Jonny Bowden's Blog, page 14

Detoxification Demystified

The term “detoxification” has been around forever, but it remains a terribly misunderstood and misused term. People use it to describe a staggeringly wide range of procedures, from total fasting, to spiritual retreats, to highly sophisticated nutritional regimens for the removal of specific toxins like mercury.

There are raw food detoxes, vegan detoxes, bone broth detoxes, medical food detoxes, and probably some I haven’t even thought of. (A quick Google search for “the detox diet” brought up so many listings that if I counted them all I’d still be at it, and this article would never have been written.)

So is there any commonality for all these different programs? Yes. It’s called the liver.

See, the liver is the ground zero clearing house for toxins in the body. Everything has to go through the liver, just like every international traveler has to go through customs. So all toxins from the air, from the water, from breathing the exhaust on the 405 freeway, from medicines, from pesticides, even toxins made in our own body as a byproduct of metabolism, nothing gets a pass as far as the liver is concerned. It’s sophisticated two-tiered system of detoxification enzymes—known as the Phase One and Phase Two Cytochrome P-450 enzymes—tries to rid our bodies of any molecular riff-raff.

But, as you can imagine, the liver can get overwhelmed with the workload.

It’s like it has an overflowing “in” box, or its message center says “this voice mailbox is full”. Obviously that’s not literally what happens in the liver, but the liver does get backed up and can’t always keep up. (Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, for example, has a strong link to insulin resistance, which, in turn, is frequently associated with an “overload” of carbohydrates. Imagine that.)

And while the liver isn’t the only organ that “detoxifies” us, it’s certainly the most important, the one that’s on duty 24/7. This is one reason conventional medicine often scoffs at the concept of a “detox” since they claim that the body is always detoxifying naturally.

And on that point, they’re technically right. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t use a little help.



So what is a detox?

For our purposes, let’s just define a detox as a period of time during which we give our systems—our livers and our digestive systems– a much-needed rest. And that means a rest from any of the foods that are known to be problematic for lots of people. (Dr. Elson Haas, who’s been running detox programs at his San Marino clinic for thirty years, calls these foods the “sensitive seven”: sugar, wheat, dairy, eggs, corn, soy, and peanuts.)

So we can think of a detox as a kind of “time out” from the daily assault on our cells of environmental pathogens and toxic foods (or foods that are perfectly fine except not for you). That kind of “time out”—which can last anywhere from a day to a month– can be a deeply valuable asset in our quest for a long and healthy life.

Doing a detox is kind of like rebooting a sluggish computer (or more accurately, like emptying the trash that’s taking up a huge amount of memory). Often the desire to “detox” is really a desire to move towards the light- figuratively and literally. Lighter food, lighter way of being, “lightening up”, “lightening the load”- even our language reflects our desire to be “unburdened” of toxic influences, whatever their source- food, air, water or circumstances.



Renewed Vigor and Increased Energy

Along with your detox, it’s a good idea to do a few things that will enhance the results. For example, exercise. By stimulating circulation and sweat, exercise assists in escorting nasty toxins out of the body. Sweating is important as is skin brushing, saunas, massages, and even acupuncture. All of these are purported to increase the quality of your results and actually help to minimize any side effects—such as headaches or nausea– that you might feel during your detoxification. (Of course, if you experience any of these effects intensely or have any other serious symptoms, you should consult a health practitioner.)

While nearly all conventional medical doctors will scoff at the idea of a “detox”, there are plenty of doctors—especially naturopathic doctors and functional medicine MDs– who swear by the concept. If you’re seriously interested in the concept of detoxing and not just in following the latest fad, check out The New Detox Diet by Elson Haas, MD, as well as the book written by Gwyneth Paltrow’s guru, Alejandro Junger, MD. It’s called Clean and it’s one of the smartest and best books on detoxing around, endorsed by such luminaries as best-selling author Mark Hyman, MD. Who, incidentally, just released a pretty good detox book of his own.

Junger’s core concepts are easy to understand and hard to argue with. Number one, toxins and stress create obstacles for normal functioning. Number two, modern eating habits and lifestyles pollute our bodies. Number three, by removing the obstacles and providing what’s lacking, our bodies bounce back into health and energy is restored. Cant’ find fault with any of that.



Supplements may help

Remember the liver is ground zero for the detoxification process, so it makes sense to give your liver all the help it can get. Supplements can be useful here. The best of them will contain nutrients that assist the liver in the two-step process called Phase One and Phase Two detoxification. Many will contain milk thistle, one of the best herbs on the planet for the liver. Some detox kits will also contain a mild laxative– usually made from the natural ingredient senna– and perhaps some digestive aids like enzymes. While not technically necessary, these kits can make things a lot easier.

One final caution. If you’re thinking a “cleanse” or a “detox” is the perfect way to lose weight, think again. Weight loss isn’t the goal of a cleanse, though many people do them for just that reason. It’s a bad idea. Weight lost during a detox is almost always gained back, though a smart cleanse can certainly jump start a new approach to eating and health which of course is exactly what you need to keep weight off permanently.

The bottom line: Don’t expect miracles. A detox is not the way to lose weight and keep it off. But it may be one of the smartest ways to teach yourself something about how your body works. After all, digestive “issues” are just your body’s way of complaining that you’re feeding it something it doesn’t particularly like. Use this period to find out what that is, and then modify your “regular” diet accordingly.

And if you look at a detox as a kind of a jump-start– a way of getting a bit more energy, a bit more clarity, a feeling of lightness and a refreshed outlook on eating— it may be just what the doctor ordered!

What We Can Learn About Diabetes From Fish

Diabetes, inflammation and Jonny’s fish tank

I’ve been making the case for a long time that inflammation is probably the most important contributing factor to degenerative disease. There’s an inflammatory component to cancer, to obesity, to diabetes, to heart disease and even to Alzheimer’s. In The Great Cholesterol Myth, cardiologist Stephen Sinatra and I put forth the theory that inflammation was one of the four major promoters of heart disease (dwarfing cholesterol’s almost non-existent role). In The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer I identified inflammation as one of the four major factors that ages our body.



Inflammation is bad news.



Problem is, most people don’t really understand how bad inflammation is and what it actually does to your body. Tell people you want to help them reduce the risk for heart disease, they’re happy to get on board. Tell them you want to help them lose weight, and you’ll be met with a chorus of “Oh Yeah!” But tell them you want to help them reduce inflammation… and it’s crickets chirping.



Which brings me to diabetes.

This month, Dr. Patrick Kinglsey from the UK put forth a really interesting theory about diabetes and inflammation. Dr. Kingsley believes that the real cause of diabetes is inflammation, but his explanation and reasoning is so excellent and clear that I thought I’d reproduce the argument here. It’s worth reading and understanding so you can really appreciate just how much inflammation influences every disease you never want to get.

And the best way I can explain it is to talk about my fish.

So I have this fish tank and every time I go to feed the fish, they all gather around near the surface waiting for the fish food. (I like to amuse myself by thinking how well I’ve trained them and how smart they are, but really, they’re fish, and they’ve just been conditioned to respond to my huge human hand hovering over their tank by rushing up to the surface, near my hand, to collect their goodies.



The same thing happens in your cells when insulin comes knocking with its sugar payload.

Remember, when sugar rises in the bloodstream, insulin gets secreted from the pancreas. The insulin “escorts” the sugar into the cells by binding with it and taking it to the surface of the cells. As soon as the sugar arrives at the cell membrane, it’s like my hand with the food arriving at the surface of the fish tank. Except instead of fish, a particular protein in the cell—it’s called Glucose Transporter Type 4 (GALT-4 for short) “swims” up to the surface. And—to keep the metaphor going—it opens its “mouth” and collects the sugar, and all is well with the world.



Except when it doesn’t.

Which is exactly what happens when you are “insulin resistant”, i.e your cells don’t respond to insulin (and its sugar payload) the way they’re supposed to.

(And when that happens, insulin takes its sugar payload to the fat cells instead of the muscles, and you can guess the rest.)

According to Dr. Kingsley, inflammatory compounds are precisely the reason why GALT-4 fails to work. One in particular—TNF-alpha—destroys GALT-4 in the muscle cells, virtually assuring the sugar is going to wind up on your hips.

Whoops.

Not only that, TNF-alpha plays havoc with an enzyme called LPL—lipoprotein lipase. Lipoprotein lipase helps break down fat (specifically triglycerides).

And yes, there’s more—TNF-alpha stimulates the production of fat cells.

And fat cells produce more—you guessed it—TNF alpha. This is one of the reasons why, as Dr. Kingsley puts it, “there’s a lot of TNF-alpha floating around in an inflamed, overweight person.”

It’s time to take inflammation much more seriously.

Berries, vegetables, fatty fish (like wild salmon), nuts, onions, tea, apples and olive oil are all highly anti-inflammatory foods, as are supplements like Omega-3, curcumin, quercetin (found in apples and onions), green tea extract, astaxanthin—all are excellent weapons in the anti-inflammatory arsenal.



Guess what’s pro-inflammatory? Sugar. Vegetable oil. And, for many people, wheat.

So take inflammation seriously. Controlling it may just be one of the most powerful strategies for creating health.

Wine Benefits For Non-Drinkers

 

Let’s talk about wine.

Now, if you know my work, if you’ve read anything I’ve written over the last decade, or you’re at all familiar with my story, you know that I haven’t had a drink since, oh, somewhere around 1982.

But it’s National Wine Day, so, here we are. And the fact that I personally don’t drink doesn’t mean I’m not fully aware of wine’s benefits.

So how can a non-drinker like me still get the well-established health benefits that come from moderate drinking?

Actually, it’s not hard.

See, the benefits of wine are two-fold. First, alcohol in general is a “disinhibitor”.  And, frankly, a little relaxation of our inhibitions once in a while is a good thing. It helps grease the wheels of social interaction, loosens everyone up, helps conversation to flow, lowers stress hormones, and—sometimes—even helps to develop intimacy (if you’re lucky, that is). But with alcohol, the dose makes the posion. Too much disinhibition can result in disaster, as anyone who’s ever seen a crazy frat party well knows.

While the disinhibiting/relaxing/social-interaction-facilitating effect of alcohol applies to all alcohol, wine has a second, unique benefit which comes from the skin of the dark grapes from which it’s made. Those grape skins contain a host of valuable plant compounds known as polyphenols, most of which have demonstrated significant health benefits.

In the case of red wine, one of the most potent of the polyphenols is a compound known as resveratrol.

Resveratrol is known as an anti-aging nutrient, largely because of its effect on a group of genes known as the SIRT genes. The SIRT (or sirtuin) genes are involved in aging, and activating them appears to extend life. There’s a ton of research on how to activate these genes, and in virtually every species tested—from yeast, to fruit flies, to monkeys—activating these genes extends life. But before the discovery of resveratrol, the only way to turn these genes on was with calorie restriction.

The discovery that resveratrol mimics the effect of calorie restriction was a red-letter day for folks who wanted the anti-aging effects of calorie restriction, but didn’t fancy to the idea of eating two asparagus sticks for dinner.

If activating the SIRT genes was all that resveratrol did, that would be enough to recommend it as a supplement. But subsequent research has shown that resveratrol has a resume that goes far beyond merely turning on your longevity genes.

Resveratrol is a powerful antioxidant. It’s anti-inflammatory. It supports the heart by protecting the endothelium, the inner layer of your arteries. It helps block the production of a highly inflammatory compound called Nf-kB (nf kappa b). It helps prevent the oxidation of cholesterol (and let’s remember that the only type of cholesterol we need to fear is oxidized cholesterol).

But wait! There’s more.

Resveratrol may limit the spread of cancer cells. It may help protect nerve cells in the brain and limit the buildup of plaque that is associated with Alzheimer’s. And if all that weren’t enough, it significantly reduces insulin resistance, which is associated with both diabetes and obesity.

Pretty impressive, don’t you think?

 

So how do you get the benefits of reservatrol without drinking wine? With reservatrol supplements. 

But shop for the supplements wisely.

The dirty little secret about resveratrol supplements is that most only contain a small amount of the active form of resveratrol, which is known as trans resveratrol.

Look on the nutrition facts label of any resveratrol supplement and you’ll probably see small print saying something like “standardized for 10% trans”. That means that only 10% of the resveratrol in the capsule is of the trans variety. So a 500 mg cap standardized for 10% would yield 100 mg of trans, the only kind of resveratrol you care about.

Reserveage is one of the only companies I know of that manufacture resveratrol supplements that are 100% trans resveratrol. It comes in both 250 mg and 500 mg capsules, and either one should do nicely as an addition to your supplement regimen. I’ve been including resveratrol by Reserveage in my daily supplement regimen for about a decade.

So if you’re a non-drinker like me, and you don’t want to pass up all the benefits of red wine, consider taking a resveratrol supplement. You won’t get the buzz you get from wine (sorry), but you will get an awful lot of the health benefits.

Deceptive Labeling

Deceptive Labeling

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™



Conscious consumers are known to be label readers. Which is definitely a good thing, a step in the direction of being more mindful of what we put into our bodies. We read the labels so that we can “know” what’s in the supplements we take, and the food we consume—so far, so good. It’s great to actually read the label!



But it’s even better if we can actually understand and evaluate what’s on that label.



This is important. Big Food is amazingly good at grabbing trending nutritional buzzwords, and then expropriating them to sell more products. Whether there’s a correspondence between what the buzzwords on the label imply (“Now with omega-3!”) and what’s actually in the product is, sadly, quite another matter.



Omega-3s are actually a great example. Most people now know that omega-3s are a good thing, though I’d argue that fewer people than you might think could actually tell you why. Even fewer would know the difference between the three omega-3 fats (alpha-linolenic acid, docosahexaenoic acid, and eicosapentaenoic acid) and their respective effects on the body. And even fewer would have even a vague understanding of the correct dose—of any of them.



Yet I see everything from candy bars to eggs that proclaim, “enriched with omega-3.” And when you investigate more closely, you find that it’s nearly always a plant-based omega-3 (ALA), which is somewhat less potent as an omega-3 than the other two, and requires a higher dose to be really effective. (By higher, I mean a tablespoon of flaxseed oil or the like, which would provide about 7 grams (7,000 mg) of ALA.) Typically the “enriched” products contain less than 50 milligrams per serving, which is essentially useless.



Fish oil is another related product where unscrupulous manufacturers can really overwhelm the consumer. Remember, the only reason we take fish oil is for the omega-3s—(fish oil is one of the richest source of the omega-3s EPA and DHA to be found anywhere on the planet). But not all fish oil has the same amount of omega-3s.



Here’s how it works. Remember the old westerns, where old grizzled prospectors would go up into the mountains to prospect for gold? They’d have these tin pans with all these little pebbly rocks in them, but only some of the pebbles were actual gold nuggets. The rest were rocks, known as “fool’s gold”.



Well, it’s kind of the same thing with fish oil. The omega-3s are the gold nuggets carried in the oil. But you can totally sell the oil without any omega-3 in it. I’ve seen bottles of commercial fish oil in big box stores labeled “1000 mg of fish oil”, yet when you read the nutrition facts label on the back you see there is zero—repeat, zero— omega-3s.



Yes, it’s possible to buy “fish oil” which contains not a milligram of omega-3. And that’s totally legal.



Speaking of gold nuggets, let’s talk about resveratrol. I’m a big fan of this nutraceutical, which is found primarily in the skins of dark grapes and in wine. And resveratrol has become a very big selling supplement due to a lot of research on its anti-aging properties. But what a lot of people don’t know is that the active part of resveratrol—the “gold nuggets” if you will—is an active compound called trans resveratrol.



Trans resveratrol is the active compound in resveratrol, the only part that’s really important. But, not all resveratrol is trans.



If you just read the front of the label—which might typically say “1000 mg resveratrol” or “500 mg resveratrol” you’d be missing the most important piece of data—how much trans resveratrol is in that dose? More honest manufacturers will tell you, even if it is in the fine print. They’ll say something like “standardized for 20% trans”, or “standardized for 10% trans”.



That means that if you’re holding a 500 mg capsule of resveratrol that’s been “standardized for 20% trans”, 100 mg of the resveratrol in that capsule (20% of 500) is trans resveratrol. A 250 mg resveratrol capsule, standardized for 20% trans would yield 50 mg of trans resveratrol. A 600 mg resveratrol capsule, standardized for 10% trans would yield a mere 60 mg of trans.



Remember, you dose only on the trans part. And experts recommend between 250-500 mg of trans resveratrol a day. That’s an awful lot of resveratrol capsules if they’re only standardized to 20% or even 30%. One brand family I like a lot is Reserveage and ResVitale, because everything in the entire capsule is 100% trans resveratrol, so when you buy a 500 mg pill, you’re actually getting a full 500 mg of trans.



Another sub-category of supplement that’s ripe for misrepresentation is grape seed extract; there are some terrific compounds in the seeds of grapes (and pine bark) known as OPCs or oligomeric proanthocyanidins. These are powerful antioxidants in the flavonoid family, and they’re the reason that grape seed extract became such a popular supplement.



But many proathocyanidins are very big molecules, which can’t be absorbed by the body. That didn’t stop manufacturers from flooding the market with cheap “grape seed extract” products which were often little more than a bunch of grape seeds that were pulverized in a food processor and contained little, if any, value—but they were cheap. Real OPC products—which contain just the isolated, smaller, absorbable proanthocyanadins—were much more expensive, and often had a hard time competing with a cheap grape seed extract that “looked” like it was the same thing. (For the record, one excellent commercially available grape seed extract product that actually does contain bioavailable OPCs is Clinical OPC/ French Grape Seed Extract by Terry Naturally.)



And finally, there’s turmeric, definitely a superstar in the spice world, largely because it contains bioactive compounds called curcuminoids (or curcumin). But curcumin is not well absorbed, and you’d have to eat a monstrous amount of turmeric to get a clinically meaningful dose of curcumin. That doesn’t stop people from buying cheap “turmeric” capsules, which aren’t likely to have much value.



For truly meaningful clinical doses of curcumin, you have to go with supplements, and even then there’s a great variety in how absorbable they are. I’m a big fan of BCM-95 curcumin, which comes from India, and has been shown in research to be far more absorbable than “garden variety” curcumin. Look for a curcumin supplement (like Terry Naturally) that actually says BCM-95 curcumin on the box.



So manufacturers frequently take shortcuts, tell us what we want to hear, and misrepresent the health benefits of their products with misleading labels. But the moral of the story is not—repeat not—that supplements are worthless.



No, the lesson here is that you should be an educated consumer, armed with as much information as possible, and that you should shop for supplements wisely, with a skeptical eye towards marketing claims.



Intelligent supplementation is one of the best things you can do for yourself. Just don’t get sucker-punched by misleading labels.

So who IS “The Biggest Loser”?

As I watched the first ever episode of “The Biggest Loser” back in 2004, I remember one question popping immediately into my head:

Who’s going to turn out to be the real biggest loser here … the contestants?  Or the audience?

Well, it’s 12 years later and the answer is clear:  It’s both.

Let me explain.

Weight loss as a spectator sport is a bad idea. It sets up expectations that are wholly divorced from reality. (“Man I only lost three pounds in two weeks and this dude on TV lost 17 pounds in one week!”) Not only is this “result” neither possible nor desirable in any realistic scenario, but it’s positively unhealthy and—as we shall soon see—utterly counterproductive.

Weight loss as entertainment relies on techniques—the boot camp exercise, the hours of running, the starvation diets– that are abominably, horrifically, fundamentally stupid,  backed by not a shred of science, and are completely unsustainable. Yet watching people do this shit is entertaining enough to make you forget how dangerous it is. (Kind of like Donald Trump—but I digress.)

So now, away from the teary, staged-for-television finales, and the “inspiring” stories of the winners, we have some actual numbers, some real science. Researchers followed “Biggest Loser” contestants for six years after their win , and for the first time, we have actual data on what happens to folks after losing a ton of weight through intensive dieting and exercise.

It’s not a pretty picture.

Thirteen of the fourteen contestants studied regained weight during the six years after the show. Four of them are heavier now than before they went on “The Biggest Loser”.

But that’s not the bad part.

The bad part is that nearly all of them have measurably slower metabolisms than they did six years earlier. That means they burn fewer calories than would be predicted for a person of their weight (more on that in a moment).

Only one of the contestants—Erinn Egbert—weighs less today than six years ago. And she requires 552 fewer calories a day to maintain that weight than she would have required if she had never gained and lost all that weight in the first place.

In other words, her metabolism slowed down.

Yes, that dreaded “slow metabolism” that people constantly complain about to personal trainers (often incorrectly) is a real, measurable phenomenon. It’s something that people in the weight loss field have been observing clinically for a long time, but that the “Biggest Loser” study demonstrates for the first time with hard data:  A large amount of weight loss—especially when it’s done quickly– slows the metabolism. Folks require fewer calories to maintain their new, post TV-show, weight than someone who was that weight to begin with.

Sorry. Don’t kill the messenger.

Let’s use round, even numbers that in no way are accurate, but will make the point clearly. Let’s say you’re a healthy, never-overweight 150 pound person and you need 2000 calories to maintain that weight on a daily basis. At 2000 you won’t lose, you won’t gain, everything is hunky-dory.

Now, over the years, you somehow balloon up to 325 and you go on the Biggest Loser and, miracle of miracles, you get your weight back down to your ideal, college weight of 150.

So, you logically figure, you can go back to eating “normally”, which, for you, means that 2000 calorie a day diet that kept you where you wanted to be.

Not so fast. To maintain that 150, you no longer need 2000 calories a day.

You now need only 1500.

And if you eat the 2000 that kept you perfectly healthy and fit pre-obesity, you will get fat again, even though you’re only eating what you used to eat before you became obese.

For a real-life example, take Pastor Sean Algaier. His starting weight on  season 8 of the Biggest Loser was 444, and he dropped 155 pounds on the show. Now, six years later, he’s up to 450, 6 pounds higher than when he started. More importantly, he now needs a staggering 458 calories less to maintain that weight than he did before he went on the show.

And yes, that’s supremely unfair. But there it is.

A symphony of hormones—leptin, ghrelin, insulin, cortisol, adiponectin, and others—work fervently to get your body back to the weight it “thinks” you should be. That hormonal army is a powerful adversary—willpower doesn’t have a chance, at least not in the long run.

Not only that, but new research on the microbiome shows clearly that the non-human microbes in your gut (which outnumber human cells by 3-10x) have a profound and dramatic effect on what happens to the calories you ingest.

You know how there are folks who can eat anything and never gain an ounce, but you just look at Cherry Garcia and your hips grow an inch? The microbiome may be partly to blame.

One class of microbes called firmicutes will stash practically every molecule of food you eat into the fat cells; another class of microbes called bacteroidetes has the opposite effect, burning up those calories almost as fast as you can ingest them.

And we’re only now beginning to realize the effect of pesticides, environmental toxins, hormones, endocrine disrupters and… don’t get me started… GMO foods, on obesity.

So the real victims in this story are the contestants—who lost a bunch of weight but gained it back with a slower metabolism to boot—and the audience—who learned a bunch of really stupid lessons about weight loss.

Weight loss—despite what every health organization from the terrible American Dietetic Association to the American Medical Association tells us—is not– repeat NOT– just about exercise and diet. Obese people aren’t unmotivated, slovenly, gluttony people with no discipline. They suffer from a hugely complex metabolic dysregulation. Continuing to pretend that weight loss is as simple as cutting calories and going for a walk is the public health policy equivalent of medical malpractice.

So does this mean we should all just throw up our hands and give up on weight loss? Hell, no.

But an enemy better understood is an enemy more likely to be defeated. If obesity is our enemy, we better stop telling ourselves a bunch of lies about how easy weight loss is.

And…

… it wouldn’t hurt if we also thought a bit about why we want to lose weight in the first place.

Most of us want to lose weight so we can be more:

happy

attractive

healthy

energetic

sexy

But if I’ve learned one thing in 25 years of doing this, it’s that we don’t really have to have the perfect body to have every one of the things on that list.

See, I don’t believe everyone on earth can be thin.

And most important, I don’t think it matters.

Gorgeous, sexy, inspiring, energetic people come in every conceivable size. And while I don’t believe a six-pack is within reach of everyone, I do believe that everyone— at any weight— can be a better, more energetic, more sexy version of who they are now.

And that while we’re figuring out this obesity thing—and believe me, we’re not even close to fully understanding it—it might be a good idea to work on having the things RIGHT NOW that you think you can only have “someday, once I’ve lost the weight”.

Because there are a lot of benefits in cutting carbs, eating healthy fat, and exercising intelligently—and most of those benefits have very little to do with your waistline.

And maybe if we stopped making it be “all about the weight”, and instead started looking at metrics like energy, sexuality, sleep, performance, attitude, optimism and well-being, we’d be a whole lot better off.

No matter what size we happen to be.

Why I Hate the New Dietary Guidelines, Part Two

Last month I told you why I think it’s very hard to take the USDA dietary guidelines very seriously. In fact, I think the whole notion of looking to the government for guidelines on eating is ludicrous. Here’s why:

 

The USDA (which publishes the dietary guidelines) has two mandates, and those two mandates are in direct opposition.

On the one hand, the USDA is charged with providing Americans with good, objective information on health and eating. On the other hand it’s also charged with promoting US agriculture and increasing the demand for its products.

The government recommendations are suspect simply because there’s a built-in conflict of interest. (Would you trust the tobacco industry to write guidelines on smoking?) The USDA will never tell us to eat less of the very foods they’re supposed to promote—– corn, wheat, soy and sugar, and therein lies the rub. In addition, the guidelines are strongly influenced by the massive lobbying efforts of industries whose bottom line are deeply affected by those guidelines—Big Food, the dairy industry and the meat industry. Even though the “system” is rigged, we can still look at the results and see what they got right, and what they got wrong.

One of the main things the system continue to get wrong is fat.

The dietary guidelines—as well as the “conventional” wisdom—warns us against saturated fat, telling us to consume as little as possible while at the same time encouraging us to consume lots of plant based fats like corn oil. Wrong, wrong, and wrong again.

We now know from at least two major meta-analyses published in serious, peer-reviewed journals like the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the Annals of Internal Medicine, that saturated fat does not cause heart disease.

Let me repeat that, since it goes against everything you and I have been taught for the past fifty years or so.

 

Saturated fat does not cause heart disease. It also does not “clog your arteries”.

While it may raise cholesterol, when you look under the hood you find that it actually raises LDL-a cholesterol (harmless) while lowering LDL-b cholesterol (not harmless). It also raises HDL cholesterol (which is generally a good thing). So the notion that you have to avoid saturated fat to prevent heart attacks is just… well, wrong.

Equally wrong is the notion that you should consume as much vegetable fat as possible. Vegetable oils are loaded with omega-6 fats, just as fish oil (and flax) are loaded with omega-3’s. You actually need both, but we need them to be in the right proportion (ideally somewhere between 1:1 and 4:1). The omega-6 fats are pro-inflammatory while the omega-3s are anti-inflammatory. When they’re wildly out of proportion, you’re setting yourself up for inflammation, the major promoter of every degenerative disease we know of. Corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil, safflower oil, and all the rest of the high omega-6 oils are found in every processed food in the grocery store. As a result, we now consume 16 times more omega-6 than omega-3. No wonder we’re walking inflammation factories!

 

In our new book, “Smart Fat”, Dr. Steven Masley and I argue that the most important thing to know about fat is whether or not it’s toxic!

When you raise cattle on huge factory farms, feeding them pesticide-sprayed grain, shooting them up with antibiotics, steroids and hormones, then yes, their fat is indeed toxic. But it’s not toxic because it’s saturated, it’s toxic because it’s been contaminated!

When cattle are raised on their natural diet of pasture—i.e. “grass-fed” beef—it’s a whole different story. The fat from grass-fed beef is perfectly fine and not toxic at all.

As long as the guidelines continue to communicate the notion that all animal fats are bad and all “vegetable” fats are good, the guidelines will continue to be woefully out of date. Worse, they will continue to promote over-consumption of the very foods we should be cutting back on (like vegetable oil and processed carbs) while promoting under-consumption of perfectly healthy (or, at the very least, neutral) fats like the fat from grass-fed beef, coconut oil and Malaysian palm oil.

There’s at least one thing the dietary guidelines got right, though.

We should eat a lot of vegetables and fruits.

But we didn’t need the US government to tell us that. We could have just asked our grandmothers.

 

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

 

Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS, also known as “The Nutrition Myth Buster” ™ is a nationally known board-certified nutritionist and expert on diet and weight loss. He has appeared on the Dr. Oz Show, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, and CBS and has contributed to articles in The New York Times, Forbes, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, Vanity Fair Online, Men’s Heath, Prevention, and dozens of other print and online publications. He is the best-selling author of 15 books, including The Great Cholesterol Myth (co-authored with Stephen Sinatra, MD). His latest, co-authored with Steven Masley, MD, is Smart Fat: Eat More Fat, Lose More Weight, Get Healthy Now! (Harper One, 2016)

The Mediterranean Diet vs. The Smart Fat Program

A lot of people have asked me a really interesting question: How does the Smart Fat Program differ from the Mediterranean Diet? While there are some areas of overlap, such as the emphasis on eating lots of Omega-3s, fruits and vegetables, there are several main differences that can allow one to easily distinguish between the two dietary approaches.

 

            To start, the Mediterranean Diet is a pattern of eating, rather than a strict food protocol. Some dishes may incorporate lots of fish and olive oil, while others are heavy on the grains, whereas some eat strictly fruits, nuts and vegetables. The Smart Fat Program, on the other hand, is very regimented: Five servings of smart fat a day, five servings of clean protein a Day, ten servings of fiber every day. Subscribers to the Mediterranean Diet tend to stay away from meat, regardless of the source. This is another point where the Smart Fat Program veers in its own unique direction.

 

Major proponents of the Mediterranean Diet typically refer to Animal Fats as unhealthy and Vegetable Oils and Vegetable Fats as healthy. The Smart Fat Program draws the line between good & bad fats based on only one thing: Whether or not the fat is toxic. Fat is toxic if it comes from animals that have been on feedlot farms, or fed antibiotics, steroids, bovine growth hormones, or even raised on a grain diet. The Smart Fat Program does encourage eating plenty of fish, but also meat when it is grass-fed, organic and not teeming with toxins. To be clear, toxic fat has nothing to do with whether or not the fat is saturated and unsaturated.

 

The third major distinction is grains, which are fairly prominent in the Mediterranean Diet and extremely limited on the Smart Fat Program. Even Whole Grains raise your blood sugar, can be very inflammatory, and many contain gluten, which can lead to Leaky Gut that can furthermore result in a chain reaction of health problems. While we do have some grains in limited amounts on the Smart Fat Program, it is not a grain-based diet by any means.

 

Those are the basic distinctions between the Mediterranean Diet and the Smart Fat Program. There are some similarities between the two, but each has its own unique place. One can think of them as “friendly cousins” that have their like-attributes, but in the end are quite different.

 

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™

Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS, also known as “The Nutrition Myth Buster” ™ is a nationally known board-certified nutritionist and expert on diet and weight loss. He has appeared on the Dr. Oz Show, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, and CBS and has contributed to articles in The New York Times, Forbes, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, Vanity Fair Online, Men’s Heath, Prevention, and dozens of other print and online publications. He is the best-selling author of 15 books, including The Great Cholesterol Myth (co-authored with Stephen Sinatra, MD). His latest, co-authored with Steven Masley, MD, is Smart Fat: Eat More Fat, Lose More Weight, Get Healthy Now! (Harper One, 2016)

 

 

 

My Holiday Message!

I want to take this time to wish you the happiest, most joyous holiday season in the world. Regardless of what you celebrate, this is a time of gratitude and peace. May we all spare a moment to reflect and make the extra effort to express the love and gratitude we have for one another.

I would not be who I am—or be able to provide this service—without such a magnificent team and engaging audience! I want to thank Michelle, my partner; Brooke, my assistant; the wonderful Mary Agnes and Tommy, along with all of you wonderful people who contribute to my life, everyday!

I love and appreciate every one of you who does me the honor of reading my work. Tremendous thanks for writing back to me and trusting me with guidance on your health and life. You are my fellow travelers. I feel blessed to be in touch and wish all of you a wonderful holiday season.

 

Happy Holidays

Jonny

 

6 Holiday Tips for Healthy Eating!

Here are my top Holiday Tips for healthy eating—and not going crazy.

Proactive Visualizing

When you wake up in the morning—before you have breakfast—I want you to visualize what the meal’s going to look like, what kind of temptations are going to be present, and actually write down—or rehearse—what you’re going to eat. Be realistic. Studies show that people do far better at keeping to what they plan to do if they write it down and rehearse it, too. This is one of the best strategies I know.

Keep a Real Food Diary

Write down what you eat. As with the planning, people become much more conscious and mindful about what they’re eating when they have taken the time to write it down.

Do Not Skip Breakfast

Do not go to the big Christmas Dinner hungry. It is the worst strategy in the world. Eat a big protein-filled breakfast and arrive with your appetite in check.

Always Start with Protein and Fat

Protein and fat will fill you up the most, keep insulin at bay, and do less damage than if you start snacking on carbohydrates

Take a Walk after Dinner

A good, long walk after dinner does remarkable benefits for the metabolism, for circulation and digestion.

Remember…

If you do go overboard—and everybody does—every meal is a new decision. Do not tell yourself: “Oh, I messed up… I’ll start at the New Year.” Rather, start the next time you put the fork on the food.

Have a wonderful holiday!

SMART FAT: The Book.

If you work at Whole Foods, sooner or later someone is going to ask you about Smart Fat. And I, for one, think that’s a very good sign.

My book, Smart Fat: Eat More Fat, Lose More Weight, Get Healthy Now (co-authored with Steven Masley, MD) is about to drop (January, Harper Collins), and soon we’ll be seeing a virtual tsunami of books capitalizing on the term. Already, one famous nutritionist is re-publishing an older book that advocated for higher fat diets and has put “Smart Fat” prominently on the cover of the new edition. Another A-list nutritionist we know of is rushing to get his high-fat book out quickly, and there are sure to be more to follow. The concept of Smart Fat has arrived, and I want you to learn what Smart Fat means, right now, right from the horse’s mouth.

Full disclosure: Sometime after our book went to press, an old physician friend of mine sent me a link to a long out-of-print book called Smart Fats that had indeed been published years ago, but that neither Dr. Masley nor myself had ever heard of that book when we wrote—and titled—our new book. So for all intents and purposes, we invented the term Smart Fat for modern times, and I’m actually glad that so many distinguished writers and nutritionists are picking up on it because, as you’ll soon see, it’s a very useful term to have.

See, at one time in the not so distant past, we all believed that fat was bad and that low-fat diets were the key to health. Then, we slowly realized that not all fat was bad. Some fats—for example, fish oil and olive oil—seemed to be really healthy. So, we modified our old-fashioned demonization of fat in general, and came up with the notion of “good fat” (i.e., vegetable oils) and “bad fat” (i.e., trans fat and animal products).

Well, that was then. This is now.

You could, I suppose, think of the notion of “smart” fat as a much-needed update to the old, outdated notion of “good fat” and “bad fat.” The new way of looking at fat still recognizes that some fat is “good” and some is “bad,” but those categories are defined very differently.

It doesn’t matter whether a fat comes from an animal or a vegetable. The only thing that makes a fat “good” or “bad” is whether or not it’s toxic. Toxic fat is bad—regardless of its origins. Some of the worst fats are the ones we’ve been told are terrific for us, and some of the best fats may turn out to be precisely the ones we were wrongly told to stay away from.

Let me explain.

In any sentient being—humans, animals—toxins are stored in adipose tissue (i.e., the fat cells). Fat cells are storage central for any toxin that gets into the body and doesn’t get excreted. When you raise cows on a factory farms—also known as CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations)—here’s what happens. The cows are fed massive amounts of antibiotics to fatten them up and to keep them from getting sick due to their poor diet and crowded conditions. They’re fed steroids and hormones (like bovine growth hormone). They eat grain—an unnatural diet for ruminants—and it’s grain that’s been sprayed with every kind of pesticide and chemical you can imagine.

And guess what? All of that stuff winds up in the fat of the animals. And on your plate. And in your body.

The fat of those animals is a toxic waste dump. And it has absolutely nothing to do with whether it’s saturated or not—(about half the fat in beef is actually monounsaturated)—and it has nothing to do with whether or not it came from an animal.

I live in Southern California and we’ve had a couple of E. coli scares, traceable to contaminated spinach. But no one in their right mind thinks spinach is a “dangerous” food—everyone understands that a particular crop was contaminated by outside sources. The contaminated spinach was recalled, end of story, everyone can eat spinach and no one thinks it’s bad for you.

Yet the situation with toxic fat is exactly like the situation with spinach. Animal products aren’t bad for you because they’re animal products, any more than spinach is bad for you because it’s a vegetable. Animal products, just like vegetables, are only bad for you when the animals are contaminated. Which is exactly what they are when they’re raised on feedlot, factory farms—and this goes for chickens and pigs as well as for beef.

The fat from grass-fed animals, however, is a whole different story. Grass-fed animals—and pasteured pork, and free-range chickens—are raised on their natural diet. Cows are free to roam on pasture and chew on grass. They don’t eat an unnatural diet of grain. Chickens peck at bugs and worms and insects (good sources of omega-3). They’re not fed antibiotics. They aren’t fed hormones. Their fat is higher in omega-3 and lower in inflammatory omega-6. When I order grass-fed beef from Whole Foods or a farmer’s market, I never ask for the lean kind, because there’s no reason to. There’s nothing toxic in that fat at all.

Our book divides fat into three categories—Smart, Neutral and Toxic. Toxic fat is fat from animals that have been raised on feedlot farms. Toxic fat is man-made trans fat. Toxic fat is damaged fat—like canola oil that’s been used and re-heated many times at a fast food restaurant. And—although vegetable oil per se is not necessarily toxic, most of it is highly processed and refined, very high in inflammatory omega-6, and, in the quantities we consume it, not very good for us. (Contrary to the old definition, vegetable oil isn’t always good fat, and definitely isn’t “smart” fat!) Saturated fat, on the other hand, is completely neutral when it comes to promoting heart disease. And in some cases—like coconut oil or Malaysian palm oil—saturated fat actually has some benefits.

When we made the bone-headedly stupid mistake of banishing fat from our diets, we lost one of the best sources of energy on the planet, and replaced it with sugar which is at the heart of every major epidemic that has a nutritional component (diabetes, obesity, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, fatty liver disease). We removed sources of calories with significant health benefits (i.e. fish, olive oil, nuts, avocados, grass-fed beef, free-range chicken, eggs, whole-fat yogurt, coconut oil, Malaysian palm oil) all in the hopes of attaining some elusive health and weight benefits believed to accrue to a low-fat diet.

It hasn’t worked out very well.

My hope is that our book is a harbinger of a whole new way of thinking about fat. Fat is our friend. It helps balance our hormones. It keeps our brain healthy. It provides amazing energy. It keeps us full. It’s vital for absorbing critical vitamins  (A, D, E and K) and other nutrients (carotenoids).

The old way of thinking—“good” fat= vegetable oil, “bad” fat= animal products—is woefully out of date. It’s about time we started looking at fat as something which- -when used the right way—has the potential to transform our health for the better.

Combined with the right amount of flavor, plenty of fiber, and liberal use of anti-inflammatory and antioxidant spices, the Smart Fat eating plan is one that has the power to change your life.

 

Posted on WholeFoods Magazine Online,

 

By Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “The Nutrition Myth Buster”™