Ping
Im confused.
Lecithin supplements REDUCE blood cholesterol levels.
fatty fish such as salmon and sardines also reduce blood cholesterol.
That raises the question about whether current “probiotic” supplements and yogurt generate the bad stuff or displace the bacteria that do.
The working hypothesis here is that certain types of gut flora metabolizes lecithin into trimethylamine N-oxide, which in mice was associated with arterial plaque formation.
Choline and betaine are also metabolites of lecithin. “Excess” levels of serum choline “promotes” plaque formation (At tleat according to this writer).
Lecithin and choline are commonly used as feed additives for cattle, poultry and fish because they purportedly promote rapid muscle growth, but “[W]hether muscle from such livestock have higher levels of these compounds remains unknown.” Right...
Humans often use lecthin and choline as dietary supplements. How it is produced - God only knows. Can dietary supplements give you “excessive” serum choline levels promoting plaque formation - probably so is the inference I get from this article. Does lecithin as a dietary supplement keep trimethylamine N-oxide producing gut flora happy and you full of arterial plaques - seems logical to me.
Thus, “juiced up” livestock and dietary supplements may be “juicing up” gut flora that increase serum trimethylamine N-oxide and serum choline that “produce” arterial plaques. Not yet marketed probiotics, such as some type of yougurt, may change the gut flora to reduce trimethylamine N-oxide production.
Solution today: stay away from “juiced up” meat and get your vitamins (lecithin and choline) in a naturally occurring form while they are still contained in plants and animals, the less cooked the better - Quarter Pounders seven days a week will not keep you healthy and and vitamin pills ontop of that might make you worse than no vitamins at all. There is no free lunch, and that includes dietary supplements.
I’d like to know which strains of gut flora are good and which are bad. Are the ones in Dannon yogurt the good ones?
Then, of course, you have the studies that show the exact opposite effect.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18983488
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mark
I agree with the others who say this is a poorly written article. It looks to me like this is all based on what happens in mice. They assume that the same happens in humans with no evidence that it does, then go on to claim all sorts of actions to be taken in human diets based on that assumption. If I’m reading this right, then that is quite a stretch.