"post–challenge insulin secretory response does not indicate adverse cardiometabolic health"
This recent article seems counterintuitive, as it states that high postprandial insulin is beneficial. I confess I have only read the abstract, but it is already making waves. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(23)00540-0/fulltext
Liver vs. Pasteurized Akkermansia
Episode #283 is all about the health benefits of having a healthy Akkermansia muciniphila population in the gut microbiome. I live in Belgium where, for some reason, live Akkermansia products from Pendulum Therapeutics are not available according to their international distributor. Instead, we have access to pasteurized Akkermansia products from The Akkermansia Company. This sounds like a scam. How can I stimulate a healhy gut microbiome by eating dead bacteria? Yet google turns up several journal articles documenting the health benefits of eating dead Akkermansia. In some cases, it's even better to consume dead vs. live Akkermansia! Please help me understand these counterintuitive findings. Plovier, H., Everard, A., Druart, C. et al. A purified membrane protein from Akkermansia muciniphila or the pasteurized bacterium improves metabolism in obese and diabetic mice. Nat Med 23, 107–113 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.4236 Xue L, Zhao Y, Wang H, Li Z, Wu T, Liu R, Sui W, Zhang M. The effects of live and pasteurized Akkermansia muciniphila on DSS-induced ulcerative colitis, gut microbiota, and metabolomics in mice. Food Funct. 2023 May 22;14(10):4632-4646. doi: 10.1039/d2fo03493j. PMID: 37098829. Ashrafian, F., Keshavarz Azizi Raftar, S., Shahryari, A. et al. Comparative effects of alive and pasteurized Akkermansia muciniphila on normal diet-fed mice. Sci Rep 11, 17898 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-95738-5 Presumably, a live akkermansia population supplies a dead akkermansia population at some rate, and there could be some health benefit to the enzymes and other parts of the dead akkermansia floating around. Could this be part of the business model of the The Akkermansia Company? It's cheaper and easier to manufacture and deliver pasteurized akkermansia bacteria. Plus, the customers don't get self-replicating product in their gut so they have to keep coming back for healthy dead akkermansia bits?
Good ApoB levels but high LDL-P
If ApoB represents the atherogenic particles, and my ApoB is 77, do I need to worry about my LDL particle count of 1947? It doesn't make sense to me that those numbers are discordant. My LDL-C is 101, TG 55, LP(a) 17, and I am insulin sensitive. Perhaps the LDL-P number is wrong? I had the ion mobility test through Quest; when I tested LDL-P through NMR last summer, my count was only 901. Thanks!