Eating 720 Eggs in a Month… What is the Health of the Doctor Who Did a ‘Crazy Experiment’?

by times news cr
Photo = Getty Images Korea.

A doctor conducted an extreme experiment where he ate 720 eggs in one month. Eggs are a food with extremely polarized reviews. They are one of the most beloved foods among health enthusiasts, but they are still suspected of being the main cause of high cholesterol levels in the body.

The debate over whether eggs raise cholesterol levels is still inconclusive. For decades, some experts believed that the cholesterol in egg yolks was the direct cause of high blood cholesterol. However, new evidence is mounting that suggests that dietary cholesterol has little to do with blood cholesterol.

In this situation, a man took it upon himself to become a ‘Maruta’ to confirm the harmfulness of eggs. He ate 24 eggs a day for a month and observed the changes in his blood cholesterol levels, and shared the results in a YouTube video.

According to reports from the Daily Mail and Daily Express in the UK and the New York Post in the US, the main character is Nick Norwitz, a doctor and a student in the medical program at Harvard University in the US. He is also a medical doctor who received his doctorate from Oxford University in the UK for his research on human brain metabolism.

Eating 720 Eggs in a Month… What is the Health of the Doctor Who Did a ‘Crazy Experiment’?

Dr. Nick Norwitz. Captured from YouTube video.

In a YouTube video that has been viewed 190,000 times as of the 26th, he revealed that contrary to the long-held beliefs of some experts, his blood cholesterol levels had dropped. He said that he did this experiment to show that eating eggs does not raise cholesterol levels, and that the level of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the so-called “bad cholesterol,” which is one of the factors that promotes arteriosclerosis, actually dropped by 18%.

“We hypothesized that eating 720 eggs a month would mean consuming 133,200 milligrams of cholesterol, but it would not increase cholesterol, especially LDL cholesterol, in the body, and in fact, it did not,” he said.

“My LDL actually went down, even though my cholesterol intake was more than five times higher (compared to before the trial),” he added.

According to the Daily Mail, LDL is called bad cholesterol because it can build up in the arteries as plaque, which can increase the risk of heart disease and stroke. On the other hand, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), known as ‘good cholesterol’, has the opposite effect by helping to remove excess cholesterol from the bloodstream and carry it to the liver. Experts warn that having too high LDL levels can increase the risk of certain diseases, including heart disease.

Ignoring sleep time, he ate one egg every hour during the experiment. He cooked the eggs in various ways, such as boiled, fried, scrambled, and omelettes, and ate them along with his regular ketogenic diet (low carb, high fat), and maintained a weekly strength training routine of one hour, he told the Daily Mail.

One egg contains about 186 milligrams of cholesterol. Other high-cholesterol foods include red meat, shrimp, and clams.

Some scientists speculate that the reason eggs don’t raise cholesterol levels is because in the intestines, cholesterol binds to receptors on intestinal cells, triggering the release of a hormone called cholesterin, which then travels to the liver and binds to a receptor called GPR146, which signals the liver to reduce LDL production, helping to regulate cholesterol levels.

Dr. Nick Norwitz. Captured from YouTube video.

Dr. Nick Norwitz. Captured from YouTube video.

Dr. Norwitz’s bad cholesterol levels dropped 2 percent in the first week of his “egg binge” diet, then dropped dramatically by up to 18 percent in the last two weeks.

He said it was because of the carbohydrates he consumed along with it.

Dr. Nick Norwitz. Captured from YouTube video.

Dr. Nick Norwitz. Captured from YouTube video.

After the first two weeks, he added 60 grams of carbs to his daily diet. He got his carbs mainly from fruits such as bananas, blueberries, and frozen cherries. To get his 60 grams of carbs, he ate two bananas and about 595 grams of blueberries every day.

He said increasing carbohydrate intake can further lower cholesterol levels. People on low-carb diets often have elevated LDL cholesterol levels because they start burning fat for energy, but eating more carbohydrates tends to lower LDL levels as the body uses carbohydrates instead of fat, he explained.


Reporter Park Hae-sik, Donga.com [email protected]

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2024-09-26 18:20:28

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