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author of this article: yun ye

what will happen if you eat 24 eggs a day?

is your first reaction: how can that be done? ! cholesterol will go off the charts! my heart will be destroyed!

recently, a guy with a doctorate from harvard medical school discovered that there is actually not enough evidence for the deep-rooted belief that "eating eggs can increase cholesterol and cause coronary heart disease."

without stopping to do anything, he made an experiment on himself——

he ate a full 720 eggs in one month, which is equivalent to eating one every hour...[1]

image source: nick norwitz

24 per day, explore 180 ways to make eggs

nick nowitz, before going to harvard to study medicine, he had received a bachelor's degree in cell biology from dartmouth college and a phd in neurodegenerative diseases and metabolism from oxford university.

recently, a question has troubled this out-and-out super academic:

eggs, are there any "sins"?

it has been a 60-year-old belief that high cholesterol causes coronary heart disease. based on this theory, eggs, which are the most common food on people's tables around the world, are loved and hated by many people because of the high cholesterol content in their yolks.

from nutritionists and cardiologists to popular science bloggers and fitness coaches, there are many people who advise you not to eat more eggs.

especially the sticky but fragrant egg yolk, many people even throw it away when eating eggs.

source: visual china

however, nick, who is more serious, discovered that over the years, there have been no experiments on directly eating eggs that have truly proven that eating eggs will increase people's cholesterol, and no egg experiments have ever proven that eating eggs can cause heart attacks.

such a conclusion is almost regarded as truth, but there is not enough experimental support! is this a loss of evidence, or is there something surprising?

so, with the evidence-based soul of a medical student burning brightly, nick decided to conduct this experiment himself.

the experimental plan is simple and crude: within a month, eat 24 eggs every day without hesitation.

image source: nick norwitz

these 720 eggs,contains approximately 133200mg of cholesterol.even if he eats these eggs this month, he has already exceeded the cholesterol intake of an ordinary person by 5 times...

of course, to avoid getting bored, he also explored 180 ways to make eggs.

the final result really confirmed nick's guess.

bad cholesterol decreases instead of increasing, why?

in nick's trial, the most important observation indicator was ldl-c, known as "bad cholesterol."

in this month, nick's ldl-c not only did not increase, but also dropped a lot:

looking at this curve, the overall trend is downward. nick's bad cholesterol did not change much in the first two weeks, falling by 2%.

but in the next two weeks, his "bad cholesterol" level finally dropped by 18%!

image source: nick norwitz

nick analyzed that a very key factor is that he is on a ketogenic diet, that is, a low-carbohydrate diet. during this period, your ldl-c will rise.

when adhering to a low-carbohydrate diet, the amount of sugar stored in the human liver will decrease, and it will enter a fat-burning mode, and vldl is needed to transport fat. vldl is the precursor of the bad cholesterol ldl-c, so if there is more vldl, there will be more ldl-c.

at the same time, the process of transporting fat will also increase the good cholesterol hdl-c and reduce triglycerides.

therefore, after a low-carbohydrate diet, especially after a complete ketogenic diet, the body will have a triangle of high ldl-c, high hdl-c, and low triglycerides:

image source: nick norwitz

this triangle is also easy to break. as long as you eat some carbohydrates to replenish the carbohydrates in the liver, the body will switch to energy supply mode, causing a sharp decrease in ldl-c.

after explaining the "innocence" of eggs, nick still felt that it was not enough, because he finally achieved the result of an 18% decrease in ldl-c. he combined it with another of his shocking research results:

"head-to-head" study of "oreos" and "statins" in lowering cholesterol [2]。

oreo’s “head-to-head” statin trial design source: reference 2

you read that right, it’s really oreo vs statin

do you think oreos or statins are better at lowering ldl-c?

most people would definitely say it must be statins, but this is not the conclusion of nick's research published in the journal metabolites.

on the basis of a strict ketogenic diet,nick ate 12 oreo cookies every day for 16 days. this approach lowered his ldl cholesterol from 383 mg/dl to 111 mg/dl.

after eating so many oreo cookies, ldl-c dropped by 71%.

then, after a washout period, nick started taking statin doses. at the beginning of this experimental period, his ldl-c was 421 mg/dl. after taking statins for 6 weeks it dropped to 284 mg/dl. a decrease of 32.5%.

source: reference 2

in other words, on the basis of this strict ketogenic diet, oreo is twice as effective as statins in lowering ldl-c.

therefore, in the last two weeks of this egg trial, nick achieved an astonishing decrease in ldl-c by adding other carbohydrates in addition to eggs.

he eats 60g of carbohydrates every day, mainly blueberries, bananas, cherries and other fruits, dipped in macadamia nut cream.

as a mortal, i still have one egg a day.

notice! these test results,it does not mean that eating 24 eggs a day is healthy, it does not mean that oreos are healthy, and it does not mean that oreos are better than statins.

nick has repeatedly stated this in his videos.

it is true that judging from the current research conclusions, there is a lack of basis for treating eggs as a scourge of cholesterol and the culprit of coronary heart disease.

there are many “counter-intuitive studies” on eggs and arteriosclerotic plaques.some studies have found that people who eat more eggs have more "fluffy" ldl-c cholesterol particles in their arteries, and such particles are less likely to cause arterial plaques [3]. other studies have shown that eating eggs can increase the good cholesterol hdl-c, reduce inflammation, and improve blood sugar control [4].

a series of finnish studies followed more than 1,000 healthy middle-aged men for decades.the results showed that there was no significant association as expected between egg consumption, cholesterol intake, myocardial infarction, and atherosclerosis.even among people who carry the apoe4 gene, which affects cholesterol metabolism, there is no increased risk with increasing amounts of eggs or dietary cholesterol [5].

image source: reference 5

a 2018 chinese study of more than 500,000 people also found that eating one egg a day reduced the risk of death from cardiovascular events by 18% [6].

currently, dietary recommendations related to cholesterol are different from the strict ban on high-cholesterol foods for many years.

the dietary guidelines released by the united states in 2015 set an upper limit of cholesterol intake of 300 mg/day (one egg contains 180 mg of cholesterol), but still maintained the recommendation that "dietary cholesterol should be reduced as much as possible" [7].

in short, although there is some research evidence to "rehabilitate" eggs, the evidence that eating more eggs is harmful is indeed insufficient.but research is research after all, and whether the guidelines should be changed requires more proof.

recommended image source for "dietary guidelines for chinese residents 2022": reference 8

in fact, no one is right or wrong in these studies, but the complexity of blood cholesterol regulation is far beyond our imagination. there is indeed not enough evidence that "high-cholesterol diet is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease" [9]。

the "dietary guidelines for chinese residents" released in 2022 is also consistent with international trends and removes restrictions on cholesterol [8].

at present, authoritative organizations such as the american heart association have gradually begun to no longer limit the intake of eggs. the chinese nutrition society recommends consuming 40 to 50g of eggs a day, which is equivalent to 1 egg.

it's okay for healthy people to eat two more eggs occasionally, but 24 eggs a day is not necessary for us mortals. when it comes to diet, balance is always most important.

in addition, the "dietary guidelines for chinese residents 2022" specifically states that,"eat eggs without discarding the yolks" oh~

references:

[1]https://www.ajc.com/pulse/720-eggs-1-month-med-students-diet-raises-questions-about-cholesterol/CSVGKMLCNBBURK6PIVICR3IZKU/

[2]Norwitz NG, Cromwell WC. Oreo Cookie Treatment Lowers LDL-C Cholesterol More Than High-Intensity Statin therapy in a Lean Mass Hyper-Responder on a Ketogenic Diet: A Curious Crossover Experiment. Metabolites. 2024 Jan 22;14(1):73. doi: 10.3390/metabo14010073. PMID: 38276308; PMCID: PMC10818743.

[3]Blesso CN, Andersen CJ, Barona J, Volek JS, Fernandez ML. Whole egg consumption improves lipoprotein profiles and insulin sensitivity to a greater extent than yolk-free egg substitute in individuals with metabolic syndrome. Metabolism. 2013 Mar;62(3):400-10. doi: 10.1016/j.metabol.2012.08.014. Epub 2012 Sep 27. PMID: 23021013.

[4]Andersen CJ, Blesso CN, Lee J, Barona J, Shah D, Thomas MJ, Fernandez ML. Egg consumption modulates HDL-C lipid composition and increases the cholesterol-accepting capacity of serum in metabolic syndrome. Lipids. 2013 Jun;48(6):557-67. doi: 10.1007/s11745-013-3780-8. Epub 2013 Mar 15. PMID: 23494579; PMCID: PMC3869568.

[5]Abdollahi AM, Virtanen HEK, Voutilainen S, Kurl S, Tuomainen TP, Salonen JT, Virtanen JK. Egg consumption, cholesterol intake, and risk of incident stroke in men: the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study. Am J Clin Nutr. 2019 Jul 1;110(1):169-176. doi: 10.1093/ajcn/nqz066. PMID: 31095282.

[6]Chenxi Qin, et al. Associations of egg consumption with cardiovascular disease in a cohort study of 0.5 million Chinese adults. Heart. 2018.

[7]https://health.gov/our-work/nutrition-physical-activity/dietary-guidelines/previous-dietary-guidelines/2015#callout-dietary-fats

[8]http://dg.cnsoc.org

[9]Carson J , Lichtenstein A H , Anderson C , et al. Dietary Cholesterol and Cardiovascular Risk: A Science Advisory From the American Heart Association[J]. Circulation: An Official Journal of the American Heart Association,2020,141(3):e39-e53.