Is there a single save your heart diet?
I’ve linked below to a video of a mainstream cardiologist being interviewed as to her thoughts on the best diet for a healthy heart. Listening to her, it’s easy to see what’s happened to mainstream thinking.
For years mainstream thinking was that the low-fat diet was the be-all and end-all for preventing heart disease. Whenever anyone brought up the idea that low-carb diets may be as effective if not more so than low-fat diets, that idea was dashed with the old ‘Show me the studies’ song and dance that the mainstream knew how to perform so well. As Gary Taubes presented so beautifully in Good Calories, Bad Calories, those studies had already been done years before, but were unknown to the mainstreamers of today. But over the past few years numerous studies have accumulated showing that the low-carb diet at the very worst equals the performance of the low-fat diet and at the very best stomps the performance of the low-fat diet in reducing putative risks for heart disease. Now, what is the mainstream to do?
This video answers the question. The mainstream has retreated to the all-things-in-moderation mantra. Let’s eat less and exercise more and we’ll all be thin and happy. And let’s don’t forget to cut sodium from our diets as well. Even though sodium is the most abundant electrolyte in our bodies, we need to be careful. And let’s forget about all those studies showing that salt intake doesn’t do squat in terms of increasing high blood pressure. Let’s just pretend those don’t exist.
Watch this woman’s response when asked about low-carb, high-protein diets. She stammers and stutters for a moment as you can see her try to access the hard drive in her brain for info on low-carb diets. Aha, she’s found it! She trots out the myth that protein is bad for the kidneys. But she’s obviously been around long enough and been hit with the info showing that protein intake has no harmful effect on normal kidneys. So she cleverly makes the case that people who go on low-carb diets are overweight, therefore most of them have high blood pressure and/or diabetes that often accompany obesity. And since both diabetes and high blood pressure are associated with slightly impaired kidney function, it isn’t a good idea to increase protein intake. A clever one, this.
She ignores the fact that low-carb diets are the best diets around for rapidly lowering blood pressure and normalizing blood sugar. And she ignores the fact (or, most likely, is ignorant of it) that low-carb diets are not necessarily high protein diets. If anything low-carb diets are high-fat diets and moderate-protein diets. This is the kind of person who, if asked about a diet of hamburgers, French fries and a Coke, would say that it’s a bad diet. If asked if it would harm the kidneys, she would say no, but it still isn’t a good diet. Now if you ask her about a the same hamburger with the bun removed, a salad instead of the fries, and an unsweetened ice tea or bottled water, she would probably say that said diet was one of those dangerous high-protein diets and would harm the kidneys.
Here is a paper from Nutrition & Metabolism showing how a low-carb diet was used to treat kidneys damaged from diabetes. Based on this paper and my own years of experience, I can tell you that low-carb diets do not cause kidney problems, even in people with less-than-perfect kidneys.
The mainstream is definitely bunkering down into the low-calorie mode because they just can’t bring themselves to even consider the low-carb diet after all the years they scorned it. It’s really too bad they can’t look on the data in an unbiased way.
Here is a link to the video.
It’s beyond my abilities to embed the thing, so you’ll have to go to the link. If the video that opens isn’t the correct one, go to the right of the video and click on the one that says: Is there a single save your heart diet?
According to this expert, the answer is yes and it’s the low-calorie diet.
Jesus wept.
will i just heard about the natives in alert bay off vancover isand, the have gone on a diet that is helping them. i would like to know more about this diet .do you know about it and what do you think about it. robin
There are links on some of the other comments that will take you to the videos, blogs and articles about this experiment. I think it is great, and I will predict a huge improvement in health.
Guys I found that beans help reduce a lot of cholesterol level in your vessels at
http://www.octanmen.com/articleDetail/124/Beneficial-effects-of-Beans-on-one%E2%80%99s-health.htm
Is it really so???
Can anyone tell me…
I can tell you: No, it ain’t really so.
Hi Dr Mike,
I know that you cannot comment on this, b/c I am not your patient, but I simply have to post it, b/c I am so upset I am on the verge of tears. And I have to put this out there, in the hopes that someone can tell me something good about this.
I got my most recent round of labs back today in a letter from my Dr.
Total: 230
LDL: 154
HDL: 64
Tri: Not shown, will call for them on Monday (have to assume normal/LC low, b/c no comment was made)
Everything else (diabetic studies, electrolytes, kidney, liver) all said “normal
18 months ago:
Total: 199
LDL: 126
HDL: 58
Tri: 73
Both on low-carb, clean food (no grains, legumes, limited high-casein dairy), moderate protein intake (right around my PP requirement), only “good” fats (meat, butter, cream, olive oil, nuts, avocados, etc).
The letter says that she doesn’t think I need medication at this point, but I should respond to a low-fat diet and exercise.
My entire family has some combination of horrible blood values, heart disease, peripheral vascular disease, diabetes and they all take statins. (I’m 43 yo female, very healthy, at healthy weight).
For some reason, I have been in deep DEEP denial that this was going to happen to me, I believed that my numbers were going to stay “normal,” b/c they have always been normal up till now, and I started LC/PP in the mid 1990′s.
Shocked does not begin to describe how I feel right now…devastated, however, does.
Yes, I’ve read everything I can get my hands on about ratios, which are all fine, I think. About the lipid hypothesis being wrong. About elevated LDL being nothing to worry about.
But I am still terrified beyond words, when you’ve watched your family drop like flies, and your bloodwork is beginning to look just like theirs…with no LC doctor to help me sort this out.
Thank you for listening.
If you’re this worried about it, spring for the bucks to get the test showing LDL particle size. If you have a predominantly Type A (large fluffy) pattern, you should feel a lot better.
Long-time Low-Carber,
I don’t know if this will reassure you, but I’ve got similar stats – female (46 yo), normal weight, fairly healthy despite some of the medical care I have received, except my total chol is a bit higher at 261 as is my LDL at 183 (by calculation, not actual measurement); HDL is also 68, Trig are a bit lower than your at 52. VLDL is quite low, but I can’t remember it, might have been 12. My ratios are excellent, which is probably why my various doctors have left me alone about blood lipids (my endocrinologist was more concerned, but when I told him I thought the lipid hypothesis was flawed and I gave him a list of addition tests he could run to gather more specific information *to reassure him*, he said it didn’t warrant that and dropped the subject).
I actually find this lipid pattern *reassuring* (I would worry far more about lower cholesterol totals, because that is associated with other issues like dementia and cancer, especially in females, and certainly about higher triglycerides). I also recently had my vit D level tested (25 OHD) and it was 44 after about 9 mos of supplementing at 2000-4000 units/day plus getting a bit more sun than in the past decade (I live in So Cal so that is easier for me). My endocrinologist was happy with the level, but it just told me it must have been rather low before supplementing and I’m going to try to get it up a bit higher. You might consider checking your Vit D level.
I consider my LC lipid pattern of the past few years a huge improvement over my high carb days a decade and a half ago when I had what was then considered great lipid numbers – my total chol was under 200, but my HDL was too low, and Trig were creeping to 200, and I was gaining weight. Also at that time, I probably was mildly hyperglycemic a lot of the time, but didn’t know it (but I now see there were lots of mild symptoms that were brushed under the carpet or attributed to other causes). I now know I was headed straight for T2 diabetes (I also had gestational diabetes in ’98, well-controlled with a LC diet), which would greatly increase my risk of heart attack later, unless well controlled. With low carb I have stopped that progression to full-blown diabetes ( at least for now) without meds. Now I get normal or nearly normal glucose levels with a careful whole food LC diet & self-glucose monitoring (but really abnormal levels with high carb foods), so I shudder to think of what my health would be like if I hadn’t gone LC and read up on how glucose metabolism works and instead followed the same advice my family members follow. I figured this out without the help of my doctors, in fact, they were most unsupportive (and clueless about the post-natal glucose issues, actually, because LC was already treating it and keeping my labs in the high normal range).
Like you, I have many family members, especially the females) with numerous progressive health problems who worry a lot about their “abnormal” lipid numbers. They have spent years on strict low fat-high carb diets, taking statins (incl a younger sister who started on them in her early 30s! and had to stop nursing her infant – I think it was actually undiagnosed post-natal hypothyroidism). None of them ever see any “improvement” in their numbers without statins, and from my perspective they have a lot of health issues that I think are directly caused by the things they do to “correct” their lipids, but they don’t see the connection. Like many other people, my extended family members have a hard time accepting that the medical and nutritional advice they get is flawed, unsubstantiated, or even plain wrong and they tend to separate medical issues and treat the symptoms, instead of looking at the big picture and getting to the root cause. There is just no way I could do what they are doing – from my perspective following the conventional advice has just made their health worse.
I’ll bet your blood work doesn’t look as much like your unhealthy family members as you think, once you get beyond the high total chol and LDL. They probably don’t have good ratios, high enough HDL, nor low triglycerides. If they are eating low fat and high carb, they probably have the numerous small dense LDL particles that are worrying. I think Dr. Eades is right, determining your particle size and number might reassure you. Keep in mind, stressing over your labs isn’t good for you either, either
. I’m not suggesting you have to see things my way, but I am pointing out that we have a lot of similarities, both follow a LC WOE, yet we have a very different perspective what the labs might mean or not mean. Everything about my health improved when my numbers got “worse” (by worse I mean by the lipid theory standards). It sounds like your paradigm hasn’t quite completed shifting yet.