I’ve been doing bulletproof coffee basically for the whole time since I started, more than 10 years ago.

The benefits have been pretty much the same as those I reported after my first 30 days.

In 2024 though, I started to think that maybe, I should ween off of coffee…

The caffeine issue

My reasoning was that the coffee was interfering with the way my body actually wanted to function. What I initially regarded as a feature started to feel like a liability! If my body wants to tell me it’s tired and maybe hasn’t slept enough, or eaten right, or needs time to repair… is it really a good idea to push it to 120%? … Daily?

On the other hand, since mid-2022 my diet had shifted to keto (low-carb, high-fat, moderate protein). Keto is definitely a great tool for maintaining a healthy weight and eating less altogether (without feeling hunger). Keto actually uses the same principle as BP Coffee: eating more fat makes you feel satiated faster and cuts down on your hunger over the subsequent day. Therefore, BP coffee actually fits great into a keto lifestyle. You can drink it in the morning and it won’t break your state of ketosis (I measured my ketones levels with a Keto Mojo device).

But the issue of forcing the body into an unnatural state (with caffeine) remains. So I progressively started replacing part of my ground coffee with decaffeinated coffee… This worked fine in terms of continuing to not eat anything else than butter/coconut oil in the morning. Of course, the caffeine boosting properties went away and after a while I was used to “no boost” without even thinking about it.

Does that mean the decaffeinated BP coffee was now useless in terms of energy and mental focus?

Actually no! Deca BP coffee was still useful: just the fact of not eating anything that takes great energy to digest is an energy booster in itself! So I went on as a happy chap… deca BP coffee FTW!

The Cholesterol issue

Along my BP coffee journey, I always sneezed at people not wanting to try it because of “Cholesterol”.

  • First, neither them nor myself, actually had any clue about what “Cholesterol” actually is and how certain (not all) lipoproteins (which happen to transport cholesterol in the blood stream) end up building plaque in your arteries.
    Seriously, now I researched this a bit: it’s insanely complex and I still don’t think I learned enough to make assertions about it. Nonetheless:

  • Second, all these people were typically eating toast in the morning: white bread + butter + jam, which they dipped in their coffee. I, on the other hand, was just removing the carb loaded bread and jam! I just kept the butter and mixed it into the coffee instead of dipping it. See the irony?

  • I actually made it a rule of thumb that the proper amount of butter in BP coffee should be approximately the same as what you’d otherwise spread on your bread ;)

And then… for some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to get some bloodwork done, for a checkup after several years…

But when the numbers came back I got a shock! My #LDL-C (abusively called “bad cholesterol”) level went through the roof compared to 5 years ago!

I first brushed those results off because my #LDL-H (abusively called “good cholesterol”) was also elevated and my #triglycerides (TG) were low… which is pretty common when doing keto with relatively low body fat. They call it #LMHR : Lean Mass Hyper Responders. There is research underway on this phenomenon and it’s difficult to have a definitive answer, at this time, about whether this profile is harmless or undesirable in the context of keto.

Then, I started pulling out my historic bloodwork data and put it into excel for the first time in my life so I could maybe see some trends (something no doctor I ever saw was ever interested in). I did actually find LDL-C tests I got done in 2018 and 2007. Unfortunately I didn’t do any more than that in the last 50 years… I’m not sure I should publish my exact numbers here, but here’s the gist of it:

  • In 2007 (way before I started BP coffee or keto) I was totally normal, even in the lower “normal range”
  • In 2018 (4 years after starting BP coffee) I was technically “normal” but already at the higher end of the “normal range”
  • In 2024 I was way out of “normal”.

So, on second thought, my elevated LDL-C may not be all because of keto and maybe BP coffee played a role too!

Any scientific evidence linking BP coffee to LDL-C?

Kind of… but it’s weak. Based on this systematic review, there are 2 studies that give some information:

  • McAllister et al. conducted a randomized, double-blind crossover trial but they only show Total cholesterol and HDL-C increases with heavy MCT oil + coconut oil (no butter). Why they did not measure LDL-C is beyond me (it’s a $5 test, probably way less in bulk and their n=10). I take the increase in total cholesterol as valid evidence that BP coffee does something to your cholesterol levels though.

  • A case report has also been published involving a 59-year-old male with dyslipidemia.  Over several months, while maintaining a consistent exercise regimen, his lipid profile deteriorated. It’s n=1 and he was on rosuvastatin before starting the study. So it’s very hard to say how much is due to stopping rosuvastatin.

At this level, I’ll do my own n=1 study on myself and I’ll measure my LDL-C (among others.)

Stopping (Deca) Bulletproof coffee?

With all this, I had to start investigating into the whole cholesterol issue (much deeper than what doctors would care to explain… and maybe even deeper than most of them know themselves… The internet in 2025 is just a goldmine of advanced medical knowledge).

Anyway, so far, this lead to more questions than answers:

  • Could it be that the saturated fats in the BP Coffee’s butter and coconut oil contributed significantly to elevating LDL-C?
  • Could it be that this is undesirable, notwithstanding the LMHR situation?
  • Would I be better off dropping BP all together?

I feared that if I stopped drinking my Decaffeinated BP Coffee in the morning I’d get hungry quickly and would need to eat breakfast again. (More ingested calories, not desirable.)

Yet, one morning after a heavy raclette dinner (which is keto friendly ;) I actually woke up still feeling full and thinking “I don’ feel like adding butter over that”. So I didn’t… I did not take my BP Coffee. And, because at that time I had already switched to deca, I felt no coffeine withdrawal syndrome either :)

It’s been about 4 weeks now and I don’t feel the need for BP Coffee in the morning any more and I don’t feel the need to eat breakfast either. I’m just keto/fat adapted enough at this point and I can eat just once or twice a day (people call this #OMAD : One Meal A Day or 2MAD.)

By the way: OMAD is such a time saver it definitely compensates for having your brain running at 100% instead of 120% as it did with BP coffee.

Now, the OMAD kicker: eating OMAD on keto pushes my body even further into LMHR / high LDL-C mode. I did control bloodwork after a 40 hour fast (which was surprisingly easy, probably because I started out already in ketosis). It came back with LDL-C even more elevated !! BUT… this was an extreme. I did it because I wanted to have as a reference point for what comes next…

But, can I quit coffee altogether? And can I quit morning calories altogether?

Most of the time I don’t feel the need for ingesting fat or any other type of breakfast anymore (however, I still crave the taste :p)

But does that mean I don’t feel the need for coffee to wake me up? Does it mean I feel at 100% without having anything in the morning?

I would wish so… but it really depends on the day. Sometimes I don’t think about it and some other days I really feel I’m thinking slowly… brain fog… and it lasts for hours… even after sleeping a solid real 8.5 hours (sleep time, not time in bed). It seems better though after having my one meal in the day…

  • Maybe it means I’m not fully keto adapted yet? (Update: I am, according to blood ketone measurements)
  • Maybe it means I’m not fully adapted to OMAD and an 18 hour fasting window?
  • Maybe it means I’m too deep into keto? (my GKI is extremely low, sometimes below 1)
    • Maybe too deep into keto is ideal for autophagy but not ideal for brain function?
    • Maybe I should try to get my GKI into a more “normal ketosis” zone?
  • Maybe it means there is actually no substitute to caffeine to boost your brain?
    • Or maybe I’m still too used to it?

I really don’t know at this point…

Update mid march: I settled on very low caffeine coffee every morning as part of a morning routine. Most of a time I put in half of a teaspoon of real coffee + 1.5 spoons of deca.

Depending on how I feel I will make it “light bulletproof” or keep it black. BY light bulletproof I mean I use less than half the butter and coconut oil that I used to.

Ironically I noticed that black coffee has a disadvantage: I feel the acidity on my gums and it also leaves a butter aftertaste in my mouth for several hours. So now, if I drink black coffee, I will follow by pulling oil with coconut oil (which I do not ingest). This was one benefit I did not realize 10 years ago: bulletproofing your coffee actually smoothens the acidy down and probably protects you to some extent from receding gums! Oil pulling may be equally effective.

Next

While waiting for the LMHR study results (2025) to know if the high LDL-C/high HDL-C/low TG needs to be addressed or not, I’m going to see if I can lower my LDL-C just in case. This is what I’m going to try:

  • Significantly reduced BP Coffee in terms of:

    • Less caffeine
    • Less butter
    • Less coconut oil
    • Less often BP / more often black

  • Try to replace as many saturated fats (SFA) as possible with mono-unsaturated fats (MUFA) and poly-unsaturated fats (PUFA) while staying on keto. Not ready for olive oil coffee yet though…

  • Learn the details about fatty acids (not all saturated fats are equal and not all PUFAs either: staring with Omega 3’s vs Omega 6’s)

  • Get bloodwork done more frequently to see what makes a difference and what not.

  • Try to get more precise bloodwork done. Liproprint (aka fractionation of LDL into different particle sizes) would be great but not available anywhere in Luxembourg right now :'(

More Bulletproof Coffee studies

Over those 10 years, some studies finally came out:

Note: these studies have NOT been done on a population following a keto diet.

Link to find potential newer research on PubMed.