A man who ate 720 eggs in 30 days… Did his cholesterol go up or down?

Eggs are nutritious, but there are also claims that they increase cholesterol levels. Among them, a man who personally experimented with eating 720 eggs for a month and revealed the effects on his cholesterol levels is a hot topic.

This is the story of a man named Nick Norwitz, who received his PhD in brain metabolism from Oxford University in England and is currently pursuing medical school at Harvard University in the United States. According to foreign media reports such as the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom and the New York Post in the United States, he observed changes in his cholesterol levels by eating 720 eggs himself for a month, and the results were posted on YouTube, garnering over 160,000 views.

He revealed that he ate eggs in addition to his usual ketogenic diet of meat, fish, olive oil, nuts, dark chocolate, cheese, and yogurt. The ketogenic diet is a low-carb, high-fat diet that aims to use fat instead of sugar as its main energy source. In addition to the diet, he did bodyweight exercises such as push-ups, pull-ups, squats, lunges, and planks for about an hour a week.

He started the experiment and after two weeks, he increased his daily carbohydrate intake to 60g. People on low-carb diets tend to have higher LDL cholesterol levels because their bodies burn fat instead of carbohydrates to get energy, so he wanted to lower his cholesterol levels by increasing his carbohydrate intake.

After a month of experimentation, blood tests showed that his LDL cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein) levels had dropped by 18 percent. Experts warn that having too much LDL cholesterol can increase your risk of heart disease and other conditions.

“We hypothesized that eating 720 eggs a month, which is equivalent to 133,200 milligrams of cholesterol, would not raise cholesterol levels, and it did,” said Dr. Norwitz. “Even though cholesterol intake increased more than fivefold, LDL cholesterol levels actually went down.” A typical egg contains about 186 milligrams of cholesterol.

The lower your ‘bad’ cholesterol LDL, the better

Cholesterol is an essential component for maintaining the basic functions of our body. It exists everywhere, including the brain, nerves, muscles, skin, liver, intestines, and heart, and is necessary for forming cell membranes and making various hormones, vitamin D, and bile acids. However, cholesterol is a fat component and does not mix with blood, so it requires lipoproteins to transport cholesterol throughout the body. Lipoproteins include LDL and HDL, among which LDL is called bad cholesterol. This is because it accumulates on the walls of blood vessels, increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke and causing arteriosclerosis.

The lower the LDL cholesterol level, the better. There are many factors that control bad cholesterol levels, such as genetic factors, food, weight, physical activity, age, sex, drinking, stress, disease, and medication. To control LDL cholesterol, it is helpful to practice healthy lifestyle habits. In daily life, try to maintain an appropriate weight, reduce calorie intake while consuming a balanced diet, consume enough dietary fiber, consume unsaturated fat instead of saturated fat, avoid processed foods high in trans fat, refrain from excessive drinking, and quit smoking.