What's on My Mind - The Mind of a Stay at Home Dad

To Lose Weight Just Eat "Food"

2008-06-06T12:22:00.002-04:00

A tricky statement to start with but it is a good idea. Below is a posting from "The Modern Forager," a blog I frequent. I have been trying to put something together like this for a while now but he did it just right. The rest of this post is a copy/paste from his website. Thanks!

Recently, I was having a conversation with some random girl and when I mentioned that I was into nutrition, she asked me to give her my five rules of nutrition, the five things she needed to know to eat right. I managed to come up with three off the top of my head and told her that basically covered it, then later realized that one rule is all that’s needed. You must follow this one simple rule to put yourself on the road to top-notch health.

Ready for an epiphany? It’s…

Eat real food.

Now, I’m not a genius that just broke the code of the universe. Jack Lalanne said, “If man made it, don’t eat it.” Michael Pollan broke it down to “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.” It really is that simple. So many nutritionists want to make it difficult; confusion keeps them employed. Look at the Food Pyramid, which was at least an attempt to get people eating right. Too many rules, too many gray areas. We can argue that the Food Pyramid is a convoluted mess of ill health, but the pertinent fact is that it’s too difficult to figure out, even if it was any good. What exactly is a serving? And how do I decide if I need 6 or 11 servings of grains? Is that pork chop “lean”? And then there are all of the rules about saturated fat, cholesterol, calories, total fat, sodium, and sugar intake. How can you make heads or tails of anything this complex?

We can argue about low carb, low fat, The Zone, Ornish, Atkins, and Weight Watchers until we’re blue in the face. But civilizations have thrived on diets of varying macronutrient proportions throughout history. The Inuit ate a diet of almost no carbs and mostly fat with no ill effects. The Masai drank cow blood and milk and ate meat like it was going out of style. As the nutritionists gasp, I’ll mention that the Masai achieved prime health too. The diet on the island of Okinawa is heavily weighted towards vegetables and rice with some fish and little meat, high in carbs, low in fat. Again, very good health; Okinawans have excellent longevity.

So it’s not so much about the macronutrients, as long as you’re getting enough protein and fat to allow the body to function properly. It’s about the types of food being consumed. Dr. Weston Price noted that traditional civilizations thrived until they were introduced to processed grains and sugars, at which point, health declined markedly. We all know someone that follows a low-fat diet or low-carb diet by eating every processed product in the store that excludes their chosen macronutrient (”Angel Food Cake is a fat-free food!”). They rarely make the progress they’d like to. Why? Because before you can worry about macronutrients, you need to focus on food. You don’t eat nutrients. You eat food.

Let’s keep it simple: Eat real foods, preferably in their natural state. I think it’s pretty easy to figure out what is “food” and what isn’t. A few things to remember:

Food grows and dies. It isn’t created.
Food rots, wilts, and becomes generally unappetizing, typically rather quickly.
Food doesn’t need an ingredient label (and probably isn’t in a package either).
Food doesn’t have celebrity endorsements.
Food doesn’t make health claims.

Let’s give some foods this simple test and see if we should eat them:

Broccoli - Most certainly a real food
Steak - Deliciously real food, straight off the cow
Oreo cookies - Hold while I read the ingredients. Are you serious?
Eggs - Bingo
Walnuts - Check
Spaghetti - I don’t recall seeing a spaghetti tree on my last hike
Pop-Tarts - Just seeing if you’re paying attention
Pasteurized/Homogenized Milk - Nope, not in its natural state
Raw Milk - Yep, real food, naturally

Sure, there are still a few gray areas. That’s the life of an omnivore. For instance, what about oatmeal and other whole grains? Those are things you will have to decide for yourself. My guidance is to keep grains to a minimum, if included at all. Cheddar cheese from raw milk? Probably okay. Velveeta? Not so much. Lard? For sure. Olive oil? I say yes, though it could be argued both ways. Crisco and margarine? Not a chance.

What you notice is that few of these foods, with the exception of cooking oils, come from a factory. They just exist. There’s no secret formula to create them. Even olive, coconut, and palm oils, while requiring extraction, require no special knowledge. Just press really hard and you get oil. Nobody has a patent on the flavor of an apple. The ingredients in zucchini can’t be tweaked to ride the current nutrition wave.

Eating real foods virtually eliminates one of the hardest parts of maintaining your weight: counting calories (or carbs or fat). Real foods have a built-in feedback mechanism to keep you from overeating. Protein and fat stimulate appetite-suppressing hormones. Fruits and vegetables tend to be bulky for their caloric content. Some may want to argue about Glycemic Indexes and other fun things, but no one gets fat by eating carrots. People get fat by eating fake foods. Just eat real ones and I guarantee that you’ll shed fat and feel better.

That’s not to say that there’s no place for managing your carb, fat, and protein intake. But before embarking on any road that gives you a set number of carbs or fat to eat, you must decide to eat real food. Until you start with real food, you will struggle. Once you start down the path, you may need to tweak if you’re going to try to build muscle or compete in marathons, but for health, just eat real food! Your body, which is significantly smarter than your mind, knows what it needs and if you feed it real food and then pay attention, it will give you feedback.

Fortune 500 Companies and Why You Should Hate Some of Them

2008-04-21T21:26:00.002-04:00

Fortune Magazine has released it's top 500 companies from 2007. A look at them can tell us a few things about the world we live in and why we need to make a few changes. I will admit that this area is not me specialty but this blog is a place for me to rant and rave, not necessarily be accurate... Though I do research my comments as best I can and try to cite my sources as often as possible. This entry is mostly a knee jerk reaction the the Yahoo article about the Fortune 500 article.

The number 1 company is Wal-Mart. Most people who know me know I hate them but for so many more reasons that you would expect. For starters, the simple answer, Wal-Mart puts the little guys out of business and ends the rule of generations of Mom and Pop run stores. They do this by introducing low prices to a community. Americans love a bargain and swarmed there for years, and continue to keep Wal-Mart a hugely successful company. But are low prices what Walmart really brings? Or do they just bring cheaper goods?Cheaper and lower prices are 2 different things. Walmart is so big now that non-cheaper goods are only available at specialty stores and are considered over priced. The brands Walmart has introduced are now the regular, everyday throw away brands we have come to expect.

How about customer service? Have you ever had good customer service in a Wal-Mart? I have been in retail for most of my adult life and most customers and trade magazines report the same thing, there is no good customer service left in America. They bitch about it non stop and yet the store most notoriously linked to poor customer service is the #1 company in America. So do you really care about good customer service or is it really price first? Next time you need something that you can shop around for try rewarding the store that provides the best customer service and not the best price. Why? Do you really think that item cost you that much more at a different store?

What if I told you Wal-Mart was bad for the American economy. Walmart is America's single biggest employer but offers the lowest wages and worst benefits. They are a drain on every community they are in. Walmart management is trained on how to get their employees on state support because they refuse to offer a living wage and affordable medical insurance. And that's to their few "full time" employees, most employees are aren't ever offered the unaffordable benefits because Walmart positions are only part time, even if the employee works an average of 40+ hours. Walmart has had numerous legal problems in this department and has lost a number of class action lawsuits. You would think the largest company in the WORLD could offer decent health care insurance. I have worked for a number of large companies and they all offered good and affordable benefits based on covering hundreds or thousands of people.

I have more but I will be saving some of my anger for the #2 company on the list, Exxon Mobile (Also the most profitable company IN THE WORLD for 2007). But that is another post.

Good News From Sweden

2008-04-02T11:56:00.003-04:00

I got this info from a great blog I frequent called The Weight of the Evidence. Apparently a Doctor in Sweden got their National Board of Health and Welfare to agree that a low carb diet is "in accordance with science and well-tried experience for reducing obesity and Type 2 diabetes." This has sparked much discussion with the powers that be in Sweden and their newspapers have picked it up. Part of the conflict is centered on the fact that this Doctor wrote an open letter to schools calling for more healthy fats in the diet of children. The Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet polled their reader as follows:

Vad tror du att barn mår bäst av?
[translation: What do you think that children are better off with?]

Choices:

Fet mjölk och smör
[translation: Fat milk and butter]

Lättmjölk och margarin
[translation: Skim milk and margarine]

As of this writing, 27,836 have cast a vote in the poll and 89.6% have answered the Fat milk and Butter!

So the newspaper readers of Sweden understand the difference between "whole foods" and processed food. Anyone believing that margarine, a completely chemical "Frakenfood," is better for you then butter has a disturbing world view.

Most dairy products are processed unless you are buying "Raw Milk." Info on Raw Milk can be found at http://www.westonaprice.org/. Raw milk has been outlawed in most of the US because 1 person died from a reaction to it. Another case of the government overstepping it's bounds and meddling in our private lives. I guess the raw milk people don't have as much money as big tobacco.

I Can't Even Call it Journalism

2008-04-01T20:22:00.003-04:00

I just giggled my way through a newspaper article from the Arizona Republic. Apparently the writer has taken it upon herself to declare that the low-carb diet fad has ended. I have no idea who Karen Fernau is or what dog she has in this fight but she went to two solid experts on the topic, Cynthia Harriman, spokeswoman for the Whole Grain Council in Boston and Wade Moises, chef at Sassi, a high-end Italian eatery in Scottsdale, Ariz. Two people who are intimately familiar with the low-carb lifestyle. Let's see what they had to say.

Cynthia says, "The carb mania finally has subsided." And now she can go back to making money!

Chef Moises says,

"It never made sense to me that people believed that if they stayed away from pasta for more red meat they would be thinner and healthier. Those of us who know the power of pasta survived the attack by realizing that moderation eventually will prevail."

Well, it makes sense to me and plenty of other people who have taken the time to learn about it. It is pretty easy to understand and has been the way humans have eaten for the last few million years, except for the last 10,000 or so (just the blink of an eye on the time line).

What kind of nutritional value do these carbs provide us? Let's see what Karen Fernau tells us:

"Pasta is fortified with folic acid, an essential B vitamin. A half-cup serving contains a mere 99 calories, less than half a gram of fat and less than 5 milligrams of sodium."

So pasta isn't good for us but the folic acid that it is fortified with is good for us. So she thinks a processed food is good for us. Let's think about grains and how edible they are. Oh wait, they aren't edible. First they need to be harvested in huge quantities to give us any usable quantity. Then they need to go through a process to convert the hard waxy kernels into something at least digestible. Next they are stripped of all their fiber and nutrients for shipping and an extended shelf life. Finally, they are ground into a fine powder and bleached. Mmmmmmm, sounds yummy so far. Somewhere in the process the folic acid is added to give the product an once of nutrition.

Calories In and Calories Out

2008-03-30T07:32:00.004-04:00

I was just thinking about a good, easy example to show how burning more calories then you eat doesn't result in weight loss. It was difficult because if you do burn more calories and build muscle then you become a more efficient user of energy and usually become a more active person and won't store as much extra sugar as fat. Then I realized that America has tons (sorry about the pun) of fat kids. We all see kids, fat or otherwise, running around and playing and burning all those calories but they are still fat. In addition, these fat kids are burning calories growing taller, but they are still fat. I don't know for sure but I would bet growing uses a LOT of calories. How can kids who are active AND growing get fat if burning more calories then you eat supposedly results in weight loss?

The answer is what I posted on below, weight control is more about chemistry then calories. The fat kids are eating processed carbs and probably TONS of sugar in juice boxes, regular juice, snacks and low fat foods. All processed for a longer shelf life not maximum nutrition. Remember, there are 4 grams of sugar per teaspoon of sugar. Check the sugar content on your juice. There are 28 grams of sugar per 8 oz serving in the juice in our fridge so that's 7 teaspoons of sugar per serving. YIKES!

Where Low Fat Came From and Why It No Longer Makes Sense

2008-03-26T16:48:00.003-04:00

This post should be short. My hope is to make shorter post with increased frequency. I write most of these without a lot of planning and I know I can ramble on and on.

So where did this idea of low fat come from and what was the rationale behind it? I think it is a very important question to know the answer to but so few actually understand. About 50 years ago Americans began getting fat. During WW2 Americans were required to ration their meat for the soldiers fighting on the front lines in Europe. To replace the calories America turned to grains and our waist lines started to expand. (This coincides with Coke introducing high fructose corn syrup). Exercise for weight loss was unheard of, it was called "working up an appetite" back then. So America was getting fat and something needed to be done.

The scientists of the day looked at the macro nutrients (nutrients that provide energy) to see where they could make cuts. Protein and carbohydrates contain 4 calories per gram and fat contains 9 calories per gram. The simple idea was to cut fat and therefore cut calories. The thinking was that eating fewer calories and exercising (burning calories) would result in weight loss. This sounded easy and is still the current view of most backward thinking doctors. Unfortunately not all calories are equal. Weight gain is not a matter of eating more calories than one burns. Many studies have shown that simple calorie restriction will result in an equal reduction in resting metabolism. The body adjusts the the amount of fuel it is given.

Weight control is more a matter of chemistry than calorie. For starters, cutting fat means cutting a nutrient that the body requires. Ever hear of "essential fatty acids?" Guess what, they come from fat! Also, cutting fat usually means reducing protein intake since most fats are literally attached to proteins. But protein is absolutely required, it is what most of the human body is made of. But what about carbs? Has anyone ever heard of a disease or condition that resulted from not enough carbohydrate in the diet? Absolutely not! Actually, the body's daily requirement for carbs is ZERO! That's right, I will say it again. ZERO! A healthy liver produces all the blood sugar the body requires and that in turn maintains a level blood glucose AND insulin level. Any sugar added to the blood stream, sugar from the digestion a carbohydrate, will cause insulin spikes which tell the body that there is plenty of easy access energy around and now is the time to store it. Extra energy is stored as... Anyone? FAT!

Below is a short clip from the upcoming movie called Fat Head. It is a brief but humerous look at the science that resulted from the poor judgment of cutting fat.

In Memory of Einstein, My Best Friend for 14 Years

2008-03-08T22:20:00.001-05:00

Many souls pass through our lives, some stay longer then others. For 14 years my dog Einstein has been a companion through good times and bad but his attitude was always the same. He was amazingly happy, lazy and lovable. Years ago he was diagnosed with a thyroid and weight problem and proper medication and diet were used. By the time he was 12 years old he had pretty bad arthritis and required many expensive med's to keep him going. Recently, at age14, we found a cancerous tumor growing near his shoulder. More med's were added to keep him comfortable and it looked like they were dong the job. On Saturday it appears Einstein suffered a stroke. We rushed him to the Kingston Animal Hospital where the decision was easily made to stop Einstein's suffering. Mary and I were close to him as the injection was made and through tears we shared his final moments of peace.

Many of you remember him as the gentle giant he was; large and lovable and always a long, sticky line of drool (Love) hanging from his lips. No one could resist him though... Once the love was wiped away with a paper towel, that is.

My favorite Einstein story took place in Colorado, his birth place. I was helping my friends the Reynolds build a new deck so I took Darwin and Einstein over the night before to get an early start. I had forgotten to bring breakfast so during the morning Einstein helped himself to the dog food at hand. As many of you know he has always had a sensitive stomach. Around lunch time the new food had worked its magic and had made its way to Einstein's business end. At first no one was sure what we were smelling, certainly no human was going to admit to being the source. The Reynolds had a pretty good size backyard and this was Colorado with lots of open space and fresh air. That said, we all had to go inside to get away from Einstein's power. Yes, Einstein cleared the outside.

Also, apparently Einstein decided to lick his balls during our wedding ceremony in the backyard. Always a charming dog, he did this in front of all our family and friends.

Today, there is an empty spot in my heart like I have never felt before. I am with out a dog. I still think I see him out of the corner of my eye, coming down the hall. It is now possible to walk from one room to another with out have to take 1 large step over him, and I miss that big step. He will never be completely gone though. I am sure I will always have some of his thick fur stuck in a fleece pullover or find some dried drool stuck to the ceiling. He could shake his head and send it EVERYWHERE.

I won't miss stepping in his poop in the hall or picking it up with on a late night walk in the rain (sometimes finding there was a hole in the plastic bag). But that's what I signed up for and I have no regrets. Some where in doggy heaven Einstein is together again with his partner in crime, Darwin, and I hope there are low fences to escape from. There were many in Colorado and escape they did. Once, I had Einstein on a dog run but when I bailed him out of doggy jail I found he had pulled it out of the trees on both ends and dragged at least 75 feet of steel cable around the neighborhood with him.

Einstein will join Darwin and Princess and be cremated the placed in a beautiful wooden box. Einstein's box will hold a position of honor though. He lived the longest and the best. We all could have learned from him. No one could nap better, could hold down a carpet better or just completely relax quite like him. His patience with kids was bottomless.

If you can, please leave a thought or a story about him. There are too many of you to call and tell personally. And Michael is a light sleeper so I can't call you anyhow. I am going to bed now with out him at the end of my bed for the first time in 14 years. I miss him so much already...

Goodnight my friend.

Am I Smarter then Researchers in Sweden?

2008-02-15T14:01:00.005-05:00

I came across a very interesting article on Yahoo today. Many people have seen the documentary "Super Size Me" by now and some have heard of the movie "Fat Head" which shows you can lose weight on a fast food diet. Well, finally some researchers in Sweden put the whole fast food diet to the test. The study can be found here. Let's look at the study briefly.

Researchers in Sweden asked 12 men and six women in their twenties, all slim and in good health, to eat two meals per day at McDonalds, Burger King or other fast-food restaurants over four weeks.

The volunteers were also told to refrain from exercising. The goal was to increase body weight by 10 to 15 percent to measure the impact of an abrupt surge in calorie intake.

If you like that kind of food, it sounds like fun! But what happened wasn't so much fun. There is an enzyme known as ALT which is an indicator of liver damage, often seen in alcoholics and patients with Hepatitis C.

Levels of ALT increased sharply after only one week, and quadrupled on average over the entire period, said lead researcher Frederik Nystrom, a doctor at the University Hospital of Linkoping.

"The results scared me," he told AFP. "One of the subjects had to be withdrawn from the study because he had 10 times the normal ALT levels."

What could possibly be causing liver damage in the crappy food served by fast food chains? The Yahoo article reports:

Published in the British Medical Association's journal Gut, the study "proves that high ALT levels can be caused by food alone," said Nystrom.

That signs of liver damage were linked to carbohydrates was another key finding, he said.

"It was not the fat in the hamburgers, it was rather the sugar in the coke," he said.

What did he say? It was the sugar? OH MY GOD! Who would have thought that? Just a few million people who understand the difference between the "lipid hypothesis" and the "sugar hypothesis" of disease. I happen to be one of those people. So does this amaze and astonish you, would it surprise anyone you know? I will admit I was happy about the direction this article was going, then they drop a bit of a bomb 0n me:

But the most startling result implies that an intensive fast food diet might have some health benefits too, apparently from fat.

"We found that healthy HDL cholesterol actually increased over the four-week period -- this was very counter-intuitive," Nystrom said.

Not counter-intuitive to me or any of my readers who believe me. Also, the author of the Yahoo article has rolled right over the whole "sugar causes liver damage" thing by stating the increased HDL was the most startling result of this study. Again, the main stream media thinks cholesterol is the story and it isn't, EVER!

So what did the mainstream media have to say about this? I checked in at a blog I frequently read called The Weight if the Evidence to see if I could steal her quotes. I could... And I thank her.

MedPage (A Daily email to practicing physicians)today says: Explain to interested patients that this small study suggested that overdoing it on high-fat foods, even during a short holiday period, for instance, and a failure to exercise can cause liver damage.

What? Did MedPage read the same article I did? What else could have been said?

NHS Choices says: The study does provide a further reason to avoid overeating (especially food high in saturated fat) if one is needed.

Hmmmm... Somehow saturated fat is found the be the culprit again? I am confused.

CBS News reoprts:

The study, published in the advance online edition of Gut, doesn't show which was more damaging - bingeing on fatty food or being sedentary.

Of course it doesn't! It was the CARBS! Was ABC any smarter?

"The extra fat is the big enchilada here, the equivalent of about three sticks of butter daily,"

Huh? Some days I just want to give up. Who are these reporters holden to? How could they possibly misreport the essential facts of this simple little study? Wouldn't the bigger story actually be that the medical community as well as the media and the government has had it wrong for the 50 years or so. I guess not.

More Dummies in "Science"

2008-02-02T11:58:00.000-05:00

I have been away for a bit and a LOT has happened for me to blog about. I am planning a sizable blog about statins and how they not only provide no protection from heart disease, they probably make it worse (plus all the side effects!).

But I just read a little article about gout and something made me laugh so I thought I would share. The article can be found here at sciencedaily.com, billed as "Your source for the latest research news." So I stop by their often for a good laugh. It says that high intake of sweetened soft drinks increase a man's risk for getting gout.

First they tell us the usual method to reverse gout:

Conventional dietary recommendations for gout have focused on the restriction of purines (found in high levels in meat and meat products, especially liver and kidney) and alcohol but with no restriction of sugar sweetened soft drinks.

That makes sense, sugar has never been reported to cause any medical problems, right? Obviously the problem lies with meat, a source of food for all animals for millions of years. OK, a little sarcasm there, but it just shows how little the medical industry actually knows.

The study tells us:

The risk of gout increased with increasing intake of sugar sweetened soft drinks. The risk was significantly increased with an intake level of 5-6 servings per week and the risk was 85% higher among men who consumed two or more servings of sugar-sweetened soft drinks per day compared to those who consumed less than one serving per month.

Not really a surprise here, soda has a negative nutritional value so it should cause health problems.

But what about fruit juices, they are considered to be "healthful" because of the fruit in their name. No one really mentions the high amount of sugar, added or not, it is "fruit sugars" and if they have fruit in their name then they must be good for you! But wait! The study gets something right here... Almost:

Fruit juice and fructose rich fruits (apples and oranges) were associated with a higher risk of gout. However, the authors stress that this finding needs to be balanced against the benefit of fruit and vegetable intake to prevent other chronic disorders like high blood pressure, coronary heart disease, stroke and certain types of cancer.

Like I said, they almost got it right. Somehow the authors have mistaken "fruit juice" for "fruit and vegetable intake." So they take an apple and squeeze out all the liquid and sugar, leaving all the important nutrients behind, then add high fructose corn syrup to it, pasteurize it and bottle it and call that a serving of fruit. They actually believe a glass of orange juice is the equivalent of eating an orange. AND they combine that in the same sentence with "vegetable" making a glass of juice the same as a serving of broccoli! I haven't finished grad school, hell, I haven't even started grad school... I don't even plan on taking my education any further then my BS in biology, but I think I know more then these idiots. Or am I having visions of grandeur?

Low Carb is Back!

2008-01-01T12:40:00.000-05:00

The day I never thought would come is here! On December 28, 2007, reason and logic finally influenced a mainstream quasi-scientific group and the American Diabetes Association (ADA) endorsed a low carb diet for weight loss. A press release can be read here. You would think I should be at least twice as excited as I really am, but they couldn't be entirely honest with us so I am only partially thrilled. Let's look at some of what they have to say.

The ADA has always believed that obesity was the cause of type 2 diabetes and that weight loss was the primary tool to battle it. (Type 2 diabetes was formally called "adult onset" diabetes but due to the "obesity epidemic" it was showing up in kids as young as 10 years old.) The ADA called for a reduction in total caloric intake via a low fat diet and increased activity levels. Here is what they have added for their 2008 guidelines:

Until now, the ADA did not recommend low carbohydrate diets because of lack of sufficient scientific evidence supporting their safety and effectiveness. The 2008 Recommendations include a statement recognizing the increasing evidence that weight-loss plans that restrict carbohydrate or fat calorie intake are equally effective for reducing weight in the short term (up to one year).

This sounds like good news to us low carbers, but why only 1 year? Let's read on:

Because people following low carbohydrate diets may replace calories from carbohydrate with fat or protein, the recommendations also include monitoring the lipid profile (blood fats, including cholesterol and triglycerides) of patients on such diets.

Interesting... In the first quote they are "recognizing the increasing evidence," which makes me think they might have read a scientific paper or 2. But any paper that found weight loss was about equal on either diet also found that lipid profiles improved more on a LOW CARB diet then on a low fat diet. (A link to the most recent paper showing this can be found here.) So they seem to be cherry picking the info they want and hiding or denying anything else. After all, the ADA has spent decades promoting the low fat diet with out any evidence, why admit they were wrong all that time? Not only have they been promoting low fat, they have been vilifying low carb. They go onto to say this:

High protein diets may also worsen kidney problems. Therefore, it is also recommended that patients with kidney disease be counseled about appropriate intake of protein and that their kidney functions be monitored carefully.

But there is no eveidence of this nor any physiological mechanism that confirms this. Still, they attack low carb with out any scientific evidence.

Recently, Adam Campbell of Men's Health magazine wrote an article criticizing the ADA's nutritional recommendations (more on that later). The ADA wrote him a letter saying,

"...your publication printed dangerous information that could potentially jeopardize the lives of millions of Americans with diabetes or at risk for diabetes."

That doesn't sound like an endorsement, but a year later they now tell the medical community that low carb can be useful for weight loss.

Many people in the low carb community see this is a partial victory, as do I, but there is still a lot of work to do. The ADA isn't recognizing all the other health benefits of a low carb life style, like curing the disease the ADA is organized to cure. Huh, cure diabetes? Yes, at least type 2 that is.

Let's briefly look at how low carb and low fat affect blood sugar and insulin and how elevated insulin causes type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is caused by the body's inability to use insulin properly. In normal individuals elevated blood glucose will cause an insulin release. Insulin bonds with the cells and allows the blood sugar into the cells to be used as energy. If the blood sugar is constantly elevated and the insulin is also, then over time the cells become desensitized to insulin. This results in an even higher blood sugar, more insulin is released and the cells become more desensitized. This starts a downward spiral that ends with type 2 diabetes.

Until December 28, 2007, the ADA recommended a low fat diet exclusively to prevent people at risk for diabetes to become diabetics. Let's see how that works out. There are 3 macro nutrients that the body can use to make energy: fat, protein and sugar (carbohydrate). When we reduce fat we naturally reduce protein since the 2 are closely linked. This leaves carbs as our primary source of energy. Carbs break down into blood sugar and we start the previous mentioned downward spiral. What makes this worse is when we remove fat from our naturally occurring foods. This makes previously yummy foods taste crappy so we do one of 2 things: 1. Replace the natural fat with a fat that is thought to be less unhealthy (that's were we get transfats from), or 2. We add sugar. Now we have taken someone at risk of getting diabetes and told them to increase their sugar intake. BRILLIANT!

Low carb will have the same calorie reducing effect as a low fat diet but allows us to burn fat for energy (This is called "ketosis" and I will dedicate a whole other blog entry to it). It has no effect on blood sugar or insulin and in a type 2 diabetic it will normalize blood sugar and insulin. Which method do you want to try?

Amendment for 1/2: Click here for a list if links to research articles showing the many health benefits of low carb AND articles showing how low fat is NOT a healthy choice.

Why is America Obsessed with Total Cholesterol?

2007-12-12T17:17:00.000-05:00

I found an article on Yahoo about the national average cholesterol reading. On average America’s total cholesterol is now at 199, the article reports, "Doctors like patients to have total cholesterol readings of 200 or lower." Why they like that number is not reported nor is it actually at all important. But lets look at a few things here. The article reports, and the mainstream medical establishment agrees, "The growing use of cholesterol-lowering pills in people 60 and older is believed to be a main reason for the improvement, experts said." Those cholesterol-lowering pills are from a class of medicine called "statins," and no one has ever proved that statins or a lower total cholesterol can prolong life.

At the beginning of this year an article appeared in the Lancet, a British medical journal, showing that statin drugs provided ZERO protection from developing cardiovascular disease (CVD) in women of any age or men over the age of 69. Here is what the article says,

Our analysis suggests that lipid-lowering statins should not be prescribed for true primary prevention (emphasis mine) in women of any age or for men older than 69 years. High-risk men aged 30–69 years should be advised that about 50 patients need to be treated for 5 years to prevent one event. In our experience, many men presented with this evidence do not choose to take a statin, especially when informed of the potential benefits of lifestyle modification on cardiovascular risk and overall health. This approach, based on the best available evidence in the appropriate population, would lead to statins being used by a much smaller proportion of the overall population than recommended by any of the guidelines.

Wow, who has the guts to tell America to stop taking Big Pharma's pills? The authors are J Abramson from Harvard and JM Wright from the University of British Columbia. What does the article tell us about them?

JMW declares no conflict of interest. JA is an expert consultant to plaintiffs’ attorneys on litigation involving the drug industry, including Pfizer for its marketing of atorvastatin.

Neither author is on Big Pharma's payroll, how refreshing. People who are not being paid by Big Pharma recommend "lifestyle modification" over medication.

What other tid bits of misinformation can we pull from this Yahoo/AP article? I like this one:

High cholesterol is commonly linked to obesity: Eating an abundance of meats, dairy products and other foods rich in saturated fats contributes to both problems, as does lack of exercise.

Ouch. That sounds pretty damning of meat and dairy. Also, it is completely wrong. Current Biochemistry textbooks have cleared this problem up, but the media has it's head in the sand (as does any doctor who graduated more then 5 years ago). In the absence of saturated fat and in the presence of glucose the liver will take the available glucose, turn it into triglycerides, attach them to an LDL particle and send it off to the fat cells for storage. The presence of insulin, due to elevated glucose, orders the body to store fat and with out dietary fat present the liver HAS TO CONVERT SUGAR TO FAT. When fructose is available (from high fructose corn syrup or table sugar) the body skips metabolizing the sugar for energy entirely, hence the term "fat forming sugars."

Is there more bad or misleading info in the Yahoo/AP article? Of course! Try this:

The drugs dramatically reduce levels of LDL cholesterol, which can clog arteries and lead to heart attacks.

So what if they reduce LDL cholesterol, I thought this article was about total cholesterol! If LDL cholesterol clogs arteries then what's with this national obsession with total cholesterol? Don't look at me for an answer, I don't have one. Total cholesterol means nothing. Where have I heard that before?

A Ban on High Fructose Corn Syrup and How the Public Miss The Point

2007-12-04T20:39:00.001-05:00

How messed up is America's thinking when it comes to nutrition? When I read the following headline I got very excited:

Amid debate, grocery chain bans high-fructose corn syrup

Then I started to think about it. "Amid debate...?" I didn't realize anyone thought high fructose corn syrup was good for you. I did expect a great number of people not to know exactly how bad for you it is but I had no idea there was debate. Then I read this gem,

"I'm completely happy about that," said Karen Hunt, 42, when told of PCC's decision. She said it will makes it easier to pick out healthier cookies and chips for her two young children. (Emphasis mine)

Jesus wept.

I don't know if Karen Hunt's words echo the rest of America's but they probably do. What EVER made a mother of 2 think ANY cookies or chips would be OK for her young children!? Is there any nutritional value to cookies or chips? Well, the label says no high fructose corn syrup! It must use some all natural added sugar to addict my child!

The article goes on to report

"...consumer advocates such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest, believe the problem is the amount of sugar Americans eat, not the type. Swapping out HFCS for other sweeteners, they believe, is no more beneficial than the 1990s craze for fat-free (but still calorie-laden) snacks whose fat-free labels gave consumers a false sense that they could overindulge without harm."

Wow, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) are rarely the voice of reason but for once I have to agree with them. That 1990's craze that was so misleading was driven by the CSPI as well as a move away from saturated fat. Saturated fat which has never been proven to be detrimental to our healths was promptly replaced by the now toxic trans fats. Big thanks to the CSPI for that!

A REAL Study Showing the Effects of a REAL Low Carb Diet on Inflammation and Blood Lipids

2007-12-04T12:58:00.001-05:00

I love this. Only days after I start my blog a second study reveals the first "study" I blogged about is true garbage. The Abstract of this new study can be found here. It is a bit over my head in some spots but I get the idea. Why should we believe this study over the previous? Well, for starters, it will be published in a peer reviewed journal but is currently available on PubMed.com. PubMed is "A service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health."

The new study actually discusses the participants whole diet on each protocol:

Overweight men and women with atherogenic dyslipidemia consumed ad libitum diets very low in carbohydrate (VLCKD) (1504 kcal:%CHO:fat:protein = 12:59:28) or low in fat (LFD) (1478 kcal:%CHO:fat:protein = 56:24:20) for 12 weeks.

Quick math (see previous post) tells us the low carb diet was about 45 grams of carb/day. About 1 and 1/2 slices of white bread. Now that is low carb! The low fat diet served a whooping 207 grams of carb/day. Yikes! That's almost 14.5 tablespoons of sugar!

So what can we take from this? So much of the abstract is over our heads, except the last sentence,

In summary, a very low carbohydrate diet resulted in profound alterations in fatty acid composition and reduced inflammation compared to a low fat diet.

But what is all this talk of inflammation about? Does it have something to do with disease? Ask you doctor someday and see what he says. Hopefully he knows that Total Cholesterol means nothing. Also, I hope he knows it is not the LDL (Bad Cholesterol) that is an indicator of heart disease, its the particle size of the LDL and the triglycerides that are important. Chronic inflammation is actually a far better indicator of heart problems. Dr. Michael Eades has a very interesting post on inflammation here and is one of the reasons I will be seeking some dental work in the new year. I STRONGLY recommend reading this post. Inflammation is such a strong indicator of disease, we could all live a little longer for having this info.

But why has this info been under reported or never reported? Would it grab headlines? Does big Pharma have a pill for it? Is it easy to test for?

It did grab headlines, years ago. Big Pharma does have a pill for it, its called Tylenol or Aspirin, and nobody is getting rich off of those sales. Finally, I don't know about testing, but I do know how to avoid it, a Low Carb diet, the Universal Cure All.

Junk Science and the Media - Can the Atkins Diet Kill You?

2007-11-30T09:36:00.000-05:00

A few days ago I got an envelope from Carl and Pat Walent, some of the best people on Earth. Inside was a photocopy of a magazine page with a few sentences reporting that a "study" found the maintenance segment of the Atkins diet causes an increase in LDL, inflamation and "reduced endothelial vasoreactivity and increased expression of biomarkers of atherothrombosis." Now I really do appreciate everyone's concern for my health and well being but the mass media is not really a good source for health advice. In my first blog I will first explain why this "study" is the junkiest of junk science and second why it captured so many headlines.

But first, why should you listen to me and not a magazine reporter or the NYT Health editor or even you doctor who has been through so many years of school? Well, for starters, I care about you and they don't. Media outlets need to get readers and headlines get readers. Your doctor needs to cycle through as many double and triple booked patients as he can to make money. I spend hours a week reading blogs and following links and reading the actual studies themselves and make my own judgment as to the validity of it's findings. I can promise you your doctor doesn't have time for that and health editors only want you to buy their publication. I have a lot more to say about this topic and there will more posts to come.

So back to the "study" itself. The "study" has not been published in any peer reviewed journal so all the data is completely unverified. This "study" was actually a 15 minute presentation of a poster at a side meeting of the annual American Heart Association convention held in Florida. Dr. Michael Eades posts about it here. Here's the bottom line:

"The important thing to understand about these presentations is that they are not peer reviewed as they are if and when they show up in a scientific journal. They are sort of peer reviewed on the spot in the sense that other researchers familiar with the specific field ask questions of the presenters or of the people with the posters. But that’s it. There is no scientific review of the data as there is when it is published in a journal. So people can present all kinds of data with no one looking it over other than the folks who ask questions."

But let's look at what little we actually have about this "study." All that is available is an abstract for the study or the poster if you attended the AHA convention. Dr. Eades was kind enough to make the abstract available on his blog here. I can not manage that on my blog yet. One of the things I noticed when I read the abstract is that my blog posting about the study is longer then the abstract itself. It is only 1 page long, but that is the least of it's problems. Here's the reseacher's methods:

We tested 3 popular diets, including Atkins (50% fat), South Beach (30% fat) and
Ornish (10% fat) in a randomized and counterbalanced, crossover study.

The Atkins Diet is billed as a low carb diet yet the "researchers" don't tell us what portion of the diet was carbs. On the Atkins diet the subjects ate 50% fat, leaving the other 50% to be a combination of protein and carbs. Now, no caloric intake is given so we are left to assume they ate a USDA recommended 2400 calories. So 1200 calories from fat. Lets look at the other macronutrients and try to guess at what else these folks ate. We need to fill in the other 50%. Let's say they ate 20% protein and 30% carbs, some quick math tells us that comes to 120 grams of protein (4 calories/gram of protein) and 180 grams of carb (also 4 calories/gram of carb). There are about 12.5 grams of protein in 1 egg so that's the equivalent of 10 eggs/day. That is a LOT of protein.

But I have moved away from the core issue here. Look at the carb count, 180 grams of carb! That's 2 potatoes or a plate of pasta! That ain't Atkins, not even in maintenance. It would be difficult for me to pack in that much carbohydrate in a week. Dr. Eades sums it up well, "In summary: no complete study, no peer review and no Atkins diet. Yet it made the news big time."

Now 1 more little thing while I have you. This flawed study looked a LDL, the "bad cholesterol." These "researchers" need to do their homework. LDL is at best a marginal indicator of heart disease. The important thing to look for is LDL particle size and triglycerides. That is something you CAN go to your doctor about. IF he doesn't know that then find another doctor.