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When I got my lab numbers from a recent annual physical, I was disappointed to see that my LDL was up from 122 to 140 over the past year. Total jumped from 187 to 213. My diet and exercise routine has been pretty constant EXCEPT several months ago I began using Muscle Milk. Don't use it every day but several days each week around workouts. Thing is Muscle Milk is relatively high fat compared to other whey supp's. They claim their fat is prone to be burned rather than stored. I'm curious as to whether any of you guys (or gals) (1) use Muscle Milk and (2) whether you've noticed any negative impact on your cholesterol numbers? I love the stuff, especially cookies and cream flavor. The thought of giving it up depresses me. Don

Don, I don't use Muscle Milk for the exact reasons you mention. The cholesterol in the stuff will kill you. When I did side by side comparison I was astounded. I take Optimum Nutritions whey. It has 1 g of total fat and .5 g of saturated. MM has 17 grams of total fat and 7 g of saturated.

All this corresponds to ON's Cholesterol being 30 mg or 10%RDA based on 2000 calorie diet. Your stuff, if it is the total fat that is affecting the cholesterol you get 510 mg of cholesterol or 170% of your RDA. Hell, even my one serving of Bluebell Ice Cream only has 35 mg of cholesterol. Admittedly I don't know the complete relationship between fat and cholesterol ratios.

So no, I don't have personal experience with it, but I did research into it. Quite frankly the numbers scared me.

I use Muscle Milk fairly regularly, since it comes in a wide assortment of flavors and it actually tastes good. It derives about 40% of its calories from fat, a good deal of it saturated fat in the form of medium chain triglycerides (MCTs). Nearly all the fat in the product is from vegetable sources (sunflower, canola and safflower oils, and MCTs). Muscle Milk only contains 5mg of cholesterol per serving. Since cholesterol is a steroid alcohol that only occurs in animal tissue, this amount shouldn't surprise anyone.

Some people are phobic when it comes to saturated fats, but MCTs don't behave like most of them. Coconut oil is almost all MCTs, so you would expect consuming it would cause heart disease. But in fact, the reverse is true. Coconuts are the staff of life in parts of South Asia and the South Pacific. People in Polynesia eating traditional diets, for example, consume up to 40% of their daily calories in coconut oil yet have a low incidence of heart disease. (Since switching to a Western diet, the incidence of obesity and heart problems have gone way up among Polynesians.) Besides the calories, there are health benefits to coconut oil as well. It's no coincidence that when humans colonized Polynesia eons ago, they brought the coconut with them.

More on the benefits of coconut oil here:

Still, your blood lipid profile has might have changed for the worse. There's always the possibility of test error, and multiple tests might give a more accurate score (and your medical insurance provider fits!). If indeed the only change that you've made between readings is using Muscle Milk, you might want to skip it and see if your numbers change for the better. If it does, it could be an idiosyncratic response to the product by you, or (shudder) the product doesn't contain what it has on the label. I'm hoping that it isn;t the latter, since, as I said before, I really like the product

BTW John Parrillo, a bodybuilding trainer of some note, is really into using MCTs as part of his training regimen.

How are you on refined carbs? There was just a study recently showing a direct link to cholesterol/heart problems and refined carbs. Which jives with what has been known about it for years really. OR how about trans fat? Eat any fried foods or processed snack food?

probably you must add to your diet fishes rich in Ω3-Ω6.
i don't know though which fishes are they.
probably ironman, tim or other can help.

I just pulled a label of the internet and that was the info I could derive. Thanks for clearing it up.

Paul, the fish you are describing high in the omega 3's, EPA/DHA are the cold water fish. All fish have them, but the coldwater types have lots, they are the fatty ones, i.e. salmon, mackerel, sardines.
Stephen and Ironman are right, in the sense that chloresterol is not really determined by what you eat, hence the bad hype on eggs, but rather it is manufactured y the body, and is affected by various sources, one being heredity, and Ironman is right. Studies have been done on the type of diet that became popular in the 80's, hi carb, very low fat, low to moderate protein, and a lot of those people got high chloresterol numbers due to the fact they were using a lot of those highly refined, low fat foods, like tons of rice cakes, Snackwell low fat cookies, etc, etc
As I recall, Musclemilk (I have never used it) was developed for higher fat on purpose. The idea, and a sound one IMO, is that most of the drinks had very little fat. Fat is required in the diet for growth, think anabolic, as fat has been shown to have a positive effect on natural testosterone levels. Think about it, back in the 60's, the way we got big was eating a lot of red meat and eggs, and drinking whole milk. The mct thing came about as a viable energy source in lieu of a lot of carbs, and Parrillo didn't have his guys/gals eating a lot of starch, basically it was meat, veg, and lots of MCT oils.
Tim

Yea, I agree, eating the coldwater fish will help with lipid levels.

I was trying to find MCT oil to use it like energy in place of carbs. Couldn't find any though. I ended up using flax oil, and it seems to work. Yes fish oil is better, but it has an unpleasant effect on my digestive system. The funny thing is I can eat the fish without any problems but can't take the oil supliment.

I haven't looked for MCT oil in quite some time, but Twinlabs used to sell it, and labeled it as "Human Machine Oil".
Tim

Actually, they call it MCT Fuel, keeping with their tradition of "fueling around" with the names of their products. I do remember them using the term "Human Machine Oil" in their ad campaign, complete with a dipstick. You would think that would confuse people into thinking it was meant for your joints.

You can get MCT Fuel at Netrition,com, among other places. Oddly enough, Twinlabs does not feature the product at its web site.

Parrillo offers the competing product Cap Tri, which you can order here.

Of course, you can do what the Polynesians do and order coconut oil itself.

I have my doubts that drinking Muscle Milk caused langeranger's fluctuations in blood lipids, but you can't say it didn't definitively.

btw,
do the omegas 3, 6 lose their beneficial properties if the fish is frozen?
are they stronger in fresh fishes?

Omega 3s - specifically DHA and EPA - are the reason to eat fish. Omega 3s aren't eaten enough by most people, while omega 6s are eaten too much.

More about that here and here.

Freezing doesn't affect the fats in fish that much. In fact, unless you buy from a fish store that has quick turnover, it's safer to buy frozen. Fatty frest fish will turn rancid quickly.

BTW, most ocean-caught fish is frozen at sea, anyway. It gets thawed when it comes to market. Only high-end resturants and gourmet shops get really fresh ocean fish.

Thanks for all the good input. I'm pretty clean insofar as diet. Hardly any refined (white flour), grind my own flax meal for my oatmeal. Eat sardines 1 x week, salmon or other fish 1-2 x week, also 2 fish oil capsules daily, very little red meat. Avoid fried stuff like the plague. Do the "lots of multi-colored vegetables" thing, and 3-4 daily fruits. Nuts and peanut butter daily. Think what I'll do is omit Muscle Milk for several weeks, then get another lipid panel done. Not perfectly clean science but as good as I can do considering all those wily variables manifesting themselves in these human bodies we call home. If the numbers are still high, guess I'll do what the doc suggests: start a statin. Yikes! Thanks again. Don