Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food

by Catherine Shanahan

Incidentally, if the second sibling were a boy, the burst of estrogen receptivity might still create a feminizing effect, sharpening the center of the chin, arching the eyebrows, rounding the forehead, and plumping the lips.

I got the lips. And I'm good with that.

“the low-fat campaign has been based on little scientific evidence and may have caused unintended health consequences.”

Restaurants can reuse frying oil for a week or longer.

I don’t worry about a high total cholesterol number if the ratio of LDL to HDL is within an acceptable range. On the other hand, if triglycerides are above 150 and/or the HDL level is below 40, it’s very likely that your lipoprotein cycle is disrupted.

The online risk calculators cardiologists use (and you can use, too) to determine your chances of heart attack don’t even ask for your LDL level.293 So why do we talk about LDL at all? You probably already know the answer. There’s no drug to raise HDL but there are drugs to lower LDL:

His research suggests that the total amount of LDL in a person’s bloodstream is practically irrelevant.

What matters more than these numbers is the size of your LDL particles, because that’s the best proxy we have to assess how well the LDL particles function. Bigger LDL particles are healthier LDL particles. Why?

The authors of the study concluded that simply cutting down the intake of linoleic acid could immediately reduce the number of people suffering from this painful, disfiguring disorder by 30 percent.310

“Even oil stored in the dark at 4 degrees Centigrade may oxidize unacceptably within a month of storage.” The New Zealand group’s conclusion: “Consuming purchased supplements entails risk of exposure to unacceptably oxidized oil.”312

Without a constant supply of fresh antioxidants, sparks flying out of the mitochondrial chamber may ignite free radical reactions in the nerve cell membrane, damaging large sections of the cell and interfering with basic metabolic functions. When enough cells are damaged and malfunctioning all at once, we develop clinical symptoms.

What is true is that a vegetable-oil-free/high-antioxidant diet, along with plenty of restorative sleep and exercise, is the best strategy to slow the oxidation in your brain so you can remain sharp and independent, ideally, until the day you die.

the reason exercise treats obesity is not because it “burns” calories. “That’s ridiculous,” he says. “Twenty minutes of jogging is one chocolate chip cookie. I mean, you can’t do it. One Big Mac requires three hours of vigorous exercise to burn off. That’s not the reason exercise is important.”

I’ve found that a good number of my patients eat far more carbohydrates than they realize and don’t achieve the average minimum daily intake of protein, while those who follow a very low-carb diet often eat too much protein.

One of my favorite resources for low-carb easy slow-cooker recipes is Dana Carpender.

And the best long-term strategy to avoid developing all kinds of auto-immune disorders is to avoid heavily processed foods, particularly those high in protein (such as dairy, eggs, and soy), because processing denatures proteins in ways that can make your immune system more likely to launch an attack. Add

Six sessions of sprint interval training increases muscle oxidative potential and cycle endurance capacity in humans, Burgomaster KA, J Appl Physiol, 98: 1985-1990, 2005.