Nick Norwitz is eating Oreos to test whether junk food can lower LDL cholesterol more than statins by changing how the liver exports fat. The experiment targets a specific metabolic pattern in lean, low-carb people, and Norwitz plans to publish results and spark debate about cholesterol and energy metabolism.
Well, that's one of the most fascinating things about this carnivore diet is how many, albeit anecdotal stories, you have of people that had all these different conditions— chronic pain, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue, all these different issues, skin issues, eczema, all these different things that they were treating with medication. It wasn't working. They were experiencing side effects. They start eliminating everything from their diet except for meat, and all of a sudden these problems go away. I mean, there's too many of those stories for it to be ignored.
The lean mass hyper-responder, and there's something called the lipid energy model. And so what this Oreo cookie thing was, is another guy's— another researcher, he's a PhD from Oxford, he's getting— he's also finishing his medical degree at Harvard. And his name's Nick Norwitz, and he basically said, look, this lipid energy model works like this. When you cut carbs low and you get lean, right, your body says, hey, there's not a lot of energy in my cells. My liver glycogen isn't full, my muscles aren't full of energy, so I need to get energy there somehow. And so what happens is the liver starts sending fat out into the bloodstream, like, to, to so you have energy to work, right? And so what, what he's showing is that If I just add Oreo cookies or some other energy-dense, maybe junk food in there, the body will say, hey, I've got plenty of energy now. So the liver shuts down. It doesn't traffic the cholesterol anymore, the triglycerides and the cholesterol. So that sort of validates what's going on here.
So I want to thank Dr. Baker for name-dropping me on Joe Rogan. That was very generous. For those of you who know me, I have a tendency to monologue. I'm going to resist doing that and instead be very concise, backing everything I have to say with more information and links below. But I wanted to make a statement of purpose, a prediction, and a promise. The statement of purpose has to do with why I'm doing this Oreo cookie experiment in the first place. As I've said before, this is a provocation of sorts. I want to draw attention to a very fascinating phenomenon for which we have, um, other studies published and other studies incoming. And I thought a metabolic demonstration in which I use junk food to lower my cholesterol massively as compared to standard of care treatment would be a good way to do this. Again, emphasizing, I don't expect this would generalize to your average Joe no pun intended. Um, actually there was a pun very much intended there. Um, but I do think it's a great metabolic demonstration. So I, uh, have been, you know, putting my predictions out a priori. Um, and that brings me to the prediction. I'm in the statin phase right now. And I wanted to reiterate that I do predict the Oreo will outperform the statin. In other words, the, um, you know, the statin will lower my LDL cholesterol less than the Oreo. And the basis of that prediction, um, which I made even before the Oreo phase, was that the Oreo treatment will address the root cause of why I have elevated LDL, which according to the lipid energy model, um, is because of a metabolic response to meet systemic energy needs in the form of fat fuel exported from the deliver. So we will have to see what the data produce, but I do have an intent to publish ethics and everything I've reviewed in other videos. Finally, the promise. You know, as I said before, the Oreo cookie thing, it's a metabolic demonstration. It's a provocation. I think it's gonna be pretty interesting, but it's only supposed to be a head-turner. The promise is that there are gonna be a lot of strong data, non-n equals one data, strong data dropping in the coming months, multiple papers. The discussion is going to ramp up. I do hope that, um, the discussion about lean mass hyperresponders, the study and the lipid energy model on the Joe Rogan podcast will help, um, amplify that. Um, I hope Joe gets interested in the phenomenon, but what I do promise is no matter what, this discussion will continue to ramp up over the coming months and coming years. We're only at the beginning, and today was, was kind of special. So thank you again, Dr. Baker, and I look forward to the discussions, the debates, and the learning to come. Have a good day.
