[podcast]http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/wp-content/uploads/llvlcep24.mp3[/podcast]
Hello, and welcome back to “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show With Jimmy Moore” podcast as we continue our “Fact-Filled February” with a look at the importance of fats (also known as lipids) to the human diet.
While most of the “experts” and the media still erroneously fixate on the role of fat in the obesity epidemic, the fact of the matter is fat has very little to do with why we are fat.
In Episode 24, Jimmy presents some interesting truths direct from the science lab showing what really happens to blood levels of saturated fats when the consumption of Omega-rich fats goes up or down. Prepare for a BIG surprise!
LINKS MENTIONED IN EPISODE 24
– Dr. Sarah Conklin’s study presented at the American Psychosomatic Society meeting in March 2006
– American Heart Association web site
– Jimmy Moore’s review of Dr. Nicholas Perricone’s weight loss diet book
– American Society of Bariatric Physicians
– Men’s Health magazine article on Dr. Mary Vernon and her work with diabetes patients
– Jimmy Moore’s interview with Dr. Jeff Volek
– Related blog post: “Defending Fat With Facts”
– Related blog post: “Saturated Fat Can Be Good For You”
Did you miss something Jimmy said? All you need to do is click on the link below to read a full transcript of Episode 24!
TRANSCRIPT:
This is Episode 24 of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore” and we’re gonna hop right into today’s topic because it’s a good one. Continuing on with the “Fact-Filled February” where we are focusing on the latest research that has come out about the low-carb lifestyle, this episode we will zero in on studies involving that healthiest of all macronutrients known as fat. For many years, we’ve been told to simply trust in certain nutritional concepts that seem reasonable at face value. See if any of these commonly held beliefs about health sound familiar to you:
– Eating fat makes you fat.
– Low-carb diets are unhealthy because they contain too much fat.
– Saturated fat is very dangerous to consume.
– Low-fat diets will protect you against heart disease.
– Carbohydrates are essential in a “healthy” diet.
Sure, you will hear most of the so-called health “experts” proclaim how awful eating fat is for you because it has over twice the calories of protein and carbohydrates and will allegedly clog your arteries (yadda, yadda, yadda!). But the truth is fat has some important qualities about it that many people have never even heard about. Take mental health, for example. Did you know there was a study presented at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Psychosomatic Society in March 2006 that concluded an increased consumption of omega-3 fatty acids could play a role in improving your overall state of mind, controlling mood swings and diminishing erratic and sometimes suicidal behavior? Probably not. But for those of us who are livin’ la vida low-carb, this is excellent news since we have been preaching the message that omega-3 fats are important for heart health for a long time. Now this study shows that consuming fats like these can also benefit your mental health as well. BONUS! Led by researcher Dr. Sarah Conklin, from the psychiatry department at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, they examined 106 healthy volunteers and discovered a rather peculiar link between omega-3 fatty acids and the study participant’s overall mood. Side-by-side blood test comparisons of the dietary intake of omega-3 fatty acid levels were lined up with the study participants’ scores on three accepted tests for depression, impulsiveness and personality. For the study, the researchers did not ask the participants to make any changes in their regular eating schedule. What they discovered in this study was eye-opening to say the least. Those who had lower blood levels of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids reported having symptoms of depression while also having an overall pessimistic view of life. Additionally, many of these same people were also found to be more spur-of-the-moment in their decision-making and taking unnecessary risks in their life. Conversely, those study participants with more elevated levels of omega-3 fatty acids had a happier demeanor and a positive attitude about their overall life as well as a much more stable mental state. Dr. Conklin said this newfound connection between omega-3 fatty acids and mental disease in otherwise healthy adults warrants further investigation into whether dietary recommendations should be altered to include higher consumption of foods that contain the omega-3 fats to help treat mental disease. She said that “a number of previous studies have linked low levels of omega-3 to clinically significant conditions such as major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, substance abuse and attention deficit disorder. However, few studies have shown that these relationships also occur in healthy adults. This study opens the door for future research looking at what effect increasing omega-3 intake, whether by eating omega-3 rich foods like salmon, or taking fish-oil supplements, has on people’s mood.”
We’ll keep an eye open for more studies on this. Some have contended that eating a low-carb diet can cause you to be in a perpetual bad mood. However, my experience has been that diets that are lower in FAT, not carbs led me to experience wild mood swings because they kept me on a sugar rollercoaster ride most of the time and, even worse, failed to satisfy my hunger. I get irritable when I’m hungry and I stayed that way the entire time I was on a low-fat diet. But not anymore now that I’m livin’ la vida low-carb, enjoying the great-tasting healthy foods I get to eat now, and consuming more fat as part of my healthy lifestyle while controlling my weight permanently. I supplement my diet with fish oil and have done so every single day since I started low-carbin’ it in January 2004. The study conducted by Dr. Conklin and her fellow researchers concludes that since the American Heart Association (AHA) recommends Americans eat fish twice a week to get omega-3 fatty acids into their diet, that advice should be heeded to improve heart health and quite possibly improve mental health as well.
Certainly advocates of low-carb should be jumping for joy at yet another health benefit of consuming omega-3 fatty acids, but how is this going to translate in a world that has become so scared of ANY kind of fat that they’ll just ignore the call to consume more? Fat-phobia in the United States is very real no thanks to the government indoctrination we have heard over the past three decades about eliminating fat from our diet. That’s exactly what I have been afraid of with all these low-fat apologists out there barking away at their message as if they have the final say about what is healthy for people. We know better because we have educated ourselves about why consuming fat is a good thing for our health while eating sugar, white flour, starchy, and processed foods are decidedly unhealthy. Bestselling author and health expert Dr. Nicholas Perricone recommends eating more omega-3s as part of his weight loss program and suggests people also start eating more Wild Alaskan Salmon. Ever since I read his book, I have eaten at least 3 servings of salmon every week. You can make it up just like tuna salad with sugar-free pickle relish and yummy full-fat mayonaisse. Scoop that on top of a bed of baby spinach or a spring greens salad and you’ve got a filling, high-protein, low-carb meal chock full of healthy portions of omega-3 fatty acids! When are we going to hear the message that FAT is healthy from the AHA, hmm? All they ever say is low-fat/low-calorie/portion control! But clearly there are good fats to be heralded and it’s high time they start doing that now that not only heart health is being affected but mental health also. Thankfully the bygone days of bemoaning fat as unhealthy are coming to an end. We can only hope the damage done by these many years of garbage science hasn’t doomed us to failed health–both physically and mentally!
Another study on just how healthy fat is for you to consume was presented at the American Society of Bariatric Physicians conference in November 2006 by two highly-respected researchers–Dr. Stephen Phinney and Dr. Jeff Volek–who conducted a side-by-side comparison of the amount of saturated fat in the blood of people on a low-carb diet with those following the highly-touted low-fat diet. What they found was the low-carb study participants had “significantly less” saturated fat in their blood than the low-fatties did. Here are the actual numbers from the study:
– LOW-FAT/HIGH-CARB DIETERS: lowered the saturated fat in their blood by 24%
– LOW-CARB/HIGH-FAT DIETERS: lowered the saturated fat in their blood by 57%
– Also, eating 3X the saturated fat cut the amount found in the blood in half
Respected low-carb practitioner Dr. Mary Vernon, who gained national prominence for her work with diabetes patients after being featured in Men’s Health magazine in late 2006, made these conclusions about fat consumption based on the research: “Eating fat (whatever kind) does not make you fat. It does not increase blood stream saturated fat. Eating carbs does make you fat. Eating carbs does put saturated fat in your blood stream.” Even Dr. Volek who was one of the two researchers in the study presented at the Bariatric Physicians conference last year had this to say about fat when I interviewed him last year: “Eating fat does not make you fat, storing fat makes you fat. And carbohydrates play a major role in storing fat. So the level of dietary carbohydrate is really the most important factor to control because it dictates what happens to fat. Carbs are dominant and fat is passive. When carbohydrates are low, fat tends to be burned, and when carbohydrates are high dietary fat tends to be stored. The same holds true for the atherogenic effects of saturated fat. The body handles saturated fat better when carbohydrates are low.” This data from Dr. Phinney and Dr. Volek truly is cutting edge nutritional information that unfortunately is widely ignored by much of the medical establishment and the media because it doesn’t fit within their template that fat is bad for you. If we are ever going to move forward in this debate about how to deal with the obesity epidemic, then widespread acceptance of these and other studies about the low-carb lifestyle need to be embraced as scientific truth just as Dr. Dean Ornish and other low-fat apologists so often quote from their low-fat studies. You can’t cherry pick the studies you like from the ones you don’t. Losing weight and getting healthy does not have a one-size-fits-all solution. But we could all stand to stop eating refined carbohydrates, eat more green leafy veggies as well as nuts and seeds, consume enough protein to build and maintain muscle function, stop eating when you get full, and always continue the education process when it comes to your own diet and health. Is anyone going to argue against any of these very basic truths to weight loss and better health? We are obligated to share them with people lest we continue heading down that path to 100% obesity that I talked about in Episode 21. I will keep doing my best to keep that from happening if it’s the last thing I do on this Earth!
That’s it for Episode 24 of “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show with Jimmy Moore.” Be sure to leave feedback in the show notes section at TheLivinLowCarbShow.com or call our listener comment line anytime at (206) 203-4192. Also, we would appreciate any feedback you could leave about the show at iTunes to tell others about what we are doing here to educate, encourage, and entertain people about the wild and wacky world of low-carb living! THANKS so much for listening today and come back next week as we continue “Fact-Filled February” by making the science understandable to the common man. So, until then, keep on livin’ la vida low-carb![podcast]http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/wp-content/uploads/llvlcep24.mp3[/podcast]