Is Current Thinking Around Cholesterol Outdated? What You Need to Know About Heart Health and The Root Cause of Plaque Build Up with David Feldman

Dhru Purohit Show

Dhru Purohit

Medicine, Health & Fitness, Alternative Health

4.7 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2025

⏱️ 117 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode is brought to you by Levels, BiOptimizers, and Birch Living. Traditionally, elevated LDL has been directly linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. But today’s guest is on a mission to dig deeper. He’s raising both awareness and funding to explore the true relationship between LDL, ApoB, and heart disease—challenging long-held beliefs in the process. He joins us to share the results of his team’s groundbreaking study. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dave Feldman to discuss his team’s landmark study on LDL cholesterol and its implications for cardiovascular health. Dave shares the personal journey that led him to fund this research and what it means for how we approach and treat heart disease. He breaks down the surprising findings on how plaque progression really occurs—and the key questions that still need answers in future studies. Dave also outlines the most effective tests to assess your risk, along with how to interpret your scores based on age. Dave Feldman is a software and platform engineer, entrepreneur, and founder of the Citizen Science Foundation. His life took a radical turn upon seeing his cholesterol skyrocket after adopting a ketogenic diet, and he became obsessed with understanding why this is common with those who are likewise leaner and more metabolically healthy. Through a series of self-experiments and partnering with formal researchers, he has since published the “Lipid Energy Model,” which may explain this phenomenon. In this episode, Dhru and Dave dive into: Dave’s mission and journey to pursue answers (00:30) What mainstream medicine believes about high cholesterol (4:20) The keto and carnivore view on cholesterol (6:00) Dave's perspective and his groundbreaking research (7:45) Why Dave’s research matters and its implications for cardiovascular disease prevention (15:57) The factors that led to starting and releasing the study (18:23) The surprising results of plaque progression (28:42) What the results mean on a broad scale and how to configure the right type of diet (35:32) Appropriate testing and optimal score ranges (45:32) Factors that contribute to plaque progression (53:32) Injury to cells and arterial lining—and what prevents repair (1:00:32) The likely responses to the landmark study (1:23:47) Advice on ApoB based on large-scale metabolic health concerns (1:38:32) Critical takeaways (1:42:22) Where to follow Dave and learn about his upcoming movie (1:45:32) Also mentioned in this episode: Plaque Begets Plaque, Not ApoB, JACC Journals Citizen Science Foundation For more on Dave, follow him on Instagram, Twitter/X, YouTube, his Website, and other platforms, such as Cholesterol Code. This episode is brought to you by Levels, BiOptimizers, and Birch Living. Right now, Levels is offering my listeners an additional 2 FREE months of the Levels annual Membership when you use my link: levels.link/DHRU. Make moves on your metabolic health with Levels today. Go to bioptimizers.com/dhru now and enter promo code DHRU10 to get 10% off any order of Sleep Breakthrough and find out this month’s gift with purchase. Get 20% off your Birch Living mattress during their Spring Event—just head to birchliving.com/dhru today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Dave, welcome back to the podcast.
0:02.7	You are an engineer, a citizen scientist who's on a mission.
0:08.6	And today is a very special day because this week you guys have published a groundbreaking first of its kind paper.
0:15.6	For anybody who's interested in the idea of, does my diet make me more likely to get a heart attack or
0:23.7	does it make me less likely to get a heart attack?
0:26.5	Is my diet healthy for my heart?
0:28.4	But before we go into the paper and unpack it, tell us about what is that mission that
0:33.7	you're on?
0:34.1	First of all, I had no interest in nutrition, medicine, even really science that much,
0:39.3	as much as I did engineering. And so I've been a software engineer my whole life for the first,
0:44.0	let's say, four decades in my life. And then I'd gone on a ketogenic diet. And going on a ketogenic diet,
0:50.9	I just felt great. It was so wonderful. And at the time I was training with running and so
0:56.9	forth, I was setting personal records. I lost a bunch of weight. And I thought I just kind of found
1:03.4	the fountain of youth and couldn't stop telling my friends, especially my family, my dad and my
1:07.7	sister adopted at the same time. What happened, though, was while their blood work
1:11.5	came back looking fine, including lipids like cholesterol, mine shot through the roof. That ended up
1:17.4	changing my whole trajectory, literally for my life for like the last decade. That's what ultimately
1:22.2	led me to where I'm at today. You went on a ketogenic diet. You felt good. Most of your blood work look good,
1:29.6	except for a few of these markers. What were the markers? And for our audience that considers
1:35.5	himself largely professional amateurs, right, they know a lot about these things. They may not
1:40.7	have a degree in medicine. They may not be a nurse practitioner or PA. They like to know
1:46.6	the specifics. So what were the markers and what were their levels for many of us, including myself,
	...

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