7 Reasons to Eat More Saturated Fat

1) Improved cardiovascular risk factors

Saturated fat plays a key role in cardiovascular health. The addition of saturated fat to the diet reduces the levels of a substance called lipoprotein (a) that correlates strongly with risk for heart disease. Research has shown that when women diet, those eating the greatest percentage of the total fat in their diets as saturated fat lose the most weight.

2) Stronger bones

Saturated fat is required for calcium to be effectively incorporated into bone. According to one of the foremost research experts in dietary fats and human health, Dr. Mary Enig, Ph.D., there’s a case to be made for having as much as 50 percent of the fats in your diet as saturated fats for this reason.

3) Improved liver health

Saturated fat has been shown to protect the liver from alcohol and medications, including acetaminophen and other drugs commonly used for pain and arthritis.

4) Healthy lungs

For proper function, the airspaces of the lungs have to be coated with a thin layer of lung surfactant. The fat content of lung surfactant is 100 percent saturated fatty acids. Replacement of these critical fats by other types of fat makes faulty surfactant and potentially causes breathing difficulties.

5) Healthy brain

Your brain is mainly made of fat and cholesterol. The lion’s share of the fatty acids in the brain are actually saturated. A diet that skimps on healthy saturated fats robs your brain of the raw materials it needs to function optimally.

6) Proper nerve signaling

Certain saturated fats, particularly those found in butter, lard, coconut oil, and palm oil, function directly as signaling messengers that influence metabolism, including such critical jobs as the appropriate release of insulin.

7) Strong immune system

Saturated fats found in butter and coconut oil (myristic acid and lauric acid) play key roles in immune health. Loss of sufficient saturated fatty acids in the white blood cells hampers their ability to recognize and destroy foreign invaders, such as viruses, bacteria, and fungi.

Organic is Healthier and More Nutritious According to New Study

A new report by the French Agency for Food Safety (AFSSA) has found that organic foods are better for you and contain less pesticides and nitrates, which have been linked to a range of health problems including diabetes and Alzheimer's.

Andre Leu, Chairman of the Organic Federation of Australia, says the up-to-date exhaustive and critical evaluation of the nutritional quality of organic food and has found organic foods have higher levels of minerals and antioxidants.'

"The AFSSA study has been published in the peer reviewed scientific journal Agronomy for Sustainable Development ensuring that it has met rigorous scientific standards," Leu said.

The major points of The French Agency for Food Safety study are:

1. Organic plant products contain more dry matter (more nutrient dense)

2. Have higher levels of minerals

3. Contain more anti-oxidants such as phenols and salicylic acid (known to protect against cancers, heart disease and many other health problems)

4. Organic animal products contain more polyunsaturated fatty acids (protect against heart disease)

5. Carbohydrate, protein and vitamin levels are insufficiently documented



6. 94-100% of organic foods do not contain any pesticide residues

7. Organic vegetables contain far less nitrates, about 50% less (high nitrate levels are linked to a range of health problems including diabetes and Alzheimer's)

8. Organic cereals contain similar levels of mycotoxins as conventional ones

How greens may protect the heart

Researchers have discovered a possible reason why green vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower are good for the heart.

Their work suggests a chemical found in the vegetables can boost a natural defence mechanism to protect arteries from disease.

The Imperial College London team hope their work could lead to new dietary treatments to prevent heart problems.

Much heart disease is caused by the build up of fatty plaques in the arteries known as atherosclerosis.

However, arteries do not get clogged up with these plaques in a uniform way.

Bends and branches of blood vessels - where blood flow is disrupted and can be sluggish - are much more prone to the build-up.

The latest study has shown that a protein that usually protects against plaque build up called Nrf2 is inactive in areas of arteries that are prone to disease.

However, it also found that treatment with a chemical found in green "brassica" vegetables such as broccoli can activate Nrf2 in these disease-prone regions.

Lead researcher Dr Paul Evans said: "We found that the innermost layer of cells at branches and bends of arteries lack the active form of Nrf2, which may explain why they are prone to inflammation and disease.

"Treatment with the natural compound sulforaphane reduced inflammation at the high-risk areas by 'switching on' Nrf2.

"Sulforaphane is found naturally in broccoli, so our next steps include testing whether simply eating broccoli, or other vegetables in their 'family', has the same protective effect.

"We also need to see if the compound can reduce the progression of disease in affected arteries."

Targeted approaches

Professor Peter Weissberg, medical director of the British Heart Foundation, which funded the research, said: "These fascinating findings provide a possible mechanism by which eating vegetables protects against heart disease.

"As well as adding evidence to support the importance of eating 'five-a-day', the biochemistry revealed in this research could lead to more targeted dietary or medical approaches to prevent or lessen disease that leads to heart attacks and strokes."

Using normal mice, and mice engineered to lack the Nrf2 protein, the research found that in straight sections of arteries Nrf2 was present in the endothelial 'lining' cells.

Through its action on other proteins, it prevented the cells from becoming inflamed, an early stage in the development of atherosclerosis.

In the lining cells of disease-prone sites - such as bending or branched arteries - Nrf2 was attached to a protein that made it inactive. This stifled its protective properties.

But the addition of sulforaphane re-activated Nrf2 in the disease-prone regions of the artery, restoring the cells' ability to protect themselves from becoming inflamed.

The researchers believe that this will enable these artery regions to remain healthy for longer, or even reduce the progression of existing disease.

Yoga Classes Help Lower Back Pain

Yoga classes helped people with chronic lower back pain improve their mood and ability to function, and it eased their pain more than conventional treatment alone, according to a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health.

People who were assigned to take yoga for two months experienced a 29 percent reduction in functional disability and a 42 percent reduction in pain, the authors reported in the September 1 edition of the journal Spine. Yoga was also associated with a 45.7 percent decrease in symptoms of depression over conventional therapy alone.

"Yoga improves functional disability, pain intensity, and depression in adults with [chronic lower back pain]," Dr. Kimberly Williams of West Virginia University and colleagues concluded. "There was also a clinically important trend for the yoga group to reduce their pain medication usage compared to the control group."

How Coconut Oil Could Help Reduce The Symptoms Of Type 2 Diabetes

A new study in animals demonstrates that a diet rich in coconut oil protects against 'insulin resistance' (an impaired ability of cells to respond to insulin) in muscle and fat. The diet also avoids the accumulation of body fat caused by other high fat diets of similar calorie content. Together these findings are important because obesity and insulin resistance are major factors leading to the development of Type 2 diabetes.

The study is also interesting because it helps explain human studies showing that people who incorporate medium chain 'fatty acids', such as those found in coconut oil, into their diets can lose body fat.

Dr Nigel Turner and Associate Professor Jiming Ye, from Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, compared fat metabolism and insulin resistance in mice fed coconut oil and lard based diets. Their findings are now published online in the international journal Diabetes.

"The medium chain fatty acids, like those found in coconut oil, are interesting to us because they behave very differently to the fats normally found in our diets," said study leader Nigel Turner.

"Unlike the long chain fatty acids contained in animal fats, medium chain fatty acids are small enough to enter mitochondria - the cells' energy burning powerhouses - directly, where they can then be converted to energy."

"Unfortunately the downside to eating medium chain fatty acids is that they can lead to fat build up in the liver, an important fact to be taken into consideration by anyone considering using them as a weight loss therapy."

Fat storage is determined by the balance between how much fat is taken in by cells and how much of this fat is burned for energy. When people eat a high fat diet, their bodies attempt to compensate by increasing their capacity to oxidise fat. The medium chain fatty acid (coconut oil) diet was more effective at increasing the oxidative capacity of muscle than the long chain fatty acid (lard) diet leading to less fat storage in muscle and better insulin action.

According to Turner, the lard-based diet used in this research is similar to the diet eaten by people in the Western world. "Its fatty acid composition is about 40% saturated fats, 40% monounsaturated fats and 20% polyunsaturated fats, of which the vast proportion is omega-6, rather than omega-3," he said.

"Obese humans usually eat 40-50% of their calories as fat. Our mice were fed 45% of their calories as fat."

"No high fat diet is good, and the normal dietary combination of long chain fats leads to an overload that our bodies can't cope with. Therefore high consumption of common dietary fats is contributing directly towards the global escalation of obesity and Type 2 diabetes."

"If someone is trying to prevent weight gain, we can see they may benefit from substituting oils containing medium chain fatty acids for other oils in their diet, as long as consideration is given to the potential problem of excess fat in the liver. Other natural dietary alternatives, such as fish oil, might be helpful because the fatty acids in fish oil are thought to exert a lot of their beneficial effects through improving fat oxidation in the liver."

How much omega-3 fatty acid do we need to prevent cardiovascular disease?

New research in the FASEB Journal identifies the 'Goldilocks dose' of DHA that is 'just right' for preventing oxidative stress in men
A team of French scientists have found the dose of DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) that is "just right" for preventing cardiovascular disease in healthy men. In a research report appearing in the September 2009 print issue of The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), the scientists show that a 200 mg dose of DHA per day is enough to affect biochemical markers that reliably predict cardiovascular problems, such as those related to aging, atherosclerosis, and diabetes. This study is the first to identify how much DHA is necessary to promote optimal heart health.

"This study shows that regularly consuming small amounts of DHA is likely to improve the health status of people, especially in regards to cardiovascular function," said Michel Lagarde, co-author of the study.

To determine the optimal dose of DHA, Lagarde and colleagues examined the effects of increasing doses of DHA on 12 healthy male volunteers between ages of 53 and 65. These men consumed doses of DHA at 200, 400, 800, and 1600 mg per day for two weeks for each dose amount, with DHA being the only omega-3 fatty acid in their diet. Blood and urine samples were collected before and after each dose and at eight weeks after DHA supplementation stopped. The researchers then examined these samples for biochemical markers indicating the effects of each dose on the volunteers.

"Now that we have a very good idea about how much DHA is just right, the next step is to try it out in an expanded clinical trial that involves many more people," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "Until then, I'll stick with tasty foods that contain DHA, like fish, rather than getting a quick fatty-acid fix at the local vitamin store."

Why You Should Avoid Red Rice Yeast

Red yeast rice, a mainstay of Chinese medicine since ancient times, is emerging in drug stores and vitamin shops as a natural tool to lower cholesterol. The substance is actually derived from a fungus that grows on rice and is eaten as a dietary staple in certain Asian countries.



As its popularity grows, I wanted to share some important information, and a warning of sorts, about red yeast rice.



Even though it is natural, red yeast rice is not a panacea or miracle cure for those of you looking to lower your cholesterol. In fact, using it is an approach I would recommend avoiding.


What’s All the Hype about Red Yeast Rice?



Red yeast rice is sold over-the-counter and is often promoted as an alternative to cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, especially for those who stop taking the drugs due to side effects, like unbearable muscle pain.



In one recent study, researchers studied 62 people with high cholesterol, half of whom were given red yeast rice twice a day for six months while the other half received a placebo. The people taking red yeast rice also had weekly meetings for three months during which they learned about how to incorporate healthy nutrition, exercise and stress management into their lives.



After six months, the researchers found[1]:



LDL (bad) cholesterol levels decreased by an average of 35 mg/dL in those taking red yeast rice, compared with 15 mg/dL in the placebo group
Total cholesterol levels improved more in the red yeast rice group than the placebo group


Although the researchers acknowledged that the study was small and of short duration, they concluded that red yeast rice, coupled with lifestyle changes, could decrease LDL cholesterol without increasing pain levels or liver or muscle enzyme levels (as often happens in people taking statin drugs). They recommended the yeast rice as a valid treatment option for people who cannot tolerate statin drugs.



A separate study, this one of 5,000 people who have suffered a heart attack, also found favorable results. Those who took an extract of red yeast rice for five years reduced their risk of repeat heart attacks by 45 percent. It also lowered their chances of having a heart procedure such as bypass surgery or angioplasty, and even appeared to reduce their risk of cancer by as much as two-thirds.[2]



So why, then, do I NOT recommend you take this “natural” supplement if you have high cholesterol?



The answer is two-fold and may surprise you:



Red yeast rice is a statin drug -- with all the same side effects
Cholesterol is not your enemy


Red Yeast Rice is a Statin Drug



The “active” compounds in red yeast rice are known as monacolins, and are substances known to inhibit cholesterol synthesis. One type of monacolin, "monacolin K," is also known as mevinolin or lovastatin.[3]



Lovastatin, as you might now recognize, is the first statin drug to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and it goes by the brand names of Mevacor and Altocor. So if you’re taking red yeast rice in the hopes of avoiding a statin drug -- surprise!



They’re actually essentially the same drug.



And if you are concerned about your cholesterol levels, taking a drug, even a “natural” drug like red yeast rice, should be your absolute last resort. And when I say last resort, I’m saying the odds are very high, greater than 100 to 1, that you don’t need drugs to lower your cholesterol.



To put it another way, among the more than 20,000 patients who have come to my clinic, only four or five of them truly needed these drugs, as they had genetic challenges that required it.




Why Statin Drugs -- Including Red Yeast Rice -- Should be Avoided



Count yourself lucky that you probably do NOT need to take cholesterol-lowering medications of any kind, because these are some nasty little pills.



Statin drugs work by inhibiting an enzyme in your liver that’s needed to manufacture cholesterol. What is so concerning about this is that when you go tinkering around with the delicate workings of your body, you risk throwing everything off kilter.



For starters, statin drugs deplete your body of Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), which is beneficial to heart health and muscle function. Because doctors rarely inform people of this risk, and advise them to take a CoQ10 supplement, this depletion leads to fatigue, muscle weakness, soreness and eventually heart failure.



Muscle pain and weakness, a condition called rhabdomyolysis, is actually the most common side effect of statin drugs, which is thought to occur because statins activate the gene atrogin-1 gene, which plays a key role in muscle atrophy.[4]



By the way, muscle pain and weakness may be an indication that your body tissues are actually breaking down -- a condition that can cause kidney damage.



Statin drugs have also been linked to:



An increased risk of polyneuropathy (nerve damage that causes pain in the hands and feet and trouble walking)
Dizziness
Cognitive impairment, including memory loss[5]
A potential increased risk of cancer[6]
Decreased function of your immune system[7]
Depression
Liver problems, including a potential increase in liver enzymes (so people taking statins must be regularly monitored for normal liver function)

Women With Strong Thigh Muscles Protected From Symptomatic Knee Osteoarthritis

A new study by researchers at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics found that thigh muscle strength does not predict the occurrence of knee osteoarthritis (OA) uncovered in x-rays, but does predict incidence of painful or stiff knee OA. Women with the strongest quadriceps muscles appeared to be protected against the development of knee OA symptoms.

Details of this study appear in the September issue of Arthritis Care & Research, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American College of Rheumatology.

The knee is the most common weight-bearing joint affected by osteoarthritis or degenerative joint disease, a major cause of disability in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that 26.9 million U.S. adults are affected by OA with 16% (aged 45+ years) of those cases occurring in the knee. Approximately 18.7 % of symptomatic knee OA patients are female and 13.5% are male. A Medical Expenditure Panel Survey estimates that total out-of-pocket expenditures for treatment of arthritis was $32 billion in 2005.

Neil Segal, M.D., M.S., and colleagues in a study funded by the National Institute on Aging followed 3,026 men and women ages 50-79 over a 30-month period in the Multicenter Knee Osteoarthritis Study (MOST) to assess whether knee extensor strength would predict incident radiographic (OA that can be determined through X-ray) or symptomatic knee OA. Of those enrolled, a total of 2,519 knees were included in the study of radiographic knee OA and 3,392 knees were evaluated for the combination of radiographic OA and symptoms of OA that include pain, aching or stiffness on most days of the month.

Participants were evaluated for thigh muscle strength using an isokinetic dynamometer, a device that measures the strength of different muscle groups. The balance of muscle strength between quadriceps and hamstrings (H:Q ratio) was used to assess weakness in the lower extremity musculature. X-rays of the knees were taken at the onset of the study and the conclusion to determine the presence of OA. A telephone screen at the beginning and end of the study was conducted to establish if frequent pain, aching or stiffness was present in the knee. Data on height, weight (Body Mass Index-BMI), femoral neck bone mineral density (BMD), and physical activity status was also collected from participants.

By the conclusion of the study 48 of 680 men and 93 of 937 women developed OA detected by x-ray. At the end of the 30-month period 10.1% of women and 7.8% of men displayed signs of symptomatic knee OA. "Our results showed thigh muscle strength was not a significant predictor of radiographic knee OA," concluded the authors. Women in the top third of peak knee extensor strength had a lower incidence of symptomatic knee OA, while men with strong thigh muscles had only slightly better odds of developing OA symptoms compared to men with weaker knee extensor strength. "The H:Q ratios were not predictive of symptomatic knee OA in either men or women," added researchers.

Researchers acknowledge there to be some limitation to the study by not including assessments of hip abductor strength. "Study of hip abductor strength, which is important for control of the knee joint, may be useful in a more comprehensive study of risk for OA of the knee," said Dr. Segal. "These findings suggest that targeted interventions to reduce risk for symptomatic knee OA could be directed toward increasing knee extensor strength," he added.

Why Low Vitamin D Raises Heart Disease Risks In Diabetics

Low levels of vitamin D are known to nearly double the risk of cardiovascular disease in patients with diabetes, and researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis now think they know why.
They have found that diabetics deficient in vitamin D can't process cholesterol normally, so it builds up in their blood vessels, increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke. The new research has identified a mechanism linking low vitamin D levels to heart disease risk and may lead to ways to fix the problem, simply by increasing levels of vitamin D.

"Vitamin D inhibits the uptake of cholesterol by cells called macrophages," says principal investigator Carlos Bernal-Mizrachi, M.D., a Washington University endocrinologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. "When people are deficient in vitamin D, the macrophage cells eat more cholesterol, and they can't get rid of it. The macrophages get clogged with cholesterol and become what scientists call foam cells, which are one of the earliest markers of atherosclerosis."

Why Low Vitamin D Raises Heart Disease Risks In Diabetics
ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2009) — Low levels of vitamin D are known to nearly double the risk of cardiovascular disease in patients with diabetes, and researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis now think they know why.


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See also:
Health & Medicine
Cholesterol
Vitamin
Diabetes
Dietary Supplement
Blood Clots
Heart Disease
Reference
B vitamins
Low density lipoprotein
Vitamin K
Coronary heart disease
They have found that diabetics deficient in vitamin D can't process cholesterol normally, so it builds up in their blood vessels, increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke. The new research has identified a mechanism linking low vitamin D levels to heart disease risk and may lead to ways to fix the problem, simply by increasing levels of vitamin D.

"Vitamin D inhibits the uptake of cholesterol by cells called macrophages," says principal investigator Carlos Bernal-Mizrachi, M.D., a Washington University endocrinologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. "When people are deficient in vitamin D, the macrophage cells eat more cholesterol, and they can't get rid of it. The macrophages get clogged with cholesterol and become what scientists call foam cells, which are one of the earliest markers of atherosclerosis."

Macrophages are dispatched by the immune system in response to inflammation and often are activated by diseases such as diabetes. Bernal-Mizrachi and his colleagues believe that in diabetic patients with inadequate vitamin D, macrophages become loaded with cholesterol and eventually stiffen blood vessels and block blood flow.

Bernal-Mizrachi, an assistant professor of medicine and of cell biology and physiology, studied macrophage cells taken from people with and without diabetes and with and without vitamin D deficiency. His team, led by research assistants Jisu Oh and Sherry Weng, M.D., exposed the cells to cholesterol and to high or low vitamin D levels. When vitamin D levels were low in the culture dish, macrophages from diabetic patients were much more likely to become foam cells.

In the Aug. 25 issue of the journal Circulation, which currently is available online, the team reports that vitamin D regulates signaling pathways linked both to uptake and to clearance of cholesterol in macrophages.

"Cholesterol is transported through the blood attached to lipoproteins such as LDL, the 'bad' cholesterol," Bernal-Mizrachi explains. "As it is stimulated by oxygen radicals in the vessel wall, LDL becomes oxidated, and macrophages eat it uncontrollably. LDL cholesterol then clogs the macrophages, and that's how atherosclerosis begins."

That process becomes accelerated when a person is deficient in vitamin D. And people with type 2 diabetes are very likely to have this deficiency. Worldwide, approximately one billion people have insufficient vitamin D levels, and in women with type 2 diabetes, the likelihood of low vitamin D is about a third higher than in women of the same age who don't have diabetes.

The skin manufactures vitamin D in response to ultraviolet light exposure. But in much of the United States, people don't make enough vitamin D during the winter — when the sun's rays are weaker and more time is spent indoors.

Pomegranate seed oil may prevent diabetes: Study

Consuming oil from pomegranate seeds may prevent the development of diabetes, suggest results from a study with mice fed a high-fat diet.

Pomegranate seed oil, rich in conjugate linolenic acid, was found to change weight gain, reduce body weight, and improve insulin sensitivity in mice, “suggesting that risk of developing type 2 diabetes may have been reduced”, says a paper published in the British Journal of Nutrition.

While the juice and pulp of pomegranate have received considerable attention, particularly for their potential heart health benefits, as well as benefiting joint health and as a potential prevention of prostate cancer, the seeds have been largely ignored.

The source of the fruit and juice’s benefits is the antioxidant content, particularly ellagitannin compounds like punicalagins and punicalins, which accounts for about half of the fruit's antioxidant ability.

However, oil from the fruit’s seeds has minimal antioxidant content, but it is a rich source of 9-cis, 11-trans conjugate linolenic acid. This is a different compound to the one currently on the market - CLA or conjugated linoleic acid.

Study details

Led by Brian McFarlin from the University of Houston, the researchers divided 60 male mice into three equal groups. The first group consumed a high-fat diet, the second group consumed the same high-fat diet but was supplemented with the pomegranate seed oil (61.8 mg per day, POM Wonderful), and the third group consumed a normal diet.

At the end of the study, the mice fed the high-fat diet and supplemented with the pomegranate seed oil gained about 10 grams less than the high-fat only group. Furthermore, insulin sensitivity increased, while leptin decreased and adiponectin increased. “Leptin and adiponectin are closely related to body weight and body composition,” they explained.

However, the researchers did not note any heart health benefits, in terms of reducing the risk for cardiovascular disease. “Despite reduction in weight gain and type 2 diabetes risk, markers for CVD were not altered,” they said.

“It is reasonable to speculate that CVD risk was not altered because POMo lacks the antioxidant properties of pomegranate fruit/juice or was not used at a high enough dose,” they said.

Dr McFarlin and his co-workers stated that future studies should evaluate the potential effects and elucidate the underlying mechanisms of the health benefits of consuming the oil during a period of weight gain.