How do I lower my cholesterol?

I gave a lecture at Mustard Seed Market last week and the topic of cholesterol came up while I was talking about the many benefits of fiber.

[Tangent #1] Fiber, as you probably know, is amazing!  In addition to helping you feel full and slowing absorption of sugars (glucose) into the bloodstream, fiber can bind to dietary cholesterol and prevent excess cholesterol from being absorbed from the small intestine into the bloodstream, which can help lower overall cholesterol.

Apparently, I was not comprehensive enough.  A woman came up to me after the lecture and told me that "cholesterol is necessary" and I should do more research. Haha!  The topic of the lecture was "Get the Skinny on Healthy Weight Management and More!"  The goal was to inspire people to eat more vegetables and fruits, which are loaded with fiber and phytonurients to slow digestion and nourish the body, respectively.  Lipids (commonly called fats) are a different topic entirely and, to do them justice, would have require many more minutes of lecture and discussion.

Instead of haranguing you about it here, I recommend you watch this wonderful video produced by Dr. Mark Hyman, MD, who mirrors my thoughts on the best way to measure cholesterol (i.e. VAP Cholesterol Profile), Statin drugs, and how to achieve healthy cholesterol by changing your diet and lifestyle - all in about 7 minutes!

6 Steps to Healthy Cholesterol, Or Why You Should Stop Your Statins Now

Why Sugar Makes Us Feel Good

I just read a great article from NPR called Why Sugar Makes Us Feel Good.  It is very well done and I recommend you read it or at least watch the short TED-Ed video.  Below are my thoughts, as inspired by the article.

Sugar once in a while is OK, but eating sugar in large quantities, every day turns the innocuous substance into an addictive drug.  We used to eat 2 lbs of sugar each year, now we consume 153! (from dhhs.nh.gov)  Many of my clients have sugar addiction and cravings.  I seems that the more you eat, the more you want to eat.  To help them kick the habit, I recommend they start cutting back little bit by little bit by substituting nutrient-dense foods for the sugary snacks.  It is also important to remember that the hardest time to say NO to a craving is the first time.  With each subsequent time you say NO, the cravings get less intense and, eventually, go away.  At least that is how it worked for me.

I used to be addicted to sugar.  At my undergraduate school, we could eat our fill in the all-you-can-eat cafeteria, but I would sneak cookies out the door with me to eat later.  Study break sweets?  I gobbled them up.  Any time candy, cookies, or cakes were offered, I could not resist them.

Today, those same sugary treats no longer hold any power over me.  I can easily say "no thanks" when offered a doughnut or slice of cheesecake.  As I changed my diet, my taste preferences changed, too.  I no longer crave the foods I once did.  Part of the reason is because I know they are "bad" for me and part of the reason is because they don't taste the same as they used to.

I used to make chocolate chip cookies and down six of them right out of the oven.  Now, when I make chocolate chip cookies, they taste like sugary flour (i.e. have no complex/savory flavors) and eating one makes me feel slightly ill.

I wish I knew exactly what changed (my body, my mind, my stress level?) to make it easier for me to say no; I wish I could share in more detail.  All I know for sure is that it gets easier, you just have to start saying NO to sugar, start saying YES to fresh vegetables, fruits and other nutrient-dense foods, and never give up.

Fruit, like pomegranate, makes a great dessert!

Another Reason to Turkey Trot!

A new research study (pubmed, NYTimes) provides evidence that, when you over eat, exercising can counteract some of the negative effects of over consumption.  At least in the short-term.

I love that this study was E-published, ahead of print, three days before America's day of purposeful overindulgence: Thanksgiving.  Just another reason why running in your local Turkey Trot 5K is a great idea.

The details
The study enrolled 26 healthy men and asked them to over eat for a week.  Half of the men were made to run for 45 minutes, every day, at 70% VO2 max (i.e. "vigorous intensity").  The other half were told to not exercise.  At the end of the week, the non-exercise group had elevated fasting blood sugar and other indicators of metabolic syndrome were present in their fat cells.  This did not occur in the exercise group.

Because I am such a geek, I looked up each gene on NCBI to elucidate it's role in metabolism.

In the non-exercise group who overate, expression of these "unhealthy" genes were up-regulated:
SREBP1c - induces the insulin signal; is considered a "thrify gene"; may participate in "fatty liver"
FAS - cell surface death receptor; has been implicated in various cancers
GLUT4 - insulin-regulated glucose transporter; helps glucose enter all cells of the body (Note: exercise allows glucose to enter the cell without insulin!)

And expression of these "healthy" genes were down-regulated:

PDK4 - contributes to glucose regulation

IRS2 - mediates the effects of insulin
HSL - a key enzyme in fatty acid mobilization and lipolysis (i.e. helps you burn fat)
VISFATIN - helps in regulation of glucose homeostasis (i.e. helps your blood sugar stay at a healthy level)

Overeating and physical inactivity can both result in unhealthy metabolic changes (e.g. weight gain, elevated blood sugar, etc).  This study indicates that exercise can help prevent these metabolic changes from occurring, at least in the short-term.  Let us remember that the exercise group was still over eating, probably still gaining weight.  It was the 45 minutes of daily vigorous activity that counteracted the unhealthy metabolic effects.

Moral of the story: if you know you know you are going to over eat, be active!

Strawberries in November?!

I just picked a red strawberry from my container garden!  This is crazy because strawberries are very much a spring fruit and yet it is halfway through November!  The leaves of the plant are in the correct season - turning red, like all the trees around my apartment complex - yet the plant is bearing fruit 6 months too late.  Amazing.

Please note that this is the same strawberry plant that kept getting nibbled to the nubbins by rabbits in my backyard garden in Falls Church.  Remember how I transplanted it into a pot and brought it with me when I moved to Alexandria?  Well, I guess it was super excited to finally grow.  So excited that it produced several little white flowers in October.  And one of those little white flowers turned into a tiny, green strawberry.

November 1

Sorry this is blurry...

Over the last 17 days, that tiny, green strawberry ripened into an inedible morsel that was so fragile it fell off when I touched it earlier today....

November 18 - tiny strawberry in my fingers

Ah nature, how you always want to survive and procreate.  It never ceases to amaze me.

Wheat Belly: My thoughts on the book

Give up wheat and all your health problems will resolve!  At least that is what Dr. William Davis would lead us to believe in his book Wheat Belly (Rodale, 2011).  And he is fairly convincing.  I almost decided to go "gluten free" again on the off chance that it might improve my fickle IBS symptoms.  At one point, he actually had me wondering if my occasional inability to speak clearly was the result of the wheat glutens attacking my brain.  Maybe?  Probably not.

Perhaps I was convinced for the first chapter.  But after reading chapter after chapter of "evidence" that elimination of wheat improves or, in some cases, "cures" diseases (obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc), I realized that Dr. Davis truly believes that elimination of wheat is the silver bullet solution to all America’s health problems.  Which is unsettling.

In chapter six (page 89) he jokes that all wheat products should have a warning on the label, similar to cigarettes, which reads "SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Wheat consumption in all forms poses potentially serious threats to health.”

In chapter seven (page 111), he writes “Virtual elimination of carbohydrates, including the “dominant” carbohydrate of “healthy” diets, wheat, not only improves blood sugar control, but can erase the need for insulin and diabetes medication in adult (type 2) diabetics – otherwise known as a cure.”

A cure?  Are you kidding me.  That is like saying that a person with Celiac disease is "cured" if they just eliminate gluten from their diet....which Dr. Davis clearly does NOT believe, as evidenced in chapter six (page 94) when he writes “Celiac disease is a permanent condition.  Even if gluten is eliminated for many years, celiac disease or other forms of immune-mediating gluten intolerance come rushing back on reexposure.”

Sure, Davis provides many examples (aka "case reports") of patients losing weight and improving medical conditions by eliminating wheat, but I proposition that it is not the removal of wheat so much as the addition of REAL FOOD - vegetables, fruit, nuts - into the diet that improves quality of life for these patients.

Think about it.  Processed food, made predominantly with enriched wheat flour, is largely devoid of natural nutrients.  Nutrients are inherently lost through processing, hence the need to "fortify" and "enrich" the flour. No wonder his patients, whose diets were undoubtedly based on processed food, were struggling with their weight and other chronic conditions - they just weren't feeding their bodies the nutrients they needed!  In contrast, vegetables, fruits, and nuts are FULL of health-promoting phytonutrients (phyto = plant).  When the body is nourished with healthy and healing whole foods, of course it is going to function better!

I am not saying that Dr. Davis should be ignored.  In truth, his book very much worth reading.  I thoroughly enjoyed learning the history of modern wheat (from Ancient Eikorn with 14 chromosomes, through polyploidy and genetic modification, into modern Triticum aestivum with 42 chromosomes - pages 19-20) and the review of several human disease processes (did you know that your elevated triglycerides are actually caused by eating too many simple carbohydrates, not fat?! - page 151).  However, I urge the reader to be a filter, not a sponge.  Please, don't just take his word for face value, but use critical thinking to determine if a "wheat-ectomy" is really the right thing for you.