If your doctor tells you to give up saturated fat "because cholesterol" -- or because any reason, really -- RUN!

in #health7 years ago

fat saturated GOOD.jpg

My friend Frank: "My doctor today advised me to give up anything tasty, fatty, or 'with four legs'... I may be switching over to a mostly fish diet soon, with vegetables and fruit, of course. I have to admit, although I love fish, shrimp, scallops, oysters, and tuna but... I'll never give up pork chops!"

Oy vey, Frank! Ignore your doctor. He got his lab coat, then stopped keeping up with the research. Except for the propaganda ghost-written by big pharma in "medical journals" (and, yes, pharma companies have been indicted for doing that).

Healthy saturated fats are critical to health. Critical as in essential. (1,2)

Did you know that your brain is mostly cholesterol? Or that your cells are 50% saturated fat? Or that your hormones are metabolized from cholesterol?

Did you know that a side effect of statins is dementia? And loss of libido and erectile dysfunction? Because statins starve your body of cholesterol!

Those details were probably left out of the misguided and inaccurate what the health "documentary"!

I tried to watch it, honest. I got through the first five minutes, but the propaganda was so intense right out of the gate, I had to stop for my mental health.

Sugar is the poison in today's diet, not good quality saturated fat. And SUGAR, not fat, is the main factor in atherosclerosis. (3,4,5)

Did you know that Alzheimer's is a.k.a. Diabetes III? Because an overload of sugar in your diet is a cause of insulin resistance in the brain (and body), meaning your brain can't use all that glucose floating around in your blood. Without food, your brain cells DIE. You know, that brain made mostly of cholesterol... (6)

Yes, eat all fish (oysters are loaded with zinc, great for prostate), at least once a week. And liver once a week if you like it. You can also disguise it in beef stew if you don't like the taste. Liver is a superfood. As is butter - eat butter at every meal! Put it in your coffee and blend it up -- better than cream. Heck, add both! (7)

And what is life without bacon? 😳

The right diet will go a long way (usually most of the way) to clearing up your health challenges, plus give you the body you want. No amount of exercise without proper diet will do either. There's an old saying around the gym: "Bodies are made in the kitchen." Even bodybuilders know this!

GIVE UP THAT DOCTOR, Frank. He works for the government now, you know. In fact, every doctor who takes insurance does.

Besides, 99% of them know NOTHING about health... or we'd all be well by now.

Resources:

  1. Podcast: How Much Fat Should We Eat?
  2. Podcast: Vegetarianism Reconsidered
  3. Pubmed
  4. Chris Masterjohn and Chris Kresser on Cholesterol
  5. Fat Head, the movie
  6. How Ketosis Can Prevent Alzheimer's
  7. The Complete Skinny on Butter Coffee
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The main problem with the fat in regular meat is the diet of the animal is mostly corn which has a low quality nutrition especially if its not nixtamalized(boiled with lime[the mineral])

Yes, very true! If we buy store-bought (industrial) meat, we don't eat the fat. Fortunately here in KY we have lots of "real food" farmers. Joel Salatin style, so access to pastured chicken, eggs, pork, beef and lamb. If there is feed or hay involved, all non-gmo and/or organically grown. We have backyard chickens for our eggs and they are fed organic grains to supplement the bugs.

Saturated fat effects different people in different ways according to genes. If you have high LDL cholesterol then avoiding saturated fat can help lower your LDL. Most Americans do have high LDL cholesterol. LDL should be lower than 70 to be optimal, and never rise about 100 to maintain good health. Most Americans have LDL far above 70.

Saturated fat is not required to be ingested for human health. The body makes the cholesterol it needs. If you consume no saturated fat a day in your life you will make all the cholesterol you need.

Yes, saturated fat is required for human health. Please read the resources.

Of course, IF you are a veg/an, you and I will never see eye-to-eye. That is fine. It's your health and it's still a free country :) At the least you might listen to #2, only 20 minutes and pretty eye-opening.

High LDL is a problem for many people, Chris and Chris talk about that in #4 and how to mitigate it.

Gov agencies and doctors have pushed the lie to avoid saturated fats to lower cholesterol. The resulting chain of events and misinformation has caused a health crisis like no other. Humans in "civilized" cultures are fatter and sicker than they've ever been. There's a YouTube video called "The Oiling of America" that goes into this debacle in depth.

So why are vegetarians who don't consume any saturated fat able to live on average longer than non-vegetarians who consume lots of saturated fat? I'm only looking at the fact that if what you say is true why did Pythagoras live so long? That said, vegetarian and non-vegetarian have the same all cause mortality so my point is only that not consuming saturated fat does not harm human health in any way I could find in my research.

I do not claim vegetarians aren't just as likely to die, just not from heart disease. I also don't claim all people who consume a lot of saturated fat die of heart disease but only it increases the risk of high LDL which is associated with heart disease.

The evidence is that the body makes saturated fat specifically from excess carbs. High carb diets are probably worse than high saturated fat diets but the high saturated fat diet in a person who has genetically high cholesterol is only going to push LDL even higher. None of this proves saturated fat causes heart disease and my argument is only that it's not necessary for humans to consume it in their diet to be healthy. Eating carbs causes the body to generate saturated fat.

  1. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743516304479
  2. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/the-truth-about-fats-bad-and-good
  3. https://news.osu.edu/news/2014/11/21/study-doubling-saturated-fat-in-the-diet-does-not-increase-saturated-fat-in-blood/

The study that proves vegs live longer than omnivores is based on a questionnaire and admits that it doesn't take into account uncontrolled variables. I would NOT bet the farm on that study.

Here's a great article debunking the notion that the centenarians in Costa Rica's "blue zone" were vegetarian: Costa Rica: Land of the Centenarians

Study 2 is flat out wrong on what are bad fats and what are good fats. Read my resources!

Study 3 is great... really makes MY point. Until you get to who funded the study. Lol. Darn it.

Your body doesn't make saturated fat from anything! If you eat too many calories of any kind, your body will store that as BODY fat. Body fat is different from saturated fat.

ALL carbs turn to sugar in the body. All of them. Even broccoli. And sugar causes and/or plays a role in more health problems than anything else.

PLEASE read/listen to the resources I posted before posting anything else for me to peruse. I'm reading your links, you are not reading mine. Play fair.

The LDL discussion is quite complex and there are many factors contributing to heart disease. Pesticides, herbicides, chemicals, environmental toxins, pharmaceuticals -- so many factors that nobody studies because Big Chemical, Big Ag and Big Pharma don't pay for it! To blame high LDL on saturated fat is not taking into account the big picture. By a long shot.

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