A man ate 720 eggs in 1 month. Here’s what happened to his cholesterol.
Some men just want to see their carbs burn.
Here’s some background: Nick Norwitz recently graduated from Oxford with a PhD in neurometabolism and is now pursuing his MD at Harvard.
One day, he decided that he would eat an average of 1 egg an hour for 30 days straight.
He did this experiment to see if eating those many eggs, with all their cholesterol, would spike his blood cholesterol levels, specifically LDL (what we call “bad cholesterol”).
Was he putting his health on the line? Yes.
Was it worth it to prove a point, for science? Also yes.
The eggsperiment
You’d think that more dietary cholesterol would mean more cholesterol clogging your arteries and making you just feel terrible, right?
Especially since this man was having a real eggsplosion of this bad stuff in his diet. (Before you ask, yes, this is going to have a whole lot more egg puns)
That just seems like common sense.
But here’s the twist: It didn’t. Not even a little.
His LDL cholesterol:
▪️ Dropped by 2% in the first 2 weeks
▪️ Dropped by another 18% in the next 2 weeks.
This was despite eating WAY more cholesterol than anyone would think is sane: 133,000 mg.
Why did his LDL decrease?
↳ Your body regulates itself, so when you eat more cholesterol, your liver chills out and produces less of it.
↳ This mechanism includes gut receptors and hormones (like cholecystokinin) that work together with the liver to maintain balance.
↳ Dietary cholesterol, even in crazy high amounts, doesn’t raise your blood cholesterol.
So why did his LDL drop in the second half of the month?
The answer is carbs.
The eggsplanation
Nick is a “lean mass hyper-responder”, which means when he goes on a low-carb, high-fat diet (like keto), his LDL tends to go up.
In the last 2 weeks, he added more carbs to his diet, like bananas, blueberries, strawberries, and a few frozen cherries dipped in macadamia butter (because why not?)
He ate about 60 gms of carbs a day, which were enough to make his LDL levels drop by 18%.
⇢ When you go low-carb, it affects how your lipids (fats) move around in your body.
⇢ Reintroducing carbs, even a little, slows down the fat-burning process, which in turn reduces LDL.
⇢ It’s like a switch: fewer carbs, more fat-burning; more carbs, less fat-burning, and so lower LDL.
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The eggcitement
But this experiment wasn’t just about eggs and cholesterol.
Nick also wanted to highlight something deeper: how extreme messages and stunts like this get more attention, especially on social media.
The whole “720 eggs in a month” stunt is exactly the kind of outrageous headline that makes people click.
Rather than sharing real, insightful knowledge, the focus is on catching your eyes with something absurd.
This is especially true in the diet and nutrition spaces, where the more outlandish the title, the more attention you get.
It reveals the psychology of social media: sensationalism drives the conversation, even if the real value is buried a little deeper.
In my opinion, this is an unfortunate, but necessary evil to raise people’s awareness of serious health discoveries.
Watch Nick’s video on his experiment here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhUMUCoJOsc
This experiment made us come for the 720 eggs and stay for the lesson on social media marketing.
Did you learn something new from this article? Let me know in the comments!
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