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he eats eggs like crazy, but his cholesterol drops instead of rising?

written | yan xiaoliu

nicholas norwitz, a 25-year-old medical student at harvard university (hereinafter referred to as nick), decided to conduct an experiment on himself.

he ate 720 eggs in one month, which is equivalent to one egg every hour. as a result, his daily average cholesterol intake is 4,800 mg, which is 16 times the amount recommended by some international guidelines.

nick did this because he hoped to test a "health hypothesis" through this extreme diet: high intake of cholesterol does not necessarily increase the level of "bad cholesterol".

in order to verify this conclusion, nick recorded the experiment with a camera and made it into a popular science video. after being uploaded to the internet, the video was widely forwarded, with views exceeding 10 million. dozens of media approached nick for interviews, and even the term "harvard medical student" was trending on him.

related searches climbed. picture source/network

this single-subject study with a sample size of 1 was divided into two parts. in the first 15 days, nick increased his egg intake on the basis of his daily diet. in the next 15 days, he added 60g of carbohydrates a day on top of the above: sometimes two bananas, sometimes a handful of blueberries or frozen cherries, and some macadamia nut butter.

as of now, nick has not disclosed his daily diet, nor has he introduced his exercise regime. but he once admitted that he had adhered to the "ketogenic diet" for many years.

this is a high-fat, high-protein, very low-carbohydrate diet. this means that before the egg test, nick's daily cholesterol intake may have been 2-3 times that of ordinary people.

image source nick norwitz@youtube

family, friends, and classmates are all worried about nick.

to this day, many people still consider binge eating eggs to be a "sinful indulgence." because this consumes large amounts of cholesterol, it may cause low-density lipoprotein (ldl) levels to rise. ldl is known as "bad cholesterol". if it accumulates in the walls of blood vessels, it can induce arteriosclerosis and increase the risk of heart disease or stroke.

in order to keep abreast of changes in his body, nick checks his body regularly, focusing on monitoring cholesterol levels.

before the trial started, his ldl level was 90 mg/dl, which was within the normal range. after eating a lot of eggs for a week, ldl dropped by 2%; by the fourth week, ldl dropped by 18%.

image source nick norwitz@youtube

"the results are as expected." nick explained that when a large amount of cholesterol is consumed, the body will activate a "self-regulation" mechanism to maintain the cholesterol balance in the body. among them, the hormone "cholesin" secreted by the intestine plays a key role.

in animal experiments, cholesterol levels in the intestines of experimental mice increased after they were fed a high-cholesterol diet. it was not until 4 hours after feeding that cholesterol levels in the liver and plasma changed, and downregulation of the cholesterol synthesis marker hmgcr was observed.

this shows that under the condition of high exogenous cholesterol intake, enterostatin will be secreted in time, thereby reducing the cholesterol synthesized by the mice themselves.

it is worth mentioning that enterostatin was discovered, named and clarified its mechanism of action by a chinese team for the first time. in march this year, "cell" published a related article. the corresponding authors are wang yiguo of tsinghua university and zhang huijie of southern medical university nanfang hospital. some analyzes pointed out that enterostatin is expected to become a new lipid-lowering target.

nick also wrote an article to thank chinese scholars for their outstanding contributions. "one of the reasons why i did the experiment on myself was to respond to the cell study, to explain why most people do not experience a significant increase in ldl after eating eggs."

picture source/network

what makes nick even more delighted is that the 18% drop in ldl is a tribute to his past "oreo biscuit research", which once again confirms that for lean body responders with lower body fat and higher ldl, carbohydrates the lipid-lowering effect may be better than that of drugs.

according to the results published in the journal metabolites (if=4.1 in 2024), this strange crossover study only had one subject, nick himself.

in the first phase of the study, he ate a ketogenic diet for 2 weeks and then ate 12 oreo cookies a day for 16 consecutive days. his ldl-c dropped from 384 mg/dl to 111 mg/dl, a decrease of 71%.

after a period of rest, he entered the second stage: returning to the ketogenic diet, and then taking lipid-lowering drugs for 6 weeks. his ldl-c dropped from 421 mg/dl to 284 mg/dl, a decrease of 32.5%. during the cross-experiment period, their daily routine and amount of exercise were relatively standardized.

nick believes that the lipid energy model can explain the lipid-lowering mechanism of oreo biscuits. “when carbohydrates are severely restricted, liver glycogen is depleted, and body fat is low, circulating fatty acid levels in the body increase, are resynthesized into triglycerides, and are exported in the form of very low-density lipoproteins (vldl). on the contrary, moderate by supplementing carbohydrates and increasing liver glycogen reserves, the number of circulating vldl particles is reduced, and ldl is naturally reduced. "

source/metabolites

"many people ask me why i do research on eggs and oreos. is it to attract attention? that's what i think. this method works very well!" nick said frankly that he had been criticized by some scholars. "they said that my behavior was funny, my research was not rigorous enough, and i would mislead the public and the academic community."

in march of this year, lin qingshun, a retired professor at the university of california, san francisco school of medicine, published an article questioning nick's oreo research on his "popular science rumor refuting" website. "can you trust the conclusion of a study with a sample size of 1? what's more, the single test subject is nicholas norwitz himself. can you trust the game of a player-referee?"

american cardiologist elizabeth klodas also raised questions. she wrote at the end of "why you shouldn't eat oreos to reduce fat": "we have a lot of data showing that consuming highly processed carbohydrates, such as oreo cookies, can lead to insulin dysregulation, increase chronic inflammation, and increase chronic disease burden. at the same time, there is no evidence that people who follow a ketogenic diet live longer or live longer."

picture source/network

nick believes that extreme cases that can withstand verification are "legal bait" that can expand the path and scope of information dissemination.

"oreos are the 'junk food' in traditional perception. they have their own topicality and sense of conflict, which can arouse people's attention and emotions." nick said that such content exactly meets the needs of the algorithm. the conclusions drawn by myself and my team through experiments have every reason to choose different forms for dissemination.

based on nick's social media information, before entering harvard medical school, he had obtained a phd in physiology from the university of oxford, england, and published a series of papers on neuroscience, gastrointestinal health, genetics, and bone health.

he claimed that he was keen on exploring nutritional knowledge such as food and medicine in his youth. at 18, he developed severe osteoporosis and was later diagnosed with ulcerative colitis. the latter is a severe inflammatory bowel disease that can cause abdominal cramps, frequent bowel movements, bloody diarrhea and other symptoms.

nick read a lot of books on gastrointestinal tract, nutrition, and metabolism, began to adjust his diet, and defeated the disease. "those painful pasts have made me who i am today. i know that modern medicine cannot solve all problems. we may have to find the answer in nutrition.”