About a month ago, a new study warning about the dangers of “super-sticky cholesterol” made a bit of a splash in the media. I ignored it at the time, but thought about it today when I received an email from a Fat Head viewer who’s raising a diabetic child. We’ll come back to that in a minute.
The study, in case you missed it, produced headlines like this:
Super-Sticky ‘Ultra-Bad’ Cholesterol Revealed in People at High Risk of Heart Disease
When I was in journalism school, we were taught that many people don’t read much more than the headline and the first few paragraphs of a news story. That’s why student journalists are taught to write in reverse-pyramid style: get the important ideas in those first few paragraphs, then expand on the details. Here are the first few paragraphs of a Science Daily article about the study:
Scientists from the University of Warwick have discovered why a newly found form of cholesterol seems to be ‘ultra-bad’, leading to increased risk of heart disease. The discovery could lead to new treatments to prevent heart disease particularly in people with type 2 diabetes and the elderly.
The research, funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), found that ‘ultra-bad’ cholesterol, called MGmin-low-density lipoprotein (LDL), which is more common in people with type 2 diabetes and the elderly, appears to be ‘stickier’ than normal LDL. This makes it more likely to attach to the walls of arteries. When LDL attaches to artery walls it helps form the dangerous ‘fatty’ plaques’ that cause coronary heart disease (CHD).
CHD is the condition behind heart attacks, claiming 88,000 lives in the UK every year (1).
If you stop there, the takeaway message is that evil ol’ cholesterol also comes in an especially evil form that’s even more likely to cause heart disease. Yikes! Better go on a low-fat diet and get your cholesterol down, maybe even take a statin just to be safe. You have to read further to spot the true villain:
The researchers made the discovery by creating human MGmin-LDL in the laboratory, then studying its characteristics and interactions with other important molecules in the body.
They found that MGmin-LDL is created by the addition of sugar groups to ‘normal’ LDL — a process called glycation — making LDL smaller and denser. By changing its shape, the sugar groups expose new regions on the surface of the LDL. These exposed regions are more likely to stick to artery walls, helping to build fatty plaques. As fatty plaques grow they narrow arteries — reducing blood flow — and they can eventually rupture, triggering a blood clot that causes a heart attack or stroke.
What turns cholesterol into “sticky” cholesterol? Sugar.
In 1976 a prominent researcher named Peter Cleave told the McGovern committee that if anything in our diets causes heart disease, it’s probably sugar. McGovern sided with the researchers who blamed dietary fat, perhaps because he couldn’t imagine how sugar could produce fatty streaks in our arteries. This study describes a plausible (and likely, in my opinion) mechanism: high blood sugar produces small, dense LDL through glycation.
Glycation is what happens when sugars bind to proteins. I’ve heard various descriptions, but the one that stuck with me (pun intended) is that glycation “caramelizes” your tissues. The Wikipedia entry on glycation gives a good description of why you want to avoid being caramelized:
Endogenous (inside the body) glycations occur mainly in the bloodstream to a small proportion of the absorbed simple sugars: glucose, fructose, and galactose. It appears that fructose and galactose have approximately ten times the glycation activity of glucose, the primary body fuel. Glycation is the first step in the evolution of these molecules through a complex series of very slow reactions in the body … all lead to advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs).
Some AGEs are benign, but others are more reactive than the sugars they are derived from, and are implicated in many age-related chronic diseases such as: cardiovascular diseases (the endothelium, fibrinogen, and collagen are damaged), Alzheimer’s disease (amyloid proteins are side-products of the reactions progressing to AGEs), cancer (acrylamide and other side-products are released), peripheral neuropathy (the myelin is attacked), and other sensory losses such as deafness (due to demyelination).
Quite a horror show, eh? As the article in Science Daily notes, pharmaceutical companies may use this information to develop drugs that help prevent heart disease by reducing glucose levels.
Yes, yes, I know … you’re probably sitting there, dangerously close to banging your head on your desk, wondering why doctors don’t just tell people to stop jacking up their blood sugar with too many carbohydrates. Well, heck, they can’t do that because everybody just knows we need those carbohydrates –- which brings me back to the email I received today:
————————————————————-
Our son was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes a year ago this August. Doctors told us that we should feed him whatever he wanted, even after I pushed to speak with their staff nutritionist and nailed her about their suggested carb intake. Their response to our concerns was, “He needs to grow healthier and stronger and the only way to do this is to feed him more carbs and give him more insulin injections.”
This would be to any Fat Head unsatisfactory as best. Three months after beginning our son’s insulin regimen, we noticed he began to show signs of symptoms he had never had before. The doctors again explained that he was fine in their opinion and his symptoms (while major and included loss of sight, balance, headaches, ear aches, and loss of cognitive function) were nothing more then simple effects of his disease and we would have to manage by continuing with their recommended treatment plan: injections and carb counting.
We did some research — as good Fat Head parents tend to — and found that the insulin prescribed for our two year old son was only approved by the FDA for children age six and over. We stopped use and contacted his doctor’s office. After two days all our son’s symptoms vanished and he began to function normally again. When we confronted the doctor about this issue they claimed that this drug is being used world-wide among the same age group as our son and it wasn’t uncommon or irregular.
Then about two weeks ago we found Fat Head. I have been doing research to that (fat) end for months, but I was missing the key component that Fat Head was able to deliver: Fat. In all the information I’ve pored over, it is always the same story. Stay away from sugar, carbs, processed foods, etc. But no one said anything about adding animal fat.
Just as a kind of experimental joke my husband and I took the information in Fat Head literally and began to cut out two-thirds of the carbs from our family diet. In only two days our son’s sugar levels went from spiking randomly at 480-600 and fell to 140-160. Our daughter also began to show signs of improved health — which for us meant more trips to the time-out chair. Having more energy evidently means more Fat Head mischief. You might want to make that a disclaimer for unsuspecting parents *wink* … just a thought.
————————————————————-
Most doctors still believe high-fat diets cause heart disease, and diabetics are three times more likely to eventually develop heart disease. Put those together, and you get the standard advice for diabetics: go on a low-fat diet with plenty of complex carbohydrates, then take insulin to control your blood sugar. Following that advice, this poor kid was getting glucose spikes of 600. That’s major glycation territory.
Ignoring the standard advice, the same kid dropped his glucose to almost-normal levels. Given more time on a low-carb / high-fat diet, he may even reach normal levels. I certainly hope so.
Cholesterol isn’t the villain; “super-sticky cholesterol” resulting from too many carbohydrates is. And by recommending low-fat / high-carbohydrate diets, doctors are putting diabetics and other people prone to heart disease in a sticky situation indeed.
If you enjoy my posts, please consider a small donation to the Fat Head Kids GoFundMe campaign.
This reminds me of Joel Greenblatt’s two suggestions for relying on experts to do your investment homework for you:
*Don’t trust anyone over 30.
*Don’t trust anyone 30 or under.
Get it? You need to do your own homework. Finance is full of just as much chicanery as medicine.
***
How’s this for a sound bite: If you want your body to work like a well-oiled machine, eat some grease. Want a breakdown? Just add sugar.
Well said.
Ok. I am all over this sticky cholesterol. I just had a patch of it taken out of my femoral artery in my left leg last week. The doctor showed it to me and it looked like ricotta cheese. This is the second time in 6 years in the same place. I may never know why it developes in that particular place but my love of sugar and all things starch is probably the reason it happened at all. I was told to eat the US official food pyramid, take statins and call back in three months. So, absent a medical profession that does some real research but just reads the headlines for their continuing education I am starting my own experiment. We all must do this. Use common sense, learn as much as you can and apply that knowledge. Then record the results.
By the way, if anyone knows anyone working on trying to convince the hospitals to stop feeding heart patients high carb, low fat, no salt meals please let me know. I couldn’t believe they were feeding people this kind of garbage. Just for fun, cook a no yolk scrambled egg and eat it with no salt. Wrong, just wrong. Also, what does three pancakes with margarine and “Breakfast Syrup” (HFCS) do to everyone’s blood sugar?
Hospital food is some the worst out there.
Isn’t there a law suit here?
Could be. I hope the FDA doesn’t look kindly on prescribing drugs not approved for that age.
Yes, diabetes. Yesterday on our talkback radio there was a discussion on this after it was revealed that we have one of the world’s worst diabetes rates. I listened, hopefully to hear the voice of reason – surely someone would mention carbs and sugar but no. They talked about exercise, weight, drugs, fat. Not one caller talked about the most obvious thing. I couldn’t phone up but wouldn’t have anyway as I do get flustered on live radio plus I’m no expert!
It really is like everyone saying the earth is flat – at least that thinking changed, maybe this will too.
Let’s hope. Literally millions of lives are affected.
It’s cracking me up looking at the ad for the “Portion Plate” that is on your blog right now. It was obviously randomly assigned by some web server because you are a “diet blog.” The plate is supposed to “help you plan healthy and balanced meals every time. ” “Healthy and balanced” meaning mostly fruit and veggies with an even amount of meat and grains, while keeping “fat and oils” to a minimum.
It reminds me of a few years ago when a car dealership chain bought a lot of radio ad time from the local station that broadcasts financial-advice-guru Dave Ramsey. You’d listen to Dave Ramsey and hear ads for “Bad credit, no credit, even if you are $10,000 upside down on your current loan…,” and shake your head thinking about how badly the advertiser was missing their target audience.
Yeah, Google places some strange ads in those spots. One of these days, I’ll get around to looking for other advertisers for those spots. Several have approached me, but not for products I want to recommend.
This post was very timely. One of Australia’s top nutritionists just published an article on pre-diabetes. Foods which help REDUCE the risk of diabetes, according to her: bread, white rice, potatoes, rice crackers. This is not a typo. Thousands of well-intentioned people see her on the Today show, read her site and follow her recommendations. I’m speechless. Here is a link: http://goo.gl/OCc6S
Anastasia
Calling it a “pre-diabetes” diet is actually appropriate … because you’ll be on your way to diabetes.
This reminds me of Joel Greenblatt’s two suggestions for relying on experts to do your investment homework for you:
*Don’t trust anyone over 30.
*Don’t trust anyone 30 or under.
Get it? You need to do your own homework. Finance is full of just as much chicanery as medicine.
***
How’s this for a sound bite: If you want your body to work like a well-oiled machine, eat some grease. Want a breakdown? Just add sugar.
Well said.
Ok. I am all over this sticky cholesterol. I just had a patch of it taken out of my femoral artery in my left leg last week. The doctor showed it to me and it looked like ricotta cheese. This is the second time in 6 years in the same place. I may never know why it developes in that particular place but my love of sugar and all things starch is probably the reason it happened at all. I was told to eat the US official food pyramid, take statins and call back in three months. So, absent a medical profession that does some real research but just reads the headlines for their continuing education I am starting my own experiment. We all must do this. Use common sense, learn as much as you can and apply that knowledge. Then record the results.
By the way, if anyone knows anyone working on trying to convince the hospitals to stop feeding heart patients high carb, low fat, no salt meals please let me know. I couldn’t believe they were feeding people this kind of garbage. Just for fun, cook a no yolk scrambled egg and eat it with no salt. Wrong, just wrong. Also, what does three pancakes with margarine and “Breakfast Syrup” (HFCS) do to everyone’s blood sugar?
Hospital food is some the worst out there.
Isn’t there a law suit here?
Could be. I hope the FDA doesn’t look kindly on prescribing drugs not approved for that age.
I am surprised that no researcher has ever published a paper on the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide. There is factual evidence that this substance is lethal when inhaled, it wrecks havoc in electrical circuits, and it is also found in all cancerous cells! And it makes food spoil very quickly!
Seriously dangerous stuff!!! Stay away from dihydrogen monoxide!
😉
Kidding aside, cholesterol is just that. LDL and HDL are lipoproteins…. not cholesterol, and yes lipoproteins can oxidise, and be more chemicaly reactive. I seriously wish that the real names of was used instead of associating things that are not related… But I guess it gets research grants
Penn & Teller got hundreds of environmentalists to sign a petition against dihydrogen monoxide. I’m now hoarding the stuff in case it’s outlawed.
Yes, diabetes. Yesterday on our talkback radio there was a discussion on this after it was revealed that we have one of the world’s worst diabetes rates. I listened, hopefully to hear the voice of reason – surely someone would mention carbs and sugar but no. They talked about exercise, weight, drugs, fat. Not one caller talked about the most obvious thing. I couldn’t phone up but wouldn’t have anyway as I do get flustered on live radio plus I’m no expert!
It really is like everyone saying the earth is flat – at least that thinking changed, maybe this will too.
Let’s hope. Literally millions of lives are affected.
It’s cracking me up looking at the ad for the “Portion Plate” that is on your blog right now. It was obviously randomly assigned by some web server because you are a “diet blog.” The plate is supposed to “help you plan healthy and balanced meals every time. ” “Healthy and balanced” meaning mostly fruit and veggies with an even amount of meat and grains, while keeping “fat and oils” to a minimum.
It reminds me of a few years ago when a car dealership chain bought a lot of radio ad time from the local station that broadcasts financial-advice-guru Dave Ramsey. You’d listen to Dave Ramsey and hear ads for “Bad credit, no credit, even if you are $10,000 upside down on your current loan…,” and shake your head thinking about how badly the advertiser was missing their target audience.
Yeah, Google places some strange ads in those spots. One of these days, I’ll get around to looking for other advertisers for those spots. Several have approached me, but not for products I want to recommend.
It is actually kind of fascinating to watch as researchers and “experts” try their darnedest to avoid demonizing sugar. As far as I can tell, nearly every major diet plan (whether low-fat, low-carb, etc) advocates cutting sugar intake or eliminating it entirely. I would bet that almost every success story on any of those plans had one thing in common– they reduced or eliminated sugar in the diet, particularly refined sugars found in snacks and sodas. In spite of such an obvious common denominator, fat gets the blame.
I believe that a lot of them are doing it out of ignorance and the deeply ingrained idea that fat is the problem. I cannot imagine that so many people are deliberately putting us at risk of poor health, suffering, and even death. It’s what makes it so important to continue to make people aware that fat is NOT the problem, refined sugar is. I hope I live to see the day when researchers stop trying to make fat the culprit and start doing some ACTUAL research.
I don’t believe it’s deliberate either. I certainly don’t mean to accuse the doctors of causing harm intentionally; they’re just acting out of ignorance.
This post was very timely. One of Australia’s top nutritionists just published an article on pre-diabetes. Foods which help REDUCE the risk of diabetes, according to her: bread, white rice, potatoes, rice crackers. This is not a typo. Thousands of well-intentioned people see her on the Today show, read her site and follow her recommendations. I’m speechless. Here is a link: http://goo.gl/OCc6S
Anastasia
Calling it a “pre-diabetes” diet is actually appropriate … because you’ll be on your way to diabetes.
As always right on (: Thanks Tom
Fantastically sound advice! Eat carbs, pump more insulin. Make a type 1 into an insulin resistant diabetic. Double diabetes anyone?
I recently found out that my mother was given this advice when I was 13 and diagnosed as prediabetic.
Today I have the nice reward of being a type 1 who is insulin resistant. Makes for fun times!
I hope all is well with the family. I am happy that her blood sugars are down. 600 is a crazy number. I was diagnosed at that number. It is not a fun feeling coming down from that!
I don’t put the blame fully on the docs though. They just push the line that Big Pharma gives them. Tom, I’m on an iPhone on Vacation, so I can’t find you the link to a study in Boston that shows maybe an 80 year old vaccination may reverse type 1. 4 shots of a 15$ vaccination to potentially cure T1. Who will place bets with me that Big Pharma will Kibosh that one?
It’ll never see the light of day. No profit in it.
I am surprised that no researcher has ever published a paper on the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide. There is factual evidence that this substance is lethal when inhaled, it wrecks havoc in electrical circuits, and it is also found in all cancerous cells! And it makes food spoil very quickly!
Seriously dangerous stuff!!! Stay away from dihydrogen monoxide!
😉
Kidding aside, cholesterol is just that. LDL and HDL are lipoproteins…. not cholesterol, and yes lipoproteins can oxidise, and be more chemicaly reactive. I seriously wish that the real names of was used instead of associating things that are not related… But I guess it gets research grants
Penn & Teller got hundreds of environmentalists to sign a petition against dihydrogen monoxide. I’m now hoarding the stuff in case it’s outlawed.
first to comment?!
it is quite scary all of this stuff, as it adds together and you try to let people know you can’t help but come across as a tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist.
again.
I know, I know; we have to avoid sounding paranoid. It’s not a conspiracy — those doctors handing out the standard advice mean well — so much as widespread ignorance at work.
Makes sense to me. If you can prove that saturated fat is bad for you by clogging up a sink with cold lard, you can certainly prove that sugar is bad for you by clogging up a sink with cold molasses.
On the opposite end of the heat spectrum, have you ever tried to clean a pan with burned-on bacon? One wipe of a paper towel dipped in hot water should do it. Now, have you ever tried to clean a pan with burned-on sugar? Better whip out the jack hammer or sand blaster.
Good point.
Hmm, super-sticky sounds good to me. Perhaps it’s better at doing its repair job and won’t break off.
Oh My Heavens- insulin prescription, low-fat, high carb diet recommended for a 2 year-old? It’s insanity. Thank goodness for the internet, so sleuths can find out this helpful and life-sparing information. Let’s appeal to vanity to counter this insanity. It may be the most pointed, sit-up-and-pay attention gig. Eating carbs and not enough FAT makes you AGE.
I have located the FOuntain of Youth.
I heard humans described as ‘mostly bags of water’
And that the process of aging is really just ‘drying out’ over time.
Fats and oils (like in topical anti-aging creams) are to stop the drying out of our skin. SO……..
Eating animal fats and cholesterol retards us drying out- is anti-aging and is the-
FOuntain of YOuth.
Like who knew lard and beef tallow was the secret?
(I do know now, but up until 3 years ago I did not know).
Appealing to vanity is a good idea. Long ago, a doctor told me the most effective method of getting young women to quit smoking was to show them pictures of how much older smokers looked by age 40.
I want to hear a doctor say, “All right, let’s take a look at your super-sticky ultra-bad cholesterol.”
Give it time. As soon as there’s a drug to treat it, there will be a test to detect it.
Many Thanks Tom… it is such a relief to visit this oasis of sanity in the midst of so much misinformation.
Take for example “…appears to be ‘stickier’ than normal LDL. This makes it more likely to attach to the walls of arteries. When LDL attaches to artery walls it helps form the dangerous ‘fatty’ plaques’ that cause coronary heart disease.”
Are we still being fed this simplistic idea that “bad cholesterol sticks to the artery walls and clogs them up like the drain pipes under your sink”..?
I like to counter that with Dr Kendrick’s observation from The Great Cholesterol Con: to paraphrase “why is it that these fatty plaques only build up in *arteries* where the blood flow is faster and under increased pressure? Why does it never build up in the *veins* when the blood flow is slower and under less pressure? Does silt tend to deposit more in fast flowing rivers or in slow moving streams?”
Cheers
Frank
I didn’t want to get into that aspect of it, but yes, even the image of how plaque builds up is wrong. Plaque builds up behind the wall of the artery.
It is actually kind of fascinating to watch as researchers and “experts” try their darnedest to avoid demonizing sugar. As far as I can tell, nearly every major diet plan (whether low-fat, low-carb, etc) advocates cutting sugar intake or eliminating it entirely. I would bet that almost every success story on any of those plans had one thing in common– they reduced or eliminated sugar in the diet, particularly refined sugars found in snacks and sodas. In spite of such an obvious common denominator, fat gets the blame.
I believe that a lot of them are doing it out of ignorance and the deeply ingrained idea that fat is the problem. I cannot imagine that so many people are deliberately putting us at risk of poor health, suffering, and even death. It’s what makes it so important to continue to make people aware that fat is NOT the problem, refined sugar is. I hope I live to see the day when researchers stop trying to make fat the culprit and start doing some ACTUAL research.
I don’t believe it’s deliberate either. I certainly don’t mean to accuse the doctors of causing harm intentionally; they’re just acting out of ignorance.
As always right on (: Thanks Tom
Fantastically sound advice! Eat carbs, pump more insulin. Make a type 1 into an insulin resistant diabetic. Double diabetes anyone?
I recently found out that my mother was given this advice when I was 13 and diagnosed as prediabetic.
Today I have the nice reward of being a type 1 who is insulin resistant. Makes for fun times!
I hope all is well with the family. I am happy that her blood sugars are down. 600 is a crazy number. I was diagnosed at that number. It is not a fun feeling coming down from that!
I don’t put the blame fully on the docs though. They just push the line that Big Pharma gives them. Tom, I’m on an iPhone on Vacation, so I can’t find you the link to a study in Boston that shows maybe an 80 year old vaccination may reverse type 1. 4 shots of a 15$ vaccination to potentially cure T1. Who will place bets with me that Big Pharma will Kibosh that one?
It’ll never see the light of day. No profit in it.
On the subject of bad medical advice, I heard a story on a forum I read, of one pediatrician recommending to a woman that she remove the fat from her own breast milk, because her baby was gaining weight too fast. Thankfully, the mother didn’t keep it very long, as her poor baby was always hungry and crying.
Please tell me that wasn’t a real pediatrician.
Anastasia, I just sent the message below to the “contact Dr. Joanna” site on MSN Today:
Just saw a clip of you on Australian TV. The written summary below the clip says: “What foods can help reduce the risk of developing pre-diabetes: Potatoes Bread White rice Rice crackers”, which is certainly different than what you said in the clip and can’t possibly be true. However, in the clip you do recommend lots of carbohydrates and suggest that they are crucial to the pre-diabetes diet. That makes absolutely zero sense to me (and I have a masters in Biochemistry, taught science for nearly 30 years, and have done a LOT of research on diet and nutrition over the course of my rather long life.) Carbohydrates, no matter what the form, get broken down (or converted) ultimately into glucose and dumped into the blood. This is exactly what someone with pre-diabetes does NOT need. The diet you recommend is guaranteed to turn a pre-diabetic into a full blown diabetic. How can you, as a doctor, not know that? I highly recommend that you read Gary Taubes’ “Good Calories, Bad Calories” and/or watch the documentary “Fathead” for a good education in a) what’s gone wrong with nutrition education over the last 4 or 5 decades and why and b) what the biochemical consequences of your recommendations actually are. To be fair, I know you are not alone in the medical/nutritional profession–that the vast majority of you think along these lines–and have been taught to do so. However, you (as a group) are (literally) making people all over the world sick and fat with your message to “eat plenty of carbohydrates” and avoid saturated fat! It needs to stop. I do not live in Australia–I live in the US, but have no connection to either Gary Taubes or Tom Naughton (producer of Fathead.) I am just tired of hearing doctors who should know better give really bad advice on nutrition and then wonder why we have an obesity/type II diabetes epidemic going on. Carbohydrates, particularly the starchy kind like grains and potatoes, are not essential to the human diet–at all. However, in moderation they can be part of a diet that includes plenty of good fat (not trans fat or vegetable oils) as long as the individual’s metabolism isn’t messed up and he/she can tolerate them reasonably well. That is not so for pre-diabetics and diabetics and the last thing they need is starchy carbohydrates, whether low glycemic or not. Margaret
Don’t imagine it will help, but hey…
Good luck. Can’t hurt to try.
first to comment?!
it is quite scary all of this stuff, as it adds together and you try to let people know you can’t help but come across as a tin foil hat wearing conspiracy theorist.
again.
I know, I know; we have to avoid sounding paranoid. It’s not a conspiracy — those doctors handing out the standard advice mean well — so much as widespread ignorance at work.
Interesting to see how the plaques that form in the arteries are “fatty plaques”… not “hard plaques”, “dangerous plaques”, “deadly plaques”, etc…but “fatty plaques”
They had to use the word ‘fatty’ to still drive that fear-of-fat mentality, even when sugar is to blame.
Keep up the great work Tom!!
“Artery-clogging fat” is stuck in their brains. I guess we could say it’s a super-sticky term.
Thanks for posting Tom. I am slowly seeing a difference on days I eat LC and days I don’t. I have a neighbor who is all gung-ho about losing weight at the gym, she comes back tired and sweaty, sore and then starves herself down to 1500 calories a day, all low fat, etc…. 6 months ago, i would have applauded her. Now I just have to bite my tongue and hope she reads your posts that I link on Facebook.
Even if she doesn’t, you know what to do for yourself.
Makes sense to me. If you can prove that saturated fat is bad for you by clogging up a sink with cold lard, you can certainly prove that sugar is bad for you by clogging up a sink with cold molasses.
On the opposite end of the heat spectrum, have you ever tried to clean a pan with burned-on bacon? One wipe of a paper towel dipped in hot water should do it. Now, have you ever tried to clean a pan with burned-on sugar? Better whip out the jack hammer or sand blaster.
Good point.
Hmm, super-sticky sounds good to me. Perhaps it’s better at doing its repair job and won’t break off.
Oh My Heavens- insulin prescription, low-fat, high carb diet recommended for a 2 year-old? It’s insanity. Thank goodness for the internet, so sleuths can find out this helpful and life-sparing information. Let’s appeal to vanity to counter this insanity. It may be the most pointed, sit-up-and-pay attention gig. Eating carbs and not enough FAT makes you AGE.
I have located the FOuntain of Youth.
I heard humans described as ‘mostly bags of water’
And that the process of aging is really just ‘drying out’ over time.
Fats and oils (like in topical anti-aging creams) are to stop the drying out of our skin. SO……..
Eating animal fats and cholesterol retards us drying out- is anti-aging and is the-
FOuntain of YOuth.
Like who knew lard and beef tallow was the secret?
(I do know now, but up until 3 years ago I did not know).
Appealing to vanity is a good idea. Long ago, a doctor told me the most effective method of getting young women to quit smoking was to show them pictures of how much older smokers looked by age 40.
I heard that dihydrogen monoxide is sometimes used in torture, drastically increases your chance of death while driving a car and releases green house gases into the atmosphere!!! We definitely need to get rid of that dangerous stuff. Though I’m with you on hording it.
Here’s how serious it’s getting: I was outside today and I swear I saw big clouds of the stuff drifting over our town. I immediately ran indoors.
I have a friend with type 2 diabetes and I told him about the different sorts of drugs he takes to regulate his blood sugar and how it would simply make more sense not to elevate it in the first place by eating carbs…
He trotted out the same old garbage about diabetics NEEDING to eat wholegrain carbs….
And another friend’s Aunt mentioned a low carb anti-diabetic diet to her GP and was told that the protein would damage her kidneys and would be the easiest way to a premature death.
Dang my forehead is sore from this desk….
For the life of me, I don’t understand the logic of recommending carbs for energy, then prescribing a drug to beat down blood sugar — the same blood sugar that’s the “energy” we extract from carbs.
I want to hear a doctor say, “All right, let’s take a look at your super-sticky ultra-bad cholesterol.”
Give it time. As soon as there’s a drug to treat it, there will be a test to detect it.
“I don’t put the blame fully on the docs though. They just push the line that Big Pharma gives them.”
Sure you can…for the reason stated — pushing the line that Big Pharma gives them. It violates their Hippocratic Oath to “first, do no harm”. They have the option in their practice to do what is best for their patients, and if that includes ditching the medicine and prescribing a restructured diet of low carbs and high fat, then that is what they should be doing. Their interest should be the patient, not the pharm rep.
There we go again with the fructose. With all that terror, I will probably require a double helping of my evening “handful” of fruits.
I don’t think whole fruits are the problem.
Many Thanks Tom… it is such a relief to visit this oasis of sanity in the midst of so much misinformation.
Take for example “…appears to be ‘stickier’ than normal LDL. This makes it more likely to attach to the walls of arteries. When LDL attaches to artery walls it helps form the dangerous ‘fatty’ plaques’ that cause coronary heart disease.”
Are we still being fed this simplistic idea that “bad cholesterol sticks to the artery walls and clogs them up like the drain pipes under your sink”..?
I like to counter that with Dr Kendrick’s observation from The Great Cholesterol Con: to paraphrase “why is it that these fatty plaques only build up in *arteries* where the blood flow is faster and under increased pressure? Why does it never build up in the *veins* when the blood flow is slower and under less pressure? Does silt tend to deposit more in fast flowing rivers or in slow moving streams?”
Cheers
Frank
I didn’t want to get into that aspect of it, but yes, even the image of how plaque builds up is wrong. Plaque builds up behind the wall of the artery.
US per capita consumption of “caloric sweeteners” is reported to be 142 lbs (64.5 kg) per year. That’s almost 6.25 oz (173 g) PER DAY!!! If you need a visual for that amount, it’s a little more than 43 sugar cubes.
But I’m sure that’s not a problem … Move along. Nothing to see here …
… just keep repeating, “It’s all caused by dietary fat.”
If fructose and galactose have ten times the glycation potential of glucose, then would it follow that eating potatoes and rice would be ten times less detrimental than eating fruit or other foods with equivalent amounts of fructose?
My wife and I are carb-addicts who have seen the light, but it is difficult for her to completely eliminate all forms of starch. We have modified her diet to include lots of fat and protein with a small portion of carbs (~50 grams) coming from rice or potatoes.
Would you agree that potatoes and rice are a better option than an equivalent amount of fruit to keep her happy?
Excess fructose seems to cause a lot of what we now call metabolic syndrome. If you eat a whole fruit, it’s not that much fructose, so I don’t see the need to avoid good foods like strawberries and blueberries. I would stay away from fruit juices and (of course) sugars. As for the potatoes and rice, I’d suggest checking how they affect her glucose levels an hour after eating.
On the subject of bad medical advice, I heard a story on a forum I read, of one pediatrician recommending to a woman that she remove the fat from her own breast milk, because her baby was gaining weight too fast. Thankfully, the mother didn’t keep it very long, as her poor baby was always hungry and crying.
Please tell me that wasn’t a real pediatrician.
Anastasia, I just sent the message below to the “contact Dr. Joanna” site on MSN Today:
Just saw a clip of you on Australian TV. The written summary below the clip says: “What foods can help reduce the risk of developing pre-diabetes: Potatoes Bread White rice Rice crackers”, which is certainly different than what you said in the clip and can’t possibly be true. However, in the clip you do recommend lots of carbohydrates and suggest that they are crucial to the pre-diabetes diet. That makes absolutely zero sense to me (and I have a masters in Biochemistry, taught science for nearly 30 years, and have done a LOT of research on diet and nutrition over the course of my rather long life.) Carbohydrates, no matter what the form, get broken down (or converted) ultimately into glucose and dumped into the blood. This is exactly what someone with pre-diabetes does NOT need. The diet you recommend is guaranteed to turn a pre-diabetic into a full blown diabetic. How can you, as a doctor, not know that? I highly recommend that you read Gary Taubes’ “Good Calories, Bad Calories” and/or watch the documentary “Fathead” for a good education in a) what’s gone wrong with nutrition education over the last 4 or 5 decades and why and b) what the biochemical consequences of your recommendations actually are. To be fair, I know you are not alone in the medical/nutritional profession–that the vast majority of you think along these lines–and have been taught to do so. However, you (as a group) are (literally) making people all over the world sick and fat with your message to “eat plenty of carbohydrates” and avoid saturated fat! It needs to stop. I do not live in Australia–I live in the US, but have no connection to either Gary Taubes or Tom Naughton (producer of Fathead.) I am just tired of hearing doctors who should know better give really bad advice on nutrition and then wonder why we have an obesity/type II diabetes epidemic going on. Carbohydrates, particularly the starchy kind like grains and potatoes, are not essential to the human diet–at all. However, in moderation they can be part of a diet that includes plenty of good fat (not trans fat or vegetable oils) as long as the individual’s metabolism isn’t messed up and he/she can tolerate them reasonably well. That is not so for pre-diabetics and diabetics and the last thing they need is starchy carbohydrates, whether low glycemic or not. Margaret
Don’t imagine it will help, but hey…
Good luck. Can’t hurt to try.
Tell the parents of the diabetic boy to read Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution by Richard K. Bernstein. He’s on the right track by keeping insulin spikes to a minimum, and his book is for both Type I and Type II diabetes.
@Scott I was like your wife… for me the secret was getting rid of it all… no more starches at all. My only carbs now are salad veggies, a bit of dressing, occasional berries, and the carbs in full fat dairy like cheese and whipping cream. Once the starches and sugars are gone, if she is like me, she won’t miss them or crave them anymore. I stay at 10-20 grams per day. It has been a long while now and I have had a cookie or whatever every now and again without getting that desire to finish the whole box like I used to but I am careful about it. For me when it come to most carbs…none is much easier than some. It is worth it.
My best wishes to the parents of the diabetic little guy.. you are doing the right thing!
Interesting to see how the plaques that form in the arteries are “fatty plaques”… not “hard plaques”, “dangerous plaques”, “deadly plaques”, etc…but “fatty plaques”
They had to use the word ‘fatty’ to still drive that fear-of-fat mentality, even when sugar is to blame.
Keep up the great work Tom!!
“Artery-clogging fat” is stuck in their brains. I guess we could say it’s a super-sticky term.
Thanks for posting Tom. I am slowly seeing a difference on days I eat LC and days I don’t. I have a neighbor who is all gung-ho about losing weight at the gym, she comes back tired and sweaty, sore and then starves herself down to 1500 calories a day, all low fat, etc…. 6 months ago, i would have applauded her. Now I just have to bite my tongue and hope she reads your posts that I link on Facebook.
Even if she doesn’t, you know what to do for yourself.
I heard that dihydrogen monoxide is sometimes used in torture, drastically increases your chance of death while driving a car and releases green house gases into the atmosphere!!! We definitely need to get rid of that dangerous stuff. Though I’m with you on hording it.
Here’s how serious it’s getting: I was outside today and I swear I saw big clouds of the stuff drifting over our town. I immediately ran indoors.
I have a friend with type 2 diabetes and I told him about the different sorts of drugs he takes to regulate his blood sugar and how it would simply make more sense not to elevate it in the first place by eating carbs…
He trotted out the same old garbage about diabetics NEEDING to eat wholegrain carbs….
And another friend’s Aunt mentioned a low carb anti-diabetic diet to her GP and was told that the protein would damage her kidneys and would be the easiest way to a premature death.
Dang my forehead is sore from this desk….
For the life of me, I don’t understand the logic of recommending carbs for energy, then prescribing a drug to beat down blood sugar — the same blood sugar that’s the “energy” we extract from carbs.