Spencer Nadolsky, Tommy Wood, and I have been having a series of meetings regarding the next major phase, which will soon result in an announcement to come. Please stay tuned as we hope to have it ready in the coming weeks.
We have some powerful news today – we now have it on strong authority that the followup time for the LMHR Measurement Project will be more than sufficient at one year, not five.
Spencer, Tommy, and I have been consulting many people both individually and together, including a very high level imaging expert. And we’re now confident progression of atherosclerosis for the LMHR population should be observable with CT Angiogram imaging at one year apart.
Needless to say, this is some very unexpected news. But I’d argue it is certainly more positive than negative. This does introduce a new slate of changes we’ll need to adjust for:
Our existing budgetary timing will be tighter. We have been seeking $2,000 per LMHR for this initial round of tests with the assumption we’d be raising the same amount for the second round in five years time. Given we’re now talking one year, the turnaround time will need to be much sooner.
However, with regard to (1) above, our high level expert has helped us figure out ways to save on the overhead per participant, but we can’t speak on that just yet. We now think we may be able to still keep the price to $2,000/each, but manage to cover both the first and second round testing.
This may change my own plans for the documentary and book. Given how close we are to having data in hand, it may be worth chronicling the effort in real time until it is wrapped, thus having a more compelling story for each medium given the big ending.
It’s pretty hard to express in words how seismic this news has been for us. Instead of a long stretch for half a decade once we break ground, we could instead be bringing forward powerful new data in just a twelve months regarding diet-induced high cholesterol and risk of atherosclerosis.
I’m beyond ecstatic to announce a new anonymous donor has come forward and is offering to match our total donations once we reach $100,000!
As of this writing, we’re sitting at $66,150, which means we have just $33,850 to unlock the match.
In other words, every $1 you contribute now is worth $4!
The Dream Scenario of 100 LMHRs
It was barely two months ago on the stage of Low Carb Houston that I announced the start of this project and that my dream scenario would be getting 100 Lean Mass Hyper-responders to participate. At 100, we’d have a very powerful population given the effect size reflected in their LDL levels.
Our back-of-the-envelope math suggests all the testing we wish to do (CT Angiogram, CIMT, CAC, etc) will probably be around $2,000 each. Thus, $200,000 gets us there.
Please Contribute and Share
We’ve come so far, so fast — but we couldn’t pull this off without your help. Please continue to contribute and share to help us cross that $100,000 line!
Tommy Wood MD, PhD Joins the LMHR Measurement Project
I’m extremely excited to announce Tommy Wood is now joining the team for the LMHR Measurement Project.
Tommy brings a wealth of experience and research aptitude that Spencer and I are quite excited to have onboard.
Tommy Wood’s Background
Tommy Wood is a Research Assistant Professor in the Pediatrics Department at the University of Washington. He received a bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences and Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge before studying medicine at the University of Oxford. He worked as a junior doctor in central London for two years after medical school, and then moved to Norway to complete a PhD in physiology and neuroscience at the University of Oslo.
Tommy is currently President of Physicians for Ancestral Health, is a director of the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine, and is on the scientific advisory board of Hintsa Performance. Tommy has also coached and competed in multiple sports including rowing, CrossFit, powerlifting, and ultra-endurance racing. Alongside his career in medicine and research, Tommy has published and spoken on multiple topics surrounding lifestyle-based approaches to health.
Big Things Ahead, But We’re Not Allowed to Say Yet
The good news is that the LMHR Project may soon be getting upgraded into something much better with Tommy Wood’s help.
The bad news is that I can’t tell you what yet. The potential improvement requires that we follow specific rules, including our not talking about the process itself. I’ll simply say this will make sense once the initial part of this process is finalized, and I’ll be sharing it here when or if it is.
Update on Signing Up
IMPORTANT — we will not have a signup area for the LMHR Measurement Project for at least two or more months. The reason for this has to do with what I was explaining in the previous section. The direction we’re looking at will be very likely a big improvement, but it requires we don’t sign anyone up until a certain conditions are met first.
In the mean time, keep checking back here at the website for announcements as they develop. Thanks again for your patience!
Roadmap Ahead
The following is a roadmap I put together to help everyone get a sense of the intended scheduling.
This roadmap includes the documentary schedule as well, which will be substantial, particularly in January and February. We’ll be developing the project in parallel and getting it ready for a summer launch. I can’t announce too much on the specifics yet as we’re still in the designing stages.
Please Keep Sharing and Contributing!
We currently estimate around $2,000 in testing overhead expenses for each LMHR participant. Which means that as of this writing, we can fund nearly 33 total. But as I mentioned in Houston, I’d love if we could get to the magic number of 100. At that level, we’ll have a very sizable population given the effect size. I know it’s a stretch goal, but we’re already 1/3rd of the way there!
The process of putting it together in a hurry was extremely difficult. But to be fair, I really didn’t think we’d actually meet that goal in the first place! Once it was clear we were within striking range just a couple days before the race, I jumped into gear.
The following thread on twitter details the many foibles I ran into during the process. It’s quite a comical read:
1/ Massive costume thread…
Spoiler alert: A software engineer I am… I costume engineer, I am not. ?
I secretly started working on getting the costume together Friday morning as I figured if there were a 1% chance it could happen, I should at least be prepared… pic.twitter.com/XnjKC0uieE
We’ve now cross the 40k benchmark and currently stand at $40,241.86 (counting the Anonymous Donor matching funds of $13,582).
Mega thanks to everyone who has contributed!
New Logo
We have a new logo generously provided by Michael Rowley. I’m a very big fan of his style and look forward to working with him on many other projects moving forward.
As mentioned earlier, I’ll be doing a 10k race to help raise money. Since announcing for it, we’ve raised $3,710. That means I’m on track to either be wearing one of the two costumes I mention in the previous post.
Please continue to contribute and share to help us make the LMHR Project a reality.
A week from tomorrow I’ll run the 10k on the Las Vegas Strip (woefully undertrained). And how much we raise for the CSF will determine how I appear! (see poster below)
I’m excited to share that at the moment of this writing we have raised $22,010. And with $8,932 of that raised in November, it will be matched to give us a total of $30,942!
We are officially 62% of the way there.
With the existing November funds matched (up to a total of $25,000), we only need $9,529 to get to the $50,000 benchmark.
Please continue to share and help get the word out — especially while we have our contributions matched! Thank you all for your support!
An anonymous donor has come forward and has offered to match all donations up to a total of $25,000 for this month (Nov’ 2019)!
That means every dollar you contribute will be worth two!
We might actually reach our goal of $50,000 before the month is out with your help. Please visit our LMHR Measurement Project page to contribute — and thanks again for your support.
Please RT — BREAKING — an anonymous donor has come forward to MATCH ALL DONATIONS up to $25,000 for this month (Nov ‘19)!!