Chinese Medicine Demystified (Part III): The “Energy Meridian” Model Debunked

March 8, 2010 in Myths & Truths | 5 comments

ship sailing off edge of world
Note: This is the third article in an ongoing series. If you haven’t read the first two, I recommend doing that before continuing:

“Why does anyone care whether Chinese anatomy and physiology are explained as energy flowing through meridians, or by the circulation of blood, nutrients, other vital substances, and vital air (qi) through the vascular system? The answer to that lies in the moral obligation of every practitioner to provide each patient with the latest medical understanding available.

The need to continually search for the truth is the most fundamental principle of science and medicine… Research so far shows that the true concepts of Chinese Medicine operate under known physiological principles, involving the complex organization of the neural, vascular, endocrine, and somatic systems, sustained by the circulation of nutrients, vital substances, and oxygen from vital air.”

- Donald E, Kendall, “Dao of Chinese Medicine” (2002)

“It is a fact that more than 95 percent of all literature published in western languages on Chinese medicine reflect western expectations rather than Chinese historical reality.”

- Paul Unschuld, historian of Chinese medicine

Continuing from Part II…

De Morant returned to France after his time in China with the intention of teaching Chinese medicine to French physicians. Conveniently, he promoted the idea that Chinese medicine didn’t require an understanding of anatomy and physiology. After all, de Morant was a bank clerk – not a physician – and had no medical training or qualifications to teach medicine at all.

But de Morant did know something about Ayurveda, the traditional Indian medicine based on the idea of energy called “prana” flowing through invisible lines called “nadis”. De Morant applied these concepts to Chinese medicine, even though they are not found in the Huangdi Neijing (HDNJ) or any other classical Chinese medical text.

The main problem with de Morant’s version of Chinese medicine was his representation of qi as “energy”. Almost all of the misunderstanding about Chinese medicine revolves around this mistranslation – which continues to be used despite historical facts that clearly contradict it.

Paul Unschuld, a respected Chinese studies scholar, notes that “the core Chinese concept of qi bears no resemblance to the Western concept of ‘energy’.” 1 Schnorrenberger, another prominent scholar of Chinese medicine, also notes that qi is “certainly not equivalent to the Western term ‘energy’.” 2

De Morant himself admitted that he translated qi as energy, “for lack of a better word.” 3

Therfore, the commonly accepted idea in the west that Chinese medicine is an energetic, metaphysical medicine was singlehandedly created by a French bank clerk with no training in medicine or ancient Chinese language. It is neither historically accurate nor consistent with modern scientific understanding of the body.

Since the energy meridian model is clearly incorrect, we must look to the classic Chinese medical texts to discover the authentic fundamental concepts of Chinese medicine. In the Huangdi Neijing, the Chinese describe the lungs breathing in what they call “da qi”. If you look up da qi in a Chinese dictionary, you’ll see it defined as “great air”. The Chinese explained that the lungs breathed in air, and the lungs extracted the qi from the da qi.

What do our lungs get from the air that sustains life? Oxygen. If you look up qi in a Chinese dictionary, there are ten definitions but not a single one of them is energy. Qi is defined as vital vapor, air, or the essence of air. It can also refer to the function of something (i.e. the qi of an organ would refer to the function of that organ) and the weather. Qi does not mean energy.

Of course the Chinese hadn’t identified the molecule we know as oxygen 2,000 years ago. They didn’t have the technology for that. But they did understand that we extracted something essential to life from the air we breathed, and they knew that this vital air (qi) was circulated around the body to support physiological processes. Therefore the closest translation of qi in a modern medical context is not energy, but oxygen.

The Chinese also described how this oxygen (qi) gets around the body: through the blood. They knew this from the dissections they had performed. The blood of the ancient Chinese is exactly the same as the blood of the 21st century! They knew blood circulated through blood vessels and the vascular system, which they had painstakingly identified and measured.

The word the Chinese used for vessel in the HDNJ is “mai”. Mai is correctly translated as vessel. “Xue Mai” is correctly translated as blood vessel (xue = blood). Morant took the word mai and incorrectly translated it as the French word “meridian”. He did this in spite of the fact that there was no word for meridian in the ancient Chinese language.

Unschuld points out:

“The term ‘meridian’, introduced by Soulie de Morant in his rendering of the concept of jing, is one example among others of what might be called a creative reception of Chinese medicine in Europe and North America in recent years that disassociates itself from historical facts.” 4

The idea that blood, along with mysterious and undefined energy, circulate through invisible “meridians” in the body was yet another creation of Soulie de Morant with absolutely no relationship to what is written about Chinese medicine in the classic texts.

De Morant also photographed ancient diagrams of acupuncture points depicted on the body. He then drew a line between all of the points, creating the concept of a meridian system for the first time. Meridian systems aren’t in the original texts. The original texts have drawings of major arteries going from the trunk into the legs. The points are arranged along these arterial routes.

The word De Morant translated as point is “jie”. Jie is more correctly translated as node, neurovascular node, or critical juncture. The Chinese knew that these nodes represent areas of fine vascular structures (arterioles, capillaries and venules – although they didn’t call them this at the time) and related nerves. Even 2,500 years ago, the superficial nodes were recognized to have afferent and efferent neural properties.

Modern research has demonstrated that neurovascular nodes (acupuncture points) contain a high concentration of sensory fibers, fine blood vessels, fine lymphatic vessels, and mast cells. These nodes are distributed along longitudinal pathways of the body where the collateral blood vessels supply the capillaries and fine vessels. The corneum stratum of the skin in these areas is slightly thinner with a lower electrical resistance. They also contain more sensory nerves, and have more fine vessels with sequestered mast cells than non nodes. 5

Ancient Chinese physicians recognized that neurovascular nodes (acupuncture points) on the surface of the body could reflect disease conditions in the internal organs, and that these same nodes could be stimulated to relieve pain and treat internal organ problems. This was a revolutionary discovery that formed the theoretical basis for acupuncture treatment. It was not until the early 1890s that this phenomenon of organ-referred pain was discovered in the West, by British physician William Head.

When the terms qi (oxygen), mai (vessel) and jie (neurovascular node) are properly translated, it becomes clear that there is no disagreement between ancient Chinese medical theory and contemporary principles of anatomy and physiology. Chinese medicine is not a metaphysical, energy medicine but instead a “flesh and bones” medicine concerned with the proper flow of oxygen and blood through the vascular system.

On his deathbed in 1955, de Morant admitted that what he referred to as meridians were in fact blood vessels. However, he still thought that energy (qi) flowed through the blood vessels.

As it turns out, de Morant wasn’t too far off. Energy is an abstract concept that means “in work”. It can’t be circulated in the blood. However, the potential for energy, in the form of oxygen and glucose, is transported through the cardiovascular system.

Energy production within each cell is initiated by breaking down each molecule of glucose (from absorbed nutrients) to form two molecules of pyruvate. Pyruvate produced in the cell cytoplasm is taken up by the mitochondria and enters the Krebs cycle.

The Krebs cycle involves a cyclic seris of reactions that convert ADP to ATP, the fundamental unit of energy in the body. This requires inhaled oxygen supplied by the red blood cells via capillaries.

This energy production cycle was discovered by Albert Szent-Györgyi and Hans Adolph Krebs well before de Morant died, in 1937. Had de Morant been aware of their work, he would have recognized that energy does not flow through the blood vessels. It is transmitted in its potential form, oxygen and glucose.

In the next post we will discuss a more authentic understanding of how Chinese medicine works, supported both by classical Chinese writings and modern scientific inquiry.

Stay tuned, and as always I welcome your comments!

  1. Unschuld, PU. Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in Ancient Chinese Medical Text. Berkeley. University of California Press. 2003 ↩
  2. Schnorrenberger, CC. Morphological foundations of acupuncture: an anatomical nomenclature of acupuncture structures. BMAS Acupuncture in Medicine, 1996. Nov;14(3):89-103 ↩
  3. Soulie De Morant, Georges. L’Acuponcture chinoise. Tome I L’ energie(Points, Meridians, Circulation). Mercur de France, 1939 (French) ↩
  4. Unschuld, PU. Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen: Nature, Knowledge, Imagery in Ancient Chinese Medical Text. Berkeley. University of California Press. 2003 ↩
  5. Kendall, Donald. The Dao of Chinese Medicine. Oxford University Press, 2002. ↩

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Chinese Medicine Demystified (Part II): Origins of the “Energy Meridian” Myth

March 5, 2010 in Myths & Truths | 10 comments

energy meridiansNote: This is the second article in an ongoing series. If you missed the first article you can find it here.

As an acupuncture student, I often like to ask people if they know what the word qi (sometimes spelled “chi”) means.

I get all kinds of answers. Some people don’t have any idea. Some guess it’s a kind of tea, like chai tea. Some say it has something to do with martial arts. Others say it means balance or flow. But those who’ve been to an acupuncturist, or at least know someone who has, say that qi means energy.

They say that because that’s what their acupuncturist told them. And their acupuncturist told them that because that’s what the acupuncturist was taught in school. That’s the definition of qi in the textbooks about Chinese medicine that we study in the west.

These textbooks teach that qi is an energy that moves through your body in meridians. A meridian is a metaphysical line “juxtaposed” on the body. It has no actual location inside of the body. In other words, it’s not really there. According to these textbooks this mysterious energy called qi flowing through these nonexistent lines called meridians forms the conceptual basis of Chinese medicine.

This is the definition of Chinese medicine that causes snickers, smirks and shaking heads amongst the scientific crowd – which is to say almost every doctor or medical professional trained in the west. But is this definition even accurate?

Much of what we know about Chinese medicine comes from a book called the Huangdi Neijing (HDNJ), or Yellow Emperor’s Internal Classic. There’s some controversy about when it was written, but most scholars agree that it was about 2,000 years ago, sometime between the second and first century BCE. The HDNJ is a massive encyclopedic text of Chinese medicine. You can think of it as their version of the Merck Manual.

The HDNJ had several sections. One was on anatomy. If you recall from the previous post in this series, the Chinese were performing detailed dissections 500 years before the birth of Christ. They listed the average weight, volume and measurements for all of the internal organs. They named the organs and described their functions. (In fact, they knew that the heart is the organ that pumps blood through the body more than 2,000 years ago. This wasn’t discovered in western medicine until the early 16th century.) They knew which vessels flowed away from the heart, which vessels flowed toward the heart, and which vessels supplied which organs.

The HDNJ also had detailed sections on pathology. They described how diseases develop and how to treat those diseases with acupuncture, herbal medicine, massage and dietary and lifestyle changes. In short, the Chinese were practicing truly preventative medicine 2,500 years before the term was even coined.

The HDNJ is a remarkable book. But early western scholars had a problem. The HDNJ is written in a dialect of Chinese that hasn’t been in common use in China for more than a thousand years. You could show it to a modern Chinese person and they wouldn’t be able to read it.

Several westerners took a crack at translating it. One of the first was a Dutch physician named Willem ten Rhijne. Ten Rhijne worked for the Dutch East India Company in Japan from 1683-1685. He reported clinical success by Chinese and Japanese practitioners in treating a wide range of disorders, including pain, internal organ problems, emotional disorders and infectious diseases prevalent at the time. Interestingly enough, Ten Rhijne accurately translated the Chinese character for qi as “air”, not energy, in his reports to the Dutch government.

But the translation we’re most familiar with, and the one that became the source for all of the textbooks used in western schools of Chinese medicine, was done by a man named Georges Soulie de Morant.

De Morant was a French bank clerk who lived in China from 1901 to 1917. He was enamored with Chinese culture and philosophy, and became interested in Chinese medicine during his stay. He decided to translate the HDNJ, in spite of the fact that he had no medical training nor any training in ancient Chinese language.

It was a huge undertaking for a French bank clerk to translate a 2,000 year old medical text written in an extinct Chinese dialect into a modern romance language (French). Under the circumstances, de Morant did well in many respects. But he made some huge mistakes that had serious consequences for how Chinese medicine has been interpreted in the west.

In the next post, we’ll look at those mistakes in more detail. We’ll also replace de Morant’s fictional “energy meridian” model with a new – or rather old – model of Chinese medicine that is both historically accurate and consistent with modern scientific principles of anatomy and physiology.

Stay tuned, and as always, I’d love to hear from you in the comment section!

References

Kendall, Donald, The Dao of Chinese Medicine, Oxford University Press, 2002

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Chinese Medicine Demystified (Part I): A Case of Mistaken Identity

March 4, 2010 in Myths & Truths | 12 comments

chinese physicianI’m sure you’re at least somewhat familiar with Chinese medicine and acupuncture by now.  It’s received a lot of media coverage over the last decade, and insurance companies are now covering it in many states. But even though an increasing number of people are using acupuncture to address their health problems, most still don’t understand how Chinese medicine works.

We’ve been told that Chinese medicine involves mysterious energy called “qi” circulating through invisible “meridians” in the body.  When the flow of qi through our meridians becomes blocked, illness results.  The purpose of acupuncture and other Chinese medical therapies (like herbal medicine and qi gong) is to promote the proper flow of qi through the meridians, thus restoring health.  Sound familiar?

If you’ve ever been to an acupuncturist in the west, I’m sure you’ve received some version of this explanation. After all, this is what they teach in acupuncture school. I know this because I’m in my final semester of studying Chinese medicine, and this is the explanation in our textbooks.

Understandably, these fundamental concepts of Chinese medicine have been difficult for western patients and doctors to accept.  If you sit a doctor down who has had ten years of post-graduate medical training and tell him that an unidentified energy called qi flowing through imaginary meridians is the key to health and disease, he’s going to look at you like you’re crazy.  And I don’t blame him.

What if I told you that nearly everything we’ve been taught in the West about how Chinese medicine works isn’t accurate?  What if I told you that Chinese medicine isn’t a woo-woo, esoteric “energy medicine” at all, but instead a functional, “flesh and bones” medicine based on the same basic physiology as western medicine?  And what if I told you I could explain the mechanisms of Chinese medicine in simple, familiar terms that any eight year-old could understand and even the most skeptical, conservative doctor couldn’t argue with?

Here’s the thing. The “energy meridian” model that has become the default explanation of Chinese medicine US is not only out of sync with our modern, scientific understanding of the body – it’s also completely inconsistent with classical Chinese medical theory.  In other words, we’ve made up our own western version of Chinese medicine that has little to do with how it was understood and practiced since it began more than 3,000 years ago in China.  

This gross mischaracterization has kept Chinese medicine on the fringes of conventional medical care since the 1930s and 1940s.  Most doctors and patients have simply been unable to accept the explanation they’ve been offered for how acupuncture works. The result is that acupuncture has come to be seen as either a mystical, psychic medicine or a foofy, relaxing spa-type treatment.

And that’s a big shame. Because Chinese medicine is in fact a complete system of medicine that has successfully treated many common health conditions for more than 2,500 years. Chinese medicine was passed through the ages in an unbroken lineage of some of the best minds of China. It was used by emperors and the royal courts to help them live into their 90s and stay fertile into their 80s at a time when the average life expectancy in the west was 30 years.

The Chinese were performing detailed human dissections where they carefully measured the blood vessels and weighed the internal organs at a time when western physicians thought the body was made up of “humors”. These dissections helped Chinese physicians to discover the phenomenon of continuous blood circulation 2,000 years before it was discovered in the west. The discovery of blood circulation is still considered the single most important event in the history of medicine.

Chinese medicine has been around for a very, very long time. The first evidence of the type of medicine that led to the Chinese Medicine in use today dates back to about 6,000 BC, which was during the neolithic (new stone age) period. Stone tools from this period have been found that were specially shaped for making small incisions in the skin, which was the early form of acupuncture. That’s 8,000 years of uninterrupted use. To put this in perspective, western medicine as we’ve come to recognize it today wasn’t even invented until the 1350s (the middle ages), which makes it less than 700 years old. Ah hem.

Let me ask you this. Do you think Chinese medicine would have survived for more than 3,000 years and spread to every corner of the globe if it wasn’t a powerful, complete system of medicine?

The reason Chinese medicine isn’t more popular in the west is that it’s completely misunderstood even by the people who practice it. And as long as acupuncturists continue to promote the “energy meridian” model as the explanation for how Chinese works, it’s destined to remain a fringe alternative modality.

In the next article I’m going to give you an explanation for how Chinese medicine works that is not only historically accurate, but also consistent with the principles of anatomy and physiology as we understand them today. I’m also going to tell you how this blatant mischaracterization of Chinese medicine in the west came about.

Read the next post in the series: Chinese Medicine Demystified (Part II): Origins of the “Energy Meridian” Myth

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Ten steps to preventing heart disease naturally

February 23, 2010 in Food & Nutrition, Heart Disease | 3 comments

A huge thank you to those of you who have recently made a donation. The information provided here has always been and will always be free. I write this blog because I’m passionate about helping people make smart choices about their own health. Your donations help to cover the cost of books, journal articles, and other publications essential to my research (some of which are unfortunately quite expensive). If you feel you have benefited from The Healthy Skeptic, please consider making a small donation via the button on the home page. Thank you!

Today I will summarize the approach to preventing heart disease I’ve been writing about for the past couple of years. If you’re new to the blog and haven’t seen those articles, there’s an index of them here.

After today’s post I’m going to move on to some new topics. There are so many mainstream health myths out there it’s hard to cover them all! In the next few months we’re going to shift our attention to the digestive system. We’ll talk about the real cause of acid reflux (GERD), the high rates of gluten intolerance in the US and its consequences when undiagnosed and untreated, the hidden problem underlying Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), and more.

As you know if you’ve been following this blog, heart disease is primarily caused by inflammation and oxidative damage. This is now well-accepted amongst medical researchers, though many physicians and medical professionals are still unfortunately focused on cholesterol.

It follows, then, that to prevent heart disease our primary goal should be to reduce inflammation and oxidative damage. How do we do that? Follow these nine steps:

1. Don’t eat industrial vegetable oils.

Industrial vegetable oils like corn, soy, cottonseed, sunflower, and safflower are high in omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-6 PUFA). Countless studies show that n-6 PUFA promote both oxidative damage and inflammation, and significantly raise the risk of heart disease. Industrial vegetable oils are found in nearly all processed and packaged foods, and in most foods cooked in restaurants. My rule here is simple: if it comes in a package, don’t eat it. And make eating out a special occasion, not a daily ritual.

For more on the danger of vegetable oils, see How to Increase Your Risk of Heart Disease.

2. Eat traditional, saturated fats.

For more than five decades we’ve been brainwashed to believe that saturated fat causes heart disease. It’s such a deeply ingrained belief that few people even question it. It’s just part of our culture now.

But several recent studies have confirmed what many researchers have known all along: that eating saturated fat doesn’t cause heart disease. Saturated fats are protected against oxidative damage – one of the primary causes of heart disease. What’s more, saturated fats have numerous health benefits.

For more on this, see New Study Puts Final Nail in the “Saturated Fat Causes Heart Disease” Coffin, and The Most Important Thing You Probably Don’t Know About Cholesterol, and Have Some Butter with your Veggies!

3. Eat less sugar (including simple carbs).

Most people know that eating sugar wreaks havoc on their health. But what many don’t understand is that all carbohydrates eventually break down into sugar in the body. Simple carbohydrates such as rice, potatoes, pasta and bread can cause spikes in blood sugar and insulin, both of which contribute to oxidative damage and inflammation – and consequently increase the risk of heart disease.

For decades the American Heart Association and American Diabetes Association have been promoting a low-fat, high-carb diet. Research has shown that this diet actually increases the risk of both heart disease and diabetes! If you want to steer clear of these conditions, a high-fat, low-carb diet is your best choice.

The average American gets 57% of his/her calories from highly refined cereal grains and polyunsaturated (PUFA) oils. The #3 source of calories, behind grains and PUFA, is sugar and high-fructose corn syrup. Refined grains, polyunsaturated oils and sugar are all major contributors to both inflammation and oxidative damage. Clearly the low-fat, high-carb diet has been a failure.

For more on this, see The Most Important Thing You Probably Don’t Know About Cholesterol and, Low-Carb Diet Best for Weight Loss.

4. Eat nutrient dense foods (especially organ meats and egg yolks!)

The key to proper nutrition is eating nutrient-dense foods. Most people think about vegetables when they think of vitamins and minerals. However, a serving of beef liver has between 10-100 times the amount of key vitamins and minerals than those found in carrots or apples.

Egg yolks are another of nature’s superfoods. One egg provides 13 essential nutrients, all in the yolk (contrary to popular belief, the yolk is far higher in nutrients than the white). And despite conventional wisdom, it’s entirely safe to eat three eggs a day. In fact, studies show that egg consumption actually increases large, buoyant LDL cholesterol – which is the type that doesn’t cause heart disease!

Grass-fed, organic animal products and raw dairy (butter, milk) are also high in health promoting nutrients, and should be eaten liberally.

For more on this, see Three Eggs a Day Keeps the Doctor Away, Cholesterol Doesn’t Cause Heart Disease and Liver: Nature’s Most Potent Superfood.

5. Eat fermented foods.

Almost all healthy, traditional cultures that have been studied regularly consume fermented foods like yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kim chi and kombucha. These foods have numerous health benefits, but in the context of heart disease one of the most important reasons to include them in the diet is that they are one of the few dietary sources of vitamin K2.

Unfortunately, many people are not aware of the health benefits of vitamin K2. The K vitamins have been underrated and misunderstood up until very recently in both the scientific community and the general public. While K1 is preferentially used by the liver to activate blood clotting proteins, K2 is preferentially used by other tissues to deposit calcium in appropriate locations, such as in the bones and teeth, and prevent it from depositing in locations where it does not belong, such as the soft tissues.

A 1993 study showed that those in the highest third of vitamin K2 intake were 52 percent less likely to develop severe calcification of the arteries, 41 percent less likely to develop heart disease, and 57 percent less likely to die from it.

For more on this, see Vitamin K2: The Missing Nutrient.

6. Take your high-vitamin cod liver oil.

Cod liver oil is one of the only supplements I recommend to people. It’s a great source of long chain omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA), which protect against inflammation. But even more importantly, cod liver oil is one of the few dietary sources of vitamin D. Low vitamin D levels associate with nearly every common non-communicable disorder, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease, osteoporosis and cancer.

But not all cod liver oils (CLOs) are created equal. Most commercially available CLOs are processed with heat and chemicals. Because heat and chemicals destroy the naturally occurring vitamins, synthetic vitamins are then added back in. Synthetic vitamins don’t have the same benefits as naturally occurring vitamins, and in fact they can be toxic at high doses (hence the hysteria of vitamin A toxicity from taking too much cod liver oil).

The only brand I know of that is cold-processed and contains the naturally occurring vitamins A & D in high amounts is Green Pastures Fermented Cod Liver Oil. Even better, because it’s fermented you’ll also get vitamin K2, which we know from step #5 protects against heart disease.

For more on this, see Separating Fact from Fiction on Cod Liver Oil, and Vitamin D: The New Super-Nutrient?.

7. Be active & go outside.

Physical inactivity is likely a major causative factor in the explosive rise of coronary heart disease in the 20th century. During the vast majority of evolutionary history, humans have had to exert themselves to obtain food and water. Even at the turn of the 20th century in the U.S., a majority of people had jobs that required physical activity (farmers, laborers, etc.) Now the majority of the workforce has sedentary occupations with little to no physical activity at all.

Currently more than 60% of American adults are not regularly active, and 25% of the adult population is completely sedentary. People that are physically inactive have between 1.5x and 2.4x the risk of developing heart disease.

On the other hand, regular exercise reduces both inflammation and oxidative damage. Even relatively low levels of activity are protective – as long as they are consistent. A public review at Harvard University showed that 30-minutes of moderate physical activity on most days of the week decreases deaths from heart disease by 20-30%.

It’s also important to spend time outdoors and get some sun. In addition to the obvious psychological and even spiritual benefits, sunlight exposure will boost your vitamin D levels. Just remember that sunscreen blocks your body from making vitamin D from sunlight.

For more on this, see Throw Away the Sunscreen!

8. Maintain a healthy weight (not too fat or thin)

Countless studies show that obesity causes both inflammation and oxidative damage, and significantly raises the risk of heart disease. For those who are obese, losing weight is perhaps the most important first step to take to reduce their risk profile.

However, most people aren’t aware that being too skinny can also increase the risk of heart disease.

It is also important to keep in mind that where you store body fat is probably more important than how much body fat you have. For example, body fat stored in the legs has consistently been shown to protect against metabolic risk in longitudinal studies. In contrast, abdominal fat, and in particular visceral fat, is independently associated with increased risk of morbidity and mortality.

For more on this, see this excellent offsite article: Get Fat, Live Longer.

9. Don’t smoke and minimize exposure to other toxins

Smoking promotes both oxidative damage and inflammation. Smoking as few as one cigarette a day can increase the risk of heart disease by 40 percent, while smoking 40 cigarettes a day increases the risk by 900 percent.

Over 70,000 synthetic chemicals are used commercially and approximately 1,000 new chemicals are introduced into our environment each year. These include insecticides, herbicides, gasoline, dry cleaning chemicals, personal care products, and more.

Environmental toxins cause both inflammation and oxidative damage, which as you certainly know by now, cause heart disease. Avoid exposure to these toxins as much as possible. Using environmentally friendly cleaning and personal care products in your home is a great start.

10. Manage stress & enjoy life

In the famous INTERHEART study, stress tripled the risk of heart disease. This was true across all countries and cultured that were studies. The primary mechanism by which stress causes heart disease is by dysregulating the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. The HPA axis is directly intertwined with the autonomic nervous system, and it governs the “fight-or-flight” response we experience in reaction to a stressor.

Continued activation of this “fight-or-flight” response leads to hyper-arousal of the sympathetic nervous system, which in turn leads to chronically elevated levels of cortisol. And elevated levels of cortisol can cause both inflammation and oxidative damage.

Stress management, then, should be a vital part of any heart disease prevention program. In fact, some researchers today believe that stress may be the single most significant factor in the cause and prevention of heart disease. There are several proven methods of stress reduction, including mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), acupuncture and biofeedback. It doesn’t matter which method you choose. It just matters that you do it, and do it regularly.

If you follow these ten steps, you will dramatically reduce your risk of not only heart disease, but also diabetes, metabolic syndrome and almost every non-communicable modern disease. You’ll also have more energy, sleep better and improve your quality of life. So what do you have to lose? Sure beats taking dangerous statin drugs.

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The most important thing you probably don’t know about cholesterol

January 20, 2010 in Food & Nutrition, Heart Disease, Myths & Truths | 15 comments

important

Summary:

  • The simplified view of cholesterol as “good” (HDL) or “bad” (LDL) has contributed to the continuing heart disease epidemic
  • Not all LDL cholesterol is created equal. Only small, dense LDL particles are associated with heart disease, whereas large, buoyant LDL are either benign or may protect against heart disease.
  • Replacing saturated fats with carbohydrates – which has been recommended by the American Heart Association for decades – reduces HDL and increases small, dense LDL, both of which are associated with increased risk of heart disease.
  • Dietary cholesterol has a negligible effect on total blood LDL cholesterol levels. However, eating eggs every day reduces small, dense LDL, which in turn reduces risk of heart disease.
  • The best way to lower small, dense LDL and protect yourself from heart disease is to eat fewer carbs (not fat and cholesterol), exercise and lose weight.

Not all cholesterol is created equal

By now most people have been exposed to the idea of “good” and “bad” cholesterol. It’s yet another deeply ingrained cultural belief, such as the one I wrote about last week, that has been relentlessly driven into our heads for several decades.

But once we’ve put on our Healthy Skeptic goggles, which I know all of you fair readers have, we no longer simply believe what we’re told by the medical establishment or mainstream media. Nor are we impressed or in any way swayed by the number of people that tell us something is true. After all, as Anatole France said, “Even if fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”

Words to live by.

The oversimplified view of HDL cholesterol as “good” and LDL cholesterol as “bad” is not only incomplete, it has also directly contributed to the continuing heart disease epidemic worldwide.

But before we discover why, we first have to address another common misconception. LDL and HDL are not cholesterol. We refer to them as cholesterol, but they aren’t. LDL (low density lipoprotein) and HDL (high density lipoprotein) are proteins that transport cholesterol through the blood. Cholesterol, like all fats, doesn’t dissolve in water (or blood) so it must be transported through the blood by these lipoproteins. The names LDL and HDL refer to the different types of lipoproteins that transport cholesterol.

In addition to cholesterol, lipoproteins carry three fat molecules (polyunsaturated, monounsaturated, saturated – otherwise known as a triglyceride). Cholesterol is a waxy fat particle that almost every cell in the body synthesizes, which should give you some clue about its importance for physiological function.

You do not have a cholesterol level in your blood, because there is no cholesterol in the blood. When we speak of our “cholesterol levels”, what is actually being measured is the level of various lipoproteins (like LDL and HDL).

Which brings us back to the subject at hand. The consensus belief, as I’m sure you’re aware, is that LDL is “bad” cholesterol and HDL is “good” cholesterol. High levels of LDL put us at risk for heart disease, and low levels of LDL protect us from it. Likewise, low levels of HDL are a risk factor for heart disease, and high levels are protective.

It such a simple explanation, and it helps drug companies to sell more than $14 billion dollars worth of “bad” cholesterol-lowering medications to more than 24 million American each year.

The only problem (for people who actually take the drugs, rather than sell them, that is) is the idea that all LDL cholesterol is “bad” is simply not true.

In order for cholesterol-carrying lipoproteins to cause disease, they have to damage the wall of an artery. The smaller an LDL particle is, the more likely it is to do this. In fact, a 1988 study showed that small, dense LDL are three times more likely to cause heart disease than normal LDL.

On the other hand, large LDL are buoyant and easily move through the circulatory system without damaging the arteries.

Think of it this way. Small, dense LDL are like BBs. Large, buoyant LDL are like beach balls. If you throw a beach ball at a window, nothing happens. But if you shoot that window with a BB gun, it breaks.

Another problem with small LDL is that they are more susceptible to oxidation. Oxidized LDL, or oxLDL, is formed when the fats in LDL particles react with oxidation and break down.

Researchers have shown that the smaller and denser LDL gets, the more quickly it oxidizes when they subject it to oxidants in a test tube.

Why does this matter? oxLDL is a far greater risk factor for heart disease than normal LDL. A large prospective study by Meisinger et al. showed that participants with high oxLDL had more than four times the risk of a heart attack than patients with lower oxLDL.

I hope it’s clear by now that the notion of “good” and “bad” cholesterol is misleading and incomplete. Not all LDL cholesterol is the same. Large, buoyant LDL are benign or protect against heart disease, whereas small, dense LDL are a significant risk factor. If there is truly a “bad” cholesterol, it is small LDL. But calling all LDL “bad” is a dangerous mistake.

Low-fat, high-carb diets raise “bad” cholesterol and lower “good” cholesterol

Here’s where the story gets even more interesting. And tragic.

Researchers working in this area have defined what they call Pattern A and Pattern B. Pattern A is when small, dense LDL is low, large, buoyant LDL is high, and HDL is high. Pattern B is when small, dense LDL is high, HDL is low, and triglycerides are high. Pattern B is strongly associated with increased risk of heart disease, whereas Pattern A is not.

It is not saturated fat or cholesterol that increases the amount of small, dense LDL we have in our blood. It’s carbohydrate.

Dr. Ronald Krauss has shown that reducing saturated fat and increasing carbohydrate intake shifts Pattern A to Pattern B – and in the process significantly increases your risk of heart disease. Ironically, this is exactly what the American Heart Association and other similar organizations have been recommending for decades.

In Dr. Krauss’s study, participants who ate the most saturated fat had the largest LDL, and vice versa.

Krauss also tested the effect of his dietary intervention on HDL (so-called “good” cholesterol). Studies have found that the largest HDL particles, HDL2b, provide the greatest protective effect against heart disease.

Guess what? Compared to diets high in both total and saturated fat, low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets decreased HDL2b levels. In yet another blow to the American Heart Association’s recommendations, Berglund et al. showed that using their suggested low-fat diet reduced HDL2b in men and women of diverse racial backgrounds.

Here’s what the authors said about their results:

The results indicate that dietary changes suggested to be prudent for a large segment of the population will primarily affect [i.e., reduce] the concentrations of the most prominent antiatherogenic [anti-heart attack] HDL subpopulation.

Translation: following the advice of the American Heart Association is hazardous to your health.

Eating cholesterol reduces small LDL

The amount of cholesterol in the diet is only weakly correlated with blood cholesterol levels. A recent review of the scientific literature published in Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care clearly indicates that egg consumption has no discernible impact on blood cholesterol levels in 70% of the population. In the other 30% of the population (termed “hyperresponders”), eggs do increase both circulating LDL and HDL cholesterol.

Why is this? Cholesterol is such an important substance that its production is tightly regulated by the body. When you eat more, the body produces less, and vice versa. This is why the amount of cholesterol you eat has little – if any – impact on the cholesterol levels in your blood.

Eating cholesterol is not only harmless, it’s beneficial. In fact, one of the best ways to lower small, dense LDL is to eat eggs every day! Yes, you read that correctly. University of Connecticut researchers recently found that people who ate three whole eggs a day for 12 weeks dropped their small-LDL levels by an average of 18 percent.

If you’re confused right now I certainly don’t blame you.

Let’s review what we’ve been told for more than 50 years:

  1. Eating saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet raises “bad” cholesterol in the blood and increases the risk of heart disease.
  2. Reducing intake or saturated fat and cholesterol protects us against heart disease.

Now, let’s examine what credible scientific research published in major peer-reviewed journals in the last decade tells us:

  1. Eating saturated fat and cholesterol reduces the type of cholesterol associated with heart disease.
  2. Replacing saturated fat and cholesterol with carbohydrates lowers “good” (HDL) cholesterol, raises triglyceride levels, and increases our risk of heart disease.

Dr. Krauss, the author of one of the studies I mentioned above, recently said in an interview published in Men’s Health, “Everybody I know in the field — everybody — recognized that a simple low-fat message was a mistake.”

In other words, the advice we’ve been given by medical “authorities” over the past half century on how to prevent heart disease is actually causing it.

I don’t know about you, but that makes me very angry. Heart disease is the #1 cause of death in the US. Almost 4 in 10 people who die each year die of heart disease. It directly affects over 80 million Americans each year, and indirectly affects millions more.

We spend almost half a trillion dollars treating heart disease each year. To put this in perspective, the United Nations has estimated that ending world hunger would cost just $195 billion.

Yet in spite of all this money spent, the best medical authorities can do is tell us the exact opposite of what we should be doing? And they continue to give us the wrong information even though researchers have known that it’s wrong for at least the past fifteen years?

Really?

Sometimes it seems like everything is backwards.

How to reduce small LDL

Eating fewer carbs is perhaps the best place to start. Reducing carbs has several cardio-protective effects. It reduces levels of small, dense LDL, reduces triglycerides, and increases HDL levels. A triple whammy.

Exercise and losing weight also reduce small, dense LDL. In fact, weight loss has been shown to reverse the evil Pattern B all by itself.

As we saw above, eating three eggs a day can reduce our small LDL by almost 20%. Interestingly, alcohol has also been shown to reduce small LDL by 20%.

In other words, if you want to reduce your risk of heart disease, do the opposite of the American Heart Association (and probably your doctor) tells you to do. Eat butter. Eat eggs. Eat traditional animal fats. Reduce your intake of carbs, vegetable oils and processed foods, and stay active and within a healthy weight range.

Testing your small LDL level

I’m not a fan of arbitrary testing. Our medical system is obsessed with testing. But where has testing has brought us with cholesterol and heart disease? Has it improved outcomes? On the contrary, we test for a number (total LDL) that tells us very little, and then medicate it downwards recklessly and expensively.

If you’re worried about your small LDL level, my advice would be to eat fewer carbohydrates, eat plenty of saturated fat and cholesterol (instead of vegetable oils), exercise, lose weight if you need to, and have a drink every now and then! Since this is the same advice I’d give you if you took a test that actually showed high levels of small LDL, I don’t see much value in doing the test.

However, if you need to see the test results to get motivated to make the changes I suggested above, by all means do the test. There are a few ways to go about it.

First, keep in mind that a regular cholesterol test at your doctor won’t tell you anything about your small LDL level. The standard tests measure your total cholesterol, LDL and HDL. But they don’t distinguish between the dangerous small LDL and benign or protective large LDL.

The fastest and cheapest, albeit most indirect, route is to test your blood sugar both before and then 60 minutes after a meal (this is called a “post-prandial” glucose test). The reason a post-prandial blood glucose test can be a rough indicator for small LDL is the same foods that trigger a rise in blood sugar also increase small LDL. Namely, carbohydrates.

Blood glucose monitors are readily available at places like Walgreens and cost about $10. You’ll also need lancets and test strips, which aren’t expensive either. If your post-prandial glucose is higher than 120 mg/dl, that may be suggestive of a higher than desired small LDL level. This test is not a perfect approximation of small LDL, but it’s the cheapest and and easiest way to get a sense of it.

If you want to get more specific, there are two tests I recommend for small LDL that use slightly different methodology:

  1. LDL-S3 GGE Test. Proteins from your blood are spread across a gel palette. As the molecules move from one end to the other, the gel becomes progressively denser. Large particles of LDL cholesterol can’t travel as far as the small, dense particles can, Dr. Ziajka says. After staining the gel, scientists determine the average size of your LDL cholesterol particles. Berkeley Heart Lab. About $15 with insurance.
  2. The VAP Test. Your sample is mixed into a solution designed to separate lipoproteins by density. Small, dense particles sink, and large, fluffy particles stay at the top. The liquid is stained and then analyzed to reveal 21 different lipoprotein subfractions, including dominant LDL size. The Vap Test. Direct cost is $40.

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New study puts final nail in the “saturated fat causes heart disease” coffin

January 15, 2010 in Heart Disease | 1 comment

coffinFor more than five decades we’ve been brainwashed to believe that saturated fat causes heart disease. It’s such a deeply ingrained belief that few people even question it. It’s just part of our culture now.

Almost every day one of my patients in the clinic tells me proudly that they have a “healthy” diet because they don’t eat butter, cheese or red meat or any other foods high in saturated fat (nevermind that red meat isn’t particularly high in saturated fat, but that’s a subject for another post). Or I might overhear someone at the grocery store saying how much they prefer whole fat yogurt to the low-fat version, but they eat the low-fat stuff anyways because they want to make the “healthy” choice.

What most people don’t realize is that it took many years to convince people that eating traditional, animal fats like butter and cheese is bad for you, while eating highly-processed, industrial vegetable oils like corn and soybean oil is good for you. This simply defied common sense for most people. But the relentless, widespread campaign to discredit saturated fat and promote industrial oils was eventually successful.

What if I told you that there’s absolutely no evidence to support the idea that saturated fat consumption causes heart disease? What if I told you that the 50+ years of cultural brainwashing we have all been subject to was based on small, poorly designed studies? And what if I told you that a review of large, well-designed studies published in reputable medical journals showed that there is absolutely no association between saturated fat and heart disease?

Well, that’s what I’m telling you. We’ve beed duped. Blindsided. Lied to. And we’ve suffered greatly as a result. Not only have we suffered from being encouraged to eat packaged and processed foods made with cheap, tasteless vegetable oils, but these very oils we were told would protect us from heart disease actually promote it! See my article How to Increase Your Risk of Heart Disease for more on that.

The recent review I’m talking about is a meta-analysis published this week in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It pooled together data from 21 unique studies that included almost 350,000 people, about 11,000 of whom developed cardiovascular disease (CVD), tracked for an average of 14 years, and concluded that there is no relationship between the intake of saturated fat and the incidence of heart disease or stroke.

Let me put that in layman’s terms for you:

Eating saturated fat doesn’t cause heart disease.

There. That’s it. That’s really all you need to know. But if you’d like to read more about it, John Briffa and Chris Masterjohn have written articles about it here and here.

I wonder how long it will take for this information to trickle down into the mainstream culture? Unfortunately it’s not going to happen overnight. Paradigm shifts don’t work that way. But I’ve seen some positive signs, and I do believe the tide is turning. Let’s hope it doesn’t take another 50 years.

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Breakfast of champions (with 88 grams of fat!)

December 17, 2009 in Food & Nutrition, Myths & Truths | 20 comments

smoothieA friend of mine was observing me making my breakfast the other day. She’s been hip to the dangers of low-fat diets and the benefits of saturated fat for some time now, but even so she was pretty surprised with just how much fat I was plowing into my smoothie. We thought it might be fun to actually measure the amount and do a full nutritional analysis on my breakfast.

Here’s the recipe:

  • 1.5 cups of whole, raw milk
  • 8 oz. of whole, plain yogurt made with raw milk
  • 1/4 cup of cream
  • 3 TBS of extra virgin coconut oil (melted)
  • 1 TBS of raw, grass-fed butter(melted)
  • 1/2 cup of strawberries (frozen or fresh, depending on season)
  • 1/2 cup of blueberries (frozen or fresh, depending on season)
  • 1/2 cup of raspberries (frozen or fresh, depending on season)
  • 2 raw egg yolks (from pastured chickens)

And here’s the nutrition breakdown:

nutrition data

calorie breakdown

The results are enough to give a cardiologist a heart attack. My morning fruit smoothie contains 88 grams of fat and 1,097 calories. 66% of those calories are coming from fat. According to the calorie calculators (that I normally pay no attention to), a person of my height and weight that is very active should consume approximately 2500 calories per day and no more than 83 grams of fat in a day (at 30% of calories). As you can see, I’m blowing right past that in my first meal of the day!

Of course the powers that be suggest that only 1/3 of those fat calories come from saturated fat. Oops! A full 62 of those 88 grams of fat in my smoothie are saturated. Yum!

Anyone still laboring under the delusion that eating saturated fat makes you fat might think I weigh 300 pounds eating a breakfast like this every day. On the contrary, I have to struggle to keep the weight on. I am 6′2 and weigh about 170 pounds. Yes, I am relatively active but nothing extreme. I commute by bicycle almost everywhere, and that makes a big difference. I go to the climbing gym once or twice a week, surf and kiteboard when I can, and practice martial arts occasionally. But we’re not talking about 1.5 hour workouts on the Stairmaster or running half-marathons every day.

What’s great about this breakfast is that it fills me up until lunch (because of all the fat, of course) and gives me all the nutrition I need for the morning. As you can see from the following chart, the smoothie is almost meeting (and in one case exceeding) the US RDA of several vitamins and minerals:

vitamin data

I should also point out that this is generally the only sweet thing I eat each day. I have completely lost my craving for sugar. I mean completely. No deprivation, no rules – I just don’t want it anymore. This is coming from a guy who started cooking at a very young age just so he could make his own chocolate chip cookies!

How did I lose my craving for sugar? By eating a lot of fat. Fat creates satiety, which is the feeling of being satisfied after eating. When we don’t eat enough fat, we crave carbs and sugar because we don’t feel satisfied. And ironically, eating carbs and sugar cause hormonal changes that stimulate more cravings for carbs and sugar. It’s a vicious cycle. So if you want to reduce your cravings for sugar, eat more fat! Saturated, animal fats of course.

In case you’re wondering, lunch and dinner are usually some kind of grass-fed meat along with a cooked vegetable and a salad. And of course the vegetables are covered with butter or cheese, and the salad has nuts, avocado, cheese and olive oil. Why? Read my recent article “Have some butter with your veggies!” to find out.

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Research update: carbs raise cholesterol & veggie oil associated with IBS & IBD

December 9, 2009 in Health Conditions | 8 comments

microscopeI recently came across two articles that I think you should read.

The first is over on Dr. William Davis’s blog, The Heart Scan. Dr. Davis reviews a study demonstrating that consumption of excess carbohydrate can raise cholesterol.

Now, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while you know that normal LDL cholesterol isn’t a risk factor for heart disease, right? So I am generally not concerned with what does or doesn’t raise cholesterol. However, there is a type of cholesterol that is a significant risk factor for heart disease: small, dense LDL cholesterol.

Small, dense LDL particles are more likely to become oxidized, and as I have explained in How to Increase Your Risk of Heart Disease, oxidized LDL is one of the strongest risk factors for heart disease we know of.

Dr. Davis clearly explains how eating too many carbs can increase your levels of small, dense LDL and he also explains why so many doctors and researchers don’t make this crucial connection. Check out the full article here.

The second article is on Dr. Barry Groves’ Second Opinions blog. He reviews a study which links consumption of linoleic acid to Inflammatory Bowel Disease (such as Crohn’s and Ulcerative Colitis) and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).

Linoleic acid is an omega-6 (n-6) essential fatty acid. “Essential” in this context means that humans can’t make it internally and need to eat it in the diet. However, we only need a tiny amount – about a teaspoonful per day – and eating too much of it can cause serious problems. Eating too much linoleic acid dramatically increases oxidized LDL cholesterol levels, which as I just explained in the last section significantly elevates our risk of heart disease. Linoleic acid is also pro-inflammatory, and inflammation is a major contributor to modern diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and, you guessed it, Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Tragically, linoleic acid has become one of the primary sources of calories in the American diet. Vegetable oils containing linoleic acid (such as soybean, corn, safflower, sunflower, cottonseed) are found in nearly all packaged and processed foods and all foods cooked in a restaurant. Almost all fried foods are extremely high in linoleic acid.

Is it any wonder, then, that Irritable Bowel Syndrome has reached such epidemic proportions? It is now the #2 leading cause for people missing work, behind only the common cold. It affects millions of people in the U.S. and abroad. There is no known “cure”, and the medications prescribed for it are largely ineffective.

This is yet another example of how toxic and harmful our modern diets are. If you want to avoid these conditions, eat traditional, saturated fats like butter, lard and coconut oil instead of industrially-processed vegetable oils. You’ll feel better, and you’ll enjoy your food a lot more too!

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More on statin side effects

November 12, 2009 in Heart Disease, Medical Industrial Complex | 6 comments

statinsDr. John Briffa wrote a post worth reading on his blog today about the significant side effects of statin drugs, and the considerable effort pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishment spend trying to convince people that these drugs are safe.

Sadly, they’ve been largely successful. Some time ago a physician in the UK by the name of Dr. John Reckless (you can’t make this stuff up) suggested that statins are so safe that they should be put in the water supply!

That’s ridiculous, of course. Statins are dangerous drugs. What’s more, they don’t reduce the risk of total mortality (death from any cause) for 95% of the population. See my articles The Truth About Statin Drugs and More Statin Shenanigans for more on this.

If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard more about the danger of statin drugs, check out another great post Dr. Briffa wrote a couple of weeks ago called Adverse effects of drugs are “neglected, restricted, distorted or silenced”.

There’s big money in the drug business, folks. The total pharmaceutical industry is worth hundreds of billions, and drug companies make $25 billion on statin sales alone. Do you think they’re going to go out of their way to tell everyone about the side effects and risks of these drugs? They’re legally obligated to maximize profits for their shareholders, as are all corporations, and maximizing profits means selling as many pills as they can.

That’s just the way it works. Unfortunately, people like you and I and our families are the victims of this profit-driven health care system.

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Three more studies that should make you skeptical of mainstream health advice

November 8, 2009 in Food & Nutrition, Heart Disease | 1 comment

caution signFor the last 50 years mainstream medical “authorities” have been hammering it into our heads that high cholesterol levels are dangerous and low cholesterol levels are desirable; that eating saturated fat is bad for us; and that a low-fat, high carbohydrate diet is healthy and helps people lose weight.

If you’re a new reader, you might be surprised to learn that there’s very little evidence to support these recommendations and plenty of evidence that contradicts them. Long ago I learned that if I wanted to live a long, healthy life it was in my best interest to ignore the dietary advice of the medical mainstream. And of course that’s why I started this blog – to share this information with all of you so you can make educated, and informed choices about your health.

Lately I’ve been encouraged by the number of studies being published that undermine the anti-fat, anti-cholesterol dogma we’ve been brainwashed with for so long. This is good news.

The bad news is that paradigm shifts do not happen overnight. It took half a century for researchers and doctors to convince people that eating toxic, highly processed, nasty-tasting vegetable oils was somehow better for them than eating traditional animal fats like butter and lard; that eating dry bagels, boneless-skinless chicken breast and salad with fat-free dressing was a path to good health; and that the best way to lose weight was to eat a highly unnatural diet high in processed, refined carbohydrates and low in fat.

So I don’t expect these ideas to disappear anytime soon, in spite of the solid evidence being published that contradicts them. It’s going to take time. But my sense is that it will take less time to convince people that eating traditional, nutrient-dense, whole foods that have been minimally processed is better for them than eating what the industrial food conglomerates have been selling us.

Here are the three studies.

The first is yet another study that associates low cholesterol with an increase in the risk of death (total mortality). It showed increased death rates in hospitalized patients with low cholesterol levels.

CONCLUSIONS: In our cohort, lower LDL-cholesterol at admission was associated with decreased 3-year survival in patients with NSTEMI.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. There’s already plenty of evidence suggesting low cholesterol increases the risk of death – as well as contributing to other conditions such as cancer and depression. For more on this see my previous article Cholesterol Doesn’t Cause Heart Disease.

The second study shows (once again) that cutting carbs is the best way to lose weight and fight obesity.

No surprise here either. Countless studies, trials and reviews have demonstrated that low-carb diets are superior for weight loss, managing diabetes and preventing many of the other modern diseases which plague us. How long will it take until doctors and the media get the message? For more on one such recent review, see Low-carb Diet Best for Weight Loss.

The last study I want to share with you was performed by a Swedish PhD student. It demonstrates that children who eat saturated fat and full-cream dairy products are healthier than those who do not.

Conclusions: BMI correlated strongly to fat mass and leptin was the best marker of overweight and fat mass in 8-year-olds. Food choice was similar to that at 4 years of age. An intake of fat fish once a week was associated with higher serum concentrations of n-3 fatty acids. Saturated fat and intake of full fat milk were inversely associated with BMI. Serum phospholipid fatty acids were associated with bone mineralisation. The results for metabolic markers may provide preliminary reference intervals in healthy children.

If you’re surprised by this, read my recent post Have Some Butter with Your Veggies as well as Whole Fat Milk: Benefits for Moms and Kids.

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