Category - Study
Man's Body Literally Oozes Cholesterol Due to High-Fat Carnivore Diet
There is currently no research that supports the alleged health benefits of the so-called "carnivore diet," which consists entirely of meat and animal products. In fact, most nutritionists will warn that the diet is inherently unsafe, given that it lacks beneficial nutrients such as fiber and antioxidants.
But one man who took the diet to the extreme experienced an adverse side effect in which cholesterol actually began seeping from his body.
The disturbing case was recently published in the JAMA Cardiology Network medical journal, via Arts Technica, detailing a Florida man in his 40s who visited a Tampa hospital after experiencing painless, yellow growths on the palms of his hands, soles of his feet, and elbows over the course of three weeks.
The patient told doctors that he had adopted a carnivore diet about eight months prior, which consisted of a daily high fat intake including six to nine pounds of cheese, sticks of butter, and hamburgers that had "additional fat" incorporated into them. The man claimed to have lost weight on the diet, in addition to other benefits such as increased energy and improved mental clarity.
However, the yellow lesions on his skin were found to have been from his cholesterol, which had reached such "stratospheric levels" that the lipids actually began oozing from his blood vessels, as you can see in the photos below.
The marks were found to be consistent with xanthelasma, a condition in which the amount of excess blood lipids are too large to be absorbed by white blood cells called macrophages, and instead lead to visible deposits on the skin. It likely resulted from severe hypercholesterolemia, a disorder commonly associated with high-fat carnivore diets in which there are high levels of cholesterol in the blood.
Indeed, the patient's total cholesterol level exceeded 1,000 mg/dL, compared to previous levels of 210 mg/dL to 300 mg/dL before embarking on the high-fat diet. Contextually, a healthy total cholesterol level is considered to be under 200 mg/dL, while 240 mg/dL is considered the to be on the verge of high.
Typically, when these deposits manifest through the skin they are seen around the eyes, in a condition referred to as xanthelasma palpebrarum. Though, the study proves that lipid deposits can occur anywhere on the human body.
It's unclear what happened to the man after he was diagnosed, but his ordeal highlights a cautionary, if not extreme tale of consuming an extremely high fat diet.
