Cholesterol. Long.
This is a rather long post.
The subject under discussion? Cholesterol, fat, heart disease, diets.
The Cholesterol Myth.
The author's name is Barry Groves.
Cholesterol Myth, Part 1
Cholesterol Myth, Part 2
He quotes a study -
"There is, in short, no suggestion of any relation between diet and the subsequent development of CHD in the study group."
Hmm. He quotes another study -
"Lowering serum cholesterol concentrations does not reduce mortality and is unlikely to prevent coronary heart disease. Claims of the opposite are based on preferential citation of supportive trials."
Hmm again. Then he says,
One that seemed to support the 'healthy' recommendations was a Finnish trial published in 1975. In the five years that the trial ran, cholesterol levels were lowered significantly, and the study was hailed as a success. But in December 1991 the results of a 10-year follow-up to that trial found that those people who continued to follow the carefully controlled, cholesterol-lowering diet were twice as likely to die of heart disease as those who didn't - some success!
Hmm. Some interesting data, too:
1. In Japan, intakes of animal fat have more than doubled since the end of the Second World War. Over the same period their incidence of coronary heart disease has fallen consistently. In Israel too an increased consumption of saturated fats was followed by a fall in coronary deaths.
2. The dietary changes in Sweden parallel those in the USA, yet heart disease mortality in Sweden was rising while American rates were falling.
3. There is also a threefold variation in rates of heart disease between France and Finland even though fat intake in those two countries is very similar.
4. Among south Asians in Britain there is an unusually high incidence of heart disease, yet living on largely vegetarian diets, they have low levels of blood cholesterol and eat diets that are low in saturated fat.
5. Indians in South Africa have probably the highest rates of coronary disease in the world yet there is no apparent reason why they should based on the current dietary hypotheses.
6. Until recently, Indians in India had a very low incidence of heart disease while using ghee (clarified butter) and coconut oil, which are highly saturated, and mustard seed oil which is largely monounsaturated. The epidemic of heart disease in India began only after these were replaced with peanut, safflower, sunflower, sesame and soybean oils, all of which are high in polyunsaturated oils.
7. Lastly, the World Health Organisation is apparently in ignorance of epidemiological data that do not support its recommendation to reduce dietary saturated fat. While it talks of coronary heart disease being responsible for most deaths in Caribbean countries, fat intake there is remarkably low.
Let's talk about margarine a minute:
The polyunsaturated fats used to make margarine are generally obtained from vegetable sources such as sunflower seed, cottonseed, and soybean. As such they might be thought of as natural foods. Usually, however, they are pressed on the public in the form of highly processed margarines, spreads and oils and, as such, they are anything but natural.
In 1989, the petroleum-based solvent, benzene, that is known to cause cancer, was found in Perrier mineral water at a mean concentration of fourteen parts per billion. This was enough to cause Perrier to be removed from supermarket shelves. The first process in the manufacture of margarine is the extraction of the oils from the seeds, and this is usually done using similar petroleum-based solvents. Although these are then boiled off, this stage of the process still leaves about ten parts per million of the solvents in the product. That is 700 times as much as fourteen parts per billion.
The oils then go through more than ten other processes: degumming, bleaching, hydrogenation, neutralization, fractionation, deodorisation, emulsification, interesterification, . . . that include heat treatment at 140 o -160 o with a solution of caustic soda; the use of nickel, a metal that is known to cause cancer, as a catalyst, with up to fifty parts per million of the nickel left in the product; the addition of antioxidants such as butylated hydroxyanisol (E320). These antioxidants are again usually petroleum based and are widely believed to cause cancer.
Hmm. Benzene in the margarine?
Nickel?
Ick.
Worse,
Research published in March 1993, confirmed this. In a study that involved 85,000 nurses, women who ate just four teaspoons of polyunsaturated margarine a day had a sixty-six percent increased risk of CHD compared to those who ate none. A review of men's experience in the Framingham Study published in 1995 also found that 6 teaspoons a day (mean of lowest intake vs mean of highest), increased risk by nearly a third.
Wait a minute. That's the very opposite of what's expected, isn't it?
Margarine contains, generally -
Edible oils,
edible fats,
salt or potassium chloride,
ascorbyl palmitate,
butylated hydroxyanisole,
phospholipids,
tert-butylhydroquinone,
mono- and di-glycerides of fat-forming fatty acids,
disodium guanylate,
diacetyltartaric and fatty acid esters of glycerol,
Propyl, octyl or dodecyl gallate (or mixtures thereof),
tocopherols,
propylene glycol mono- and di-esters,
sucrose esters of fatty acids,
curcumin,
annatto extracts,
tartaric acid,
3,5,trimethylhexanal,
ß-apo-carotenoic acid methyl or ethyl ester,
skim milk powder,
xanthophylls,
canthaxanthin,
vitamins A and D.
Okay - there's a couple in there I recognize, and I don't like 'em.
Like... TBHQ. Tert-butyl hydroquinone. The MSDS (materials safety data sheet for it is here. And here, where it is mentioned that long-term damage to aquatic environments can result, so "do not allow to enter waters, waste water, or soil."
Back to the cholesterol myth -
Margarine use began around the turn of the century. Butter was expensive. The poor bought margarine as a substitute for butter and sales were brisk. The rapid rise in margarine consumption was followed a couple of decades later by that dramatic rise in heart disease deaths.
And he has graphs.
If the CO2-global mean temperature graphs of Al Gore's mean anything, then so do these.
Many laboratories have shown that diets high in polyunsaturates promote tumours. It has been known since the early 1970s that it is linoleic acid that is the major culprit.
Margarine suppresses the immune system.
But linoleic acid suppresses the immune system. Indeed it is so good at this that in the 1970s sunflower oil was given to kidney transplant patients to prevent kidneys being rejected - until an excess of cancer deaths was reported. With a high intake of margarine, therefore, a tumour may grow too rapidly for the weakened immune system to cope thus increasing our risk of a cancer.
And this?
Since 1974, the increase of polyunsaturated fats has been blamed for the alarming increase in malignant melanoma (skin cancer) in Australia. We are all told that the sun causes it. Are Australians going out in the sun any more now than they were fifty years ago? They are certainly eating more polyunsaturated oils: even milk has its cream removed and replaced with vegetable oil. Victims of the disease have been found to have polyunsaturated oils in their skin cells. Polyunsaturated oils are oxidised readily by ultra-violet radiation from the sun and form harmful 'free radicals'. These are known to damage the cell's DNA and this can lead to the deregulation we call cancer. Saturated fats are stable. They do not oxidise and form free radicals.
...
Melanoma occurs ten times as often in Orkney and Shetland than it does on Mediterranean islands. It also occurs more frequently on areas that are not exposed to the sun. In Scotland, for example, there are five times as many melanomas on the feet as on the hands; and in Japan, forty per cent of pedal melanomas are on the soles of the feet.
Interesting.
All polyunsaturated margarines, from the brand leader to shops' 'own brands' are around thirty-nine percent linoleic acid. Of cooking oils, sunflower oil is fifty percent and safflower oil seventy-two percent linoleic acid. Butter, on the other hand, has only a mere two percent and lard is just nine percent linoleic acid. Linoleic acid is one of the essential fatty acids. We must eat some to live, but we do not need much. The amount found in animal fats is quite sufficient.
Now, this next has a startling conclusion:
Linoleic acid is one of the essential fatty acids that our bodies need but cannot synthesise. We must eat some to survive. Fortunately there is one form of linoleic acid that is beneficial. Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) differs from the normal form of linoleic acid only in the position of two of the bonds that join its atoms. But this small difference has been shown to give it powerful anti-cancer properties. Scientists at the Department of Surgical Oncology, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, New York and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, New Jersey Medical School, showed that even at concentrations of less than one percent, CLA in the diet is protective against several cancers including breast cancer, colorectal cancer and malignant melanoma.
Conjugated linoleic acid has one other difference from the usual form - it is not found in vegetables but in the fat of ruminant animals. The best sources are dairy products and the fat on red meat, principally beef. It is another good reason not to give up eating red meat or to cut the fat off.
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin also believe that CLA has a slimming action. They put the dramatic increase in obesity in the USA down to Americans not eating beef fat.
An increase in obesity derives from Americans not eating beef fat? I'd laugh... except I'm afraid he's right.
And the follow-up, on bran -
The Bran Myth
1. The incidence of osteoporosis (brittle bone disease) is increasing and now affects one in two post-menopausal women, one in five of whom will die as a direct result. Osteoporosis is also increasingly affecting men. Osteoporosis is caused by several factors, but lack of calcium is the basic problem. Bran both inhibits the absorption of calcium from food and depletes the body of the calcium it has. Moreover, zinc, which bones need to heal, is another mineral whose absorption is adversely affected by bran.
2. Sufferers from Alzheimer's Disease (senile dementia) are found to have abnormal amounts of aluminium in their brains. Tests on the people of Guam and parts of New Guinea and Japan, who get Alzheimer's disease at a much younger age, suggest that it is lack of calcium, causing a hormonal imbalance that permits the aluminium to penetrate the brain.
3. Infants may suffer similar brain damage if fed soy-based baby milk as this too has a high phytate content, inhibiting the absorption of zinc, which is essential for proper brain development.
4. Vitamin deficiency diseases such as rickets that were common in Britain until a diet high in dairy products and meat was advocated are on the increase again. The situation is getting so bad here that doctors suggest that vegetarian-based fad diets should be classified a form of child abuse.
5. In the UK, USA, Canada and South Africa the intake of 'anti-nutrients' such as dietary fibre that impair the absorption of iron, accompanied by a low intake of meat (another result of the diet-heart recommendations), is producing a real risk of iron deficiency anaemia.
6. Depression, anorexia, low birth weight, slow growth, mental retardation , and amenorrhoea are associated with deficiencies of zinc and the first five of these are also associated with a deficiency of iron.
7. Lastly, excess fibre affects the onset of menstruation, retards uterine growth and, later, is associated with menstrual dysfunction .
And, then, the dangers of low blood cholesterol.
On Christmas Eve, 1997, yet one more study's results were headlined in the press. The Framingham researchers said that "Serum cholesterol level is not related to incidence of stroke . . ." and showed that for every three percent more energy from fat eaten, strokes would be cut by fifteen percent.
Child mortality rates are related to blood cholesterol.
In 1991 the US National Cholesterol Education Programme recommended that children over two years old should adopt a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet to prevent CHD in later life. A table showing a good correlation between fat and cholesterol intakes and blood cholesterol in seven to nine-year-old boys from six countries supported this advice. What it did not show, however, was the strong correlation between blood cholesterol and childhood deaths in those countries. These are at Table V. As is clearly demonstrated, the death rate rises dramatically as blood cholesterol levels fall. So for children too, low blood cholesterol is unhealthy.
I'm coming to some interesting conclusions. This is corroborating some ideas I've had for a while.
Cholesterol-lowering drugs
A study of all trials into cholesterol lowering by drugs up to 1987 showed an increase in mortality in those treated with drugs of 13.6%.
Including Niacin, which he mentions specifically.
Has anyone gained?
Me, I say, "follow the money."
He mentions:
Those remarks have been confirmed by all the major studies published to date. Forty years after the Framingham Heart Study began, its researchers looked at total mortality and cholesterol. The evidence was that for those with low cholesterol levels, deaths from non-cardiac causes offset any reduced incidence of heart disease. There was "no increased overall mortality with either high or low serum cholesterol levels" among men over forty-seven years of age. There was no relationship with women older than forty-seven or younger than forty. The researchers also concluded that people whose cholesterol levels are falling may be at increased risk.
And ten years later the Framingham researchers say: "Intakes of fat and type of fat were not related to the incidence of the combined outcome of all cardiovascular diseases or to total or cardiovascular mortality." Thus we now have fifty years of studies all demonstrating that animal fat is harmless.
And heart disease?
I have noticed, as I preach my gospel, that many women say "I'd rather drink skimmed milk. I don't like the taste of full-cream milk now, it's too rich". This is a trend that worries me.
We all need calcium but women need a good supply to prevent osteoporosis in later life. Milk is the best dietary source of calcium. As all the calcium in milk is in the milk, not in the cream, skimmed milk contains slightly more calcium than full-cream milk. On the face of it, therefore, it looks like a good idea to drink skimmed milk. BUT for calcium to be absorbed from the gut, it has to be there in the presence of fat and vitamin D - and skimmed milk contains neither. As a result, while just over fifty percent of the calcium in full-cream milk is absorbed, only about five percent is absorbed from skimmed milk. AND if you drink your skimmed milk with bran muesli for breakfast, you probably won't absorb even that five percent.
Because bran blocks the absorption of calcium, among other things.
Fat has over twice the energy value of either carbohydrates or proteins, and other essential nutrients: lipids used in the brain and central nervous system without which we become irritable and aggressive; sterols, precursors of the bile acids and a number of hormones (including the sex hormones); and the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K. The late Dr. John Yudkin, when Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at London University, called fat the most valuable food known to man. It is both stupid and wasteful to throw it away.
I remember an immunologist at college whose children cannot now drink milk because they were raised on a "low-fat" diet. They were given "preventive" antibiotics constantly. Their immune systems are non-functional; they catch EVERY disease that comes along. And nothing can be done. This woman and her pediatrician abused these children, unknowingly and unwittingly (although almost any of us chiropractic students could have told her), because of "then current medical wisdom."
A matter of ethics
The first problem with screening in CHD, is deciding what to test for. As a predictor of coronary risk, total blood cholesterol turns out to be irrelevant, and merely testing for that is regarded by many experts as misguided. Far more reliable, they claim, is measurement of HDL (the 'good' cholesterol). However, in a test of the accuracy of checking for HDL at various laboratories, values differed by as much as 40% in 95% of the samples tested. In another study, 16 instruments manufactured by nine companies were tested in 44 laboratories. In this test, although the inaccuracies of the machines were lower at 3.6-4.4%, biases attributed to the methods used ranged from -6.8% to +25%. The accuracy of desktop machines is even more suspect.
A third study to evaluate the ability of cholesterol screening to detect individuals with blood cholesterol abnormalities concluded that 41% of those with abnormal levels would not be detected using present guidelines.
So if they tell you your HDLs are at a nominally good level, what if the instruments are off by 95%? Are they still good? What method was used? Is it accurate?
There is evidence that the medical profession is biassed in favour of diagnosing illness rather than health. A classic example was a test run in New York on 1,000 11-year-old children and their tonsils. On first examination 61% were found to have had their tonsils already removed. The other 39% were re-examined by a group of doctors who recommended tonsillectomy operations for 46% of them. The rest were again examined by yet another team and, again, nearly half were recommended for operations to remove their tonsils. After three examinations, only 65 of the original 1,000 had not been recommended for the operation. The test ended there as they ran out of physicians to perform the examinations. However, if the physicians had had their way, it is obvious that a great many unnecessary operations would have been performed.
Doctors diagnose illness, not health.
Sir William Beveridge set up the National Health Service on the assumption that "there exists in any population a strictly limited amount of illness which, if treated under conditions of equity, will eventually decline." It was calculated that the cost of the service would fall as the rates of illness went down. No-one considered that the NHS would redefine and broaden its service to such an extent that only budgetary restrictions would keep it from expanding indefinitely.
Obviously, this is about Britain. But, still, the point should be kept under advisement.
Child abuse?
Doctors in Britain are reporting cases in 'the muesli belt' of severe nutritional disorders which include kwashiorkor, marasmus and rickets which are due solely to their parents' food faddism.
Does anybody know how to recognize these?
Kwashiorkor
Marasmus
Rickets
Yes. In Britain, this is child abuse. In Rwanda or Darfur, probably not.
Dangers of a healthy diet
Back in 1932 obese patients on different diets lost weight thus:
* Average daily losses on high carbohydrate/low fat diet - 49g
* Average daily losses on low carbohydrate/high fat diet - 205g
Right. So we've "known" about this for 75 years or more.
It's no coincidence that the numbers of people getting fat has risen dramatically since 'healthy eating' was advocated. As long ago as 1863 it was shown that low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets make people fat.
Okay, make that 145 years or more.
But never mind that - it gets worse.
The largest and most comprehensive study on diet and breast cancer to date found that:
* women with the lowest intake of fat had a significantly higher incidence of breast cancer and
* women with the highest intake of starch also had a significantly higher incidence of breast cancer.
* Saturated fats were not implicated in breast cancer.
The biggest study so far into the relation between breast cancer and fat intake is the Nurses' Health Study, conducted by Harvard University Medical School. A total of 88,795 women free of cancer in 1980 were followed up for 14 years. Comparing breast cancer rates in women who derived more than thirty percent of their calorie intake from fat with women who derived less than twenty percent of calories from fat, they show that those on low-fat diets had a higher rate of breast cancer than those who ate more. They went on to look at the various different types of fats and found that breast cancer rates were lower for all types except one: omega-3 fish oils, which are touted as 'healthy', were the only ones that increased cancer rates. However, the increase was small. Dr Michelle Holmes and colleagues conclude:
"We found no evidence that lower intake of total fat or specific major types of fat was associated with a decreased risk of breast cancer" .
His conclusions:
1. Polyunsaturated fats found in margarines and cooking oils may lower cholesterol levels but they increase cancer risk.
2. Trans-fats found in highly processed margarines and oils also increase CHD risk.
3. 'Healthy' omega-3 oils may increase cancer risk.
4. Monounsaturated fats are no better as far as heart disease is concerned but they may reduce cancer risk.
5. Saturated fats are healthier in CHD, particularly if you have already had a heart attack. They are not implicated as a cause of cancer.
6. Conjugated linoleic acid found only in animal fats is a powerful anti-cancer agent.
7. Animal fats are just under half saturated and just under half monounsaturated, with a small, but sufficient proportion of polyunsaturated fats.
You don't have to like it. But when we go where the evidence leads, that's where we go.
Almost counter-intuitive, isn't it?
There are other sites related.
http://www.cholesterol-and-health.org.uk/
http://www.cholesterol-and-health.org.uk/statins.html
The subject under discussion? Cholesterol, fat, heart disease, diets.
The Cholesterol Myth.
The author's name is Barry Groves.
Cholesterol Myth, Part 1
Cholesterol Myth, Part 2
He quotes a study -
"There is, in short, no suggestion of any relation between diet and the subsequent development of CHD in the study group."
Hmm. He quotes another study -
"Lowering serum cholesterol concentrations does not reduce mortality and is unlikely to prevent coronary heart disease. Claims of the opposite are based on preferential citation of supportive trials."
Hmm again. Then he says,
One that seemed to support the 'healthy' recommendations was a Finnish trial published in 1975. In the five years that the trial ran, cholesterol levels were lowered significantly, and the study was hailed as a success. But in December 1991 the results of a 10-year follow-up to that trial found that those people who continued to follow the carefully controlled, cholesterol-lowering diet were twice as likely to die of heart disease as those who didn't - some success!
Hmm. Some interesting data, too:
1. In Japan, intakes of animal fat have more than doubled since the end of the Second World War. Over the same period their incidence of coronary heart disease has fallen consistently. In Israel too an increased consumption of saturated fats was followed by a fall in coronary deaths.
2. The dietary changes in Sweden parallel those in the USA, yet heart disease mortality in Sweden was rising while American rates were falling.
3. There is also a threefold variation in rates of heart disease between France and Finland even though fat intake in those two countries is very similar.
4. Among south Asians in Britain there is an unusually high incidence of heart disease, yet living on largely vegetarian diets, they have low levels of blood cholesterol and eat diets that are low in saturated fat.
5. Indians in South Africa have probably the highest rates of coronary disease in the world yet there is no apparent reason why they should based on the current dietary hypotheses.
6. Until recently, Indians in India had a very low incidence of heart disease while using ghee (clarified butter) and coconut oil, which are highly saturated, and mustard seed oil which is largely monounsaturated. The epidemic of heart disease in India began only after these were replaced with peanut, safflower, sunflower, sesame and soybean oils, all of which are high in polyunsaturated oils.
7. Lastly, the World Health Organisation is apparently in ignorance of epidemiological data that do not support its recommendation to reduce dietary saturated fat. While it talks of coronary heart disease being responsible for most deaths in Caribbean countries, fat intake there is remarkably low.
Let's talk about margarine a minute:
The polyunsaturated fats used to make margarine are generally obtained from vegetable sources such as sunflower seed, cottonseed, and soybean. As such they might be thought of as natural foods. Usually, however, they are pressed on the public in the form of highly processed margarines, spreads and oils and, as such, they are anything but natural.
In 1989, the petroleum-based solvent, benzene, that is known to cause cancer, was found in Perrier mineral water at a mean concentration of fourteen parts per billion. This was enough to cause Perrier to be removed from supermarket shelves. The first process in the manufacture of margarine is the extraction of the oils from the seeds, and this is usually done using similar petroleum-based solvents. Although these are then boiled off, this stage of the process still leaves about ten parts per million of the solvents in the product. That is 700 times as much as fourteen parts per billion.
The oils then go through more than ten other processes: degumming, bleaching, hydrogenation, neutralization, fractionation, deodorisation, emulsification, interesterification, . . . that include heat treatment at 140 o -160 o with a solution of caustic soda; the use of nickel, a metal that is known to cause cancer, as a catalyst, with up to fifty parts per million of the nickel left in the product; the addition of antioxidants such as butylated hydroxyanisol (E320). These antioxidants are again usually petroleum based and are widely believed to cause cancer.
Hmm. Benzene in the margarine?
Nickel?
Ick.
Worse,
Research published in March 1993, confirmed this. In a study that involved 85,000 nurses, women who ate just four teaspoons of polyunsaturated margarine a day had a sixty-six percent increased risk of CHD compared to those who ate none. A review of men's experience in the Framingham Study published in 1995 also found that 6 teaspoons a day (mean of lowest intake vs mean of highest), increased risk by nearly a third.
Wait a minute. That's the very opposite of what's expected, isn't it?
Margarine contains, generally -
Edible oils,
edible fats,
salt or potassium chloride,
ascorbyl palmitate,
butylated hydroxyanisole,
phospholipids,
tert-butylhydroquinone,
mono- and di-glycerides of fat-forming fatty acids,
disodium guanylate,
diacetyltartaric and fatty acid esters of glycerol,
Propyl, octyl or dodecyl gallate (or mixtures thereof),
tocopherols,
propylene glycol mono- and di-esters,
sucrose esters of fatty acids,
curcumin,
annatto extracts,
tartaric acid,
3,5,trimethylhexanal,
ß-apo-carotenoic acid methyl or ethyl ester,
skim milk powder,
xanthophylls,
canthaxanthin,
vitamins A and D.
Okay - there's a couple in there I recognize, and I don't like 'em.
Like... TBHQ. Tert-butyl hydroquinone. The MSDS (materials safety data sheet for it is here. And here, where it is mentioned that long-term damage to aquatic environments can result, so "do not allow to enter waters, waste water, or soil."
Back to the cholesterol myth -
Margarine use began around the turn of the century. Butter was expensive. The poor bought margarine as a substitute for butter and sales were brisk. The rapid rise in margarine consumption was followed a couple of decades later by that dramatic rise in heart disease deaths.
And he has graphs.
If the CO2-global mean temperature graphs of Al Gore's mean anything, then so do these.
Many laboratories have shown that diets high in polyunsaturates promote tumours. It has been known since the early 1970s that it is linoleic acid that is the major culprit.
Margarine suppresses the immune system.
But linoleic acid suppresses the immune system. Indeed it is so good at this that in the 1970s sunflower oil was given to kidney transplant patients to prevent kidneys being rejected - until an excess of cancer deaths was reported. With a high intake of margarine, therefore, a tumour may grow too rapidly for the weakened immune system to cope thus increasing our risk of a cancer.
And this?
Since 1974, the increase of polyunsaturated fats has been blamed for the alarming increase in malignant melanoma (skin cancer) in Australia. We are all told that the sun causes it. Are Australians going out in the sun any more now than they were fifty years ago? They are certainly eating more polyunsaturated oils: even milk has its cream removed and replaced with vegetable oil. Victims of the disease have been found to have polyunsaturated oils in their skin cells. Polyunsaturated oils are oxidised readily by ultra-violet radiation from the sun and form harmful 'free radicals'. These are known to damage the cell's DNA and this can lead to the deregulation we call cancer. Saturated fats are stable. They do not oxidise and form free radicals.
...
Melanoma occurs ten times as often in Orkney and Shetland than it does on Mediterranean islands. It also occurs more frequently on areas that are not exposed to the sun. In Scotland, for example, there are five times as many melanomas on the feet as on the hands; and in Japan, forty per cent of pedal melanomas are on the soles of the feet.
Interesting.
All polyunsaturated margarines, from the brand leader to shops' 'own brands' are around thirty-nine percent linoleic acid. Of cooking oils, sunflower oil is fifty percent and safflower oil seventy-two percent linoleic acid. Butter, on the other hand, has only a mere two percent and lard is just nine percent linoleic acid. Linoleic acid is one of the essential fatty acids. We must eat some to live, but we do not need much. The amount found in animal fats is quite sufficient.
Now, this next has a startling conclusion:
Linoleic acid is one of the essential fatty acids that our bodies need but cannot synthesise. We must eat some to survive. Fortunately there is one form of linoleic acid that is beneficial. Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) differs from the normal form of linoleic acid only in the position of two of the bonds that join its atoms. But this small difference has been shown to give it powerful anti-cancer properties. Scientists at the Department of Surgical Oncology, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, New York and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, New Jersey Medical School, showed that even at concentrations of less than one percent, CLA in the diet is protective against several cancers including breast cancer, colorectal cancer and malignant melanoma.
Conjugated linoleic acid has one other difference from the usual form - it is not found in vegetables but in the fat of ruminant animals. The best sources are dairy products and the fat on red meat, principally beef. It is another good reason not to give up eating red meat or to cut the fat off.
Scientists at the University of Wisconsin also believe that CLA has a slimming action. They put the dramatic increase in obesity in the USA down to Americans not eating beef fat.
An increase in obesity derives from Americans not eating beef fat? I'd laugh... except I'm afraid he's right.
And the follow-up, on bran -
The Bran Myth
1. The incidence of osteoporosis (brittle bone disease) is increasing and now affects one in two post-menopausal women, one in five of whom will die as a direct result. Osteoporosis is also increasingly affecting men. Osteoporosis is caused by several factors, but lack of calcium is the basic problem. Bran both inhibits the absorption of calcium from food and depletes the body of the calcium it has. Moreover, zinc, which bones need to heal, is another mineral whose absorption is adversely affected by bran.
2. Sufferers from Alzheimer's Disease (senile dementia) are found to have abnormal amounts of aluminium in their brains. Tests on the people of Guam and parts of New Guinea and Japan, who get Alzheimer's disease at a much younger age, suggest that it is lack of calcium, causing a hormonal imbalance that permits the aluminium to penetrate the brain.
3. Infants may suffer similar brain damage if fed soy-based baby milk as this too has a high phytate content, inhibiting the absorption of zinc, which is essential for proper brain development.
4. Vitamin deficiency diseases such as rickets that were common in Britain until a diet high in dairy products and meat was advocated are on the increase again. The situation is getting so bad here that doctors suggest that vegetarian-based fad diets should be classified a form of child abuse.
5. In the UK, USA, Canada and South Africa the intake of 'anti-nutrients' such as dietary fibre that impair the absorption of iron, accompanied by a low intake of meat (another result of the diet-heart recommendations), is producing a real risk of iron deficiency anaemia.
6. Depression, anorexia, low birth weight, slow growth, mental retardation , and amenorrhoea are associated with deficiencies of zinc and the first five of these are also associated with a deficiency of iron.
7. Lastly, excess fibre affects the onset of menstruation, retards uterine growth and, later, is associated with menstrual dysfunction .
And, then, the dangers of low blood cholesterol.
On Christmas Eve, 1997, yet one more study's results were headlined in the press. The Framingham researchers said that "Serum cholesterol level is not related to incidence of stroke . . ." and showed that for every three percent more energy from fat eaten, strokes would be cut by fifteen percent.
Child mortality rates are related to blood cholesterol.
In 1991 the US National Cholesterol Education Programme recommended that children over two years old should adopt a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet to prevent CHD in later life. A table showing a good correlation between fat and cholesterol intakes and blood cholesterol in seven to nine-year-old boys from six countries supported this advice. What it did not show, however, was the strong correlation between blood cholesterol and childhood deaths in those countries. These are at Table V. As is clearly demonstrated, the death rate rises dramatically as blood cholesterol levels fall. So for children too, low blood cholesterol is unhealthy.
I'm coming to some interesting conclusions. This is corroborating some ideas I've had for a while.
Cholesterol-lowering drugs
A study of all trials into cholesterol lowering by drugs up to 1987 showed an increase in mortality in those treated with drugs of 13.6%.
Including Niacin, which he mentions specifically.
Has anyone gained?
Me, I say, "follow the money."
He mentions:
Those remarks have been confirmed by all the major studies published to date. Forty years after the Framingham Heart Study began, its researchers looked at total mortality and cholesterol. The evidence was that for those with low cholesterol levels, deaths from non-cardiac causes offset any reduced incidence of heart disease. There was "no increased overall mortality with either high or low serum cholesterol levels" among men over forty-seven years of age. There was no relationship with women older than forty-seven or younger than forty. The researchers also concluded that people whose cholesterol levels are falling may be at increased risk.
And ten years later the Framingham researchers say: "Intakes of fat and type of fat were not related to the incidence of the combined outcome of all cardiovascular diseases or to total or cardiovascular mortality." Thus we now have fifty years of studies all demonstrating that animal fat is harmless.
And heart disease?
I have noticed, as I preach my gospel, that many women say "I'd rather drink skimmed milk. I don't like the taste of full-cream milk now, it's too rich". This is a trend that worries me.
We all need calcium but women need a good supply to prevent osteoporosis in later life. Milk is the best dietary source of calcium. As all the calcium in milk is in the milk, not in the cream, skimmed milk contains slightly more calcium than full-cream milk. On the face of it, therefore, it looks like a good idea to drink skimmed milk. BUT for calcium to be absorbed from the gut, it has to be there in the presence of fat and vitamin D - and skimmed milk contains neither. As a result, while just over fifty percent of the calcium in full-cream milk is absorbed, only about five percent is absorbed from skimmed milk. AND if you drink your skimmed milk with bran muesli for breakfast, you probably won't absorb even that five percent.
Because bran blocks the absorption of calcium, among other things.
Fat has over twice the energy value of either carbohydrates or proteins, and other essential nutrients: lipids used in the brain and central nervous system without which we become irritable and aggressive; sterols, precursors of the bile acids and a number of hormones (including the sex hormones); and the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K. The late Dr. John Yudkin, when Professor of Nutrition and Dietetics at London University, called fat the most valuable food known to man. It is both stupid and wasteful to throw it away.
I remember an immunologist at college whose children cannot now drink milk because they were raised on a "low-fat" diet. They were given "preventive" antibiotics constantly. Their immune systems are non-functional; they catch EVERY disease that comes along. And nothing can be done. This woman and her pediatrician abused these children, unknowingly and unwittingly (although almost any of us chiropractic students could have told her), because of "then current medical wisdom."
A matter of ethics
The first problem with screening in CHD, is deciding what to test for. As a predictor of coronary risk, total blood cholesterol turns out to be irrelevant, and merely testing for that is regarded by many experts as misguided. Far more reliable, they claim, is measurement of HDL (the 'good' cholesterol). However, in a test of the accuracy of checking for HDL at various laboratories, values differed by as much as 40% in 95% of the samples tested. In another study, 16 instruments manufactured by nine companies were tested in 44 laboratories. In this test, although the inaccuracies of the machines were lower at 3.6-4.4%, biases attributed to the methods used ranged from -6.8% to +25%. The accuracy of desktop machines is even more suspect.
A third study to evaluate the ability of cholesterol screening to detect individuals with blood cholesterol abnormalities concluded that 41% of those with abnormal levels would not be detected using present guidelines.
So if they tell you your HDLs are at a nominally good level, what if the instruments are off by 95%? Are they still good? What method was used? Is it accurate?
There is evidence that the medical profession is biassed in favour of diagnosing illness rather than health. A classic example was a test run in New York on 1,000 11-year-old children and their tonsils. On first examination 61% were found to have had their tonsils already removed. The other 39% were re-examined by a group of doctors who recommended tonsillectomy operations for 46% of them. The rest were again examined by yet another team and, again, nearly half were recommended for operations to remove their tonsils. After three examinations, only 65 of the original 1,000 had not been recommended for the operation. The test ended there as they ran out of physicians to perform the examinations. However, if the physicians had had their way, it is obvious that a great many unnecessary operations would have been performed.
Doctors diagnose illness, not health.
Sir William Beveridge set up the National Health Service on the assumption that "there exists in any population a strictly limited amount of illness which, if treated under conditions of equity, will eventually decline." It was calculated that the cost of the service would fall as the rates of illness went down. No-one considered that the NHS would redefine and broaden its service to such an extent that only budgetary restrictions would keep it from expanding indefinitely.
Obviously, this is about Britain. But, still, the point should be kept under advisement.
Child abuse?
Doctors in Britain are reporting cases in 'the muesli belt' of severe nutritional disorders which include kwashiorkor, marasmus and rickets which are due solely to their parents' food faddism.
Does anybody know how to recognize these?
Kwashiorkor
Marasmus
Rickets
Yes. In Britain, this is child abuse. In Rwanda or Darfur, probably not.
Dangers of a healthy diet
Back in 1932 obese patients on different diets lost weight thus:
* Average daily losses on high carbohydrate/low fat diet - 49g
* Average daily losses on low carbohydrate/high fat diet - 205g
Right. So we've "known" about this for 75 years or more.
It's no coincidence that the numbers of people getting fat has risen dramatically since 'healthy eating' was advocated. As long ago as 1863 it was shown that low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets make people fat.
Okay, make that 145 years or more.
But never mind that - it gets worse.
The largest and most comprehensive study on diet and breast cancer to date found that:
* women with the lowest intake of fat had a significantly higher incidence of breast cancer and
* women with the highest intake of starch also had a significantly higher incidence of breast cancer.
* Saturated fats were not implicated in breast cancer.
The biggest study so far into the relation between breast cancer and fat intake is the Nurses' Health Study, conducted by Harvard University Medical School. A total of 88,795 women free of cancer in 1980 were followed up for 14 years. Comparing breast cancer rates in women who derived more than thirty percent of their calorie intake from fat with women who derived less than twenty percent of calories from fat, they show that those on low-fat diets had a higher rate of breast cancer than those who ate more. They went on to look at the various different types of fats and found that breast cancer rates were lower for all types except one: omega-3 fish oils, which are touted as 'healthy', were the only ones that increased cancer rates. However, the increase was small. Dr Michelle Holmes and colleagues conclude:
"We found no evidence that lower intake of total fat or specific major types of fat was associated with a decreased risk of breast cancer" .
His conclusions:
1. Polyunsaturated fats found in margarines and cooking oils may lower cholesterol levels but they increase cancer risk.
2. Trans-fats found in highly processed margarines and oils also increase CHD risk.
3. 'Healthy' omega-3 oils may increase cancer risk.
4. Monounsaturated fats are no better as far as heart disease is concerned but they may reduce cancer risk.
5. Saturated fats are healthier in CHD, particularly if you have already had a heart attack. They are not implicated as a cause of cancer.
6. Conjugated linoleic acid found only in animal fats is a powerful anti-cancer agent.
7. Animal fats are just under half saturated and just under half monounsaturated, with a small, but sufficient proportion of polyunsaturated fats.
You don't have to like it. But when we go where the evidence leads, that's where we go.
Almost counter-intuitive, isn't it?
There are other sites related.
http://www.cholesterol-and-health.org.uk/
http://www.cholesterol-and-health.org.uk/statins.html