Heartscan On Diabetes Cure

Among the more important recent clinical studies is a small experience from Duke University's Dr. Eric Westman. In this study, obese type 2 diabetics reduced carbohydrate intake to 20 grams per day or less: no wheat, oats, cornstarch, or sugars. Participants ate nuts, cheese, meats, eggs, and non-starchy vegetables. 

After 6 months, average weight loss was 24.4 lbs, BMI was reduced from 37.8 to 34.4. At the end of the study, 95% of participants on this severe carbohydrate restriction reduced or eliminated their diabetes medications.

That was only after 6 months. Heartscan on Westman Diet


This is a small study, but a good one - an intervention study, sometimes called a clinical trial.  Replication on a larger scale is expensive, but there are a number of small ones with similar results.  More importantly, you can test this approach on yourself, as Shi No Ubi did.  At latest report, my friend is down more than 50 pounds and totally off of blood pressure, diabetes, and gout medications - not to mention, he's feeling a hell of a lot better.

Some Omega 3s Are "More Equal" Than Others

http://www.tropicaltraditions.com/organic_whole_flaxseed.htm
And this is an example of the ones that are less equal. Flax seed does indeed have O3 fatty acids, but they are the short chain variety.  These do not become the long branched chain O3s that we probably do need to supplement, given that most of us ingest too much O6 fatty acids.

Ideally, we don't eat a whole bunch of either O6 or long branched chain O3 fatty acids, as they are poly unsaturated fats which tend to oxidize and create undesirable results.  But since we all likely eat too much O6, we have to get enough O3s to balance the 6s; ideally, a 2 to 1 ratio or thereabouts. The hard part is that the test to evaluate your success in balancing this ratio costs about $150 bucks.

With apologies to Sir Winston, flax seed is the kind of omega 3s "up with which I will not put."

Kurt Harris' Paleo 2.0

 Paleo 2.0
This is a long post at PaNu, but it provides a prospective those those trying to get their hands around what it means to eat "Paleo."  If I wouldn't agree with all of it, and if I think in some cases he gets unnecessarily testy about trivial details, still I appreciate the intellectual rigor and common sense that shines through.  Interesting summary:

I started reading and thinking about nutrition over 3 ½ years ago and began blogging almost 2 years ago. What I have seen in the past few years is that there are a number of other writers who also emphasize these same Neolithic Agents.

Critically, these other writers also:

1) Reject the alternative hypothesis of saturated fat or cholesterol as a Neolithic agent – the so-called diet/heart hypothesis

2) Believe that obtaining a substantial fraction of nutrition from animal sources is necessary for health

3) Discount the absolute importance of macronutrient ratios in the nutritional transition.

4) Believe that a whole foods diet that includes adequate micronutrients is the best way to eat healthy.

5) Believe that tubers, root vegetables and other sources of starch can be healthy for normal people, but that most grains are a suboptimal source of nutrition in other than small amounts.

What Famous Low Fat Advocate Got Cancer and Killed Himself?

Low Cholesterol and Suicide
Low serum cholesterol has been linked in numerous scientific papers to suicide, accidents, and violence (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7). No one knows whether violence and suicidal risk have a metabolic byproduct of low cholesterol, or whether having low cholesterol will predispose you to suicide out of hand (8). However, the brain's dry weight is 60% fat, and cholesterol plays a vital role in neuron signaling and brain structure. In fact, one quarter of your body's free cholesterol is found in the nervous system (9). It would make sense that if your cholesterol drops too low then mood and behavior could be affected.
Statins seem to improve mortality for middle-aged men who have known heart disease, have had a stroke, or have high levels of inflammatory markers. If you don't meet those particular criteria, statins will give you no mortality benefit. A recent Cochrane review (18) urged caution in using statins for population-wide prevention of cardiovascular disease, as the risks may well outweigh the benefits.
My brain needs cholesterol! So does yours.  Dismantling your body's ability to make it might have some far-reaching effects.


Ever notice the statin add small print?  Usually, it says something about a reduction in deaths due to heart disease.  But would you trade dying from a heart attack in order to die from cancer, or some other non-heart related death?  Because if you aren't not 65 or under with a previously diagnosed heart condition, that's what you are doing, according to the stats.  Bottom line for me is that I don't think there's any good reason to trust the entire line of logic that results from assuming that fat and cholesterol drives the chronic diseases of the West.  Why do I use words like 'trust' and 'assumption'?  Because after forty years of trying, the fat/cholesterol conjectures remain unproved, and perhaps disproved. 


The cholesterol/mental health connection provides no proof, either, but since I don't eat to lower cholesterol, I suppose I can let this one go!


By the way, the famous guy was Pritikin.  Tragic irony is all you can say to a guy who advocates ultra low fat and dies like that.

Eating Grass

If money were no object, my CF gym would be right in the middle of my pastured beef cattle. Pastured animals change everything in the food chain from bad to good, and would be cost competitive without the negative impact of the Feds.

Along with taste, freshness and cost, consumers these days are also concerned with where their food comes from.

This new focus has created a renewed interest in grass-fed beef, both as a healthy alternative to corn- and hormone-fed cows and as an environmentally friendly industry.

Until just a few generations ago, beef cattle intended for human consumption were raised on a diet of grasses and hay. Their diet began to include corn and grains with the rise of industrialized farming after World War II. Pasture-based farming never went away completely, though, and is growing on family farms across the U.S.

Pasture-based agriculture benefits humans, the environment and animals in many ways. Grass-fed beef is higher than grain-fed in omega-3 fatty acids, and lower in calories and fat. It also has higher levels of conjugated linoleic acid, another fat thought to reduce heart disease and cancer risks, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Read more:  http://www.timesunion.com/living/article/From-grass-to-plate-1193392.php#ixzz1HrHr9zLj

Smug (but Hopefully Instructive)

http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-nutrition-duck-fat-20110320,0,3917224.story

For a game of "spot the inaccurate assumptions", this is a target rich environment (HT:  @dreades):

Love fries but hate the thought of artery-clogging fried food?

**Eating a ton of fried potatoes?  Bad (unless it's an occasional indulgence to remind you of how crappy you feel when overeating carbs and junk oils).  Especially if they are fried in transfats or hydrogenated fats or peanut oil.  My bet?  If you eat your fries, fried in beef tallow, your cholesterol numbers will improve compared to any of the oils that are commonly used now.

A growing number of gourmet restaurants and foodies see a solution to this conundrum in an unlikely source — duck fat. They consider it a healthy alternative to frying foods in pork fat, beef fat or even butter. Duck fat is high in beneficial unsaturated fats, and its chemical composition is closer to olive oil than to butter, they say.

**The evidence that monounsaturated fats are "beneficial" is thin, but there's no reason to believe they are harmful.  They are certainly a better choice than the highly oxidizable frankenfats made from corn and seed oils.  Given the evidence to support the conjecture that saturated fats are harmful is paper thin AT BEST, this whole paragraph is essentially nonsense.

But some experts say health claims about the fat are overstated. Though duck fat is among the healthiest of animal fats, it's still a significant source of saturated fats, said Dr. Freny Mody, director of cardiology for the Greater Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Healthcare System.

**It's confusing to talk about food this way - food is either a good source of fuel or one that causes injury.  There's no fat that generates 'health.'  Humans need fat to achieve health, that's what we are made for.  But eating the right food reveals the natural birthright of human health - and eating neolithic junk degrades health.  Again - if you manage your carb intake and eat butter and other saturated fats, your health markers will be superior to those poor uninformed folks carefully avoiding fat but pounding down 300 grams of carbs daily.

Duck fat's popularity has surged in part because consumers are seeking all-natural, locally sourced alternatives to commercially produced items, said Melissa Abbott, culinary insights director with the Hartman Group, a Seattle-area market research firm. Compared with, say, margarine, duck fat has a single, minimally processed ingredient: fat taken from ducks. It's available from local butchers and at farmers markets, though a few national retailers sell it as well.

**And oh by the way, duck fat is also not a neolithic monster like margarine!  Does anyone seriously think that margarine, invented in a laboratory, is a superior form of nutrition?

Abbott said the fat had also gained some cachet thanks to the so-called French paradox — the observation that the French are thinner and have a lower incidence of cardiovascular disease than Americans despite enjoying a diet loaded in fat. The paradox has stumped researchers for decades, though some theories chalk it up to a number of characteristics of the French diet — including small portions, lots of red wine, and, of course, the consumption of duck fat.

**It's funny in retrospect to consider "the French paradox".  If you assume that eating fat is bad for your heart, and then observe that people who eat more fat have less heart disease, you have a "paradox."  Well, actually you have a bunch of people who, ignoring the fact that they don't know what they think they do, sound truly stupid writing paragraphs like the one above.  The paradox is that after nearly forty years of trying to prove that saturated fat is bad for you, they won't give up that bit of conjecture. 

That belief is based on its composition of saturated and unsaturated fats. According to the National Nutrient Database maintained by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, duck fat contains 62% unsaturated fat and 33% saturated fat.

**My guess is that some of the saturated duck fat is stearic acid, which is converted to oleic acid, the monounsaturated fat in olive oil, early in the digestion process - which is the same reason these people should be championing steak if they think oleic acid is so 'healthy.'  More here.

Saturated fats raise blood cholesterol and increase the risk of heart disease, said Dr. Karol Watson, co-director of the UCLA Cholesterol and Lipid Management Center.  At 33%, duck fat's saturated fat content isn't terribly low, she points out. In fact, it's on par with chicken fat (about 30% saturated fat) and pork fat (39% saturated fat). All three are better than butter, which is about 51% saturated fat.

**Dr. Karol Watson could not back up her assertions for love or money.  That is simply unproved, and when considering the facts, darned near ludicrous.  Yet, many believe.  Amen.  Saturated fats raise both LDL and HDL, making total cholesterol higher.  But not even the "corelation-ists" view total cholesterol as a convincing forecaster of heart disease - HDL to total, though also poor, is much better than total alone as a predictor.  HDL to total improves when you eat saturated fat.  That's right - Dr. Watson is in reverso world.

Proponents of duck fat prefer to highlight its unsaturated fat content. Studies have linked unsaturated fats — including both monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats — to lower blood cholesterol levels. Dutch researchers who reviewed 60 studies of the effects of dietary fat intake found that replacing saturated fats with unsaturated fats reduced levels of bad cholesterol and raised levels of good cholesterol, which in turn decreased the incidence of coronary artery disease by 18% to 44%. Their findings were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2003.

**Ah yes, a report on the observational studies is obligatory.  While it is true that eating monounsaturated fats lowers cholesterol, every intervention study, and the massive Framingham, failed to show that high fat diets or saturated fat cause heart disease.  That's why the French Paradox isn't paradoxical.  

Duck fat enthusiasts are particularly keen on its levels of a monounsaturated fat called oleic acid, which olive oil has in abundance. Some research indicates oleic acid may be behind the beneficial effects of the Mediterranean diet. Many large studies have indicated that the Mediterranean diet — in which olive oil is the predominant source of fat — can lower the risk of heart disease, cancer and other diseases of aging.

**Most reports of the so called Mediterranean diet are just hooey.  It hardly exists as it is reported to exist.

But although 40% of duck fat is oleic acid, its content doesn't quite compare with that of olive oil, which is 71% oleic acid, according to a 2007 analysis by University of Wisconsin researchers published in the Journal of Food Quality.  And just because duck fat contains oleic acid — or even a decent amount of unsaturated fats in general — that doesn't override the fact that one-third of duck fat is unhealthy saturated fat, Watson said.  And both saturated and unsaturated fats get incorporated into cell walls, where they affect the elasticity of the vascular system, Watson added. That's why the American Heart Assn. stresses that unsaturated fats are beneficial only when they take the place of saturated fat in the diet, Mody said.

**It's nearly a 100% bet that if you what the AHA says not to do, you'll be healthier for it.  And again, apparently the good doctor doesn't know that stearic acid become oleic acid upon ingestion, which might explain why saturated fats have never been proven to cause heart disease.

All in all, she said, cooking with duck fat may be preferable to cooking with butter, pork fat or beef fat (which contains 50% saturated fat). But it's still nowhere near as healthful as cooking with olive oil or other vegetable oils, such as safflower oil and canola oil. According to the USDA, olive oil contains less than 14% saturated fat, while canola and safflower oil contain less than 8%.

**If you cook with these "healthful oils", safflower and canola (ever wonder why they don't just market 'canola' oil as rape seed oil?) which were never seen on the face of the earth prior to about 1940, you'll get what you deserve.  Pastured butter on the other hand was consumed in ample quantities by very healthy populations and there's simply no reason to avoid real butter - mass produced butter from the industrial food chain, though it must be viewed with the same skepticism as the meat and dairy from the industrial food chain, is still a quantum of goodness above the dwarf mutant wheat, sugar, and seed oil derived frankenfoods most of us have been raised on.

I beg your forgiveness dear reader for giving in to the impulse to sound smug.  Exasperation gets the best of me from time to time.

If Hindsight is 20/20 ...

This would be funny except it is not, it is the deadly serious health disaster for those subjected to this approach in treating their diabetes.  It's a  torturously long story to learn how this logic ever came about, and an indictment of a profession.  "Is there another disease in which patients are counseled to make things worse so that they can take larger quantities of medicine?" 

Dateline 2015, History of Diabetes
The conflict culminated in the large judgment for the plaintiff in Banting v. American Diabetes Association (ADA) in 2012, affirmed by the Supreme Court in 2013.

Banting was a person with type 2 diabetes.  Unlike people with type 1 diabetes, he was able to produce insulin in response to dietary (or systemic) glucose but his pancreas was progressively dysfunctional and his body did not respond normally, that is, he was insulin-resistant.  Although most people with type 2 diabetes are at least slightly overweight, Banting was not although he began gaining weight when treated with insulin.
The phrase “covered with insulin…” rocked the court: the president of the ADA, H. Himsworth, Jr., was asked to  read from the 2008 guidelines [2]: “Sucrose-containing foods can be substituted for other carbohydrates in the meal plan or, if added to the meal plan, covered with insulin or other glucose lowering medications.”
Jaggers (attorney for Banting): “Are there other diseases where patients are counseled to make things worse so that they can take more drugs.”
Himsworth: “We only say ‘can be.’  We don’t necessarily recommend it.  We do say that ‘Care should be taken to avoid excess energy intake.’”
It soon became apparent that Himsworth was in trouble.  He was asked to read from the passage explaining the ADA’s opposition to low carbohydrate diets:
“Low-carbohydrate diets might seem to be a logical approach to lowering postprandial glucose. However, foods that contain carbohydrate are important sources of energy, fiber, vitamins, and minerals and are important in dietary palatability.”


But yes, it is true, the current practice for treatment of diabetes is to load them up with a low fat, high carb diet which requires the administration of large doses of insulin to protect against the damage the resulting high sugar levels would otherwise do.  IOW - they make things worse so they can take more drugs.  This post shows how the enlightened treat this same population, keeping their blood sugars in the normal range.