Too many people have told me that they never eat red meat. I have dozens of conventional thinkers who remain afraid to eat a whole egg, or a steak, or bacon……..worried that doing so will lead to cardiovascular disease. The truth is…..that we have no studies confirming this fact…..but somehow it became dogma in 1984 and no one has questioned it……..at least not any health conscious patients. This is called conventional thinking……and is the reason so many of you still use a daily vitamin, despite the absence of any solid data confirming any significant benefit. Our mothers told us vitamins were good for us so it must be true……similarly I grew up in fear of eggs and steak…..and replaced it with healthy whole grains and other carbohydrates. Was I doing the right thing all those years? Now that I know better, I think not. The truth is that the government had spent over 100 million dollars researching the low fat heart hypothesis….that is, eating low saturated fat is linked to lower cardiac risk….but 10 years of studying this proved nothing. Soon after this in 1984, the first study showing that statins lowered the risk of heart attacks came out. It was assumed that because statins lowered cholesterol (particularly LDL or bad cholesterol) that statins must prevent heart attacks because they lower cholesterol. We know now that in fact statins lower cardiac risk by multiple mechanisms, only one of which is to lower cholesterol. The government without proof in 1984 assumed that a diet that lowered LDL cholesterol (a low fat high carb diet) would also lower cardiac risk because statins lowered LDL cholesterol and lowered heart disease……but this was not a correct conclusion. In fact, two very large looks at the literature…….the Cochrane Collaboration and the Womens Health Initiative………tens of thousand of patients worth of data looking to prove the fact that eating a diet low in saturated fat was linked to lower cardiac risk……….failed to find any evidence to conclude this. But somehow, this fact wasnt made public, so we all continued to live in fear of saturated fat……avoiding many of the things we all like. If you avoid fat, by definition youre going to have to increase your carbohydrate intake. By increasing your carb intake, you will likely increase your triglyceride level and lower your HDL (good cholesterol) level……..both of which are much more tightly and conclusively linked to cardiac risk as they are associated with the formation of many more dangerous LDL cholesterol particles. Higher LDL particle number means higher cardiac risk. Although this is going to sound a bit heretical, especially coming from a cholesterol expert and cardiac prevention specialist, I would trade in your cereal for eggs and bacon, trade in the sandwich for salad with olive oil, and if you enjoy an occasional steak……eat it, but dont eat the bread first or the potatoes that come with it……order double veggies. If you can find bacon or steak that is grass fed then youre doing yourself and your body a favor. Obviously this is a complex topic and this short blog may only serve to confuse some of you……..if you liberalize fat, you MUST cut down or carbs or you WILL raise cardiac risk.
Posted on: Thu, 08 May 2014 00:22:18 +0000
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