Jonny Bowden's Blog, page 7

It’s Heart Health Month—Don’t fall for the BS

It’s heart health month, the time of year when I typically get apoplectic reading all the bullshit about how important it is for us to check our cholesterol.

And with a new class of cholesterol lowering drugs about to hit the market, you can count on aggressive campaigns to get you to pay attention to your cholesterol levels, and how great these new drugs are when you combine them with a statin, which is what they did in the research. So now, you can be on two drugs to solve the terrible problem of high cholesterol (although I saw an encouraging article recently that said that the new drugs—Repatha and Praluent—aren’t selling. Such a pity.)

Two drugs that may lower cholesterol stupendously. But which do very little if anything for lowering the risk of heart disease.

That’s because—- as I said on the Dr. Oz show—trying to lower the risk of heart disease by lowering cholesterol is like trying to reduce your risk of obesity by giving up lettuce.

So let’s start with one, basic, incontrovertible, evidence-based, non-alternative fact: Cholesterol does NOT cause heart disease. Not even close. It’s actually not even a good predictor of heart disease. Fully half the people admitted to US hospitals with cardiovascular disease have perfectly normal cholesterol. Tim Russert, the beloved host of Meet The Press, dropped dead on a treadmill at the NBC studios with his cholesterol perfectly in check.

Now that we’ve got the cholesterol thing out of the way, let’s talk about what does cause heart disease, and, more importantly, what we can do about it. Which turns out to be a lot (more on that in a moment).

Heart disease doesn’t have a single cause. Many different factors can contribute to a weakened heart, just as they can to a weakened immune system. And when the heart—or more precisely, the cardiovascular system—is weakened, it doesn’t take as much to overwhelm it.

Imagine building a fence out of bamboo around a house on the coast of Florida. That fence may stand perfectly straight in good weather, but at the first sign of a hurricane, goodbye fence. (A fence made of something more substantial would be exposed to the same hurricane winds, but probably wouldn’t get knocked down.)

Your body is like that fence. When your system is weakened by a diet high in sugar and starch, by stress, by inflammation, by oxidative damage, by the absence of exercise and the presence of toxins, it’s like having a fence made of paper maché. In our book, The Great Cholesterol Myth, my co-author, cardiologist Stephen Sinatra, MD, tells the story of a banker who was felled by a heart attack after hearing a bit of minor bad news. His system was so weakened that even a minor setback was enough to bring him down.

Think about all the stories you’ve heard about couples who were married for 57 years, one dies, and the other is gone within a month. (Case in point: my grandparents.) The grieving survivor’s system is simply overwhelmed, flooded with cortisol (which depresses immunity), their will is gone, their physical resources depleted and they simply die, often triggered by an ordinarily innocuous bacteria or virus. Thinking we are speaking metaphorically, we might say of that person that he died of a broken heart—- but a broken heart might be closer to the truth than we think.

We weaken our systems every time we consume sugar, soda, donuts, French fries, or any of the other staples of our great American experiment in horrible diets. Our system is further weakened by exposure to the toxins in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and the stress we experience. All add up to a significant increase in our susceptibility to heart disease. Cholesterol has absolutely nothing to do with it.

And one more thing—perhaps the most important. Have you ever noticed that there are no newspaper articles—let alone studies—of healthy, robust centenarians that live in isolated cabins in the wilds of Montana? That’s because there are no such people. All the places in the world where they have the highest concentration of healthy 100-year olds have one thing in common, and it’s not their diet, their exercise, their supplementation program or their genetics.

It’s the fact that they all have strong social connections.

And I’m not talking Facebook friends, I’m talking real people whose eyes you can actually look into when you talk to them. Who you talk to with actual words, not texts. The social fabric is such a strong protector of health that it may even counter the negative effects of some really bad risk factors.

There’s even a name for this phenomenon—The Roseto Effect— named after a close-knit Pennsylvania community with a heart attack mortality rate about half that of all the surrounding areas, baffling all the scientists and researchers of the day .

The people of Roseto lived a really hard-scrapple life. They worked in toxic slate quarries, inhaling horrible gases, dusts and other awful stuff. They smoked. Their diet was as bad as you can imagine. But the town was mostly composed of closely-knit Italian immigrant families who had an incredibly strong social fabric. They shopped locally, patronizing their neighbors’ businesses. They didn’t show off, or care terribly about status. They attended the same churches, went to the same schools. They didn’t seem terribly unhappy or stressed out. They ate family dinners together, and had virtually no crime in their neighborhoods. They had a sense of purpose and a sense of connection to things outside (and bigger) than themselves. And they took care of one another—though hardly a well-heeled town, they had a very low percentage of people on public assistance.

Apparently that lifestyle protected them a hell of a lot more than a statin drug.

Look, let’s face it. You can’t completely eliminate the risk of heart disease. But you can do an awful lot of things to reduce the risk of it killing you. You can eat real food—food your grandmother would have recognized as food. You can move. A lot. You can get up and walk around for a few minutes every hour or so, so you never sit for extended periods of time. You can get some sun, and take a walk in the woods. Play with a pet. Make love. Meditate. Spend a few minutes every day contemplating the things you’re grateful for. Eat an apple. Drink some tea. Dance like no one’s looking. Take fish oil, vitamin D, magnesium, and probiotics. Laugh. Make someone else feel good—every single day of your life.

These are the things that create a strong “fence” They ultimately protect you and insure that you’re as strong, healthy and fit as you can possibly be.

That’s how you protect your heart.

Lowering your cholesterol has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Kate goes to Fat Camp

I’ve been loving the NBC-TV television hit This is Us for many reasons, including its honest and empathetic portrait of one of the central characters in the show who happens to be obese.

But let me be clear that this is not a column on This is Us. It’s a column about something that happened in the show that tells us a lot about the way we think about obesity.

And that’s really what I want to talk about.

If you haven’t seen This is Us, it’s about three siblings (triplets, actually) in their mid-30’s, one of whom, Kate, is overweight. OK, let’s not mince words, she’s obese. Doctors would probably classify her as “morbidly obese” except there is absolutely nothing morbid about Kate, especially as played by the wonderful Chrissy Metz who in my humble opinion is one of the most beautiful women on television, but that’s not really the point, now, is it?

What’s is the point is the episode in which Kate goes to “fat camp”.

When she signs up for it, she’s expecting a “fat camp” a la Biggest Loser. But the fat camp she arrives at is anything but what she expected. There’s no boot-camp style exercising, no drill sergeants, no fat shaming, no food police, none of it. No, this “fat camp” more resembles an Esalen-style retreat, where people sit in circles, get in touch with their feelings, explore their “real” relationship with food, and find out why they have the need to be fat.

Which might almost sound pretty cool, right?

It’s not.

It’s bullshit.

What’s more, it perpetuates a widely held misconception about obesity the destructiveness of which we are just beginning to appreciate.

Let me explain.

Suppose instead of fat camp, Kate went to “diabetes camp”, or “cancer camp”. What would you think of a group of diabetics sitting around in a room 12-step style talking about their feelings about diabetes, and their relationship to insulin? We think that notion is ridiculous because everyone knows that diabetes is a metabolic disorder that needs a medical intervention, not group therapy. Or at least, not just group therapy. No one expects a support group to affect your A1c blood test.

While people certainly have feelings about having diabetes and could certainly discuss them productively in a support group, the notion that you can cure diabetes by talking about it is pretty ridiculous.

“As a diabetic… not to mention a physician… I would no more think that I could treat my disease by sitting around in a room with other diabetics and commiserating about our problems than thinking I could cure it by eating a diet of only chocolate cake”, writes Akikur Mohammad, MD, author of the excellent book, The Anatomy of Addiction.

Dr. Mohammad would probably not agree with the point of view on display at Kate’s fat camp. There, a counselor tells Kate that she’s going to get to the core of her relationship with food. Kate takes part in drum workshops, group therapy, personal growth exercises, mindfulness training—all wonderful things that might well be expected to help one live a better life in general, but that have next to nothing to do with the real causes of obesity.

And therein lies the problem.

The fat camp portrayed on This is Us perpetuates the notion that obesity is about self-control. Its philosophy is deeply rooted in the notion that obesity is about calories and exercise, self-denial and discipline. You know the talking points, you’ve heard them a million times—fat people are fat because they eat too much and don’t put in enough time on the treadmill.

But what if we got it backwards?

What if fat people aren’t fat because they eat too much? What if they eat too much because they’re fat? What if not exercising is a result of being obese, rather than a cause of it?

This is precisely the counter-intuitive theory put forth for the past decade by the award-winning science journalist and researcher, Gary Taubes. In his books, Why We Get Fat and more recently, The Case Against Sugar, Taubes argues that obesity is a metabolic dysfunction, not a failure of will power. Obesity, says Taubes, citing persuasive research, creates a metabolic situation in which hormones literally compel you to eat. The energy-producing mitochondria in your cells are exhausted and overwhelmed with toxins and sugar, making exercise a truly horrific experience. It is as foolish—and cruel—to blame the victim of such metabolic dysregulation for their condition as it would to blame diabetics for theirs.

I believe we’re going to be seeing a lot of research in the near future testing this very different—and compelling- view of obesity.

Look, obesity is one of the most baffling diseases on the planet. Really. Talk to smart, experienced obesity researchers who’ve been studying this thing for two decades and they’ll be the first to tell you they haven’t begun to figure it out yet.

To make matters worse, obesity is a multi-factorial, multi-determined condition that can be “caused” by any number of events or conditions, and usually is caused by a number of them. Clinicians have seen cases of obesity caused by everything from hormonal malfunction to sexual trauma. Sometimes people hold on to weight as a defense against unwanted attention. Sometimes it’s caused by food allergies, inflammation, and stress. Sometimes it’s too much sugar, others it’s a malfunctioning thyroid.

So we never want to diminish the honest, earnest, deeply courageous kind of work Kate expects to do in her fat camp. It’s always good to know yourself better, to understand your relationship with food, with your body, with your body image, and with the world in general. It’s always admirable to take as much responsibility for your life as you can and to become wiser and more mindful about what you do, including your eating. This is exactly what my good friends Marc David and Emily Rosen are up to at the Institute for the Psychology of Eating.

But the fact that those who struggle with weight can—like most people—benefit from a deeper understanding of themselves should not blind us to the fact that obesity has real metabolic causes and real metabolic consequences.

And hopefully, one day, real metabolic solutions.

Which will likely not include drum circles.

No one decides to be obese. No one wants it. No one signs on to be part of the only minority in America that late-night comedians can still make fun of without fear of censure.

And as long as we go on thinking of obese people as unenlightened, unmotivated sloths who simply can’t control their eating and are too lazy to get on a treadmill, we’ll be perpetuating one of the nastiest myths in health, one that truly blames the victim and ignores the real causes of their suffering.

Turnips

Whenever I think of turnips, I can’t help recalling that line in Tennessee Williams’s famous play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, where Big Daddy calls the little kids “no-neck monsters”! That’s because turnips have no necks and the fact that they grow just about anywhere— in the poorest soil– has made them kind of like the “catfish” of vegetables, endearing them to the poor and giving them pretty low status among snobbier folk who haven’t tasted them.

But they’re anything but a poor country cousin when it comes to nutrition.

Turnips are among the most commonly grown and widely adapted root crops. You might be surprised to learn that they’ve got more in common with broccoli than with potatoes. That’s because turnips are actually members of the same general family as Brussels sprouts, collard greens, cabbage and kale—the Brassica family, which I often refer to “vegetable royalty”. The brassica family has many genres and species, but in general are widely acclaimed for their cancer-fighting indoles and isothiocyanates and other health-giving phytochemicals. And, along with rutabagas, turnips are particularly high in anti-carcinogenic glucosinolates.

Turnip Greens Promote Bone Health

Turnips are another of those “high-volume” foods that fill you up without costing you a lot of calories. A cup of cooked turnips (without the greens) has all of about 35 calories, with 3 g of fiber, more than 250 mg of potassium, 18 mg of vitamin C, and 51 mg of calcium. Add the nutritious bone-building greens to the mix and your calcium nearly triples to 148 mg, plus you get a whopping 14,000 IUs of vitamin A, more than 8,000 IUs of beta-carotene, and an incredible 676 mcg of bone-friendly vitamin K. In the bargain, you also get more than 15,000 mcg of lutein and zeaxanthin, two members of the carotenoid family that have been shown (in a study known as the AREDS-2 Study) to help protect the eyes from vision problems like macular degeneration.

Turnip greens are sometimes available by themselves, usually next to other greens like kale and collards, but sometimes at a farmers’ market you’ll be able to find the turnips with the tops attached. Buy them!

Turnips are very high in nitrates, which, contrary to a lot of misinformation, are actually very good for you. They convert to nitrites, which, in the absence of high heat, convert to nitric oxide, one of the most potent and health-giving molecules on the planet. Dietary nitrate reduces blood pressure, inhibits platelet aggregation, improves endothelial function and enhances exercise performance, one reason why those beet root juice supplements you see at every Whole Foods are popular with athletes.

I love using turnips as a faux mashed potato. Just boil or bake, mash, add a little grass-fed milk or cream, some grass-fed butter and Himalayan sea salt and go to town. And remember, one cup of cooked turnips provides a nice 4 grams of fiber. Try getting that from your Corn Flakes. (To save the skeptics among you from having to look it up, Corn Flakes have exactly .9 grams of fiber per cup. That’s point nine, as in less than one gram.)

TURNIPS

Whenever I think of turnips, I can’t help recalling that line in Tennessee Williams’s famous play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, where Big Daddy calls the little kids “no-neck monsters”! That’s because turnips have no necks and the fact that they grow just about anywhere— in the poorest soil– has made them kind of like the “catfish” of vegetables, endearing them to the poor and giving them pretty low status among snobbier folk who haven’t tasted them.

But they’re anything but a poor country cousin when it comes to nutrition.

Turnips are among the most commonly grown and widely adapted root crops. You might be surprised to learn that they’ve got more in common with broccoli than with potatoes. That’s because turnips are actually members of the same general family as Brussels sprouts, collard greens, cabbage and kale—the Brassica family, which I often refer to “vegetable royalty”. The brassica family has many genres and species, but in general are widely acclaimed for their cancer-fighting indoles and isothiocyanates and other health-giving phytochemicals. And, along with rutabagas, turnips are particularly high in anti-carcinogenic glucosinolates.

Turnip Greens Promote Bone Health

Turnips are another of those “high-volume” foods that fill you up without costing you a lot of calories. A cup of cooked turnips (without the greens) has all of about 35 calories, with 3 g of fiber, more than 250 mg of potassium, 18 mg of vitamin C, and 51 mg of calcium. Add the nutritious bone-building greens to the mix and your calcium nearly triples to 148 mg, plus you get a whopping 14,000 IUs of vitamin A, more than 8,000 IUs of beta-carotene, and an incredible 676 mcg of bone-friendly vitamin K. In the bargain, you also get more than 15,000 mcg of lutein and zeaxanthin, two members of the carotenoid family that have been shown (in a study known as the AREDS-2 Study) to help protect the eyes from vision problems like macular degeneration.

Turnip greens are sometimes available by themselves, usually next to other greens like kale and collards, but sometimes at a farmers’ market you’ll be able to find the turnips with the tops attached. Buy them!

Turnips are very high in nitrates, which, contrary to a lot of misinformation, are actually very good for you. They convert to nitrites, which, in the absence of high heat, convert to nitric oxide, one of the most potent and health-giving molecules on the planet. Dietary nitrate reduces blood pressure, inhibits platelet aggregation, improves endothelial function and enhances exercise performance, one reason why those beet root juice supplements you see at every Whole Foods are popular with athletes.

I love using turnips as a faux mashed potato. Just boil or bake, mash, add a little grass-fed milk or cream, some grass-fed butter and Himalayan sea salt and go to town. And remember, one cup of cooked turnips provides a nice 4 grams of fiber. Try getting that from your Corn Flakes. (To save the skeptics among you from having to look it up, Corn Flakes have exactly .9 grams of fiber per cup. That’s point nine, as in less than one gram.)

Alternative Facts Aren’t Limited to Politics

A few days ago, on national television, political pollster and presidential counsel Kellyanne Conway uttered a phrase destined to become an instant classic: alternative facts.

Though Ms. Conway probably wishes she hadn’t chosen those exact words, the truth is that she did us a favor by calling attention to the fact that we do live and operate in a world of “alternative facts”. That’s nowhere more true than in the field of health and nutrition. And, thanks to Ms. Conway, there’s never been a better time to talk about it than right now.

Alternative facts are the real reason everyone is confused about what’s true and not true in nutrition.

Examples of this kind of confusion and disagreement in nutrition are so numerous and so well known to readers that I don’t want to waste time reviewing them, but here’s a short refresher. We disagree on fat, on calories, on diets, on vegetarianism, on butter, on coffee, on statin drugs, on cholesterol, on the best way to lose weight, on low-carb diets, on the dangers of meat– you name it and there’s a serious scientific dispute about it, and probably some really nasty feelings to boot.

It’s about time that we all understood why,

The best way to illustrate what I’m about to say is with a completely non-partisan example of an industry that everyone who has ever traveled has feelings about—the airlines.

If you’re a traveler, it’s important to you to know the “facts” about the airlines you fly, right? How often are they late? How often do they crash? Do they lose your baggage? How’s their customer service? And which one has the best prices?

You know, facts.

Well, it turns out there is data on every single one of those metrics, just like there is data on food, medicine, supplements, statin drugs, the Suzuki violin method, interval training, and virtually anything else you can think of where things can be measured. Which of these facts you choose to talk about depends completely on what your agenda is.

Back to the airlines.

If you’re Virgin Airlines, your marketing department is going to make hay out of the fact that Virgin is ranked the best airline to avoid mishandled baggage, and right behind Delta if you want to avoid involuntary bumping. You will probably not mention the fact that Virgin is one of the worst when it comes to “extreme delays”.

If you’re Delta, on the other hand, you will definitely mention that you are the airline with the least number of cancelled flights and the least amount of involuntary bumping. You will leave out the fact that you’re one of the absolute worst for 2-hour tarmac delays. (You won’t say it’s not true—you just won’t mention it.)

If you’re selling alcohol, you’ll probably talk about how moderate drinking lowers the risk for heart disease, and leave out the fact that drinking alcohol increases the risk of breast cancer. If you manufacture statin drugs, you’ll make a very big deal about how statin drug users have less heart attacks while burying the fact that they have more cancer and diabetes.

If you’re a real estate agent selling a house, you’re going to talk up the 3,000 square feet of space and the gorgeous new kitchen, while minimizing the fact that it’s in a high-crime area and doesn’t have a view.

And if you’re the sugar industry, you’ll spend a lot of marketing dollars to call attention to how little Americans exercise, all to take focus away from the role of sugar in metabolic misery.

Just pick the facts you like and ignore the inconvenient ones.

The people who are selling you Delta Airlines, alcohol, sugar, tobacco, statin drugs or the beautiful house in the shitty neighborhood are not lying, at least not directly. They’re just using a tried-and-true marketing technique called cherry picking the evidence. Big Pharma has been doing it for… well, forever.



Welcome to the world of alternative facts.

We’ve come to expect the use of alternative facts in politics. We need to start realizing that they’re also used to make arguments in nutrition and medicine. And whether it’s politics or nutrition, those choosing which facts to present (and which to ignore) almost always have an agenda to advance.

See, everyone likes to say “facts are facts” but the truth is that facts are neutral, impartial, bloodless numbers—and there are zillions of them. They don’t really acquire meaning until someone chooses the “important” ones, and then strings them together to craft an argument.

So the next time someone argues that vegetarians are healthier than meat eaters, or statin drugs save lives, or high-fat diets make you sick and obese, or that raw food is the healthiest way to eat, or that obesity is only about calories and exercise, don’t call them liars. The truth is, there are enough “facts” hanging around to make a case for just about anything.

Instead, ask yourself what facts are being left out.

Very often, the facts they don’t tell you are the most important ones of all.

The 15 Foods (and 5 Beverages) I Can’t Do Without

People often ask me to list my personal favorite healthy foods. Since the 10th anniversary, updated and expanded edition of The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth is coming out this June, I figured this would be a great time to answer that question in print.

Hence this list.

These are the foods that I have in my house all the time and I eat on a regular basis. I know I’ve probably left a few out, but this is my own personal version of culinary “heavy rotation”. If I stocked my house with nothing but these foods, I could live very well. I might be bored with my choices after a while, but I definitely wouldn’t be malnourished!

1. Eggs (free-range)

Really, one of nature’s most perfect foods, and, during the idiotic low-fat craze, one of the most unfairly demonized. If you’re still eating egg-white omelets—for any reason other than that you actually like the way they taste—you’re making a mistake. The yolk is a great source of choline (brain food), plus the twin superstars of eye nutrition, lutein and zeaxanthin.

2. Wild Salmon (all of mine comes from Vital Choice)

In The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth there’s a two-page essay on the difference between farmed salmon and wild salmon and why you should choose the later. Trust me, wild is where it’s at. I’m no cook, but I probably make wild Alaskan sockeye salmon at least twice a week—it’s one of the easiest dishes to make perfectly.

There are two huge differences between grass-fed beef and factory-farmed meat. One is health. Grass-fed has anti-cancer CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), more anti-inflammatory omega-3, less inflammatory omega-6, no antibiotics, steroids or hormones, etc.). The second is how the animals are treated. If health matters to you, grass-fed is a slam dunk. And if fair and human treatment matters to you, then forget about factory farmed meat.

4. Kale OR spinach

Almost any member of the brassica family could go in this slot—broccoli, kale, spinach, Brussels sprouts, etc.—but we’d be here all day and the list would be very long. The two I eat regularly are spinach and kale. Either I make spinach at home (which I do several days a week), or I buy the prepared kale salad at the market (with pine nuts and cranberries). I eat one or the other almost every single day.

5. Berries (especially blueberries)

All berries are loaded with compounds that are anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, and in many cases anti-cancer. They’re also high in fiber and relatively low in sugar. I just happen to like blueberries the best, which also have some nice animal research showing that they support healthy memory.

6. Nuts

Minerals, fiber, and fat with a tiny sliver of protein– what’s not to like about nuts? Every epidemiological study I’ve ever seen shows that people who eat nuts regularly have improved numbers in important health metrics, including BMI.

7. Cherries

Recent published research has confirmed the value of this old traditional food remedy for gout. Loaded with antioxidants, cherries help lower the risk for gout attacks largely due to their concentration of powerful anthocyanins which are strongly anti-inflammatory.

8. Dark Chocolate

Dark chocolate is great for you for many reasons, not the least of which is its association with lower blood pressure and a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. The really high-quality bars, with 60% or higher cacao, don’t create cravings for more. It’s really easy to put the bar away after eating just a square or two, which is just about equal to the amount found in research to give you a nice health benefit.

9. Oatmeal

I know my grain-hating friends don’t hold oatmeal in very high esteem, but I like it. It has fiber and fat and a little protein and if you mix it with the right stuff, it’s pretty good tasting. Sure, it has carbs, but when you add butter, nuts, blueberries and a dollop of Dave Aspery’s Brain Octane Fuel, the overall glycemic load is pretty low. (I even sometimes add a spoonful of probiotic-rich locally produced raw unprocessed honey. Don’t hate.)

10. Sweet potatoes

Sweet potatoes are pretty much my favorite starch. And since I frequently put them in the frig and eat them cold the next day, I was happy to learn recently that cooled off potatoes are a great source of resistant starch , a kind of superfood for good bugs in your gut.

11. Lemons

Seems a strange food to add to a favorites list, but the truth is I use lemons for a lot of things. I always put a slice or two into the juicer when I’m making a quart of fresh made juice (much more than that overwhelms the taste of the juice). And I throw in the rind because it contains a powerful antioxidant called limone. I also use lemons in tea and sometimes infuse a quart of water with lemon and ginger, keep it in the frig and drink it all day.

12. Ginger

Next to turmeric, ginger is like the greatest spice ever! It’s staple in all my fresh vegetable juices, and since I make them so frequently, there’s always a supply of fresh ginger in my kitchen.

13. Yogurt. (and Kefir, though I eat yogurt more often)

Needless to say I wouldn’t touch no-fat or low-fat yogurt, a totally ridiculous idea if there ever was one. But real, fermented yogurt—full-fat of course—is a tremendous food (if you don’t have a sensitivity to dairy). And a great way to get probiotics into your diet, though I usually sprinkle additional probiotics on as well. My favorite way to eat: with frozen cherries, frozen blueberries, a sprinkle of nuts, coconut flakes, and a splash of pomegranate juice. Seriously. I call it “Dr. Jonny’s Berries and Cherries” and I can’t think of a “dessert” that’s better for you.

14. Avocados

I’m such a fan of avocados that Dr. Masley and I chose to put one on the cover of our book, Smart Fat: Eat More Fat, Lose More Weight, Get Healthy Now. Besides having a lot of fiber and monounsaturated fat, avocados are the secret to making an extra-creamy shake or smoothie.

15. Apples

Just file this with the ever-growing list of “things grandma was right about after all”. If ever there was ever a single food that could actually keep the doctor away, it would be apples. It’s also all-purpose. I sauté apple slices in butter with scrambled eggs, cheese and spinach; I slice them and eat them with peanut or almond butter; and I use them in juicing. Apples are the bomb.

Then there are my five favorite drinks:

1. Green tea (also black and other varieties)

Green tea is an anti-aging metabolism tonic in a glass. I make it with leaf tea. I also sometimes make matcha, complete with the little bowl and the whisk.

2. Pomegranate juice

Pomegranate juice is a superfood. Period. Israel researchers also called it “a natural Viagra” due to its effect on their lab rats. Questions, anyone?

3. Fresh made vegetable juice

Given that I’ve written many times that eating the whole fruit/vegetable is so much better than drinking its juice, I sometimes take heat for my love for the Hurom juicer and my newly acquired juicing habit.

But here’s the thing. You may not get all the fiber when you make fresh juice, but you get a concentrated source of vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, antioxidants, anti-inflammatories, polyphenols, flavonoids, and other healthy plant compounds plus all the good stuff in the ginger I add to it. It’s about as healthy a beverage as I can imagine sipping.

4. Raw milk (full-fat, unpasteurized, non-homogenized)

I always keep a few quarts in the freezer, and defrost them in the frig as I need them, which is constantly. Raw milk—really cold, just barely defrosted– is something about which I can honestly say, “They will have to pry it from my cold, dead hands”. I just love this stuff.

5. Coffee

I drink coffee a lot—Bulletproof mostly, but also regular garden-variety organic. I’ve had many “coffee arguments” with my health conscious friends about this, but I believe that if you don’t have a genetic sensitivity to caffeine, it’s a perfectly good “food” which actually contains a number of the same healthy antioxidants found in cocoa.

And a zillion studies show coffee drinkers have lower risk for all kinds of things from pancreatic cancer, to diabetes, to… well, death! (I haven’t put links to all the research I mentioned in this article but I’ll put a link into this one, because it’s likely to raise eyebrows.

As you may have noticed, I didn’t include spices or oils in this list. Things I use to make foods taste better, or to garnish, or to cook with, would have taken us beyond a mere list and into book territory—(did I mention the 10th anniversary edition of The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth is coming out in June? I know I did. Just wanted to see if you were paying attention.).

So that’s why you don’t see grass-fed butter (I like Kerrygold), extra-virgin olive oil, Malaysian palm oil, ghee, avocado oil, coconut oil, flaxseeds, chia seeds, coconut flakes, turmeric, and all the other spices, oils and specialty items that make food delicious and gorgeous.

I’d love to know what your favorite foods are. Share your list with me and everyone else in our community on Facebook! It’s always fun to see what other people really eat when no one’s looking.

And if we’re really coming clean about what we eat when no one’s looking. I should probably add ice cream to the above list.

PS, I mentioned the ice-cream thing to a tennis friend of mine who lives on pizza, donuts, fast food and Ben and Jerry’s. “See?” he said, triumphantly, “even you eat ice cream!”

“Tru dat”, I said. “But look at all the other things I eat on the very same day.”

I rest my case.

For Caretakers Everywhere

My dogs and I have a very nice arrangement.

Here’s what they get: A warm bed, a roof over their head, dog food magically appearing at predicable intervals, belly rubs.

Here’s what I get in return: I get to take care of them.

You might be thinking, oh, he’s being sarcastic—the dogs get an easy life, he “gets” to take care of them, ha ha, great bargain you made there, Jonny!

But you would be missing something.

This arrangement is indeed uneven. But in my favor, not the dogs.

Taking care of the dogs—taking care of anything, actually—is one of life’s great gifts and can profoundly influence metrics of health and well-being. That’s worth a whole lot more than the cost of kibble.

Ellen Langner—the first female professor to gain tenure in the psych department at Harvard- performed a brilliant and classic experiment that illustrated what I’m talking about. Here’s the short version.

She gave half the residents of a nursing home a plant to take care of. And not some hothouse orchid that requires a degree in botany just to water it, but a snake plant. The kind your grandmother had. That will grow in a garage in the dark with no food and water for six months. The straight ugly kind that you basically can’t kill.

Know what happened?

The residents who were assigned to take care of a plant had better metrics on just about everything. Less doctor visits. Better blood pressure. Quicker recovery from illness. Practically every measure they looked at improved significantly.

From taking care of a snake plant.

The comedian Marc Maron has talked on his podcast for years about his feral cat Boomer, who, as far as I can tell, won’t let anyone near him (including Maron, most of the time). But Boomer wandered into Marc’s life somehow and now he feels responsible for him and acts accordingly. Somehow he’s intuited that he’s got the better part of the bargain. The feeling of being responsible for the welfare of something outside yourself can be a very healing, growing experience, particularly for those of us who might have a tendency towards self-involvement.

All this sheds new meaning on the casual valediction, “Take care”. Maybe the speaker is actually wishing that you spend some time every day in an activity which is health promoting, spiritually

Now let me deal preemptively with a criticism of this whole “taking care of something is a gift” thing. There are people who are working two– or even three– jobs to take care of a family, which may include kids, perhaps an elderly person with dementia, a partner with needs of her/his own…. you get the picture. And they’re doing it on a shoestring income with the attendant elevation in stress, the inevitable sleep deprivation, and the oppressive nature of a life you feel trapped in.

Surely those folks don’t think it’s such a great deal to be 24-hour caretakers. And they’re right. Because people in those very difficult circumstances have the added stress of having exactly zero minutes a day for themselves.

And that’s the difference.

Adding the responsibility of caretaking to an otherwise reasonably balanced life can be the gift I was telling you about, for reasons that will become clear in a moment. But when responsibility is all you have—with no time to nurture and nourish your own interests, dreams and relationships— that responsibility doesn’t feel like a spiritual gift, it feels like you’re drowning in quicksand.

Interestingly, neither being 100% devoted nor being 100% independent, works. If you’re 100 percent focused on yourself, you’re a narcissist. If you’re 100% focused on others, you’re depleted.

When “taking care” is a PART of who you are, it makes the other parts grow.

When it’s ALL of what you are, you’re in danger of losing something very valuable indeed.

The 7 Biggest Self-Help Myths.

Before we start, let’s getting something straight.

I love self-help as much as you do. I wouldn’t have a career if I didn’t believe in self-help. I am the original Mr. “you are the master of your own fate”. And I’m a teacher by nature and profession (all writers are), so I obviously believe we can improve our lives with a combination of information, persistence and motivation.

That said, there are an awful lot of platitudes in the self-help world that everyone repeats like they’re revealed gospel, but which, really people, they’re not.

Not even close.

Here’s my list of the top 7 contenders. Remember, like “carbs are bad” or “trans fat is evil”, generalities often contain a germ of truth. But truth is in the details. It’s time to bust a few myths when it comes to what I call “poster platitudes”—sayings that look good on a motivational poster in the office, but need a little clarification in order to be useful.

1. The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.

The idea behind this is that if you’re conscientious in one area you will be conscientious in another. If you’re a “shortcut taker” in your work you may be a “shortcut taker” in your diet. Or in your relationship.

Boy, do I wish this one were true. My teachers (notably Werner Erhard and T. Harv Eker) have said it often, and honestly, for a while I said it often. Problem is I’ve known plenty of people who were fastidious and organized in several areas of their life and completely out of control in others (like their diet). Some people are risk takers in business and extremely cautious in relationships. I like the idea of practicing a trait—like conscientiousness or integrity—and hoping it will crossover to every area of your life. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t always work that way.

2. Everything happens for a reason.

No. It doesn’t. If by “reason” you mean everything is preordained and designed, and you were “meant” to be in this relationship or in this city or in this job, then, sorry, I don’t buy it. What I do buy is that you can take any situation and find something ultimately valuable in it, but that’s you making up the reason after the event has happened.

For example, when I got divorced I thought it was the end of the world. Now, 15 years later, I see that it wasn’t. But that’s because getting divorced turned out well for me. That doesn’t mean there was some pre-ordained “reason” my ex-wife and myself parted ways. It just means I was lucky enough to turn what was then a big fat sour lemon into a pretty amazing sugarless lemon chiffon cake.

3. You have to visualize something to make it happen.

This is another platitude that contains a grain of truth. There’s a lot to seeing a result in your mind’s eye; it causes you to be more aware of daily decisions that could actually create that result. (I visualize “safety” every time I get behind the wheel of my car, but not because I think that visualization has any magical power—I just want to increase my consciousness of safety so I make safer driving decisions.)

Where the platitude goes south is when we think we have to visualize something in order for it to actually happen. People sometimes, unexpectedly, and with absolutely no thought, stumble into incredible good luck, sometimes deserved and sometimes not-so-deserved. Drew Carey was working as a parking attendant in Vegas and the biggest thing he visualized for himself was a studio apartment and his own (used) vehicle. Life has a way of surprising us.

4. Don’t accept limitations.

I certainly understand the sentiment behind this one. Every other week there’s an inspiring movie about someone who surmounted unbelievable odds because he wouldn’t accept other people’s definitions of him. I’m all for that.

But the fact is, we do have limits. You can’t spend 90 hours a week trying to make partner in a law firm and still have 20 hours a week to work on your music career while trying to keep a family together. “Having it all” was a big aspirational marketing myth, the main result of which was to make women who weren’t Superman feel somehow deficient. There’s lots of peace and serenity in accepting certain limits. There’s even more in making choices and being happy with them.

5. Go for your dreams.

No one I know—including myself—likes the idea of stomping on someone’s dreams. The “go for your dreams” stuff is almost built into our DNA. But the fact is, sometimes your dreams shouldn’t be pursued—or should be pursued in a different way.

If you’re 5’2”, going for your dreams of playing with the Lakers is probably not going to work out. But maybe that dream can morph into something that is achievable, and will still get you a lot of what you wanted in the first place. I once knew a dancer who came to New York with the dream of being a member of the Alvin Ailey dance company. Wasn’t going to happen. But once she accepted that, she went on to became one of the best-known Pilates teachers in the world. Sometimes we have to be bigger than our dreams, which aren’t always the best guide to what we should do.

6. You can be anything you want to be.

You can’t. I can’t be a professional tennis player, you probably can’t be the next draft pick for the Pittsburg Steelers, my beloved Michelle can’t be First Lady, and the homeless guy on my corner can’t be the Governor of Alabama. And few of us can win a Rhodes Scholarship or wrestle in the Olympics, no matter how hard we try and how motivated we are.

When I was a professional musician back in the 80’s and 90’s in New York, I knew a very famous orchestrator. In fact, by many accounts, he was the greatest orchestrator in the world. But he was miserable. Why? Because he wanted to be a great composer, and he wasn’t. Nor could he be. He just wasn’t very good at it.

Remember the serenity prayer? I’ll paraphrase it : Let me change what I can and accept what I can’t. Accepting that you can’t be anything you want to be certainly doesn’t mean you have to be nothing.

7. You have to look a certain way to be sexy and attractive.

If I have one mission to achieve on this planet it’s to bust this destructive ugly myth into so many pieces that they explode into another galaxy. So listen up.

Sexiness comes from within. There are a zillion ways to be beautiful and attractive. Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. The nose you think is too big might drive somebody else crazy with desire. The weight you think you have to lose to be lovable might be the heaviness of the thoughts in your head rather than the love handles on your hips. Remember that the sexiest place in your body is between your ears. The more you chase after some cookie-cutter template for “beauty” the less attractive you become. The more you embrace, own, and love who you are, the hotter you are.

As Allen Stone says…

I ain’t no angel, but I ain’t so bad

And the best part of learning is just loving where you’re at.

Does it matter where your food comes from?

Despite the best efforts of the food industry to make us think our food just magically somehow appears in the supermarket aisle, our food actually comes from somewhere.

And where it comes from—where and how it grows in the case of plants, what it eats and how it was raised in the case of animals—has a lot to do with its quality.

So let’s start with a basic premise: The quality of the food we eat comes from the quality of the food our food eats.

This even applies when we’re talking about fruits and vegetables. Early studies showed that carrots grown in one part of the country didn’t have the same nutrient composition as carrots grown in another part of the country. But the practice of studying this kind of thing was abandoned because it pissed farmers off. Grapefruit growers in one part of the country didn’t want data out there showing that grapefruits grown in another part of the country was “better” because it had more vitamin C. Agribusiness is dedicated to selling us the concept that “carrots are carrots and beef is beef.”

Of course, that’s demonstrably false. Just for example: on a gram for gram basis, a California (Haas) avocado has 77% more monounsaturated fat, 44% more potassium and 21% more fiber than its Florida brethren. And the Haas variety has about 100 calories more.

But Big Food doesn’t want you to think about this too much. The dairy industry fought bitterly to prevent labels that said “no bovine growth hormone”. They didn’t want you believing that milk with no hormones was any “better” than milk with hormones, and they spent a ton of money to make sure you didn’t.

(That’s also why agribusiness—particularly Monsanto—has spent countless millions lobbying to defeat the passage of a GMO transparency bill in virtually every state in which it’s been on the ballot.)

Agribusiness interests aside, where a food comes from makes a huge difference in its nutritional composition, and how it was produced (GMO vs non-GMO) makes a big difference in its chemical composition.

It can even make a difference in its effect on your blood sugar. The glycemic index/glycemic load charts show significant differences between, say, the russet potatoes from Canada and those from the U.S., or between corn from the U.S. and corn from New Zealand.

If a fruit or vegetable is growing in soil depleted of minerals, that fruit or vegetable is going to be less nutritious than one that’s grown in soil that’s rich in nutrients. (In fact, recent studies of fruits, vegetables, and wheat have indeed revealed a 5-15% decline in some key vitamins, minerals, and protein over the last half-century.)

If an apple is sprayed with a ton of chemicals or pesticides and then artificially treated to make it bigger, rounder, redder, more uniform, polished and more appealing to the eye, it stands to reason that a chemical analysis of that apple is going to look a lot different than an analysis of an apple growing wild on a farm somewhere.

But you’ll always be able to get some establishment-apologist reporter like the NY Times’ Jane Brody, to write an article about how organic apples are no more nutritious than non-organic apples by simply comparing their vitamin C content (and ignoring the rest of the differences).

And speaking of organic…

The whole idea of the organic food movement—the “spirit” of the movement, if you will—was a desire to return to basics. It was fueled by a fervent wish to consume the healthy products of the small, sustainable farms where fruits and vegetables and cows and pigs and chickens and horses lived in an interdependent ecosystem of pastoral tranquility, and where food—whether animal or vegetable—was grown (or raised) the “old-fashioned way.

The organic movement Valued a time and place where animals were not fed growth hormones and steroids and antibiotics, and where crops were left to fend off the elements with their own protective antioxidants and anthocyanins, rather than chemical pesticides and carcinogens, and where “Roundup Ready” genetically modified plants (GMOs) were unknown.

People who wanted organic food were voting both for their health and against a marketplace that was increasingly providing them with “food products” bearing less and less resemblance to anything that could once be considered real or whole food—stuff that grew out of the ground, fell from a tree, or was harvested from healthy animals grazing on pasture or wild fish from uncontaminated waters.

Buying organic represented a return to natural—and presumably healthier—foods.

At least, that was the hope.

But if you want that kind of real food its going to take more than just looking for the label organic” on your supermarket label, especially since—as we speak—there are lobbyists working hard on behalf of agribusiness to soften and dumb-down the definition of “organic”.

But there’s a lot you can do! Join a food collective. (You can even get raw, unpasteurized full-fat milk through many of them.) Go to a farmer’s market. Or, If you can, go to a local farm and buy your food there. See where it comes from. Say hello to the people who grow and raise it.

If you’re lucky enough to be able to do that, you’d be giving yourself (and your family) a real gift.

True or False: I can get all the vitamins I need from food

Get a free autographed book and start the new year right!

This time of year I seem to be getting a lot of questions from friends about how to start a good, science-based supplement program. Most of the people who ask me are actually trying to overhaul and upgrade their health in general, so vitamins are just a part of the overall lifestyle changes they’re making, changes which include slowing down a little, managing stress, eating anti-inflammatory foods, and getting more exercise. And spending more time with their loved ones.

All great things to do, all highly recommended, and all worth a book’s worth of commentary. But for now, let’s focus on the question of supplements.

I’ve said a billion times that I don’t believe in one-size-fits-all solutions for anything—and that includes clothing, romance, diet, hairstyles, exercise routines and supplement programs. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some basics from which you could start, basics that would be beneficial for almost anyone.

I did a lot of thinking about this last year when Dr. Steven Masley and I designed two basic supplement packs. We wanted them to have the greatest possible applicability, beneficial to nearly everybody. And while people with special conditions—i.e. liver problems, depression, arthritis—can always benefit from an individualized program heavy in nutrients specific to their situation, the ingredients we used in our two supplement packs were nutrients we felt everyone could use more of.

What are those nutrients? Well, let’s start with a “high quality multivitamin” which basically everyone recommends but few people define. Is a “high quality multi” something you get at CVS? Costco? Walgreens?

It could be… but it’s probably not.

Each one of our Vitality Packs contains 2 high-quality multiples, and I do mean high-quality. Made for us by Thorne Research, one dose contains all the basic vitamins (C, all the B’s, D and E) in reasonable doses and in the correct forms (mixed tocopherols for vitamin E, for example, as opposed to d-alpha tocopherol). It also contains important minerals in chelated form, such as zinc, selenium, and chromium.

Also in the Vitality Pack is one 500mg capsule of EGCG (green tea extract) which has been found to protect the brain as well as help with fat burning. Rounding out the five-pill pack is a chelated magnesium supplement (almost no one gets enough), and a capsule containing a full 2000 IUs of vitamin D (ditto). If I could get my nieces and nephews (mostly in their 20’s) to take just this packet every day, I’d breathe a lot easier.

Then there’s the Energy Pack Plus, which we designed as a terrific add-on to the basic Vitality Pack. The Energy Pack Plus contains resveratrol (in its most potent form, trans resveratrol), curcumin, and Coenzyme Q10. Those are three nutrients that are on my personal top 10 list, and that I recommend to almost anyone willing to take a couple of extra pills. The Energy Pack Plus also contains 200 mg of quercetin, a powerful anti-inflammatory found in apples and onions, and hard to find as a stand-alone supplement.

In addition to our two supplement packs, we also created a protein powder and a fiber supplement. Two things to know about the protein powder: One, it’s from grass-fed cows (so no antibiotics, steroids or hormones). Two, it happens to taste delicious. Twenty-two grams of high quality protein, only 4 grams of carbs, 120 calories, and sweetened with stevia. What’s not to like? And you get 35 servings per tub.

We made a fiber supplement because—honestly—I don’t think anyone is getting enough fiber. Our fiber supplement—Ultimate Fiber—contains 7 grams of fiber per scoop and mixes with anything (including the protein powder). Six of those seven grams of fiber are soluble fiber, which is one of the best foods for the microbiome, the collection of non-human microbes that live in our gut and that we now know are connected to everything from weight gain to depression to immune function.

It’s critically important to make sure the healthy microbes in our gut are being fed and nurtured; feeding them plenty of fiber is one of the best ways to do just that.

I’d love to encourage you to start the new year with an awesome Smart Fat package, and to make it even more attractive, we’re offering all the products, together in one package, for the unprecedented, limited time price of only $195 – The package includes one of each of the Smart Fat products (retail value of over $425). ORDER HERE- NOW.

And wait… there’s more!

“Smart Fat: Eat More Fat, Lose More Weight, Get Healthy Now” (by Dr. Masley and myself) has just been released in paperback, and if you haven’t read it yet, this is the perfect time to do so. It will answer all your questions about fat, bust the myths about “good fat” and “bad fat”, and show you how to use fat to turbo-charge your health.

I’m going to include a FREE copy of the new edition of “Smart Fat” for anyone purchasing the heavily discounted Smart Fat Super Package. And for the first 100 people who respond, I’ll personally autograph it for you. (If you want me to autograph it to someone else, just drop an email to brooke@jonnybowden.com right after you make your purchase, and include your order number.)

Vitamins, supplements, protein powders, fiber and the like—even high-end ones like these– may not by themselves give you a health makeover for 2017.

But they’re a hell of a foundation from which to get started.

Here is a recipe I love for the Ultimate Smart Fat Shake.

Ultimate Smart Fat Shake

This is our basic, protein-packed morning shake with added smart fat and fiber. This will keep you going all morning, and can also be used as a mini-meal or even a dessert. If you’re primarily concerned with weight loss, I’ve had clients do two of these plus one good, low-carb/high fat/moderate protein meal a day with terrific results.

Prep time: 2 minutes

Serves 1 (2.5 cups)

1 scoop of Grass-fed Whey Protein (22 grams of protein)

8-12 ounces of original or unsweetened almond milk OR raw milk from grass-fed cows (available in some states)

1 cup frozen berries (I prefer organic blueberries)

1 handful of frozen spinach leaves (mixes better and doesn’t get stuck in your teeth)

1 serving of the fat of your choice: tablespoon of almond butter, nut oil, a couple of slices of avocado (makes it really creamy), Dave Aspery’s Brain Octane oil, or MCT oil. (Hint: Barlean’s makes an MCT oil in coconut swirl that’s out of this world and goes great in this recipe!)

1 scoop of Ultimate Fiber

Note: no problem if you want to use two servings of fat.

And be creative! Peanut butter works as well as almond butter, chia and flax seeds are a great addition, you can change up the berries with blueberries, strawberries, blackberries or raspberries, and you can even add a tablespoon of uncooked oats. It’s all good!