One of the twins’ eight-week vegan fasts completely reversed his elevated cholesterol.

Matt and Mike Beckwith are twins who have seen a gradual rise in their cholesterol levels over the previous few decades.

“Our parents gave us the gift of high cholesterol,” Matt stated.

Although they are both physically fit and in good health, he does occasionally hesitate because of his inherited tendency toward high cholesterol.

“I am at that age where every so often we hear about somebody our age who died of a massive coronary event or a stroke, and it scares the hell out of me,” the 52-year-old said.

They were therefore both eager to compare their data and determine which diet would be better for heart health when they engaged in a twin study that aimed to compare healthy meat-and-dairy diets against good vegan eating regimens.

During the two months of the trial, Matt went vegan and lost twenty pounds. Some former diet staples he dearly missed included butter, eggs, and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. But after the experiment was through, his findings were astounding. Over the course of the investigation, Mike’s lab results stayed mostly same, while Matt experienced some significant improvements in heart health.

Four weeks of vegan eating caused a ten-year rise in cholesterol to decline again.
“My cholesterol dropped from the high cholesterol level right through the middle and went all the way into the good,” he stated.

Within the first four weeks of going vegan, this occurred:
“This was a 10-plus year drop in cholesterol,” Matt stated. “My cholesterol had been slowly going up ever since I was a teenager.”

The study’s nutrition expert, Professor Christopher Gardner, expressed satisfaction if the trial encourages subjects like Matt to consume less processed food, less meat, and more veggies, even if only little.

“Really what we’re after is helping people make a pattern change that they can maintain for the rest of their life,” he told Business Insider. “They’re both going to have beans, they’re both going to have veggies, but the vegans, they’re going to have more beans and more veggies, and that’ll be the difference. So we’ll try to see if compared to a healthy omnivore diet, a healthy vegan diet does well.”

It did on nearly all of the accounts. The lone noteworthy exclusion? The study found that the vegans had slightly lower levels of vitamin B12, which is important for long-term brain function. This difference wasn’t significant enough to affect the participants’ well-being right away, but it could become a problem in the future. According to Gardner, vegans can easily obtain adequate B12 in their diets by making a conscious effort to include nutritional yeast or fortified plant milk in their meals.

Eat more vegetables and whole grains, which naturally lower cholesterol, is one of Matt Beckwith’s long-term improvements as a result of the experiment. Additionally, he has chosen to occasionally replace butter with heart-healthy olive oil.

“I don’t know if I could do vegan full-time ever, because I do like a little bit of butter in some things,” he stated.

About a year has passed since the study’s conclusion, and Matt’s cholesterol has gradually increased to almost its initial level. He said he isn’t overly shocked that his cholesterol dropped thanks to the nutritious vegan diet, but he was taken aback by how noticeable the effects were.

“I was shocked at how much it did for me,” he stated. “I’ve been ‘vegetarian-curious’ and ‘vegan-curious’ for a long time, so it was a good kind of trial run.”