Lipid Protocol · Personal Health

What Your ApoB-Lowering Stack Is Actually Doing

A read on the lifestyle-plus-nutraceutical lipid protocol against three clean Function Health draws, the no-statin way. The honest answer: winning hard on particle count, plateaued on ApoB mass.

Generated 2026-06-24 · Lab source: 30-personal/health/bloodwork/bloodwork.md and 2026-06-01 May 2026 Function Health Panel Review.md · Stack source: Ace Personal, Family and Health.md lines 113-128

The verdict

The stack is doing its single most important job: it is dismantling the part of your lipid profile that actually causes plaque.

For a South Asian pattern-B profile, the danger is not cholesterol mass, it is the number of small, dense LDL particles. Those are collapsing. LDL particle count fell from 2011 to 1253 and crossed from High into Moderate for the first time, and small-dense LDL fell from 520 to 246 (May 2026 panel review). That is the strongest interval of the whole project. Where it has stalled is the headline ApoB mass number: 129 down to 96, then a tick back up to 99, still off the under-90 checkpoint (Quest lipid panel p1). So: the engine works, the last 9 points of ApoB are the holdout.

The four markers that matter

ApoB

99 mg/dL

129 → 96 → 99 · goal <90

Plateau, off goal

LDL Particle Count

1253 nmol/L

2011 → 1740 → 1253 · beat <1400

Crossed into Moderate

Small-Dense LDL

246

520 → 327 → 246

Down 53%

Triglycerides

129 mg/dL

71 → 129 · trig/HDL 1.69 → 3.23

Drifted up, watch

All four sourced to bloodwork.md and the May 2026 panel review. Three clean time points: Nov 2024, Mar 2026, May 2026 (Aug 2025 discarded as a 66-hour-fast artifact).

Trajectory across three clean draws

The stack, agent by agent

Agent (dose)	Role in your lipid plan	How it lowers ApoB / LDL	Published LDL-C effect
Thorne Red Yeast Rice 2 caps, meal + dinner	Primary mover Your statin stand-in	Monacolin K is naturally occurring lovastatin. Blocks HMG-CoA reductase, upregulates the LDL receptor, clears LDL particles from blood.	-15% to -25% population range
Berberine 2 caps/day, meal + dinner	Primary mover Particle + glucose lever	Upregulates the LDL receptor by a non-statin pathway, so it stacks additively with red yeast rice. Also lowers ApoB and blood glucose.	-15% to -20% population range
Bergamot (Jarrow Bergamonte) 2 caps, meal + dinner	Primary mover The HDL angle too	Polyphenols inhibit cholesterol synthesis and absorption; one of the few agents here that also nudges HDL up, which matters given your HDL is low.	-12% to -27% population range
CholestOff (plant sterols) 2 caps, meal + lunch + dinner	Primary mover Absorption blocker	Plant sterols compete with dietary cholesterol for absorption in the gut, so less reaches the bloodstream. Different mechanism again, stacks cleanly.	-8% to -10% population range
Omega-3 (SR Triple Strength) 690mg EPA / 310mg DHA	Primary mover Particle-size + trig lever	EPA-dominant, chosen for LDL particle size, not LDL mass. Drives triglycerides down and shifts particles larger and less dense (pattern B toward A). Barely touches LDL-C itself.	trig -15% to -30% LDL-C neutral
Ubiquinol 1 cap, meal + dinner	Support Safety, not lowering	Reduced CoQ10 to offset the statin-like CoQ depletion from red yeast rice (muscle, mitochondria). Protects the primary mover, does not lower lipids itself.	n/a
Milk Thistle 1 cap, meal + dinner	Support Absorption booster	P-gp inhibition deliberately boosts berberine absorption. A force multiplier on a primary mover rather than a mover itself.	n/a
D3 + K2 1 cap, meal + dinner	Support Arterial, not lipid	K2 directs calcium away from arterial walls. Plays to your CT calcium story (Agatston 6), not your ApoB number.	n/a

Doses and product choices: Ace Personal, Family and Health.md lines 113-128. Omega-3 EPA/DHA split: line 125.

Read the effect column honestly. Those percentages are population ranges from published clinical trials, not your measured personal effect, and they do not add up to a single number. Five agents, plus a 20 lb weight loss, OMAD, interval training, and a tighter diet all changed at once, so no one can split your ApoB drop of 129 to 99 into "this much came from berberine." What is yours, and fully sourced, is the measured trajectory above. The literature column only tells you why each agent is in the stack and roughly how hard it pulls in the general population.

What this means for you

You are winning on the marker that predicts plaque, and that is the right marker to win on. Particle count and small-dense LDL are the genuinely atherogenic signals for a pattern-B South Asian profile, and both are in steep decline. Backed by an Agatston calcium score of 6 (minimal, Jan 2, 2025) and hs-CRP under 0.2, your actual cardiovascular risk reads low, which is the whole point of the lifestyle-first, no-statin call (May 2026 panel review confirms that call stands).

The two things to watch

ApoB has plateaued just above goal. 96 then 99 is a stall, not a reversal, but it is the holdout number. The stack lowered the easy two-thirds of the gap; the last 9 points to under-90 are the hard part.
Triglycerides jumped 71 to 129 and trig/HDL went 1.69 to 3.23. The May panel review reads this as recent-diet or short-window noise (inferred from clean A1c and insulin), not a real shift, but it is unconfirmed. A rising trig number can also drag particle count back up, so it matters to the stack's progress.
Next test, not next supplement. The planned move is a clean ApoB and trig/HDL recheck around Aug 2026 with diet tightened in the run-up, to confirm the drift was noise. No protocol change is indicated before that read (May 2026 panel review, open follow-up).

Personal health summary for Ace Hemani, lifestyle-first lipid protocol. Not medical advice and not a prescription nudge; the no-statin approach is the documented standing call. Effect-size ranges are general published clinical-trial figures for the named agents in broad populations, included to explain stack design, and are explicitly not decomposed onto Ace's personal result. All personal lab values trace to bloodwork.md and the 2026-06-01 May 2026 Function Health Panel Review.md; stack composition to Ace Personal, Family and Health.md. Three clean draws used (Nov 2024, Mar 2026, May 2026); the Aug 2025 draw is excluded as a 66-hour-fast artifact.