The Dr. Hyman Show
Rethinking Cholesterol, Keto, and Cardiovascular Risk with Nick Norowitz
Wed, 30 Apr 2025
Who in the world would try to lower their cholesterol by eating an entire sleeve of Oreos every day for a month? Meet Nick Norwitz, PhD, an Oxford graduate and Harvard medical student who did just that—in an effort to test a hypothesis about cholesterol and metabolic health. After reversing a serious inflammatory condition with a ketogenic diet, Nick saw his LDL cholesterol spike. Instead of panicking, he turned to research—and self-experimentation—to better understand what those numbers really meant. In this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, we explore: • The health crisis that led Nick to a ketogenic diet • Why his LDL cholesterol jumped—and what questions it raised • The Oreo experiment and what it did (and didn’t) reveal • The nuance around LDL, metabolic health, and cardiovascular risk • What the science—and Nick’s own experience—suggests about meat, veganism, and finding a diet that works Check out the episode to hear this fascinating conversation. View Show Notes From This EpisodeGet Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hymanhttps://drhyman.com/pages/picks?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcastSign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journalhttps://drhyman.com/pages/longevity?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast
Who is Nick Norwitz and what is his health background?
And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out Function Health for real-time lab insights. And if you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, the Hyman Hive.
And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your health journey, visit my website at drhyman.com for my website store for a summary of my favorite and thoroughly tested products. Now, before we dive in, I want to make a quick note about this episode.
This conversation with Nick Norwitz was released before the release of a new keto diet study co-authored by today's guest, Dr. Nick Norwitz. Now, this study sparked a lot of interest and a lot of debate online. It was pretty interesting to see the amount of blowback it got
And now, while this new study isn't discussed in the episode, the study that I'm talking about now, the conversation gets into some of these topics and offers valuable context on what led Nick to explore this topic in the first place, including his own health struggles, and now a viral experiment where he lowered his LDL cholesterol by eating a whole sleeve of Oreos a day. It was very fascinating.
He's a character. Welcome to the Dr. Hyman Show. This is Dr. Hyman, and this is a place for conversations that matter. And today, if you're confused about nutrition,
I can't promise you won't be confused in the end, but at least you'll be more educated because we're talking to a MD, almost MD, from Harvard, an Oxford PhD, who's made it his job to understand the science beneath nutrition and metabolic health. His name is Nick Norwitz. He's a graduate valedictorian from Dartmouth. He majored in cell biology and biochemistry. He went to
Oxford to get his PhD in metabolism and study ketones and Parkinson's. He is an enthusiastic person, to say the least. He's very passionate about understanding the underlying mechanism behind our chronic disease epidemic and our metabolic health. He's personally suffered from severe inflammatory bowel disease and cured himself of it through food, which I think is important to take note of.
He's making a name for himself online, and he is also making a name for himself through the academic work on various diets and approaches through scientific literature, including ketogenic diets, cholesterol, lipids, LDL. And he's a great scientific communicator with all kinds of expertise across a array of things that I don't even think I understand. His mantras stay curious.
He loves hard questions. And we went through a lot of hard questions today. We talked about all kinds of things from whether artificial sweeteners are good or bad for you to what does LDL... do in terms of your body's risk for heart disease. And it is at the Boogeyman we thought it was. We talked about carnivore diets, vegan diets, and lots more.
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