No mention anywhere that this study was funded by Esperion Therapeutics - the company that manufactures the drug. Hm? There's also studies that show people with higher LDL live longer than thoses with lower LDL. There's also studies that show heart disease is primarily driven by hyperinsulinemia. There's also a thing called an advanced lipid panel, which is far more informative than a simple blood test that shows you total LDL with a lipoprotein size breakdown. Just because you have normal range total LDL tells you nothing about the size breakdown or if athereosclerosis or LDL having a high residence rate. The ignorance since the 1950s on heart disease and the war on fats just continues to full steam these days and shows in the posting of this story.

You can make new brain cells

Correct. No one "essentially" needs dietary carbs or sugar. Carbs do stimulate insulin and that stops autophagy. Insulin locks away your fat stores and requires your brain and body to burn the glucose. But when insulin is low and you make ketones from your fat stores - Ketones fuel every cell and even brain cells prefer ketones over glucose. They burn cleaner than glucose - less inflammation like you say. You take in some carbs because you want fiber or other nutrients - like eating a blueberry for antioxidants. Carbs/fructose are never a necessary payload and sugar is processed food that should be avoided. Fructose can only be metabolized by your liver which makes inflammatory fat cells in your belly. I guess you get a little autophagy from exercise but water fast is supposed to be way stronger. Eating once a day also gets you a little bit. It's the feast fast cycle folks. If you are not on that it's constant storage, addiction feeding. You snack and eat so many meals, you have no ability to distinguish true hunger and cravings. Eat once a day you will know what real feeding feels like. And get your glucose insulin tolerance tested. An a1c that is normal is worthless without a tolerance test. We've known since the 1970s (Kraft) that you can test for insulin resistance 10-20 years before an a1c detects a pre diabetic. By the time you are pre diabetic the vascular damage is already done. It's the insulin thats been killing diabetics for years, before untreated high blood sugar would have a chance to. Its good the scientist want to research drugs and therapies but there is context that feels largely forgotten here.

Autophagy/mitophagy induced by prolonged fasting (3-7 days) does this. It is almost a forgotton part of our physiology but the health rewards are astounding when you look into the details or try it. We were desigend to feast and fast - not snack all day and eat 3 meals constantly everyday - especially so many processed foods and sugar.