This egg expert wasn't busy extracting the yolk.
Dr. Nick Norwitz, a Harvard medical student, ate 720 eggs in one month to study the effect of a “chicken” diet on his cholesterol and found that his cholesterol levels decreased by about 20 percent.
Norwitz “hypothesized” before his experiment that eating 60 dozen eggs would not increase his LDL (low-density lipoprotein) or “bad” cholesterol by the end of the month.
Norwitz revealed in a video that eating 24 eggs a day for an average of one hour increased his dietary cholesterol intake more than fivefold. Norwitz's cholesterol intake reached 133,200 milligrams in one month. Posted on YouTube.
Norwitz's LDL levels dropped by 2 percent in the first week of the new diet, and decreased more dramatically by 18 percent in the following two weeks.
Norwock's normal LDL level was about 90 milligrams per decimeter when he was on his “mixed, standard American-style diet” before going on keto.
Eating two eggs or half a cup of eggs per day did not change blood cholesterol levels, compared to a high-carb breakfast without eggs. According to Healthline.
The study also found that people with health problems, including diabetes, who ate 6-12 eggs per week had no negative effect on their total blood cholesterol levels or heart disease risk factors but instead increased high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, or “good” cholesterol.
Dietary cholesterol binds to receptors in the intestine, stimulating the secretion of cholesterol hormone, which binds to receptors in the liver and inhibits “endogenous cholesterol synthesis”, thereby maintaining homeostasis or balance.
“In lean, insulin-sensitive people who consume low-carbohydrate diets, particularly ketogenic diets, it is common to have increased LDL levels as part of the lipid triad,” Norwitz explained.
He said the lipid triad “consists of high LDL, high HDL and low triglycerides, which create the metabolic signature of a major shift from carbohydrate-burning to fat-burning.”
Adding carbohydrates back into the diet of “lean, massive hyper responders” can lower LDL.
However, Norwitz chose fruits like blueberries, bananas, and strawberries to eat in the final two weeks, resulting in a dramatic drop.
Sixty grams of net carbs per day was not enough to reverse his “lean, massive hyper responder phenotype,” but was enough to have an effect on the “ups and downs” of ketosis.
“The extra dose of carbohydrates made a huge difference to the excessive amount of cholesterol I was consuming,” he said.
The Oxford University PhD recipient says he was eating 75 grams of saturated fat, or 100 calories, and nearly 5,000 milligrams of dietary cholesterol per day.
The American Heart Association recommends that no more than 6 percent of daily calorie intake should be from saturated fat.
Norwitz says he set out on the “crazy” experiment to provide “intellectual stimulation” against the extreme messages about dieting on social media.
Calling it a “real temptation,” Norwitz uses his bizarre diet and storytelling to get more researchers interested in and involved in the study of metabolic health.
