One of the most common questions that I get, being carnivore, is this:
"Aren't you worried about your cholesterol?"
And there's been many good answers to that. High cholesterol is just a very bad predictor of heart attacks.
But with this new study that came out, it's pretty definitive.
The bottom line is, the factor that's really linked to heart attacks is coronary plaque. Having a high CAC score (coronary arterial calcium) is very strongly predictive of all kinds of heart disease.
Link to article: https://www.jacc.org/doi/10.1016/j.jacadv.2025.101686
Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJJGHQDE_uM.
This just-released study followed 100 healthy individuals on a long-term ketogenic diet (many of them carnivore). After doing the ketogenic diet, they developed very high LDL-C.
However, they didn't develop more coronary plaque. And that's the important thing.
Despite LDL-C/ApoB levels that would typically be alarming, these markers showed no association with coronary plaque progression.
Notably, 90% of participants showed no significant change in plaque over the course of one year, and remarkably, six participants showed reductions in their total plaque scores.
Baseline coronary plaque—particularly a positive CAC score—was the best predictor of future plaque growth.
The supposed association of high LDL with heart disease is the reason so many statins (a very high profit drug for big pharma) are prescribed. Statins have horrible side effects and do not work overall for reducing deaths from heart disease.