It took 10 years for former Radio Talk show host Dean Edell to get the government to admit it was wrong. Somehow Doctor Edell, who lives in San Francisco and is a liberal politically, managed to make it through medical school without losing his critical thinking skills and the need to question authority.
One of his recurring opinions was that the cultural desire to avoid saturated fats would turn out to be a big mistake. Much of his adult life he was a vegan, and in retrospect realizes he significantly damaged his son’s health by imposing his choice on his children. Growing children need animal protein. If they don’t get it, they need a very carefully controlled diet that forces them to eat legumes.
What he pointed out is that the words satiated and saturated are similar for a reason. A saturated fat is one that is solid at normal temperatures. Unsaturated fats like corn oil are a liquid at body temperature. Cholesterol is fat that came from an animal – including cheese, eggs, milk, butter. All cholesterol is saturated fat, some plant fats are saturated.
What careful controlled studies concluded:
“There is insufficient evidence from prospective epidemiologic studies to conclude that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD, stroke, or CVD.”
In fact, it is not a coincidence that removing saturated fats happened at the same time America developed an “obesity epidemic” and a “Diabetes Epidemic”. Saturated fats satiate you. When you start to eat something with animal fat, you quickly go “whew, I’ve had enough!” and stop eating. Replace that fat with vegetable oil that you don’t even realize is there (or even worse sugar or complex carbohydrates) and you keep eating. Fat contains 9 calories per gram – that is totally unrelated to the type of fat.
The U.S. Government finally realized they are killing our children with bad non-science compulsory diets at school based on emotion and “common sense” like that dished out by Oprah and Dr Oz. Sodium intake (salt) turns out also to have negligible effect on heart disease. Inelastic blood vessels cause high blood pressure – high blood pressure does not cause inelastic blood vessels. The American Heart Association “Heart Healthy” diet was not based on science – it was based on its ability to get their logo on restaurant menus to raise money by scaring them. The road to hell is paved with Good Intentions.
Egg Yolks are a very important source of vitamin D, and an ample supply of cholesterol is necessary in your blood to synthesize Vitamin D, probably the most important thing you need to maintain a strong immune system and bone strength. Vitamin D is crucial to the use of Calcium in the body.
Another of Dr Edell’s points was that using sun screen causes more cancer than it prevents. The best source of vitamin D is uV sunlight hitting your skin. Supplements are better than nothing, but if you block sunlight using sunscreen – while you might prevent some skin cancer, your crippled immune system can’t fight off the cancer cells that constantly form in everyone and are quickly destroyed by an active immune response. Lack of uV light is also behind Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is now treated by using uV lamps in the winter.
So let’s get back to cooking with lard and frying potatoes in beef tallow. Do it for the children.
…and as usual the nanny state is 100% wrong in their do-gooder thinking.
Anyone want to bet that the nanny state has learned it lesson and won’t jump into the next irrational idea to “fix” people that comes along? I’m not holding my breath on that one.
Back when I had my health problem in 2009, I briefly had nurses come to check in on me to make sure I was being healthy. Among the things she wanted:
– eat fewer egg yolks
– stop using aluminum fry pans, they cause Alzheimer’s
– don’t eat bananas – they have a high glycemic index (another fallacy disproven in the past few months)
It’s been about 5 years now since I’ve seen a doctor. I keep outliving smart people. My next generation relatives think that they are preventing heart disease by drinking wine every single day. I think it may be dawning on them that Jon Stewart was not really “news” and Barack Obama is not Jesus.
They no longer talk to me. I may be OK with that. Maybe they’ll wake up some day, but I tend to think not.
Here is my struggle. My Father’s side of the family is laden with coronary artery problems. I do have a minor occlusion in one coronary artery and I worry that my “good” cholesterol is way too low (47). So – I use statin drugs. I hear these will eventually destroy my liver. Rats – I may as well drink a BOTTLE of wine every day and at least enjoy before my liver explodes 🙂
How do you discern so-called science so that you live a relatively decent life? I don’t know exactly what causes plaque in the arteries, I just know I have the issue. I would rather not do statin drugs. I would like to eat normally and live well.
Any thoughts?
I’m not a doctor.
My belief and was confirmed that while there may be a correlation between high cholesterol and heart disease, there is no evidence that lowering cholesterol by taking statins reduces heart disease.
From what I was reading earlier today, the cholesterol in your blood is there because your liver made it. A total vegan has cholesterol in their blood. The lipids in your diet are not precursors to cholesterol.
The introduction of transfats to replace cholesterol does cause heart disease, or at least I’ll buy that for now. Plaque in arteries is an inflammatory reaction. Get enough plaque and someday a blood clot forms. The advice to take an aspirin a day to prevent clotting turned out to also be wrong and withdrawn by the medical community. Reducing platelet counts to stop blood clotting increases bleeding in the brain. The remaining advice is to only take aspirin for people after they have their first heart attack.
Replacing cholesterol with sugars and carbohydrates increases inflammation. This video from a few years ago by the “Dead Doctors Don’t Lie” seemed dubious back then. Now I’m paying attention
http://youtu.be/_9_0gRpt_ok
Here is the Mayo Clinic information mentioned by Joel “Dead Doctors don’t lie” Wallach. It doesn’t remote say what he says in the video.
http://www.mayo.edu/research/discoverys-edge/celiac-disease-rise
Here is a study of the 700 people who died in the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199607113350203#t=articleDiscussion
The median age was 76 years of age (1/2 older, half younger). The primary predictor of death was being bedridden [Hard to get uV lying in bed], social isolation, not having air conditioning, not listening to radio, and not having friends. There is no mention of “100% of them were on sodium restricted diets”. The advice I’m seeing is pretty universal to not take extra salt when it is hot. That makes sense – salt temporarily causes the body to want to keep fluids in the blood stream. When you come under heat stress your body needs to sweat a lot. The time to have consumed salt is before your body is running low on fluids.
Here is the reason why you don’t take salt to recover too fast from low salt levels
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_pontine_myelinolysis
Here is a much more detailed description
http://www.aafp.org/afp/2005/0601/p2133.html
One thing that jumped out is that people taking beta blockers will have heat related problems faster because the beta blockers stop body heat from moving from the core out to the skin to provoke sweating to dissipate heat
Another opinion
http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2015/02/12/show-981-old-fashioned-food/