OxLDL Replication Experiment – Design and Hypothesis

Starting tomorrow, August 30th, I’ll be executing a replication of the OxLDL experiment I performed last year.

Experiment Design

As with the first, I’ll have three phases:

1. Eat baseline diet for five days (maintenance calories)
2. Eat 1/2 baseline diet for five days (hypocaloric)
3. Eat high calorie keto for five days (hypercaloric)

Additional Notes:

• In the original experiment I sought to have 2x baseline diet but found it untenable and thus made an adjustment. This experiment will attempt to replicate that adjustment as well to keep all food the same.
• My current sleep schedule has me waking up a bit earlier in the morning than last year. Thus I’ll be adjusting both the eating and blood draw windows. (See below)
• As with the original, I’ll be eating at three time periods a day, each five hours apart. One difference is that my scheduled times will be about 1 hour earlier at 9am, 2pm, and 7pm.
• Given the earlier eating times, I’ll be likewise getting my blood drawn at approximately one hour earlier as well.

Blood tests for mornings of September 4th, 9th, and 14th

One exciting change is that I’ll be getting much, much more expansive blood tests than last time:

Labcorp:

• Apolipoprotein A-1
• Apolipoprotein B
• C-Reactive Protein
• Complete Blood Count (CBC)
• Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (CMP)
• Cortisol
• Fatty Acids, Free (NEFA)
• Ferritin, Serum
• Fructosamine
• GGT
• Glucagon, Plasma
• GlycA
• Hemoglobin A1c
• IGF-1
• Insulin and C-Peptide
• Leptin
• Lipid Panel
• Lipoprotein(a)
• Lp-PLA2 Activity
• Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)
• Oxidized Low-density Lipoprotein (OxLDL)
• Testosterone, Serum
• Thyroid Panel
• Uric Acid, Serum
• Vitamin B12 and Folate
• Vitamin D, 25-Hydroxy

Boston Heart Diagnostics:

• Adiponectin
• Cholesterol Balance
• Fatty Acid Balance
• HDL Map
• Interluekin-6
• Leptin (Redundant, but of high interest)
• Oxidized Phospholipids on apoB (OxPL)

Hypothesis

As with the first experiment, I predict my OxLDL levels will track with LDL particle count (LDL-P).

However — of much greater importance are the results of the Oxidized Phospholipid test (OxPL). If the assay is truly quantitative to this metric, it stands to reason OxPL will not quantitatively track with OxLDL, even if there were a correlation at a smaller magnitude. On the other hand, if it did track in magnitude, this would open up a lot more questions (that I won’t cover here), particularly if OxPL rises substantially in the hypocaloric phase and drops substantially in the hypercaloric phase.