Yes. Total Cholesterol is an outdated way of assessing risk.

Here's the deal.
On LC, typically triglycerides go down (they are directly tied to sugar / carbs. That's great.
HDL typically goes up. HDL is typically known as "the good cholesterol". This is also good.
LDL meanwhile is calculated based on your total cholesterol, triglycerides and HDL. LDL is considered "the bad cholesterol". LDL sometimes does some weird stuff. For some, it goes down. For others, it goes up.

The problem is that LDL can actually be "fluffy" or "dense". The fluffy stuff is fine. It's the dense LDL that becomes an issue. On Low Carb, LDL typically gets larger and fluffier. But they don't measure the size of the particles - they are only measuring the quantity. Why does LDL become more dense? Triglycerides (which again, ties back to sugar).


Take a look at this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E57cFhjpxgw

If you want to jump ahead, go to around 12:30 in the video - here they talk about cholesterol values. But the entire video is quite interesting and informative, and explains what's happening in your body with fat storage and sugar and cholesterol.


Other resources --
There's a new documentary out called "Cereal Killers" where they discuss cholesterol quite a bit. The individual in Cereal Killers goes on keto, and does have the particle size measured before and after.

This article also talks about this -- see # 5 and #9.
http://authoritynutrition.com/10-benefits-of-low-carb-ketogenic-diets

I also like this cholesterol ratio calculator, which I think does a good job of looking at the ratios(which tend to be more important than any of the individual values).
http://www.hughcalc.org/chol.php

One more. Jimmy Moore also has a book he put out recently called "Cholesterol Clarity". Here he tries to explain the cholesterol issues. Jimmy is a long time low carber, and did a full 1 year "experiment" with nutritional ketosis, where he measured his blood ketones every day. It's also worth checking out.

At a workshop held at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, researchers looked at every single study about the risk of having high or low cholesterol and came to the same conclusion: Mortality was higher for women with low cholesterol than for women with high cholesterol.

In the new paradigm, from current science, we have learned that:

Dietary cholesterol has little influence over serum cholesterol: the body increases cholesterol production when dietary cholesterol falls, and vise versa.

There is no correlation between cardiovascular disease and any of the following: dietary saturated fat, total LDL, total or dietary cholesterol.

LDL cholesterol values represent a heterogeneous population of hazardous LDL particles (small, beady and likely to get caught in an inflamed blood vessel) and big fluffy LDL particles that bounce right over any bump in the vascular road. Two ways to determine your LDL particle profile are the LDL particle number (high numbers are hazardous, representing more small particles) and the LDL typing, A (big) vs. B (small) particles.

The potential side effects of statins include increased risk of muscle pain, dementia and cognitive deficits, breast cancer, and more.

The potential side effects of a high carbohydrate diet in sensitive people include elevated triglycerides, fasting glucose, visceral fat accumulation and type 2 diabetes.

Saturated fats, cholesterol, and nutrients in avocados, coconut oil, and eggs are well loved by your brain, heart and metabolism.

Most importantly we have learned in the new paradigm that a low carbohydrate, high fat, moderate protein diet outperforms both the Mediterranean Diet and the ultra-low-fat Ornish diet when it comes to weight loss and preventing or reversing the main plagues of modern civilization, which I would count as six: cardiovascular disease (heart disease and strokes), type 2 diabetes, cancer, arthritis, dementia and depression. I use the word “plague” quite intentionally: as a nation we suffer significant morbidity, mortality, and expense attributed to all of these conditions.