EGGS “How many eggs can I eat in a week?” This is a very popular question that comes up quite often. Even those who understand that cholesterol is not the bad guy, most people still fear the delicious egg.
Cholesterol is not the bad guy that we have vilified it to be; it is vital for every cell in your body. You cannot live one day without cholesterol!
It does not damage arteries, it repairs arteries! Cholesterol can be referred as the fire fighters in our body. They help stop the inflammation that is occurring. When you kill the firefighters (cholesterol), sure your cholesterol numbers will go down, but did the inflammation (fire) go away? No, it didn’t.
Cholesterol is so important to the human body that nature has devised a backup plan in the event your diet falls short. When that happens, your liver steps in to make cholesterol to give your body a baseline level. The high levels of insulin that are released in a low-fat, high-carb diet also trigger the body to tap off leftover blood sugar into the liver to make cholesterol and triglycerides which are used for energy and fat storage.
In its natural, unstressed state your liver makes 75% of the cholesterol your body needs. The rest you have to eat is butter, meat, whole-fat dairy products, shellfish and eggs.
If you deprive yourself of cholesterol, your liver overproduces cholesterol to make up the difference. This overdrive state can’t shut off until you start eating cholesterol again.
So give your liver a break and get some cholesterol in your diet! Most importantly, the biggest contributor to heart disease risk is inflammation.
A well formulated keto-adapted diet is very low in inflammation. Sugar and carbs are the big culprits when it comes to increased inflammation. Coronary Artery Disease occurs when an LDL particle (usually a small dense one) gets lodged in a lesion (caused by inflammation) in the artery wall. It then releases its cholesterol into the artery wall which starts the formation of plaque. So if you have very low inflammation and no arterial lesions for the LDL to get stuck in, your cholesterol numbers aren’t really relevant. Stop the inflammation and you stop the coronary artery disease, regardless of LDL levels. This is how people can live with cholesterol numbers of 300 or more and have zero plaque in their arteries. So if you want to know your real risk for coronary artery disease, get a calcium score done.
Pastured free range hens eating lots of bugs and other natural foods for their bodies result in eggs with 5 to as much as 11 times the omega-3 content! I highly recommend purchasing pastured free range eggs where chickens are able to consume bugs and insects. It is well worth the extra money! You may hold a carton of $1.50 and a carton of $4.00 eggs and decide to save money on the cheaper eggs; however just think…people spend over $4 for a coffee drink at Starbucks but they complain about spending that much on a dozen eggs.
So the question is, “How many eggs can I have in a week?” The answer is, “As many as you like! Then your liver won’t have to work so hard!”
