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Quick! Eat Fat!

borofergie said:
It really is very difficult to imagine how animal fat could be bad for you, since for 2.5 million our ancestors were mainly top level carnivore Hunter Gatherers. Our evolutionary diet is based around eating the whole animal, including all the really fatty bits none of us eat today.

There is no scientific evidence that links saturated fat directly to heart disease. It was only ever based on the observation that:
(1) Saturated fat causes a rise in cholesterol
(2) High cholesterol is associated with cardiovascular disease.

The trouble is that (1) is only true over the very short term (in people that don't have familial hypercholesterolemia), and that (2) has largely been debunked now that we know more about different types of blood lipids and their influence on CV disease.


http://feinmantheother.com/articles...treatment-of-diabetes-and-metabolic-syndrome/
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And now the theory is that inflammation is the main cause for cardiovascular disease, brought on by to much high blood sugar, while high cholesterol (total cholesterol) have almost nothing to do with it. Interestingly in elderly a slightly higher cholesterol is actually beneficial.
 
modesty007 said:
And now the theory is that inflammation is the main cause for cardiovascular disease, brought on by to much high blood sugar, while high cholesterol (total cholesterol) have almost nothing to do with it. Interestingly in elderly a slightly higher cholesterol is actually beneficial.
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Yes - I eat an 80%+ fat diet and my cholesterol is too low, despite gorging myself on the fattiest cuts of meat I can lay my hands on, often smeared in butter. In some ways too low might be worse than too high.

Another possible cause of inflammation is PUFAs, which you get in all of those so called "healthy fats" made from grain oils. I'd rather eat natural products (which it least bear a resemblance to our ancestral diet) than manmade highly processed ****.
 
Dillinger said:
You know how when we talk about low carb and high fat there often comes a post that says 'the problem with all of this is that there are no studies on the safety or efficacy of a low carb diet'?
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Often they will claim a lack of "long term studies". Regardless people having eaten LCHF diets since prehistoric times.
If anything it's the LF(V)HC that lack proper long term studies. With there being quite a bit of anecdotal evidence that they are especially bad for mammals. (Such diets appear to "bypass" the usual behaviour of animals avoiding food which makes them ill.)
 
donnellysdogs said:
How come the shelves are stuffed full of skimmed and semi skimmed milk.. When did that actually start?
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The LFHC fad would be 1977 in the US, 1980 in the UK.

I'm not convinced that semi skimmed milk is actually better than whole milk since all this info coming out about low fat/fat etc.
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It appears to be the case that some of the water soluble nutrients in milk require either the fat or fat soluble nutrients to be adsorbed in the gut.
Also lactose (like all sugars) is water soluble. So skimmed milk contains the highest amount of lactose, whole milk the least.

In many cases milk is first separated from the cream. Then some cream is added back in to make 1%, semi-skimmed & whole.
Since the cream is also sold, the profit margin is likely to be highest with skimmed milk. It being uncommon for skimmed milk to be sold for less than whole milk.
 
borofergie said:
It really is very difficult to imagine how animal fat could be bad for you, since for 2.5 million our ancestors were mainly top level carnivore Hunter Gatherers. Our evolutionary diet is based around eating the whole animal, including all the really fatty bits none of us eat today.
Click to expand...

Not even our distant ancestors. It's only very recently, within living memory, that saturated fat has been demonised.
Somehow we have ended up with the daft situation that things people have been eating since prehistoric times are "bad" whereas things which simply didn't exist until recently are "healthy". (I suspect the hardcore paleo people who refer to vegetable oils as "diesel fuel" may be talking a lot more sense than supposed "experts".)

There is no scientific evidence that links saturated fat directly to heart disease. It was only ever based on the observation that:
(1) Saturated fat causes a rise in cholesterol
(2) High cholesterol is associated with cardiovascular disease.

The trouble is that (1) is only true over the very short term (in people that don't have familial hypercholesterolemia), and that (2) has largely been debunked now that we know more about different types of blood lipids and their influence on CV disease.
Click to expand...

The actual factors appear to involve lipoproteins (the mechanism by which complex organisms transport lipids), rather than any of the lipids being transported in them.
What commonly performed tests do is break open a lot of "shipping containers". Then look at (some of) the "cargo" then try to guess what this means about the shipping containers (before they were destroyed sight unseen.)
 
borofergie said:
Yes - I eat an 80%+ fat diet and my cholesterol is too low, despite gorging myself on the fattiest cuts of meat I can lay my hands on, often smeared in butter. In some ways too low might be worse than too high.
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I'm also hypocholesterolemic yet am finding it hard to get anyone at my GP's practice to even acknowlage this.
About the only thing "too high" is risk factor for is CVD. But too low increases risk of just about everything, including CVD.
There is also data from the BHF & WHO (oddly missing from the BHF website) which gives a healthy TC range of 5.2-6.2 mmol/l with a lowest CVD risk at 5.4 mmol/l

Anyone able to explain where the 5.0 & 4.0 mmol/l come from (other than drug companies wanting to sell drugs)?
 
mpe said:
I'm also hypocholesterolemic yet am finding it hard to get anyone at my GP's practice to even acknowlage this.
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I've actually been told by an endocrinologist that there's no such thing as "too low" when it comes to cholesterol. That was when I asked whether total cholesterol of 2.8 (in one of my kids) was anything to worry about. I don't understand why they panic if we go above the upper limit but not if we go below the lower one. Why set a lower limit if going below it is good?

Kate
 
Not sure I agree with your endocrinologist: the "all-causes mortality" graph clealyshows that low-cholesterol is as damaging to your health as high cholesterol (perhaps even more so). However, there may be some mitigating factors, one of which is that low-cholesterol may be a symptom of sever terminal conditions, rather than the cause of them:

Cholesterol_vs_Deaths_newplot.jpg


My Total Cholesterol is 140 mg/dl which is "off the scale" on the left hand side of this plot. However, since I eat an 80% fat diet, and participate in regular strenuous exercise, I've decided there is little I can do about my low cholesterol, so there is little point in worrying about it.
 
kesun said:
I've actually been told by an endocrinologist that there's no such thing as "too low" when it comes to cholesterol.
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Possibly they are the wrong "specialist". Whilst there are steroid hormones. Steroids appear to be fundermentally important to eukaryotes.

That was when I asked whether total cholesterol of 2.8 (in one of my kids) was anything to worry about. I don't understand why they panic if we go above the upper limit but not if we go below the lower one. Why set a lower limit if going below it is good?
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In many cases the "lower limit" seems to be assumed to be zero.
 
borofergie said:
Not sure I agree with your endocrinologist: the "all-causes mortality" graph clealyshows that low-cholesterol is as damaging to your health as high cholesterol (perhaps even more so). However, there may be some mitigating factors, one of which is that low-cholesterol may be a symptom of sever terminal conditions, rather than the cause of them:
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I'm not sure how this mitigates anything.
Nor does there appear to be much to support the idea that low is a "symptom" rather than a "cause", but high is a "cause" rather than a "symptom".

The total mortality curve (which is the most important one) is remarkably symetrical around 5.7 mmol/l (222 mg/dl)

My Total Cholesterol is 140 mg/dl which is "off the scale" on the left hand side of this plot.
Click to expand...

My most recent reading was 3.3 mmol/l (128 mg/dl) even further to the left. At least it's not (quite) as bad as the 2.9 mmol/l I had a year ago.

However, since I eat an 80% fat diet, and participate in regular strenuous exercise, I've decided there is little I can do about my low cholesterol, so there is little point in worrying about it.
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Or it's confirmation that dietary fat dosn't have much effect on cholesterol (inside lipoproteins made by the liver). Nobody appears to have been able to come up with a mechanism for this in the first place.
 
Dillinger said:
Blimey; it's all go today on The Telegraph; here's another one that will sound strangely familiar

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/dietandfitness/9160114/The-bitter-truth-about-sugar.html

Best

Dillinger
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I have just watched the Youtube film of Robert Lustigs's report on this and I believe it to be the most important 90 minutes of my life. I now know more about how my body works and how to change this disease. What an amazing film. What is scary is that I don’t have products high in fructose. I do not drink fizzy drinks, or lots of alcohol. I prefer an orange to just juice on its own and high fructose corn syrup is restricted in this country. The problem is for me Carbohydrates because of the sugar. Simple!

Thank you for the above link as it prompted me to research more.

fortysix
 
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