Posted on 10/25/2024 9:27:47 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
Warnings against saturated fat on heart health need to be revisited as flaws were revealed in the seminal 1950s studies on which these warnings were based, according to research.
In 1953, spurred by an apparent surge in heart disease in the US, physiologist Ancel Keys published a study that introduced the "lipid-heart hypothesis." He claimed without evidence that high saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet raise cholesterol levels in the blood and contribute to heart disease.
Newport and Dayrit pointed out that Keys erroneously conflated the saturated fats found in meat and dairy with the harmful industrial trans-fats commonly used in margarine and shortening. Keys also included coconut oil in the warning.
They argue that this misunderstanding has led to flawed dietary recommendations, including a disproportionate focus on heart disease at the expense of research into the role of trans-fats in cancer, obesity, and other metabolic disorders. These conditions have been steadily on the rise in the decades since Keys published his findings.
"Numerous observational, epidemiological, interventional, and autopsy studies have failed to validate the Keys equation and the lipid-heart hypothesis. Nevertheless, these have been the cornerstone of national and international dietary guidelines," the researchers said.
The study highlights that trans-fats, commonly found in processed foods, are strongly linked to heart disease. These industrial fats were widely consumed during the twentieth century but ignored in dietary guidelines that were based on Keys' claims.
It also critiques the unregulated promotion of polyunsaturated fats—specifically linoleic acid, commonly found in soybean oil and other vegetable oils—which can lead to an imbalance in omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids and increase the risk of chronic inflammation and other health issues.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
Omega-3 is needed more and saturated fats are reasonable to have.
Outdated. So they were once right but now it's different because humans changed. Or... maybe ... the right word isn't "outdated", it could just be that the medical wisdom of the last 70 years is just plain old "wrong" and needs to be looked at objectively again, finally.
To quote Groucho Marks, “whatever it is, I’m against it.”
No butter or milk crosses my ladylike lips. Almond milk is fine and so is extra virgin olive oil.
Re cholesterol, read Wheat Belly by Wm Davis, MD. He demonstrates that wheat is the actual thing loading your arteries with cholesterol. I stopped eating wheat and three months later had cholesterol checked. It was fine. No statins for me, I only take one prescription drug, Lisinopril, for my heart.
Prevention is always better than taking pharmaceuticals.
“Ancel Keys published a study that introduced the “lipid-heart hypothesis.””
And when he kept being proven wrong, he bullied his opposition into submission. In the end, he’s responsible more early deaths than Hitler, Mao, Stalin, and possibly even Putin*. And to think that we’re still on the upside of this his mass killing...
*just trying to keep the Zeepers off my back
Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease (Be careful if you happen to have a sweet tooth and stay away especially from pre-fab foods)
Dr. Dwight Lundell
Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:58 CST
We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years experience, having performed over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact. I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labelled “opinion makers.” Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.
The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.
It Is Not Working!
These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated. The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.
Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before. Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have pre-diabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.
Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped.
Inflammation is not complicated — it is quite simply your body’s natural defense to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process, a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial.
What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully.
The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity.
Let me repeat that: The injury and inflammation in our blood vessels is caused by the low fat diet recommended for years by mainstream medicine. What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods.
Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate this painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury. This is a good way to visualize the inflammatory process that could be going on in your body right now.
Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation. While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, or processed with omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.
How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?
Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.
When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat. What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.
While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator — inflammation in their arteries.
Let’s get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While omega-6’s are essential -they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell — they must be in the correct balance with omega-3’s.
If the balance shifts by consuming excessive omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation.
Today’s mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of omega-6. That’s a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today’s food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy.
To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer’s disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated.
There is no escaping the fact that the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in omega-6 oils.
There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. Cut down on or eliminate inflammation causing omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods that are made from them, including sugar.
One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Instead, use olive oil or butter from grass-fed beef. Animal fats contain less than 20% omega-6 and are much less likely to cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labeled polyunsaturated. Forget the “science” that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.
The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation. Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.
What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding essential nutrients from fresh unprocessed food, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American
Thanks for the recommendation for “Wheat Belly.” It looks promising based on Amazon blurb and reviews.
“The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.”
Note the word “Malpractice”. That is why your nice doctor that you swear by has to be VERY CAREFUL as to what they recommend for you, for if they go ‘off script’, they risk losing EVERYTHING they worked so hard to obtain, which is their career.
So who writes “the script”? Well, it’s the only entity involved in the medical world that cannot be sued - and so not doctors, not hospitals, not medical groups, not even insurance companies, but...the US Government. They write “the script” and everything flows down from them. If a doctor is sued for causing people to die from complications due to low Cholesterol (due to Statins), for example, the doctor (or, more likely, his insurance company) simply points to the “Federal Guidelines” and case-closed, the doctor is cleared. But if the doctor deviates from those ‘guidelines’, he’s fair game for lawsuits, even if his results are far better.
I use Coconut oil instead of butter and for frying.
Putin is not in the same league as Hitler, Stalin, or Mao. He doesn’t even rise to the level of Pol Pot, or Castro.
Thanks for posting. Very instructive.
“Outdated. So they were once right but now it’s different because humans changed. Or... maybe ... the right word isn’t “outdated”, it could just be that the medical wisdom of the last 70 years is just plain old “wrong” and needs to be looked at objectively again, finally.”
Oh it was right... For the industry because the myth has been very profitable as a standard for so many years. Humans NEED animal fat to be truly healthy, and they knew that.
It wasn’t “wrong”: it was simple carb-industry funded to misdirect.
“No butter or milk crosses my ladylike lips.”
Both are good for you. Milk is being brought back. I suppose most never left it.
This visualization of inflammation is very powerful. I would like to see side-by-side graphs of the dramatic increase in type two diabetes and the low-fat craze of the 1980s and 90s. Probably very comparable.
McDonald’s, for example, used to use animal fat for its french fries. They were either shamed or banned from doing it, but it might have been healthier than what they use now. Portion sizes were much smaller also.
I remember my mother saving bacon grease, and using it for cooking other things such as eggs. That was back when the USA obesity rate was a tiny fraction of what it is today.
One of the groups that pushed the low fat nonsense was the nutritionists.
There was a cooking show on PBS called something like “Cooking after 50”. On all the episodes he consults a nutritionist to appraise his menu. On one particular episode the host asked the nutritionist about fats in the diet. At that point the nutritionist apologized for how they had it wrong for so many years. It was quite the moment, she apologized for her entire profession.
But that show is gone and all the rest are still pushing low fat.
“No butter or milk crosses my ladylike lips.”
Lots of butter for me. But milk ... don’t recall having any since Mother’s milk. Gross!
Ping
“McDonald’s, for example, used to use animal fat for its french fries. They were either shamed or banned from doing it, but it might have been healthier than what they use now. Portion sizes were much smaller also.
I remember my mother saving bacon grease, and using it for cooking other things such as eggs. That was back when the USA obesity rate was a tiny fraction of what it is today.”
Protein is one of the three macronutrients, along with fat and carbohydrate. These are essential for the optimal functioning of the body. However, too much protein — especially with no fat or carbs — can be harmful. This is something to be aware of considering the prevalence of many high-protein diets.
Protein poisoning is when the body takes in too much protein with not enough fat and carbohydrate for a long period of time. Other names for this are “rabbit starvation” or “mal de caribou.” These terms came about to describe only consuming very lean proteins, such as rabbit, without consuming other nutrients. So, although you may be getting enough calories from protein, your body experiences malnourishment from lack of other nutrients, like fat and carbs.
The liver and kidneys play key roles in the metabolism of proteins. When excessive amounts are consumed, it can put the body at risk for increased levels of ammonia, urea, and amino acids in the blood. Although very rare, protein poisoning can be fatal because of these increased levels.
Symptoms of protein poisoning include:
nausea
headache
mood changes
weakness
fatigue
low blood pressure
hunger and food cravings
diarrhea
slow heart rate
What causes it?
To function properly, your body needs:
protein
carbohydrates
fats
vitamins
minerals
If there’s too little or too much of any of these, functioning will decline. Even if you’re getting adequate calories from one macronutrient, ensuring there’s balance is important for optimal health.
Excessive protein is defined as greater than 35 percent of total calories you eat, or more than 175 grams of protein for a 2,000-calorie diet. The acceptable macronutrient distribution range (AMDR) is defined as the range that’s associated with reducing the risk for chronic disease while fulfilling the body’s needs of nutrients. The current AMDR according to the Institute of Medicine recommends the following:
Protein intake: 10 to 35 percent of total calories
Carbohydrate intake: 45 to 65 percent of total calories
Fat intake: 20 to 35 percent of total calories
Excessive consumption of macronutrients outside the ADMR may lead to increased risk for chronic disease and insufficient intakes of essential nutrients.
There are exceptions to the AMDR for carbohydrate and fat macronutrients, but not for protein. Diet exceptions include the ketogenic diet, where fat makes up the majority of the diet, or in plant-based diets, where carbohydrates may make up more than 65 percent of the diet. Either of these diets can result in health benefits.
Protein intake exceeding the AMDR or 35 percent of calories doesn’t show these same benefits, and can lead to protein poisoning.
https://www.healthline.com/health/protein-poisoning
“I remember my mother saving bacon grease, and using it for cooking other things such as eggs.”
My mom, too. She had a crock on the back of the stove for bacon grease. Never refrigerated. The best fried eggs are cooked in bacon grease. Sometimes if we couldn’t afford butter, we used bacon grease on toast.
Mom was 4 months short of 100 years old when she died.
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