BTW, in addition to lifestyle factors, gum disease increases or any kind of infection increases inflammation, and chronic inflammation may be positively proven to be the cause of heart disease.
In the case of cholesterol, the inflammatory response arises when LDL gets trapped in arterial tissue, hard plaque is the physical manifestation of this. Your body will have an inflammatory response to anything in it that is damaged. How does the LDL get damaged in the first place. There may be more than one reason for this which is why CAD is multi causal. It is thought that the molecules naturally degrade in the course of coursing through the body over and over again, things ain’t perfect in there, damaged cells lodge in the endothelium, and this is the start of blocked arteries. What causes them to get damaged as they whiz around, the large consensus seems to indicate oxidative stress. The key question, the focus of all the gunslinging imo, is what kind of fat particles are more subject to oxidative stress in the body.
It is for this reason for ex. that you need a plentiful intake of antioxidants when taking fish oils – they prevent the oils from becoming rancid in your body. BTW the exteremely high amino acid content, esp. the high cysteine content of the whey product I mentioned, supplies the essential precursor to glutathione, which is the mother of all anti-oxidants. Glutathione production decreases with age, it is essential to your body’s detoxification processes and boosts your immune system. Toxins accumulate in fat and you should try to buy whey that comes from cows that have grazed on chemical and/or pesticide free grass, and that have never been fed grain or given growth hormones or antibiotics. The reason for this is that all these foreign substances are treated as invaders /harmful by the body and they provoke the inflammation response. It’s just the body trying to heal itself. Inflammation means undoing what’s causing it in the first place, hence the gunslinging.
The fact is that the overall degree of systemic inflammation in the body will effect arterial inflammation, and be effected by it, in addition to the more specific local factors. Over time any breakdown in bodily function, eg liver function, thyroid, adrenals as a result of any cause, can serve as a source of inflammation, which comes to exist in the body as a low grade chronic inflammatory condition. This is the reason to not eat crap, and non-food like foods. In trying to accurately monitor inflammation levels, CRP is a very rough proxy, it is not the be all and end all.
I noticed a while back that you wrote a post suggesting that Arachidonic acid is the reason behind inflammation. You might want to retract that in the light of new information. For ex. This brouhaha over Omega 6 in grass fed meat is much ado about nothing imo.. It simply reflects an obsession with quantitative factors as opposed to qualitative ones. Firstly not all Omega 6’s are harmful, granted most of them are. What important is the quality of the fat, this means distinguishing good fats from bad, no matter how much you like the political nature of the distinction. Grass fed meat is not meant to be a primary source of omega 3’s, whats important is that it has twice as many of them compared to industrial meat, yielding a better 3:6 ratio, nearly double that of toxic meat.
Your concern over Omega 6’s got me thinking why, if dietary intake of Cholesterol is unimportant, and it’s what it does in body that’s more-so, why obsess over dietary intake of omega 6’s. Not saying they’re unimportant, they’re generally to be avoided, but we can’t do that, so it’s the ratio that counts. Before getting bent out of shape why not check out what happens to omega 6’s in the body so as to make a proper judgement.
Lo and behold, the latest research done by Richard Feinman, he of the infamous “inconsequential” quote in that ny times article (I agree that J.Brody is crap btw) reveals that a diet sufficiently high in saturated animal fats and low in carbs to induce Ketosis, resulted in significantly more serum Arachidonic acid compared to a Low Fat diet, with very little weight loss difference between the two groups. It turns out, if I understand his speculation correctly that the exogenous nature of omega’s 6’s in the high meat diet is ultimately less inflammatory once inside the body. Even with higher serum levels, it is less harmful compared to what happens with omega 6’s consumed as part of a Low Fat diet wherein the knock-on effects of these result in increased lipid degeneration. And this is where the rubber hits the road.
The Low Fat diet in the study, far as I can tell did not disallow any of the crap fats or processed carbs that we now know are really bad for us. So the comparison is actually between a diet high in saturated animal fats and a crap diet. There is no doubt in my mind that under such conditions, faced with such a stark choice, that the high saturated fat diet is more beneficial, I have no problem with that. I think though that thinking this means that this diet is always superior is leap of faith, a grave error. The focus on Low Fat, obscures the disasterous effects of bad fats like hydrogenated and trans fatty acids and crap carbs like sugars, processed foods etc. I will always eat a whole fat product before a low fat processed one – without question and have been doing so for years. I consider my diet not to be Low Fat, but one of beneficial fats. I don’t eat any of the other rubbish that was probably allowed in the study, so how would his results stand in comparison to my diet for ex. This is a distinction that has until recently been ignored by Atkins community. This is changing and even now they make the distinction between good and bad fats. In the same way the Dean Ornish faction has recognized that it’s not necessarily how much but what kind, and have started downing fish oils, along with everyone else.
The question is, just how sustainable over time is a diet very high in saturated animal fat, the one you seem to be pushing, is this a natural state for your body, where are the studies, what are the long term effects of ketosis. It is one thing to use something as a tool for a specific purpose, or with a limited objective in mind, but not everything is a nail. By far it is widely accepted even amongst Atkins people, that in general a predominantly plant based diet is the healthiest. As far as such generalizations hold, the best diet will also depend greatly, upon your unique biochemistry and specific metabolism.
As I said before I eat meat, I don’t think this means that more is necessarily better, it may be better than the rest of the bad advice out there, to eat a low fat diet, because all fats are not created equal. It’s the same with carbs. The worst combination for example is likely to be one that combines a high meat diet with lots of sugar, low fat processed food and refined carbs. Low Fat is a misnomer, these foods lead to high arterial fat, and the fatter you get, the greater inflammatory response.
You will note that Feinmans research was paid for by Atkins, nevertheless it makes an interesting read, you might learn more about Arachidonic acid than you ever wanted to know. The question on A.acid, is who is right. Feinman, Sears or Davis. cnpp.usda.gov
BTW, one of the reasons for the greens drink, it’s more than a morning boost, is that phytonutrients nourish the immune system, keeping low grade inflammation response at bay. |
