The Digest - 31 May - Nutrition Focus

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  • 2 new meds for IBS approved.
  • Sugar content in “healthy children fruits snacks” from the UK scary.
  • A superfood to always include in your diet.
  • Another study demonstrating (unsurprising) link between insulin resistance and heart disease.
  • Vitamin D added to bread in the UK. Be careful with this one.
  • Eggs vs. oatmeal breakfast on cholesterol, glucose, and inflammation. Who’s your money on?
  • Scientific American: latest science publication to counter-attack Dean Ornish.

 

  • The FDA has approved 2 new prescription medications to treat IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). One is an antibiotic (!!!) and the other slows down the contractions in your intestines to prevent diarrhea. This is another example of giving people medication to treat symptoms instead of the real cause of the problems. The blame doesn’t fall just on the pharma companies or the FDA: it’s “us”. We’re constantly looking for a “quick and easy fix”, a pill to pop. There are ways to naturally overcome IBS (and I’ve successfully accomplished that many times). By definition, IBS is almost always caused by an irritation of the intestinal wall. This means there is always “something” causing the irritation. The most common culprits are FODMAPs – if you suffer from IBS, make a list of the FODMAPS and avoid them at all cost for 2 weeks and I promise you will feel better – your intestinal lining regenerates itself every 7-10 days, so avoiding any irritants for 2 weeks should give you clear results.

 

 

  • I always have pumpkin seeds on hand. They’re packed with essential vitamins and minerals and can be easily incorporated into any sweet or savory dish. This simple article highlights the nutritional benefits of pumpkin seeds, including one which surprised me personally (and which I’ll investigate further): “Pumpkin seeds also are one of the only foods that increase in nutritional value over time.”

 

  • I’ve often advocated (based on research I read) that the primary cause of heart disease is high carbohydrate diets (combined with lack of movement and other lifestyle factors). After all, the “explosion” in heart disease in the past 40 years correlates very well with the change in the typical diet from a high fat/low carb to a high carb/low fat since the mid 1950s. This study looked at the predictive nature (over 5 years) of “insulin resistance” as it relates to heart disease: the conclusion was clear-cut: none of the people with no insulin resistance developed heart disease, and 14% of the people with the highest insulin resistance were diagnosed with heart disease. What causes insulin resistance? By definition: high carb diets!

 

  • Vitamin D is being added to bread in the UK and I don’t like it! Granted most people (and I do mean most) are deficient in Vitamin D, and I do personally supplement with Vitamin D. HOWEVER: I supplement with Vitamin D in conjunction with Vitamin K2, and I recommend to everyone to do the same. Vitamin D helps your body extract calcium from food/digestion and into your bloodstream. Ok so now you have plenty of calcium in your bloodstream, but unless you have enough Vitamin K2, that calcium is going to stay in your bloodstream and increase the risk of arterial calcification (hardening of arteries). In fact, there are many studies linking Vitamin D supplementation to arterial calcification, and the main reason in my opinion is absence of K2 from diet or supplementation. We’re deficient in D because of “low fat diets” and “lack of sun exposure combined with sunscreen obsession”. We’re deficient in K2 because we’ve been misled to avoid K2-rich foods: butter, egg yolks, cheese, liver, etc…

 

  • This study has once again caused chaos in the mainstream “eat low fat” world: scientists took a group of people with Type II Diabetes (lifestyle acquired diabetes). The study was a randomized cross-over clinical trial (a high standard), where scientists compared 2 iso-caloric breakfasts (eggs vs. oatmeal) in relation to cardiovascular risk factors and inflammatory markers. The results: no difference in blood lipids (cholesterol), glucose or Hba1c, but the “egg” breakfast did result in lower overall inflammation markers, putting eggs ahead of oatmeal for lowering risk of inflammation (the major cause of plaque formation and arterial calcification).

 

  • Scientific American in the defense of science: Scientific American is the latest scientific publication (following several others) to rebuff Dean Ornish’s op-ed in the New York times, in which he claimed that high fat / high protein diets are to blame for modern health problems. Just like previous publications, Scientific American demonstrates that Ornish’ claims were flawed and unsupported by science. I won’t get into the details here, you all know my position on this, but it’s still an interesting read which sheds light on common misconceptions.