Category Archives: Cardiovascular Disease - Page 3

Saturated Fat REDUCES risk of stroke and heart disease

Posted by on September 21, 2010 98 comments

As readers of the book know, we regard saturated and monounsaturated fats as the only macronutrients that are safe in unlimited doses. Other macronutrients become toxic above certain levels: glucose above 600 calories per day, protein above about 600 calories, and polyunsaturated fats above 100 calories. We recommend that 60% of calories or more be obtained from saturated and monounsaturated fats.

Since eating more saturated and monounsaturated fats is likely to displace toxic nutrients from the diet, in the general population we would expect higher saturated and monounsaturated fat intake to reduce disease rates.

Despite the prejudice the medical profession has long held against saturated fats, there was never real evidence against them. But after many decades of demonization, high quality studies are now showing saturated fat to be health-improving – just as we would expect.

A New Study from Japan

Via Dr. Briffa and Dr. Stephan Guyenet comes word of a new study from Japan.

This study followed 58,453 Japanese adults, aged 40 to 79 at the start of the study, for 14.1 years. [1] The study found that higher saturated fat intake was associated with:

  • A 31% reduction in mortality from stroke
  • An 18% reduction in mortality from cardiovascular disease

It was only earlier this year that a systematic review of the literature found that “there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD.” [2] In a few decades the reviews will probably have to go further: there will be significant evidence that dietary saturated fat is protective against CHD and CVD.

References

[1] Yamagishi K et al. Dietary intake of saturated fatty acids and mortality from cardiovascular disease in Japanese: the Japan Collaborative Cohort Study for Evaluation of Cancer Risk Study. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 Aug 4. [Epub ahead of print] http://pmid.us/20685950.

[2] Siri-Tarino PW et al. Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 Mar;91(3):535-46. http://pmid.us/20071648.

Depression Is Deadlier Than Coronary Heart Disease

Posted by on September 17, 2010 24 comments

I thought this was a remarkable statistic:

Those with coronary heart disease alone were 67% more likely to die of all causes, while those who were depressed, but otherwise healthy, were twice as likely to do so as those who had neither condition.

But those who were both depressed and had heart disease were almost five times as likely to die as their mentally and physically healthy peers. [1]

If you are severely depressed, or have any other mental health condition, do not just live with it. Your condition may reflect some defect with diet or nutrition that may lead to long-term harm if not remedied. Or it may be caused by an infection which, if not treated, will progress.

One trouble with infections is that all infectious pathogens have evolved ways to disable the immune system, so any one infection makes you more vulnerable to subsequent infections. This is why people with chronic diseases and the elderly generally have many chronic infections at the same time. Each infection is debilitating; but as the number and severity of infections grows, the body weakens. Eventually, pathogens will induce some acute condition like pneumonia that enables them to spread to new hosts, and their first host will die.

I suspect that depressions of infectious etiology are more deadly than coronary heart disease because they imply a more advanced infection. Generally, to infect the brain pathogens have to first infect the vasculature; the vascular infection enables them to cross the blood-brain barrier. One can have a vascular infection (and coronary heart disease) without a brain infection, but as a rule one will not have a brain infection without vascular infection.

The drugs that doctors use for mental health conditions generally moderate symptoms but do not cure. By all means, see the doctors, but don’t expect a cure from psychoactive drugs. So what should you do?

I believe that the best treatment for depression, as our last post suggests, is a ketogenic variant of a healthy diet, good nutrition, and (if an infection is present) appropriate antibiotics. It is wise to start with diet and nutrition first, since diet alone may cure many conditions and a good diet is entirely safe. A healthy diet can greatly enhance mood. Antibiotics have the potential to backfire, so are the last line of defense; but in severe infections will be necessary for a cure.

References

[1] Depression and heart disease combo more lethal than either one alone, study suggests. ScienceDaily. September 16, 2010. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100915205716.htm. Nabi H et al. Effects of depressive symptoms and coronary heart disease and their interactive associations on mortality in middle-aged adults: the Whitehall II cohort study. Heart. 2010 Sep 15. [Epub ahead of print] http://pmid.us/20844294.

Why You Shouldn’t Supplement Calcium

Posted by on August 20, 2010 47 comments

Much of the advice handed out by medical doctors is unreliable.  One reason is that the research on which that advice is based is often conducted by specialists who overlook effects beyond their scope of professional interest.

We’ve mentioned previously the example of statin research. Statin studies are generally performed by cardiologists and in the U.S., many statin studies reported only heart attacks and other cardiovascular events as endpoints, not total mortality, cancer, or infectious disease. This method of evaluating drugs would show a lethal neurotoxin to be the best cardiac treatment ever:  In the neurotoxin group not a single patient would die of a heart attack!

A similar myopia has occurred in osteoporosis research, where doctors have focused on the effect of calcium supplements on bone density or fracture rates but often do not evaluate the effect of the supplements on overall health.

But other effects have to be considered, given that:

  • Calcification of coronary arteries may be the best single indicator of heart attack risk. [1]
  • In the Nurse’s Health Study, supplementation of calcium increased the risk of calcium oxalate kidney stones by 20%. [2]
  • Calcium is a strong promoter of biofilm formation in most pathogenic bacterial species. [3] It also likely promotes formation of Candida albicans (fungal) biofilms. As a result, it can aggravate bowel disorders and infectious diseases.

Clearly, calcium in the wrong places – a problem that could be exacerbated by calcium supplementation – is a major health risk.

What causes calcium to go in the wrong places? Deficiencies of vitamin D and vitamin K2 are common reasons. Deficiencies of both are widespread. Vitamin K2 deficiency is a known cause of vascular calcification.

A few years ago, a group of New Zealand researchers conducted a randomized clinical trial that found that over five years, older women taking calcium supplements doubled their risk of heart attack compared to women taking a placebo. [4]

Now, the same group has conducted a systematic review of calcium supplementation studies which confirms the link between calcium supplementation and heart attacks. Dr. Mark Bolland of the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and colleagues report that calcium supplementation increases the risk of heart attack by 31%, the risk of stroke by 20% and the risk of death by 9%. [5]

In an accompanying editorial, Dr. John Cleland writes:

Calcium supplements, given alone, … are ineffective in reducing the risk of fractures and might even increase risk, they might increase the risk of cardiovascular events, and they do not reduce mortality. They seem to be unnecessary in adults with an adequate diet. Given the uncertain benefits of calcium supplements, any level of risk is unwarranted. [6]

We concur. A healthy diet, including dairy and green leafy vegetables, not to mention a daily multivitamin (ours contains 200 mg calcium), should provide a sufficiency of calcium as long as vitamin D levels are normal. If you’re worried about bone health, supplement with vitamins D, K2, and magnesium citrate – not calcium.

[1] Budoff MJ et al. Long-term prognosis associated with coronary calcification: observations from a registry of 25,253 patients. J Am Coll Cardiol 2007;49:1860-1870. http://pmid.us/17481445. 

[2] Curhan GC et al. Comparison of dietary calcium with supplemental calcium and other nutrients as factors affecting the risk for kidney stones in women. Ann Intern Med. 1997 Apr 1;126(7):497-504. http://pmid.us/9092314.

[3] Kierek K, Watnick PI. The Vibrio cholerae O139 O-antigen polysaccharide is essential for Ca2+-dependent biofilm development in sea water. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2003 Nov 25;100(24):14357-62. http://pmid.us/14614140.  Geesey GG et al. Influence of calcium and other cations on surface adhesion of bacteria and diatoms: a review. Biofouling 2000; 15:195–205.

[4] Bolland MJ et al. Vascular events in healthy older women receiving calcium supplementation: randomised controlled trial. BMJ. 2008 Feb 2;336(7638):262-6. http://pmid.us/18198394.

[5] Bolland MJ et al. Effect of calcium supplements on risk of myocardial infarction and cardiovascular events: meta-analysis. BMJ. 2010 Jul 29;341:c3691. doi: 10.1136/bmj.c3691. http://pmid.us/20671013.

[6] Cleland JG et al. Calcium supplements in people with osteoporosis. BMJ. 2010 Jul 29;341:c3856. http://pmid.us/20671014.

Omega-3 Fats and Cardiovascular Disease

Posted by on June 15, 2010 30 comments

The importance of achieving a good omega-3 to omega-6 ratio has been demonstrated repeatedly in clinical trials and epidemiological studies.  Cardiovascular disease mortality is especially strongly dependent on this ratio [1]:

This plot shows coronary heart disease mortality plotted against the fraction of long polyunsaturated fats in tissue that are omega-6, not omega-3.  It’s best to have around 30% omega-6, 70% omega-3.  But most Americans have around 78% omega-6, 22% omega-3.  Their omega-6 to omega-3 ratio is 9 times the optimum, and CHD mortality is ten-fold higher than is necessary.

Dr. Bill Lands, one of the pioneers in omega-3 and omega-6 science, notes that the tissue ratio is determined by how much of each type of fat is eaten:

There seems to be no ‘corrective’ metabolic response to prevent fatal tissue combinations from being developed. As much as humans might wish for some protective re-adjustment of the metabolic promiscuity, the enzymes seem to continue assembling harmful and harmless combinations in response to supplies ingested – without much regard to or feedback from the consequences. [2]

So it’s important to eat these fats in the right ratio.

How do you do that?  These steps:

  1. Minimize omega-6 fats by:
    • Avoiding most vegetable oils, including soybean oil, corn oil, safflower oil, and canola oil.
    • Using low-omega-6 oils, such as coconut oil, butter, beef tallow, olive oil, and lard, in cooking and dressings and sauces.
    • Regularly eating low-omega-6 red meats, like beef and lamb.
  2. Get sufficient omega-3 fats by eating 1 lb per week of fatty cold-water fish, like salmon or sardines.

These simple dietary changes can reduce your risk of dying from a heart attack by a factor of ten.

Yet how many doctors recommend these steps?  Indeed, many recommend the opposite:  avoiding saturated fats in coconut oil, butter, and beef tallow; avoiding red meats; and eating lots of vegetable oil.

This is a great example of our First Law of Health:  Every conventional dietary recommendation is wrong.

[1] Lands WE. Dietary fat and health: the evidence and the politics of prevention: careful use of dietary fats can improve life and prevent disease. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2005 Dec;1055:179-92. http://pmid.us/16387724. Lands WE, http://efaeducation.nih.gov/sig/personal.html.  Hat tip Stephan Guyenet, http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/09/omega-fats-and-cardiovascular-disease.html.

[2] Lands WE, http://efaeducation.nih.gov/sig/composition%20maintained.pdf.