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Comment by carbocation | Hacker News Reader

300 grams of oatmeal a day, basically nothing else, and your LDL only goes down 10%.

Definitely shows the comparative power of medications. Statins, ezetimibe, and PCSK9 inhibitors can reduce LDL or ApoB by 85-95%.

> Statins, ezetimibe, and PCSK9 inhibitors can reduce LDL or ApoB by 85-95%

What? Absolutely not. Not even close. Provide a source if you really believe this.

40mg Rosuvastatin + 10mg ezetimibe + leqvio did this precisely for my n=1.

One source: https://www.escardio.org/communities/councils/cardiology-pra...

Specifically: “ Although our pharmaceutical armamentarium is very good at the moment (the combination of statin-ezetimibe-proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 [PCSK9] can reduce LDL cholesterol [LDL-C] levels by 85%), new drugs are emerging through the different pitfalls of current drugs.”

Colestyramine basically works the same way as oatmeal, but is far stronger.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colestyramine

It seems as if some researchers think that reducing this single metric without considering any other factors is inherently always a good thing and is very important.

the diet was just maintained for two days

Hardly “nothing else”. Two smoothies a day with 150g of oats blended in them will basically cover this. You’d still have plenty of room for other food.

But that's not what the study tested. The study showed that both calorie restriction, and calorie restriction combined with almost all calories from oats, reduced cholesterol; but that the effect was more durable for the latter case. No data was gathered on eating oats without calorie restriction in this study.

It seems more complicated than that - the "Oats only" people were only on that regime for two days, not an extended period of time.

Also the paper says that the "Oats only" people were allowed to eat other fruits and vegetables with their meals.

The oat diet was two days and the effect lasted two weeks though so it's not as bad as eating nothing but it's all the to e

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