
the breakdown of my stored body fat and slow the trafficking of said fat
through the liver, thus decreasing the production.
o
After
more than four months of a near zero carb diet, and coming off a three day
average of approximately 6300 calories, 500g fat, and 290g saturated fat (more
than 20 times the “healthy” recommendation) per day, my lipids were as listed
below. These conventionally excellent metrics obviously fly in the face of the
traditional paradigm that saturated fat consumption is the primary driver of
elevated cholesterol and dyslipidemia (particularly when my personal LDL-C “PR”
is over 200 mg/dl)
- LDL-C: 89mg/dl (recommended <100
mg/dl)
- HDL-C: 64 mg/dl (recommended >40
mg/dl)
- Triglycerides 77 mg/dl (recommended
<150 mg/dl)
Neurocognitive Testing and Medical Fallout
o I believe strongly that the American
physician has failed me immensely. I have been lied to, accused of faking
symptoms, accused of lying, denied relevant testing, and been subject to
seemingly endless attacks on my character and my knowledge. I have been
mistreated and abused by the American physician. This was, however, the most
frustrating episode to date.
o To put it bluntly and maybe
arrogantly, I was very intelligent at baseline. The last time I took a
standardized test, when I was considering a Ph.D. program, I scored in the ~99th
percentile of the GRE.
o Working memory (basically retaining
and using a range of information in real time), in particular, was a great
skill of mine. At one point I could shuffle a standard deck of playing cards,
look at it one time through, and accurately repeat the entire deck back in
order.
o One of my physicians, with whom I had
previously had a decent relationship, backed off from helping me with me
medical/work situation until I did neurocognitive testing to assess possible
intellectual impairment.
o I ultimately decided to go though
with it, and did so shortly after the cholesterol experiment. As would be
predicted, the physical effects of this nearly 4 hour test were massively
debilitating. I was virtually bed-ridden for several days and did not fully (or
perhaps “fully”) recover for about two weeks.
o I scored very highly (95th-99th
percentile) in all markers of durable (“crystalized”) intelligence related to
long-term memory, verbal fluency, etc. Even scoring in the 99th
percentile on mental math was, ironically, only a reflection of long-term
memory, as the testing never stressed any operations I didn’t essentially know
by heart from years earlier.
o My fluid intelligence – my actual raw
cognitive skills – were extremely poor. The lowest of these was a score in the
3rd percentile in a test of working memory. Now, these test results came not
only with a percentile but also with a description. Any score at or below the 2nd
percentile was tagged as “intellectual disability” while a score in the 3rd percentile was tagged only as “borderline.”
o This physician interpreted this and
other “borderline” and “low average” results to be normal, despite the clinical
physiologist who carried out the test explaining that extremely high
crystallized intelligence and extremely low fluid intelligence follows an
expected pattern of brain damage in somebody whose acute cognitive capacity was
significantly impaired.
o Full stop, from this man’s mouth – he
would have helped me. He would have supported my pursuit of medical
accommodation at work, had only my working memory been in the 2nd
percentile. To him, the 2nd percentile was a disability, while a
drop from the 99th to the 3rd percentile was normal and
healthy.
o Instead of helping, he accused me of
faking and embellishing symptoms in an attempt to scam my way into disability
accommodation at a job that I literally cannot continue to do.
o Instead of helping, he admitted to not
being educated enough to understand my adverse test results or how the test
even worked, and thus couldn’t know if the symptoms I claimed were real.
o Instead of helping, he used my 3rd
percentile working memory and other cognitive struggles as a weapon to question
and discredit everything about me – my adverse autoimmune results, my impaired
brain metabolism, my cognitive decline, and the crushing and debilitating
neurological symptoms I deal with on a regular basis.
Backyard Burn 10 Mile Trail Race – March 16
o At the end of a week off from work, I
felt well enough to jump in an unplanned trail race
o I ran exactly 70:00 for 10 miles on a
pretty tame trail course to finish third
o I am/was clearly in poor relative
shape, but I actually felt pretty good about this result because I’d not run
hard in well over a year and maybe never in a very low carbohydrate state
Elm Creek Backyard Ultra – April 25
o This race was not unplanned and was
in fact a terrible idea. I had signed up months earlier in a fit of optimism
and, after a very poor April, was ~100% certain I was not going to race just a
week out
o Then I forced my way through a walk,
and the next day forced my way through a jog, and the next day the jog was a
little better, and I decided the race was still a good excuse to take a few days
off and go home to MN
o I don’t really want to talk about it
any further than that. I felt bad all week, felt bad the morning of the race, felt
bad during, and didn’t run nearly as far as I would have hoped or thought possible
o Ultimately completed 13 laps (~54.1
miles) to finish like…50th or so?
o The good news is that the effort was minor
enough to not cause any real damage, and I actually felt better neurologically
in the days following
