another interesting article on diet and health

[2thDoc]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/op...?emc=eta1&_r=0

good, easy read.

Just trying, once again, to open up the discourse on diet and overall health.

[2thDoc]

ALMOST half of Americans are on a diet — not surprising, since two-thirds are overweight or obese, a frightening statistic that inspired Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to push through a ban on large soft drinks in New York City. The country is preoccupied with calories. McDonald’s, for instance, is now posting them. But our widespread hope for weight loss makes us vulnerable to all kinds of promises, even ones that aren’t true, when it comes to food.

Perhaps the biggest misconception is that as long as you lose weight, it doesn’t matter what you eat. But it does. Yet being thin and being healthy are not at all the same thing. Being overweight is not necessarily linked with disease or premature death. What you eat affects which diseases you may develop, regardless of whether you’re thin or fat. Some diets that may help you lose weight may be harmful to your health over time.

A widely publicized study earlier this year showed that a low-carb Atkins-type diet might be a faster way to lose weight. That may have given many people the idea that eating meat and butter is the route to thinness and thus health.

In 35 years of medical research, conducted at the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute, which I founded, we have seen that patients who ate mostly plant-based meals, with dishes like black bean vegetarian chili and whole wheat penne pasta with roasted vegetables, achieved reversal of even severe coronary artery disease. They also engaged in moderate exercise and stress-management techniques, and participated in a support group. The program also led to improved blood flow and significantly less inflammation which matters because chronic inflammation is an underlying cause of heart disease and many forms of cancer. We found that this program may also slow, stop or reverse the progression of early stage prostate cancer, as well as reverse the progression of Type 2 diabetes.

Also, we found that it changed gene expression in over 500 genes in just three months, “turning on” genes that protect against disease and “turning off” genes that promote breast cancer, prostate cancer, inflammation and oxidative stress.

The program, too, has been associated with increased telomerase, which increases telomere length, the ends of our chromosomes that are thought to control how long we live (studies done in collaboration with Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, who shared the Nobel Prize in 2009 with Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for discovering telomerase). As our telomeres get longer, our lives may get longer.

In a randomized controlled trial, patients on this lifestyle program lost an average of 24 pounds after one year and maintained a 12-pound weight loss after five years. The more closely the patients followed this program, the more improvement we measured in each category — at any age.

It’s not low carb or low fat. An optimal diet is low in unhealthful carbs (both sugar and other refined carbohydrates) and low in fat (especially saturated fats and trans fats) as well as in red meat and processed foods.

WHAT you eat is as important as what you exclude — your diet needs to be high in healthful carbs like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, soy products in natural, unrefined forms and some fish, like salmon. There are hundreds of thousands of health-enhancing substances in these foods. And what’s good for you is good for the planet.

Calories do count — fat is much denser in calories, so when you eat less fat, you consume fewer calories, without consuming less food. Also, it’s easy to eat too many calories from sugar and other refined carbs because they are so low in fiber that you can consume large amounts without getting full. Sugar is absorbed so quickly that you get repeated insulin surges, which promote Type 2 diabetes and accelerate the conversion of calories into body fat.

But never underestimate the power of telling people what they want to hear — like cheeseburgers and bacon are good for you. People are drawn to Atkins-type diets in part because, as the study showed, they produce a higher metabolic rate. But a low-carb diet increases metabolic rate because it’s stressful to your body. Just because something increases your metabolic rate doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Amphetamines will also increase your metabolism and burn calories faster, which is why they are used to help people lose weight, at least temporarily. But they stress your body and may mortgage your health in the progress.

Patients on an Atkins diet in this study showed more than double the level of CRP (C-reactive protein), which is a measure of chronic inflammation and also significantly higher levels of cortisol, a key stress hormone. Both of these increase the risk of heart disease and other chronic diseases. A major research article published recently in the British Medical Journal studied 43,396 Swedish women over 16 years. It concluded that “low carbohydrate-high protein diets ... are associated with increased risk of cardiovascular diseases.” An important article in The New England Journal of Medicine examined data from a study showing that high-protein, low-carb diets promote coronary artery disease even if they don’t increase traditional cardiac risk factors like blood pressure or cholesterol levels. A diet low in fat and high in unrefined carbohydrates caused the least amount of coronary artery blockages, whereas an Atkins-type diet caused the most.

Outcomes from more than 37,000 men from the Harvard-sponsored Health Professionals Follow-Up Study and more than 83,000 women from the Nurses’ Health Study who were followed for many years showed that consumption of both processed and unprocessed red meat, a mainstay of an Atkins diet, is associated with an increased risk of premature death as well as greater incidence of cardiovascular disease, cancer and Type 2 diabetes.

About 75 percent of the $2.8 trillion in annual health care costs in the United States is from chronic diseases that can often be reversed or prevented altogether by a healthy lifestyle. If we put money and effort into helping people make better food and exercise choices, we could improve our health and reduce the cost of health care. For example, Medicare is now covering this program for reversing heart disease. In an increasingly polarized political landscape, this approach provides an alternative to some Republicans who want to privatize or dismantle Medicare and some Democrats who want to simply raise taxes or increase the deficit without addressing the diet and lifestyle choices that account for so much health spending.

This way of living helps you lose weight and keep it off while enhancing rather than harming your health.

A clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and the founder of the Preventive Medicine Research Center

[turbo]

I stopped reading at Michael Bloomberg.

[GobblerHntr]

Hey you got further than I did. I stopped at " another interesting article"

[Bownut]

He's just got a beef with .............beef. No mention of chicken or fish, at all.

[2thDoc]

easy now. good article on health. it mentions fish, for sure. It just happens to say that eating fatty meat isn't the wisest choice. It in no way says that you shouldnt eat meat.

I just like for people to see that there is a pretty simple formula that scientists CAN agree on these days. Stay away from sugar and processed foods. Period. End of discussion.

[Tater]

I have some breaking news for you and yours.....EVERY American is on a diet.

[Tater]

And......

[Tater]

[XHailGC]

[2thDoc]

nice bacon lattice work.

[CAMO SNOB]

I only looked at the pictures

[marsh chicken]

Patients on an Atkins diet in this study showed more than double the level of CRP (C-reactive protein)

Did they mean CRP or hs-CRP I wonder?

High levels of HS-CRP are a huge indicator of cardiovascular disease.

[2thDoc]

A diet low in fat and high in unrefined carbohydrates caused the least amount of coronary artery blockages, whereas an Atkins-type diet caused the most.

we are getting to the "meat" of the matter, aren't we?

[Bownut]

You can do an Atkins style diet with fish and chicken too.

[2thDoc]

absolutely you can. I think the true "atkins" diet just stays away from any and all carbs.

That is why I think the paleo lifestyle makes more sense and is simpler for most to follow.

NOW, about what Tater said about people being on diets. That's likely true...but pretty stupid. I think the LIFESTYLE of the paleo mantra is a good one. Make wise dietary choices ALL THE TIME....not a diet.

[LabLuvR]

Why don't you diet freaks go to www.whogivesashit.com?? There u can discuss the issue with a bunch of women who care.

[Glenn]

Go be fat and sick in another forum.

[2thDoc]

amen

I am here to tell you that "dieting" isnt a wise choice

AND

what you eat is really important.

[marsh chicken]

This ties in well with what Glenn and 2th have been discussing. Inflammation is now being strongly linked to a number of disease states, including CVD. Cholesterol is still very important as well. Although the medical community is starting to look at the particle sizes of the cholesterol in your blood. A patient with low cholesterol, but large particle sizes, are much more apt to experience a coronary event than those with higher cholesterol, but small particle size. Think of a single hair floating down the drain vs a big gunk of hair. One floats on through with a hitch, the other clogs the drain and causes a fucking mess. This is helping explain why seemingly fit young men drop dead of a heart attack at 35, while the fatass truck driver who eats cheeseburgers lives to be 70.


Thousands of heart attacks and strokes could be prevented—and millions of dollars in healthcare costs saved—if doctors used a new, more accurate screening strategy to identify at-risk patients, according to new research presented at the International Society of PharmacoEconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) Annual Meeting in Quebec.

The study was the first to analyze clinical and financial outcomes of adding a multimarker blood test to standard cholesterol testing. The new test checks a sample of the patient’s blood for three inflammatory biomarkers that may signal future heart attack and stroke risk. Each biomarker test costs $20 to $50.

Researchers from Cleveland HeartLab (CHL) and economists from Analysis Group calculated that if a commercially insured U.S. health plan with one million members adopted this approach, 2,018 heart attacks and 1,848 strokes could potentially be avoided, resulting in $180.6 million in cost savings over five years, compared to outcomes if standard screening methods were used.

Heart Disease by The Numbers: An Infographic

A More Accurate Way to Detect Heart Attack Risk
Improved strategies to detect hidden cardiovascular disease (CVD) are urgently needed, given that for 30 percent of people with CVD, the first symptom is death—often from a heart attack or stroke, says lead study author Marc Penn, MD, PhD, FACC, director of research at Summa Cardiovascular Institute and chief medical officer of CHL.

“Adding routine inflammatory testing to standard cholesterol takes prevention to the next level at very low cost, with a potentially enormous saving in both money and lives,” says Dr. Penn. This combined screening approach is known as multimarker testing.

Multimarker testing detects 37 to 43 percent more at-risk patients than would have been identified through checking levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol alone, a 2013 studyby Dr. Penn and MDVIP, a physician group specializing is personalized medicine, found. The research, which included more than 95,000 patients, was published in Future Cardiology.

Are Your Arteries on Fire?
“Inflammation testing is like a fire alarm to warn of cardiovascular danger,” saysBradley Bale, MD, medical director of the heart health program for Grace Clinic in Lubbock, Texas and coauthor of Beat the Heart Attack Gene. “With these tests, we can find out if seemingly healthy patients are actually at high risk for heart attack or stroke.”

For example, adds Dr. Bale, “We have a patient who is in such superb physical condition that we’ve nicknamed him Superman. He only consulted us because his wife talked him into getting checked, but inflammatory testing revealed that his arteries were on fire—and ultrasound imaging found huge plaque deposits.”

These findings “were the cardiovascular equivalent of kryptonite in Superman’s arteries,” continues Dr. Bale, who routinely uses inflammatory testing in his medical practice.

10 Top Health Risks For Men

Warning Signs of an Impending Heart Attack
In a new paper, Dr. Bale reports that inflammatory testing—along with imaging—are key reasons why medical providers can actually guarantee arterial wellness.

The inflammatory tests used in the study check levels of these three biomarkers:

Myeloperoxidase (MPO). This immune system enzyme is normally only found at the site of an infection. Having elevated levels in the blood was the single strongest predictor of heart attack risk in the 2013 CHL/MDVIP study discussed above. “High MPO signals a high likelihood of vulnerable plaque [the most dangerous kind] in the arteries,” says Dr. Penn.

Lp-PLA2. This blood vessel enzyme, found to be the second most predictive of heart attack risk in the CHL/MDVIP study if elevated, also warns of vulnerable plaque that could erupt like a volcano, says Dr. Bale. “Lp-PLA2 has also been shown in a recent study to be a direct player in the atherosclerotic disease process.”

High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP). This protein, produced in the liver, rises when there’s inflammation in the body. “In one large study, high levels of hsCRP were linked to triple the risk of heart attacks, compared to people with normal levels,” says Dr. Bale, who also points that a number of other conditions, including infections and inflammatory diseases.
50 Percent of Heart Attack Sufferers Have Normal Cholesterol
“Traditionally, doctors have focused on identifying and treating people with high cholesterol, but in 2014, this strategy is not sufficient because about 50 percent of people who have heart attacks or strokes have normal cholesterol levels,” reports Dr. Penn. “Inflammation testing can improve outcomes by identifying people with previously unsuspected risk.”

“Being able to tell which patients’ arteries are on fire—and prescribe appropriate treatments, which can include weight loss, more exercise, improved diets and medications—is key to saving lives, by taking early action to prevent heart attacks and strokes,” says Dr. Bale.

Currently, Medicare covers all three tests, but coverage varies among other plans.

“Every insurance plan should pay for these tests because arterial inflammation has been shown to actually cause cardiovascular disease—and ignite heart attacks. This study is exciting because it suggests that inexpensive tests can lead to huge cost savings,” adds Dr. Bale.