Okay so my question today, Chris, is about psyllium husk and potentially using it as a tool
to lower LDL cholesterol levels. The question is in that context,
can you share your thoughts and advice around a specific form or even specific supplements
of psyllium husks for that purpose... Dosing? Chris:
I don't have too much to say about this. I do know basically psyllium husk is going to come
in pretty much two forms. There's the flakes and there's the powder.
The powder's going to be more effective, or at least on a
per dose amount the powder is going to be more effective just because it has more surface area.
But I don't know if that really means much except that you need to change the dose.
Let me see if I can quickly pull up something on the ones that have been... There's six studies
on LDL cholesterol. Let me... Hold on one second. Just got to... all right, am I here now?
Here's one. They used five grams, I think twice a day
using Plantago psyllium. I'm not even sure what that is. It looks like a brand new... 120 people
had a six week diet period of diet counseling followed by six week treatment period.
It looks like this wasn't even randomized, but anyway, they measured blood lipids every
two weeks. Here is a better description. There were foil packets containing five grams and they
consumed three doses. So not twice a day, three times a day. So it's 15 grams total,
five grams before each meal. Chris:
I'm going to have to pull up the results here. Hold on...
All right. So it looks like it took... It basically took six weeks for the effect
to be maximized, but two weeks for the... Oh, wait a second, that's glucose. That's not LDL.
Oh, for the blood lipids, it didn't measure them every two weeks. It just measured them at the end
of the study it looks like. LDL cholesterol went from 140 to 118 with 15 grams of psyllium. And
total cholesterol went from 215 to 195. So it's reducing LDL more than total.
And they used, let's see...
I'm not sure what... I guess Plantago is just the
technical name for the plant. Oh, this was made by Metamucil.
That might help us figure it out. Danny M:
I had seen that referenced as a form or brand used in some cases.
Chris: Do you know what type of...
whether it's a husk or powder? On their website it looks like it's the husk. The flaky part.
Danny M: That's what I was gathering,
but I haven't confirmed. Chris:
So 15 grams of the flaky stuff looks sufficient. You could probably get...
I'm going to guess you could get... That you could get similar effects if you
used one third of the dose of the fine powder. I don't know, did you have any questions
beyond the powder versus the husk? Danny M:
Yeah, just on the dosing, which I think you just found some information on that. But
then the third part is maybe even a broader question than just regarding psyllium husk
is what are your thoughts on minimum time after doing something like this. Like psyllium husk,
say other dietary intervention, like lowering overall fat, saturated, fat or cholesterol.
What is your thought on the minimum amount of time
to test that? Chris:
I would say the minimum time is four weeks. Danny M:
Four weeks. Okay. Chris:
So just perusing through these various trials, summaries,
it looks like the doses used are between six grams and 15 grams and tend to be more in the
10 to 15 gram area. And then, let me look at, a lot of this stuff is in diabetics, but I think
before we finish this, I think I just want to look at this meta analysis to see if they did any
sub-grouping by dose or a type of product, because that itself might be interesting...
It doesn't look like I did actually. Chris:
I'm going to say
generally speaking, give a good four weeks for any effect to translate into an effect on blood lipids
on psyllium husk. You're probably going to get the best results with 15 grams of psyllium.
And you can probably cut that in a half or a third with the powder, the fine powder versus the flaky
husk. But you might want to start on a higher dose than you expect rather than a lower one,
just to make sure that when you test the effect on your blood lipids you don't miss out on a real
effect because your dose was too small. Danny M:
That sounds great, Chris, thanks for the input. That
helps a lot. Chris:
You're welcome. Take care, Danny. Thank you for your question.