Ask a doctor about eggs and he or she might tell you that they raise your cholesterol levels and could lead to an early death.
However, in gym communities they are hailed as a superfood.
To get to the bottom of whether or not eggs are bad for you, one man ate 720 of them in a month to see what really happens when you eat eggs.
Dr. Nick Norwitz, a PhD student at Harvard University, found that contrary to what many doctors believed, his cholesterol levels actually went down.
Dr. Nick Norwitz ate 720 eggs over the course of a month and saw his cholesterol levels drop. Pictured above, he is holding over 40 cartons of eggs from the “egg experiment.”
After the month-long experiment in which he ate the equivalent of 24 eggs a day, or 1,800 calories, his levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), or “bad” cholesterol, dropped by 18 percent.
LDL is considered “bad cholesterol” because it can build up as plaque in the arteries, increasing the risk of heart disease and stroke.
The other type of cholesterol, called high-density lipoprotein (HDL) or “good” cholesterol, has the opposite effect, helping to remove excess cholesterol from the bloodstream and transport it to the liver.
Experts have demonized the cholesterol in eggs for decades, warning that eating them can cause a spike in LDL levels and increase the risk of complications.
Dr. Norwitz holds a PhD in human brain metabolism from Oxford University and is completing his medical doctorate at Harvard University.
He first became interested in nutritional science after his battle with ulcerative colitis, an inflammation of the intestines where ulcers form, which left him in and out of the hospital and bedridden some days.
She eventually opted to try the ketogenic diet, in which 70 percent of calories come from fat, despite doctors’ warnings against using it to treat her condition.
Revealing the decision to STAT in 2021, she said: ‘After a week on a ketogenic diet, my colitis symptoms started to disappear.
‘Over the next few months, I stopped taking my colitis medication. Two years later, I’m still on a ketogenic diet and my colitis is still in remission.’
In the video, which has been viewed more than 160,000 times on YouTube, he said his aim was to show that eating eggs did not cause cholesterol levels to rise.
This graph shows how their cholesterol levels decreased over the course of the four-week experiment. They were revealed through blood tests.
Dr Norwitz said: ‘My hypothesis was that eating 720 eggs in a month, which alone equates to 133,200 mg of cholesterol, would not increase my cholesterol. Specifically, it would not increase my LDL cholesterol.
“And, indeed, that was not the case, not in the slightest.”
He added: “Although my dietary cholesterol intake increased fivefold, my LDL cholesterol actually decreased.”
Throughout the experiment, he analyzed the cholesterol levels in his body through blood tests.
Eggs contain about 186 milligrams (mg) of cholesterol each. Other foods high in cholesterol include red meat, seafood, and tropical oils.
Some scientists hypothesize that eggs do not raise cholesterol: in the gut, cholesterol binds to receptors on intestinal cells, triggering the release of a hormone called cholesin.
This travels through the blood to the liver, where it binds to a receptor called GPR146, which signals the liver to produce less LDL, helping to maintain levels in the body.
After the first two weeks of his experiment, Dr. Norwitz also decided to start eating 60 grams of carbohydrates per day in the form of fruits like bananas and blueberries.
Dr. Norwitz explained the mechanism by which cholesterol levels had decreased in his body despite eating so many eggs.
He said it was largely due to the fact that he had also eaten carbohydrates, which his body was using for energy.
He explained how eating more carbohydrates can help further reduce cholesterol levels in the body.
In people on a low-carb diet, LDL levels tend to increase in their bodies because their system starts burning fat for energy instead of carbohydrates.
But when someone eats more carbohydrates, the opposite happens: LDL levels decrease in the body because the person gets more energy from carbohydrates.
In the experiment, he ate 60 grams of carbohydrates in frozen bananas, blueberries, strawberries and cherries per day.
That’s equivalent to two bananas a day or 21 ounces of blueberries.
Commenting on the video, one viewer said: “I clicked because I knew my LDL wouldn’t go up and I want to share this video with some family members who are freaking out because I’m eating all these eggs and meat.”
A second added: “I’ve eaten eggs almost every day of my 67 years, through thick and thin, I’ve never given them up. And I’m in very good health, no doctors or medication.”