Blasting Off Into 2022

Make no mistake, 2021 has been a watershed year for us. There have been many substantial developments both in what has been completed and what has just begun.

New Research Spotlight for Siobhan Huggins

Early in the year my colleague, Siobhan Huggins was diagnosed with Lipedema and quickly shifted focus to this and related conditions. In a very short time, she has developed a number of hypotheses that she has since presented on, with more presentations planned (including Low Carb Boca this upcoming January). She is also now communicating closely with leadership at the Lipedema Project to see where future collaboration on this important topic may be useful to the community and for seeking to increase the knowledge on Lipedema where possible. As a result, just last last week Siobhan was selected as Program Co-Director for the upcoming April Symposium, which will focus on ketogenic diets for Lymphatic and Fat Disorders.

Lean Mass Hyper-responder Study Launched

After an extensive process for the protocol, we received official IRB approval and announced the study on August 27th. This study will be focusing on LMHRs and borderline LMHRs, and note it is still recruiting.

For more details and to see if you’re eligible, visit our official recruitment page to learn more.

Feel free to watch the announcement video here:

Lean Mass Hyper-responder Paper Published

Our new paper for low carb impacts on lipids and the Lean Mass Hyper-responder phenotype was published in Current Developments in Nutrition. Here’s the direct link:

https://doi.org/10.1093/cdn/nzab144

You can watch this interview from Diet Doctor where my coauthors and I discuss this paper in depth:

Lipid Energy Model Paper in Development

I know it’s been a long time coming, and you can see much of its progress through this time in our poster, my Stanford presentation, or even the super simplified, Lipid Energy Model in a nutshell (just 5 minutes). But there have still be plenty of updates to expand the model since then.

The new collaboration of Nick Norwitz, Adrian Soto-Mota, and myself have helped shaped the model for its coming submission for publication. I’m incredibly honored to be working with such extensive talent and can’t wait until we finally have our 1.0 up in the literature.

Debut of the Triad and All Cause Mortality

A recent analysis was performed with the Women’s Health Study data that concluded the highest LDLc levels correlate to the highest All Cause Mortality (ACM) where compared to low and mid ranges of likewise HDLc ≥ 50 and TG ≤ 100 levels. The process in how it came to this finding is very interesting and worth a coming post of its own which I’ll be doing in collaboration with a biostatistician.

Of special interest, the event actually helped to solve one of the largest problems in this space I’ve long struggled to tackle. For some time I’ve wanted to fashion a criteria for analyses that would be “pre-approved” as much as possible by all major voices in this debate. This would be the ideal given it would be in place before approaching the datasets we’d apply it to. But in reality, this was also likely near impossible given the wide variety of opinions across the spectrum on what the right methodology might be.

Fortunately, this current analysis and its originating criteria were widely accepted and shared by prominent voices for low LDLc (including many I’ve long discussed this with online). Its final iteration excluding standard attributes of metabolic syndrome is of special significance, and exactly what I was hoping given this helps better stratify toward metabolic health. In other words, over a short time we not only have mutual interest in looking to the triad vs ACM, but a lot of agreement on the specific parameters to use for the approach. This helps provide an important roadmap for our coming analyses.