very good review. Like you i focus on TG to be low, HDL to be high and my CRP is to very low. SO for the last year I increased my protein from meat t0 2gr/kg, only eat berries (70, uric acid 4.2 and CRP
5 mg Crestor, 500mg Nicotinic Acid (watch for flushing), 20mg policosanol & possibly Bergamot on keto with under 40 grams of saturated fat. Ultimately calories drive CRP. Fructose is fructose doesn’t matter where you got from berries (low), squash or fruits etc. Fructose is bad My 2 cents
CRP can also be impacted by isolation, loneliness, poor sleep, depression and anxiety. I've also seen research on time outside (even just walking) reduces inflammation at a clinical level.
Excellent presentation of data. Glad to see my hs-crp is half the average for my age. My HDL has been hovering in the mid 70’s for the past 18 months so the correlation you surmise may explain. Interestingly, my hs-crp had jumped to 4 in the middle of this period after crashing on a mountain bike injuring my ACL. Even a high HDL didn’t keep crp down.
Very interesting video! I think you probably need more data points for thorough CRP tracking. CRP is an inflammatory marker and will be increased if you have an injury that day - even something minor like stubbing your toe. It would also be interesting to note the error percentage in blood tests (some tests can vary from 20-80% chance of innacuracy) which is important when you're comparing quite low CRP values which are not significantly different in value. When CRP is used as a biomarker in hospital, values compared are often very high (greater than 25 mg/L) when looking at a medical condition, and is taken daily to look at improving medical condition. It's used because it's a relatively easy to obtain data set but it's not particularly accurate compared to some other biomarkers. Nonetheless, great video!
Thanks as always for your comprehensive and thoroughly referenced and research report. I love your videos and I take them like Motivational Vitamin Shots.
Thx for sharing this informative update Michael. Given SCFA Butyrate is known to strengthen and indeed repair intestinal epithelial cells therefore inhibit pro inflammatory cytokines such TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, and IL-8 etc it may be worthwhile increasing your consumption of almonds ,garlic ,kiwi fruit etc Just a suggestion on another possible dietary intervention that may help to play an increased and very important anti-inflammatory role within your current dietary regime.
Thanks Richi. it tells me that HDL may not be driving lower CRP. In support of that, HDL was 41 on my last test, and CRP was below the lab limit of < 0.3 mg/L. It may be turmeric intake, which is one of the rare foods that is significantly correlated with lower CRP in my data (black pepper and total nuts+seeds are the others).
@@conqueragingordietrying1797 Thanks Dr. Lustgarten for clarification. I am also in the journey to improve it from 0.88 current value. Your video motivated me immensely. Thank you.
Thank you for this video. I will link to this post on my LinkedIn page. What I find most enlightening is that higher TC and HDL significantly correlated with lower hs-CRP . I would have thought the opposite about TC.
More dietary fat and less fructose dramatically increased my HDL (from about 60 mg/dL to 85 mg/dL.) I probably eat about 5 - 10 g of fructose/day as fruit, mostly berries, and quite a bit of fat from eggs, butter, full fat Greek yogurt, cheese, nuts, olive oil. I had to start carefully watching my diet after my blood glucose levels went past 100 back in 2009. Which biomarkers are most important for health and longevity? It seems the optimization must weight them accordingly. And which ones act independently, as opposed to just being markers of another? It's a balancing act, and you don't want unimportant or redundant ones to skew the results. (For example, data from the Framingham study shows if HDL is high, then cardiac disease risk is nearly independent of LDL, but it's a strong function of LDL when HDL is low.) Have you tried to develop a Principal Component Analysis?
The "big picture" biomarkers as mentioned in the video reflect many organ systems and are important to track, imo. I haven't done a PCA in a while, but I may start using factor analysis to better evaluate my diet's impact on the biomarkers.
I don't track feel numerically, but if I didn't do all the other tracking, I'd probably feel significantly worse. Feel is very subjective, so I prefer to focus on the objectively measured biomarkers as a primary strategy.
Hi Dr, my uric acid is 255 and 267 in the last 2 blood tests. I see that about 300 is optimal. My creatinine was also increased to 0.94. Is there anything specific that works for you in increasing uric acid levels?
Hi Obi z, your uric acid and creatinine are far from problematic. Note that there's a U-shaped association for uric acid with all-cause mortality risk, so going lower can also be bad for health. Creatinine increases during aging, so you might want to keep an eye on that.
Maybe I'd try to replace the yogurt that you take in high amounts by 1/3 the amount of kefir. Kefir is more powerful so you might get the same CRP lowering and probiotic effects, but that would reduce calories, which would help lower BF, so CRP in the long run. Also cutting yogurt would lower significantly your calcium intake, which would enable you to take more vitamin D, which would lower CRP as well. Just an idea
@@conqueragingordietrying1797 Reducing the amount from yogurt to kefir would also reduce blood glucose. Also, I just read that kefir has a lower GI than fermented milk. Versus yogurt the bacteria in kefir have used the lactose as a food source, so blood sugar would go up less I imagine, for the same amount.
@@Battery-kf4vu I switched from full-fat yogurt, which was significantly correlated with glucose, to low-fat, which is not significantly correlated with glucose, including the last few blood tests. I'm not sure that kefir would lower my glucose levels, but as mentioned in the video, my data is driving me towards interventions to try, rather than trying a completely new approach (i.e. kefir).
@@bottlenecks Just found a link that says: "Kefir has slightly less sugar than yogurt, but it depends on which brand you buy. The biggest nutritional difference between the two is that kefir contains more probiotics than yogurt. While yogurt also contains some probiotics, kefir is more potent. If you are looking to improve digestion or gut health, kefir is the better choice." What kind of yogurts are you eating? greek yogurt?
My exercise routine is consistent from week-to-week, and has little impact on HDL. My average daily niacin intake is not significantly correlated with HDL (r=0.09, p=0.63, n=32 blood tests since 2015). If you're talking about higher-dose niacin, I've tried that, and while it boosted my HDL, it more than doubled my liver enzymes, so that's not a good strategy for me.
My liver enzymes weren't optimal for a long time (perhaps because I take the B3 variants NR and NMN?), but I just had by far the best test results in 4 years (ALP down, AST down, ALT down), and until my future blood tests convince me otherwise I would attribute this to the addition of Schizandra chinensis (北五味子) to my supplement stack.
Does sleep deprivation increase hscrp?? Past 2 months i didn't sleep well took hscrp test, result came 3.65. Age 28 years ldl 98 non diabetic and i have some anxiety issues. How to lower hscrp value??
I'm not sure about the published research, but I'd bet that it definitely can. I'd focus on optimizing sleep as much as possible, then retesting. That said, optimizing sleep duration and quality is a big part of my approach.
This is pure speculation, I don't have any data, but... CRP is an acute-phase reactant, which means that its production is increased in response to infection. While I don't have an active infection, it's possible that my diet (for some reason) leads to sub-optimal gut barrier function, leading to a greater leak of microbes and/or microbial products into the blood, so the liver reacts by making more CRP. One of the microbial products could be LPS, which HDL is known to detoxify. However, for the times that HDL is not relatively higher, LPS induces pro-inflammatory gene expression, thereby leading to more circulating CRP.
@@conqueragingordietrying1797 thank you for your detailed response. How did you diagnose your suboptimal gut lining leading to elevated LPS ? If you know a biomarker for that then have you measured it by eliminating certain food group gluten , dairy , starches ?
Paraoxonase (PON1), an antioxidant enzyme, is associated with HDL & can lower CRP. Anthocyanins in berries are thought to increase PON1 activity. If decreasing fructose consumption entails decreasing berry and anthocyanin intake, that might lower PON1 activity - unless some non fructose-containing source of anthocyanins is substituted (e.g., hibiscus tea). It will be interesting to see what happens.
There may be some seasonal variation for hs-CRP (higher during allergy season, for me), but my symptoms also vary each summer, which makes me wonder about HDL impacting seasonal allergy symptoms, too, assuming causation for the HDL-CRP link.
@@claudecamire5913 Ha, I do think about that sometimes, I wouldn't rule it out! Probably computer science if I do, but I'll have to start at the university level 1st, so back to square 1 (to take 2 steps forward).
Hi Dr. Lustgarten, I was trying to find your turmeric video. Not sure it is hidden with another supplement video. I am trying to establish a dose of turmeric to reduce my HS-CRP. Your video may give me some strategy for that. Could you possibly share a link? Thank you.
Very interresting!. Is is meaningful to compare your hs-CRP against an age-profile for hs-crp, from a large data set? I was wondering wether your increase in hs-crp was age related (e.g. Accumulation of senescent cells), and if so, it would show a correlation to general population’s hs-crp increase. I know nothing, so asking stupid questions here 🙃
Ha, stupid questions = not asking, so there are no stupid questions on the road to truth! I think it is meaningful to at least to have a look at population based data, to get a sense of where one compares. Over the past 3y, as mentioned in the video, I don't see an age-related increase for hs-CRP, but I've achieved values < 0.3, so the goal is to more consistently get there, rather than the wider variability (0.2 - 1.01 mg/L)..
@@conqueragingordietrying1797 Thanks for your response. They have actually added choline amounts to a significant amount of foods; that's why I asked the question originally. It's also intriguing how you'd optimize choline intake, give that its main source is eggs -which you don't eat, as far as I remember.
very good review. Like you i focus on TG to be low, HDL to be high and my CRP is to very low. SO for the last year I increased my protein from meat t0 2gr/kg, only eat berries (70, uric acid 4.2 and CRP
5 mg Crestor, 500mg Nicotinic Acid (watch for flushing), 20mg policosanol & possibly Bergamot on keto with under 40 grams of saturated fat. Ultimately calories drive CRP. Fructose is fructose doesn’t matter where you got from berries (low), squash or fruits etc. Fructose is bad
My 2 cents
CRP can also be impacted by isolation, loneliness, poor sleep, depression and anxiety.
I've also seen research on time outside (even just walking) reduces inflammation at a clinical level.
And exercise. All the other variables are mostly constant, the greatest variability is for my diet.
I avoid fructose all together, no matter the source. My hsCRP=0.3. I'm in my late 50s. Ketovore diet.
Not so sorry. I eat plenty of fruit. My hsCRP=0.4. I am 60. Whole Plant Based diet.
Looking forward to your next blood test and CRP analysis. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks Gary!
Excellent presentation of data. Glad to see my hs-crp is half the average for my age. My HDL has been hovering in the mid 70’s for the past 18 months so the correlation you surmise may explain. Interestingly, my hs-crp had jumped to 4 in the middle of this period after crashing on a mountain bike injuring my ACL. Even a high HDL didn’t keep crp down.
Thank you for the good work.
Thanks daniel harrell!
Very interesting video! I think you probably need more data points for thorough CRP tracking. CRP is an inflammatory marker and will be increased if you have an injury that day - even something minor like stubbing your toe. It would also be interesting to note the error percentage in blood tests (some tests can vary from 20-80% chance of innacuracy) which is important when you're comparing quite low CRP values which are not significantly different in value. When CRP is used as a biomarker in hospital, values compared are often very high (greater than 25 mg/L) when looking at a medical condition, and is taken daily to look at improving medical condition. It's used because it's a relatively easy to obtain data set but it's not particularly accurate compared to some other biomarkers. Nonetheless, great video!
CRP is not used the same as HS CRP. He is tracking High Sensitivity CRP. Apples & Pears.
Thanks as always for your comprehensive and thoroughly referenced and research report. I love your videos and I take them like Motivational Vitamin Shots.
Thanks Eugene Lynch!
Thx for sharing this informative update Michael.
Given SCFA Butyrate is known to strengthen and indeed repair intestinal epithelial cells therefore inhibit pro inflammatory cytokines such TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, and IL-8 etc it may be worthwhile increasing your consumption of almonds ,garlic ,kiwi fruit etc
Just a suggestion on another possible dietary intervention that may help to play an increased and very important anti-inflammatory role within your current dietary regime.
I wish I could eat more garlic, onions, and other plants from the allium family-they give me bad gas!
Thanks for another good video!
Another amazing video. I am amazed by your motivation to crack the CODE. How do you explain your HDL
Thanks Richi. it tells me that HDL may not be driving lower CRP. In support of that, HDL was 41 on my last test, and CRP was below the lab limit of < 0.3 mg/L. It may be turmeric intake, which is one of the rare foods that is significantly correlated with lower CRP in my data (black pepper and total nuts+seeds are the others).
@@conqueragingordietrying1797 Thanks Dr. Lustgarten for clarification.
I am also in the journey to improve it from 0.88 current value.
Your video motivated me immensely. Thank you.
Modern fruit and vegetables have been bred to be sweeter so it may make sense that extra fructose wouldn't be helpful
Thank you for this video. I will link to this post on my LinkedIn page. What I find most enlightening is that higher TC and HDL significantly correlated with lower hs-CRP . I would have thought the opposite about TC.
That's how it looks for me, it may be different for others...
More dietary fat and less fructose dramatically increased my HDL (from about 60 mg/dL to 85 mg/dL.) I probably eat about 5 - 10 g of fructose/day as fruit, mostly berries, and quite a bit of fat from eggs, butter, full fat Greek yogurt, cheese, nuts, olive oil. I had to start carefully watching my diet after my blood glucose levels went past 100 back in 2009.
Which biomarkers are most important for health and longevity? It seems the optimization must weight them accordingly. And which ones act independently, as opposed to just being markers of another? It's a balancing act, and you don't want unimportant or redundant ones to skew the results. (For example, data from the Framingham study shows if HDL is high, then cardiac disease risk is nearly independent of LDL, but it's a strong function of LDL when HDL is low.)
Have you tried to develop a Principal Component Analysis?
The "big picture" biomarkers as mentioned in the video reflect many organ systems and are important to track, imo. I haven't done a PCA in a while, but I may start using factor analysis to better evaluate my diet's impact on the biomarkers.
Do you track how you feel? I realize it's a vague measurement, but if it swings a good bit in some direction, it could be a clue.
I don't track feel numerically, but if I didn't do all the other tracking, I'd probably feel significantly worse. Feel is very subjective, so I prefer to focus on the objectively measured biomarkers as a primary strategy.
Very cool!
Hi Dr, my uric acid is 255 and 267 in the last 2 blood tests. I see that about 300 is optimal. My creatinine was also increased to 0.94. Is there anything specific that works for you in increasing uric acid levels?
Hi Obi z, your uric acid and creatinine are far from problematic. Note that there's a U-shaped association for uric acid with all-cause mortality risk, so going lower can also be bad for health. Creatinine increases during aging, so you might want to keep an eye on that.
Maybe I'd try to replace the yogurt that you take in high amounts by 1/3 the amount of kefir. Kefir is more powerful so you might get the same CRP lowering and probiotic effects, but that would reduce calories, which would help lower BF, so CRP in the long run. Also cutting yogurt would lower significantly your calcium intake, which would enable you to take more vitamin D, which would lower CRP as well. Just an idea
Not a bad idea, thanks Battery9876
@@conqueragingordietrying1797 Reducing the amount from yogurt to kefir would also reduce blood glucose.
Also, I just read that kefir has a lower GI than fermented milk. Versus yogurt the bacteria in kefir have used the lactose as a food source, so blood sugar would go up less I imagine, for the same amount.
@@Battery-kf4vu I switched from full-fat yogurt, which was significantly correlated with glucose, to low-fat, which is not significantly correlated with glucose, including the last few blood tests. I'm not sure that kefir would lower my glucose levels, but as mentioned in the video, my data is driving me towards interventions to try, rather than trying a completely new approach (i.e. kefir).
Kefir has about 12 g sugar per 100 g? The yogurts that I eat have around 4 g. 4 g seems better to me.
@@bottlenecks Just found a link that says:
"Kefir has slightly less sugar than yogurt, but it depends on which brand you buy. The biggest nutritional difference between the two is that kefir contains more probiotics than yogurt. While yogurt also contains some probiotics, kefir is more potent. If you are looking to improve digestion or gut health, kefir is the better choice."
What kind of yogurts are you eating? greek yogurt?
When it comes to HDL maybe you should look into levels of B3 and the amount of strenuous exercise
My exercise routine is consistent from week-to-week, and has little impact on HDL. My average daily niacin intake is not significantly correlated with HDL (r=0.09, p=0.63, n=32 blood tests since 2015). If you're talking about higher-dose niacin, I've tried that, and while it boosted my HDL, it more than doubled my liver enzymes, so that's not a good strategy for me.
Do you remember what dose b3 you were taking?
@@MrGatward From 500 mg/d to 3g. Even 3x the RDA sends my AST higher, so I'm currently ~2x the RDA, 30 mg/d.
My liver enzymes weren't optimal for a long time (perhaps because I take the B3 variants NR and NMN?), but I just had by far the best test results in 4 years (ALP down, AST down, ALT down), and until my future blood tests convince me otherwise I would attribute this to the addition of Schizandra chinensis (北五味子) to my supplement stack.
Do you have a video/article about your diet, supplements, exercise, etc..?
I do, many! Here are 2:
czcams.com/video/hvKogCUOqyA/video.html
czcams.com/video/ue-mzz1bm3E/video.html
@@conqueragingordietrying1797 many thanks
@@jonathanantoine4962 Enjoy!
Will inflammation from say a work out result in HSCRP>3? Is HSCRP specific for cardiovascular related inflammation?
Does sleep deprivation increase hscrp?? Past 2 months i didn't sleep well took hscrp test, result came 3.65. Age 28 years ldl 98 non diabetic and i have some anxiety issues. How to lower hscrp value??
I'm not sure about the published research, but I'd bet that it definitely can. I'd focus on optimizing sleep as much as possible, then retesting. That said, optimizing sleep duration and quality is a big part of my approach.
What could be the mechanism of higher HDL and lower CRP ....is it like more HDL means more healing capability and lower systemic inflammation ?
This is pure speculation, I don't have any data, but...
CRP is an acute-phase reactant, which means that its production is increased in response to infection. While I don't have an active infection, it's possible that my diet (for some reason) leads to sub-optimal gut barrier function, leading to a greater leak of microbes and/or microbial products into the blood, so the liver reacts by making more CRP. One of the microbial products could be LPS, which HDL is known to detoxify. However, for the times that HDL is not relatively higher, LPS induces pro-inflammatory gene expression, thereby leading to more circulating CRP.
@@conqueragingordietrying1797 thank you for your detailed response. How did you diagnose your suboptimal gut lining leading to elevated LPS ? If you know a biomarker for that then have you measured it by eliminating certain food group gluten , dairy , starches ?
@@rohitf117 I didn't diagnose it, as I mentioned above, it's pure speculation.
Paraoxonase (PON1), an antioxidant enzyme, is associated with HDL & can lower CRP. Anthocyanins in berries are thought to increase PON1 activity. If decreasing fructose consumption entails decreasing berry and anthocyanin intake, that might lower PON1 activity - unless some non fructose-containing source of anthocyanins is substituted (e.g., hibiscus tea). It will be interesting to see what happens.
Interesting, thanks@@rhyothemisprinceps1617
Have you looked at seasonal variation in CRP? It generally increases in winter and spring.
There may be some seasonal variation for hs-CRP (higher during allergy season, for me), but my symptoms also vary each summer, which makes me wonder about HDL impacting seasonal allergy symptoms, too, assuming causation for the HDL-CRP link.
Do you take rapamycin?
My biological age is already relatively young (czcams.com/video/ue-mzz1bm3E/video.html), so nope, not yet.
@@conqueragingordietrying1797 you dont want to be too young, otherwise you will have time to have another Phd in another field
@@claudecamire5913 Ha, I do think about that sometimes, I wouldn't rule it out! Probably computer science if I do, but I'll have to start at the university level 1st, so back to square 1 (to take 2 steps forward).
Does hs-CRP need to be converted into CRP? Now I'm confused. I find papers that seem to convert one to the other.
They're the same biomarker, but hs-CRP is a more sensitive test for detecting relatively low levels.
Hi Dr. Lustgarten, I was trying to find your turmeric video. Not sure it is hidden with another supplement video.
I am trying to establish a dose of turmeric to reduce my HS-CRP. Your video may give me some strategy for that.
Could you possibly share a link? Thank you.
Hi Richi, see 30:06 in this video for the turmeric-CRP data:
czcams.com/video/46_Xkj9xQug/video.html
@@conqueragingordietrying1797 Thank you very very much.
Very interresting!.
Is is meaningful to compare your hs-CRP against an age-profile for hs-crp, from a large data set?
I was wondering wether your increase in hs-crp was age related (e.g. Accumulation of senescent cells), and if so, it would show a correlation to general population’s hs-crp increase.
I know nothing, so asking stupid questions here 🙃
Ha, stupid questions = not asking, so there are no stupid questions on the road to truth!
I think it is meaningful to at least to have a look at population based data, to get a sense of where one compares. Over the past 3y, as mentioned in the video, I don't see an age-related increase for hs-CRP, but I've achieved values < 0.3, so the goal is to more consistently get there, rather than the wider variability (0.2 - 1.01 mg/L)..
How is your typical fructose distribution in terms of sugar , berries , fruits etc. Thanks
I post that data daily on Patreon:
www.patreon.com/MichaelLustgartenPhD
Also started measuring TNF-alpha and IL6. Any experience with these?
Hi Paul, yes-lower is better for both.
Hey Michael! Besides other micro- and macro-nutrients, do you track your Choline intake?
Hey Kostya, I do, but choline data is missing for a lot of foods in cronometer, so I don't place much value on cronometer's daily choline amounts.
@@conqueragingordietrying1797 Thanks for your response.
They have actually added choline amounts to a significant amount of foods; that's why I asked the question originally. It's also intriguing how you'd optimize choline intake, give that its main source is eggs -which you don't eat, as far as I remember.
@@kostya8105 i do eat eggs, just not often: ~5 eggs/month or a little more.
Does the premium version of cronometer break down sugars into fructose, glucose, etc.?
Yes, but the free version does, too. You just have to make it visible.
@@conqueragingordietrying1797 I see - it's under Settings > Profile + Targets
Great!