Use the labels in the right column to find what you want. Or you can go thru them one by one, there are only 29,112 posts. Searching is done in the search box in upper left corner. I blog on anything to do with stroke.DO NOT DO ANYTHING SUGGESTED HERE AS I AM NOT MEDICALLY TRAINED, YOUR DOCTOR IS, LISTEN TO THEM. BUT I BET THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO GET YOU 100% RECOVERED. I DON'T EITHER, BUT HAVE PLENTY OF QUESTIONS FOR YOUR DOCTOR TO ANSWER.
Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain!trillions and trillions of neuronsthatDIEeach day because there areNOeffective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.
What this blog is for:
My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.
A stroke, or “brain attack,” occurs when blood circulation to the
brain fails. Brain cells can die from decreased blood flow and the
resulting lack of oxygen. Two key steps you can take will lower your
risk of death or disability from stroke include controlling stroke’s
risk factors and know stroke’s warning signs. When it comes to
controlling the risk factors, diet and exercise are of paramount
importance.
Too much salt can increase your blood pressure. You should not eat more than six grams (or a teaspoon) of salt per day.
Much of the salt we eat is hidden in processed foods like ready meals, crisps, nuts, cake and biscuits and processed meats.
Avoid adding salt to food when you’re cooking or at the table.
Try instead using fresh ginger, lemon juice and chillies or dried herbs and spices to flavour food instead.
Eating saturated fats can raise your cholesterol.(Really?)
To reduce the amount of saturated fat you eat, try to eat lean cuts
of meat and take the skin off poultry, advised the Stroke Association
It added: “You could use beans or lentils to replace some of the meat in stews and curries.
It’s a good idea to eat two portions of fish every week, especially
oily fish like mackerel, sardines or “salmon, as these contain omega-3
fatty acids, which can prevent blood clots and lower blood pressure.”
Vegetarian or vegan sources of protein include tofu, mycoprotein (such as Quorn), textured vegetable protein and tempeh.
According to the National Institute of Ageing, common early symptoms of a stroke include:
Sudden numbness or weakness of face, arm, or leg, especially on one side of the body
Sudden confusion, or trouble talking or understanding speech
Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes
Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, or loss of balance or coordination
Women's
heart health has been the focus of a recent study by Monash University,
with researchers finding that proportional carbohydrate intake and not
saturated fat was significantly associated with cardiovascular disease
benefit in Australian women.
Cardiovascular
disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in women. Poor diet is
recognized as both an independent CVD risk factor and a contributor to
other CVD risk factors, such as obesity, diabetes mellitus (DM),
hypertension, and dyslipidemia.
The
research found that in middle-aged Australian women, increasing the
percentage of carbohydrate intake was significantly associated with
reduced odds of CVD, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and obesity.
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Furthermore,
a moderate carbohydrate intake between 41.0%—44.3% of total energy
intake was associated with the lowest risk of CVD compared to women who
consumed less than 37% energy as carbohydrates. No significant
relationship was demonstrated between proportional carbohydrate intake
and all-cause mortality.
In
addition, increasing proportional saturated fat intake was not
associated with cardiovascular disease or mortality in women; rather,
increasing saturated fat intake correlated with lower odds of developing diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and obesity.
The findings are now published in the British Medical Journal.
The
results contradict much of the historical epidemiological research that
supported a link between saturated fat and CVD. Instead, the results
mirror contemporary meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies where
saturated fat was found to have no significant relationship with total mortality or CVD.
While
the cause of this inconsistency in the literature is unclear, it has
been suggested that historical studies neglected to adjust for fiber,
which is known to help prevent plaque from forming in the arteries.
"Controversy
still exists surrounding the best diet to prevent CVD," said Sarah
Zaman, a former Monash University professor who is now an associate
professor at the University of Sydney.
"A low-fat diet has historically been the mainstay of primary prevention guidelines, but the major issue within our dietary guidelines is that many dietary trials have predominately involved male participants or lacked sex-specific analyses."
She adds: "Further research is needed to tailor our dietary guidelines according to sex."
The
study's first author Sarah Gribbin, a Doctor of Medicine and BMedSc
(Hons) student, says: "As an observational study, our findings only show
association and not causation. Our research is purely
hypothesis-generating. We are hoping that our findings will spark future
research into sex-specific dietary research."
The
Heart Foundation, which is one of the study's funders, welcomed the
focus on women and CVD, which has historically been under-researched.
Heart Foundation manager, food and nutrition, Eithne Cahill, cautioned that "not all carbohydrates are created equal."
"We know that quality carbohydrate foods such as vegetables and whole grains—including
whole grain bread, cereals, and pasta—are beneficial for heart health,
whereas poor quality carbohydrates such as white bread, biscuits, cakes,
and pastries can increase risk," she said.
"Similarly,
different fats have different effects on heart health. That is why the
Heart Foundation focuses on healthy eating patterns—that is, a
combination of foods, chosen regularly over time—rather than a single
nutrient or food. Include plenty of vegetables, fruit, and whole grains,
and heart-healthy fat choices such as nuts, seeds, avocados, olives and
their oils for cooking and a variety of healthy proteins especially
seafood, beans and lentils, eggs and dairy."
In the debate of low-fat versus low-carb diets, both can help you
shed unwanted weight equally, as long as you’re choosing healthy
options. But it turns out a diet composed of fewer carbs and higher
percentages of saturated fat might actually have health benefits outside
of weight loss — better blood cholesterol levels.
This finding came from a follow up analysis of the DIETFITS
study, which set out to contrast the effects of low-carb versus low-fat
dieting and determine which was better for losing weight. In a subgroup
of 210 low-carb dieters, those who consumed a higher percent of
saturated fats as part of their overall diet had better levels of blood
lipids, including both higher HDLs (good cholesterol) and lower
triglycerides, which are the main type of fat in the blood and in body
fat storage.
That's not to say that saturated fats are suddenly exonerated — there's a bit of a catch, said Christopher Gardner,
PhD, nutrition expert and senior author of the analysis. Those with the
best lipid levels and highest percent of saturated fat intake also ate
fewer carbohydrates, particularly added sugars and refined grains.
So the lesson here isn't that saturated fats are good for you, it's
that they're not going to topple a good dieting effort that's low in
carbs and refined sugars and high in whole foods and vegetables.
A secondary analysis paper detailing the findings appears in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Cindy Shih, former research assistant at Stanford, is the first author.
"The people who were assigned to the low-carb group did a great job
at cutting carbs, particularly from added sugars and refined grains.
They didn’t get specific guidance about how much fat to eat, and
according to their diet records, they didn't eat very differently in
terms of the amount of fat intake," said Gardner.
The national guideline for saturated fat consumption is 10 percent of
your diet, but since these folks consumed fewer calories from
carbohydrates, the percent of fat, including saturated fat, technically
increased, since it accounted for a higher proportion of their diet.
"So if one of these people were to go to their doctor the doctor
might see an increase in saturated fat percent from 10 to 15 and be
concerned. But if you look more closely, you see that the grams of fat
they're eating didn't change much, and you see that they have higher HDL
levels, stable LDL levels and lower levels of triglycerides."
This, Gardner says, is the punchline: Low-carb dieters with the
highest saturated fat percentage had modestly better, not worse, blood
lipid levels. But the actual amount of saturated fat they ate wasn’t
much different — the high percentage was primarily due to the fact that
these folks cut back the most on their carbohydrate intake.
"I want this finding to put people who are on a low-carb diet, and
their doctors, more at ease about the percent of saturated fat
consumption," said Gardner. "An increase to 15 percent exceeds the
guidelines, but what matters most is the grams of fat and carbs, and the
weight loss. If you or your patient is more successful at losing weight
with a low-carb diet, you might not have to worry so much about the
percent of saturated fat."
More reasons for YOUR DOCTOR to come up with diet protocols.
You need to know EXACT amounts per body weight and sex. No guessing allowed.
You may have to call the stroke hospital president and DEMAND accountability from the doctors and therapists.
THIS IS YOUR DOCTORS' RESPONSIBILITY!
Unless you think you can decipher this on your own. You need all these diet protocols. Good luck.
For stroke
prevention; for dementia prevention; for cognitive improvement; for
cholesterol reduction; for plaque removal; for Parkinsons prevention; for
inflammation reduction; for blood pressure reduction.
The type of saturated fats we eat can affect our risk of a heart attack, according to a study published in the International Journal of Cardiology.
People whose diets contain relatively little palmitic and stearic
acid—saturated fats composed of 16 or more carbon atoms (longer-chain
saturated fats) that are typically found in meats—and eat plant-based
proteins instead have decreased chances of myocardial infarction.
Moreover, individuals who eat more saturated fats with 14 or fewer
carbon atoms (shorter-chain saturated fats) that are typically found in
dairy products have lower risk of myocardial infarction.
"Our analysis of the diets of large groups of individuals in two
countries over time shows that the type of saturated fats we consume
could affect our cardiovascular heath," explained lead investigator
Ivonne Sluijs, PhD, Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care,
University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the
Netherlands.
The study investigated whether saturated fats with chains varying in
length from 4 to 18 carbon atoms are associated with the risk of
developing a myocardial infarction. Data from approximately 75,000
people in the UK and Denmark were analyzed. Of these two groups, nearly
3,500 people experienced myocardial infarction in the period between the
study's initial outreach and follow-up 13 years later (in Denmark) and
18 years later (in the UK).
"We found that eating relatively little of the longer chained
saturated fatty acids and consuming plant-based proteins instead was
associated with a lowered risk. Substitution of those saturated fats
with other energy sources such as carbohydrates did not affect the risk
to develop myocardial infarction," said Dr. Sluijs. Although diets vary
by nationality and other factors, the most frequently consumed saturated
fat is palmitic acid, with 16 carbon atoms, followed by stearic acid,
with 18 carbon atoms, both of which are found in meat products.
Consumption of saturated fats that have shorter carbon atom chains and
are present in dairy products is less prevalent.
Since the 1960s, when diets high in saturated fat were linked to
elevated "bad" low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and coronary
heart disease, dietary guidelines recommended restricting saturated
fatty acids across the board. In recent years, research studies have
raised some questions about what was considered established evidence.
Inconsistent findings have pointed to the possibility that different
types of saturated fats have different effects on cholesterol levels and
the development of coronary heart disease. Despite the fact that their
study's findings support this hypothesis, Dr. Sluijs and her fellow
investigators recommend proceeding with caution before changing dietary
guidelines:(Look at that laziness; guidelines NOT protocols.)
"Our study only allowed us to draw conclusions on the level of
associations between saturated fatty acids and the development of
myocardial infarction. We do not know whether those fatty acids are
actually the cause of differences between the occurrences of myocardial
infarction we observed. To further explore this, we need experiments in
which the consumption of saturated fatty acids is more controlled and,
for instance, compared with consumption of unsaturated fatty acids," she
noted.
"The study is applaudable for its large size, prospective cohort
study design, and detailed assessment of diet and lifestyle factors. In
addition, it is among the few studies that specifically examined
individual saturated fatty acids in relation to coronary heart disease
risk and compared with different macronutrients," commented Jun Li, MD,
PhD, and Qi Sun, MD, ScD, both at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public
Health, Boston, MA, USA, in an accompanying editorial. They also noted a
few limitations of the study and thus called for cautious
interpretation of the overall null results for the primary saturated
fatty acids.
Dr. Li and Dr. Sun advise that shifts in fat intake should align with
the recommended healthy dietary patterns, which emphasize limited
intakes of red and processed meat and added sugars, lower salt intake,
replacement of refined grains with whole grains, and higher consumption
of fruits and vegetable (So you want us to completely guess what to do? Good to know these MDS and PhDs are so not helpful.)
Up to you to decide whether my 44 mostly positive reviews on coconut oil, with no medical background are more believable than this latest. But the Cleveland Clinic has a different idea on cholesterol in food. Whom to believe?
Coconut oil raises ‘bad’ cholesterol
in the same way as other foods high in saturated fats like butter and
beef, according to the American Heart Association.
Indeed, butter
and beef drippings have less saturated fat that raise levels of
low–density lipoprotein (LDL), the bad kind of cholesterol that can
build up in blood vessels and lead to clots and heart attacks, according
to new AHA dietary recommendations. Coconut oil is 82% saturated fat,
compared with 63% for butter and 50% for beef fat.
Instead of
coconut oil, people should cook with so–called polyunsaturated fats like
corn, soybean and peanut oils, the AHA advises.
“Replacing
saturated with polyunsaturated has a two–fold effect because a fat that
causes heart disease is lowered and a fat that prevents heart disease is
increased,” lead author of the advisory Dr. Frank Sacks, a researcher
at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston, said by email.
Coconut
oil raised LDL about as much as other oils high in fat like butter,
beef, and palm oil in seven out of seven studies reviewed by the AHA for
its advisory published in the journal Circulation.
Replacing
saturated fats with polyunsaturated vegetable oil reduces the risk of
cardiovascular disease by about 30%, the AHA concludes from its review
of trials that used the scientific gold standard for research – randomly
assigning some participants to get the intervention being tested and
others to receive an alternative or no treatment.
Cardiovascular
disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for 17.3
million fatalities a year, researchers note in the advisory.
Studies
in many populations showed that lower intake of saturated fat coupled
with higher intake of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat is
associated with lower rates of cardiovascular disease.
For
optimal heart health, the AHA recommends the Dietary Approaches To Stop
Hypertension (DASH) diet or a Mediterranean–style diet. Both diets
emphasize unsaturated vegetable oils, nuts, fruits, vegetables, low–fat
dairy products, whole grains, fish and poultry and both limit red meat,
as well as foods and drinks high in added sugars and salt.
Even eating like this some of the time may help, said Dr. John Potter of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
“Small changes may be relevant,” Potter, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.
These
might include cutting saturated fat with one meatless dinner a week,
reducing sugar by eating one less cookie or drinking one less can of
soda, having one less glass of alcohol or getting a few extra minutes of
exercise every day, Potter suggested.
Portions also matter, said Dr. Lennert Veerman of the Cancer Council NSW in Sydney, Australia.
“Baking
with coconut oil may not raise heart disease risks as much as, for
example, a generous amount of butter on a 12–ounce steak, not to speak
of the steak itself,” Veerman, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by
email. “But then again, a small reduction of risk every day adds up, so
replacing coconut oil with olive oil may be an easy way to reduce risk a
bit.”
—Lisa Rapaport
Ask your doctor for a definitive diet protocol, not just the lazy
generic MIND or Mediterranean diets. Not to be done until 50 years from
now when our stroke medical professionals finally get around to creating
a diet protocol and your doctor can prescribe that. https://www.medpagetoday.com/meetingcoverage/esc/67566
But PURE also challenges belief that more is better for fruits and vegetables
by Larry Husten, CardioBrief
This article is a collaboration between MedPage Today® and:
BARCELONA
-- An enormous prospective study of food intake in adults, reported
here, challenges several staunchly held beliefs about dietary components
and their association with health risks: finding, for example that
diets rich in fats, including saturated fats, don't increase mortality
risk, but high-carbohydrate diets do.
And the study, called PURE (Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology),
also found that the benefits of fruits, vegetables, and legumes top out
at just three to four total servings per day.
In
sum, the results suggest that nutritional guidelines and conventional
wisdom regarding these basic dietary elements may be seriously mistaken.
PURE investigators recorded food intake using questionnaires in
135,000 people in 18 countries, including high-, medium- and low-income
nations. The latest findings from the ongoing study, with median
follow-up of 7.4 years, were outlined in two separate presentations at
the European Society of Cardiology meeting here, which were accompanied
by simultaneous publications in The Lancet and in Lancet: Diabetes & Endocrinology. Carbohydrates and Fats: Unexpected Findings
One presentation and Lancet paper
led by Mahshid Dehghan, PhD, of McMaster University in Hamilton,
Ontario, focused on the association of fats and carbohydrate intake with
cardiovascular disease and mortality.
Defying expectations, PURE found that high carbohydrate intake was
associated with a significant increase in the risk of death, while both
total fat and saturated and unsaturated fats were associated with a
decreased risk of death. However, fat consumption was not associated
with cardiovascular disease or cardiovascular mortality, though
saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke.
"Global dietary guidelines should be reconsidered in light of these findings," Dehghan concluded.
These findings may be partly explained by the paper in Lancet: Diabetes & Endocrinology,
which looked at the effect of dietary nutrients on lipids and blood
pressure. The authors found that high intake of carbohydrates had "the
most adverse impact on cardiovascular risk factors" while
monounsaturated fats had a beneficial effect and saturated fat had a
neutral effect.
"Reducing saturated fatty acids and replacing them with carbohydrates
might have an adverse effect on cardiovascular disease risk," they
concluded. "Current recommendations to reduce total fat and saturated
fatty acids in all populations, which de facto increases carbohydrate
intake, are not supported by our data." Fruits, Vegetables, Legumes: Benefits Limited
The second presentation and Lancetpaper,
by Andrew Mente, PhD, also of McMaster University, challenges the
widely held and nearly religious belief that more is always better when
it comes to fruits, vegetables, and legumes.
The
study did confirm that fruits and veggies (and legumes) in moderation
are good for you, but it did not show that the benefits keep growing
with increased consumption. Instead, the PURE researchers found that the
maximum benefit was achieved with three to four serving per day.
Current guidelines recommend that people consume five servings a day.
The authors note that many people in lower income countries are unable
to afford this high level of consumption.
"Optimal health benefits can be achieved with a more modest level of
consumption, an approach that is likely to be much more affordable,"
write the PURE investigators.
"For the first time, our study provides a global look at the
realities of people's diets in many countries and gives a clearer
picture of people's fat and carbohydrate intake," said Dehghan, in a
press release. "The current focus on promoting low-fat diets ignores the
fact that most people's diets in low and middle income countries are
very high in carbohydrates, which seem to be linked to worse health
outcomes. In low- and middle-income countries, where diets sometimes
consist of more than 65% of energy from carbohydrates, guidelines should
refocus their attention towards reducing carbohydrate intake, instead
of focusing on reducing fats. The best diets will include a balance of
carbohydrates and fats – approximately 50-55% carbohydrates and around
35% total fat, including both saturated and unsaturated fats. " Interpreting the Data
In an interview, Mente stressed both the strength and limitations of
the PURE findings. As an observational study PURE is only capable of
finding associations; causation is impossible to prove, though in their
multivariate analysis the authors attempted to adjust for every known
risk factor.
The
PURE results are particularly relevant in poorer countries and in the
poorer sections of richer countries, where carbs -- largely low
quality -- comprise more than three-quarters of energy intake. "It's
that population that needs to reduce carb intake to more moderate
levels. Our data doesn't support low carb but certainly it supports a
moderate carb intake of 55%," said Mente.
Similarly, he noted that existing guidelines have traditionally
called for lower fat intake, below 30%, "but they haven't specified what
that should be." The current papers don't give details on individual
foods. Mente said that is the next stage of their research.
Mente also emphasized that the PURE results need to be put in the
proper perspective. Although the associations have very large long-term
population effects, at the individual level the effects are almost
negligible, a fact which many people fail to grasp.
"The effects are modest effects, in the neighborhood of a 20%
reduction in relative risk. So if the annual [absolute] risk of
mortality is 1%, it would be reduced to 0.8%. At the individual level,
it is tiny. And nowhere near what you find for smoking and lung cancer
-- about 200 times smaller in fact," said Mente.
"Dietary exposures in general have modest effects on clinical
outcomes. Even in the PREDIMED trial in 2013, where they evaluated an
entire dietary pattern, and presumably an additive effect of multiple
foods, they found a 30% reduction in risk. So you might imagine how
modest the effect for individual foods would be. Typically most foods or
nutrients are associated with about a 10% change in relative risk.
Small."
"Having said all that, at a population level, if these small
effects are true and not due to confounding, they would translate into
thousands or even millions of fewer deaths annually, depending on the
size of the population, if the exposure is common which is certainly
true for diet. Therefore, from a public health perspective, which deals
with policy and impact on populations, the findings are important."
Ask your doctor for a definitive diet protocol, not just the lazy generic MIND or Mediterranean diets. Not to be done until 50 years from now when our stroke medical professionals finally get around to creating a diet protocol and your doctor can prescribe that. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2817%2932252-3/fulltext
The
relationship between macronutrients and cardiovascular disease and
mortality is controversial. Most available data are from European and
North American populations where nutrition excess is more likely, so
their applicability to other populations is unclear.
Methods
The
Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study is a large,
epidemiological cohort study of individuals aged 35–70 years (enrolled
between Jan 1, 2003, and March 31, 2013) in 18 countries with a median
follow-up of 7·4 years (IQR 5·3–9·3). Dietary intake of 135 335
individuals was recorded using validated food frequency questionnaires.
The primary outcomes were total mortality and major cardiovascular
events (fatal cardiovascular disease, non-fatal myocardial infarction,
stroke, and heart failure). Secondary outcomes were all myocardial
infarctions, stroke, cardiovascular disease mortality, and
non-cardiovascular disease mortality. Participants were categorised into
quintiles of nutrient intake (carbohydrate, fats, and protein) based on
percentage of energy provided by nutrients. We assessed the
associations between consumption of carbohydrate, total fat, and each
type of fat with cardiovascular disease and total mortality. We
calculated hazard ratios (HRs) using a multivariable Cox frailty model
with random intercepts to account for centre clustering.
Findings
During
follow-up, we documented 5796 deaths and 4784 major cardiovascular
disease events. Higher carbohydrate intake was associated with an
increased risk of total mortality (highest [quintile 5] vs lowest quintile [quintile 1] category, HR 1·28 [95% CI 1·12–1·46], ptrend=0·0001)
but not with the risk of cardiovascular disease or cardiovascular
disease mortality. Intake of total fat and each type of fat was
associated with lower risk of total mortality (quintile 5 vs quintile 1, total fat: HR 0·77 [95% CI 0·67–0·87], ptrend<0·0001; saturated fat, HR 0·86 [0·76–0·99], ptrend=0·0088; monounsaturated fat: HR 0·81 [0·71–0·92], ptrend<0·0001; and polyunsaturated fat: HR 0·80 [0·71–0·89], ptrend<0·0001). Higher saturated fat intake was associated with lower risk of stroke (quintile 5 vs quintile 1, HR 0·79 [95% CI 0·64–0·98], ptrend=0·0498).
Total fat and saturated and unsaturated fats were not significantly
associated with risk of myocardial infarction or cardiovascular disease
mortality.
Interpretation
High
carbohydrate intake was associated with higher risk of total mortality,
whereas total fat and individual types of fat were related to lower
total mortality. Total fat and types of fat were not associated with
cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction, or cardiovascular disease
mortality, whereas saturated fat had an inverse association with
stroke. Global dietary guidelines should be reconsidered in light of
these findings.
Funding
Full funding sources listed at the end of the paper (see Acknowledgments).
To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
Some foods have an negative effect on cognitive function and, potentially, eating habits.
Diets high in saturated fats can slow brain function, new research finds.
Saturated fats have a direct effect on the hypothalamus, an area of the brain which is critical for regulating hunger.
Eating saturated fats could, therefore, make it difficult to control your eating habits.
They can make it difficult to control how much you eat, the types of foods you choose to consume and when to stop eating.
Saturated fats are typically found in:
lard,
butter,
or fried food.
Unsaturated fats are typically found in:
fish,
avocado,
or olive oil.
Professors Marianna Crispino and Maria Pina Mollica, two of the study’s authors, said:
“These days, great attention is dedicated to the
influence of the diet on people’s wellbeing. Although the effects of
high fat diet on metabolism have been widely studied, little is known
about the effects on the brain.”
The study on rats compared the effects of feeding them fish oils or a lardy diet over a period of six weeks.
Professors Crispino and Mollica said:
“The difference was very clear and we were amazed to establish the impact of a fatty diet onto the brain.
Our results suggest that being more aware about the type of fat
consumed with the diet may reduce the risk of obesity and prevent
several metabolic diseases.”
The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience (Viggiano et al., 2016).
Last month, the American Heart Association
once again went after butter, steak and especially coconut oil with this
familiar warning: The saturated fats in these foods cause heart disease. The organization’s “presidential advisory”
was a fresh look at the science and came in response to a growing
number of researchers, including myself, who have poured over this same
data in recent years and beg to differ. A rigorous review of the
evidence shows that when it comes to heart attacks or mortality,
saturated fats are not guilty.
To me, the AHA advisory released in
June was mystifying. How could its scientists examine the same studies
as I had, yet double down on an anti-saturated fat position? With a
cardiologist, I went through the nuts and bolts of the AHA paper, and
came to this conclusion: It was likely driven less by sound science than
by longstanding bias, commercial interests and the AHA’s need to
reaffirm nearly 70 years of its “heart healthy” advice.
It was in 1961 that the AHA launched the world’s first official recommendations
to avoid saturated fats, along with dietary cholesterol, in order to
prevent a heart attack. This “diet-heart hypothesis” was adopted by most
leading experts, though it had never been tested in clinical trials —
the only kind of science that can establish cause-and-effect. Thus, from
the beginning, the rap on saturated fats lacked a firm scientific
foundation.
The hypothesis had some backing in preliminary data, and
it made intuitive sense — fat clogs your arteries like hot grease down a
cold drain pipe, right? — which was enough for AHA officials seeking to
address the fast-rising tide of heart disease.
Still,
rigorous data was needed, and so governments around the world —
including our own, through the National Institutes of Health — spent
billions of dollars trying to prove the hypothesis was true. Somewhere
between 10,000 and 53,000 people were tested on diets where saturated
fats were replaced by unsaturated vegetable oils. The results did not
turn out as expected — saturated fats weren’t killing people.
In a
stunning example of science ignored, researchers, either unable or
unwilling to believe the study outcomes, did not talk about this data
for decades. The results of one of the forgotten trials, a large NIH-funded study,
were not published for 16 years. Another analysis that failed to link
saturated fats with heart disease, part of the famous “Framingham
Study,” languished, also unpublished, in an NIH basement.
Starting
in 2010, however, researchers worldwide unearthed these studies and
re-examined them. Of nine separate reviews, none could find any evidence
in the data that saturated fats had an effect on cardiovascular
mortality or total mortality. As quite a few of the reviewing authors
stated in their conclusions, such results clearly do not support the
government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which limit saturated
fats to 10% of daily calories, or the AHA advice to cap them at 5% to
6%.
The disparity between these independent reviews and the AHA
advisory hangs mainly on the endpoint chosen for consideration. Instead
of looking at indisputable “hard” outcomes — heart attacks, stroke,
cardiovascular mortality or total mortality — the AHA examined only less
definitive “cardiovascular events,” a category that combines heart
attacks with much more subjective conditions, such as angina, or heart
pain. By using this combined, “intermediate endpoint” criteria, and
ignoring deaths, the data can deliver negative findings for saturated
fats. But that’s a little like reporting on mid-way times in a marathon
while remaining silent about who won the race.
The
AHA advisory disregards other data, too. While the nine other papers
reviewed an average of ten trials each, the AHA examined only four. And
one has to question the AHA’s choices of which trials to review. It
excluded, for example, the Minnesota Coronary Experiment,
based on the reasoning that the 9,750 men and women who spent a
year-plus on its intervention diet did not meet the AHA’s study-duration
standard of at least two years. Yet in the past, the AHA has
recommended the DASH diet, based on studies of fewer than 1,200 people
altogether, and trials lasting no longer than 5 months. As Andrew Mente,
a nutritional epidemiologist at McMaster University, told me, the AHA’s
choices of what studies to include in its advisory review amounted to
“cherry picking.”
That the AHA should be so resistant to updating
its view of saturated fats, despite so much legitimate science, could
simply reflect the association’s unwavering devotion to a belief it has
promoted for decades. Or it could be due to its significant,
longstanding reliance on funding from interested industries, such as the
vegetable-oil manufacturer Procter & Gamble, maker of Crisco, which
virtually launched the AHA as a nation-wide powerhouse in 1948 by
designating the then-needy group to receive all the funds from a radio
contest it sponsored (about $17 million). More recently, Bayer, the
owner of LibertyLink soybeans, pledged up to $500,000 to the AHA,
perhaps encouraged by the group’s continued support of soybean oil, by
far the dominant ingredient in the “vegetable oil” consumed in America
today.
It’s still possible that a very large, long-term clinical
trial could ultimately demonstrate that saturated fats cause
cardiovascular death, or even premature heart attacks. And it may be
prudent to restrict the consumption of coconut oil or meat for reasons
that have nothing to do with saturated fats. But over the last half
century, the diet-heart hypothesis has been tested more than any other
in the history of nutrition, and thus far, the results have been null.
If the AHA were to fully reckon with this evidence, it would be backing
away from its guilty verdict on these fats. Lacking the evidence to
convict, the right thing to do is acquit. Investigative
journalist Nina Teicholz is the author of “The Big Fat Surprise: Why
Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet.” This op ed is based
on a longer analysis of the recent AHA advisory that was co-written with
cardiologist Eric Thorn and published this month on the medical website Medscape.
Coconut oil raises ‘bad’ cholesterol
in the same way as other foods high in saturated fats like butter and
beef, according to the American Heart Association.
Indeed, butter
and beef drippings have less saturated fat that raise levels of
low–density lipoprotein (LDL), the bad kind of cholesterol that can
build up in blood vessels and lead to clots and heart attacks, according
to new AHA dietary recommendations. Coconut oil is 82% saturated fat,
compared with 63% for butter and 50% for beef fat.
Instead of
coconut oil, people should cook with so–called polyunsaturated fats like
corn, soybean and peanut oils, the AHA advises.
“Replacing
saturated with polyunsaturated has a two–fold effect because a fat that
causes heart disease is lowered and a fat that prevents heart disease is
increased,” lead author of the advisory Dr. Frank Sacks, a researcher
at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, said by
email.
Coconut oil raised LDL about as much as other oils high in
fat like butter, beef and palm oil in seven out of seven studies
reviewed by the AHA for its advisory published in the journal
Circulation.
Replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated
vegetable oil reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease by about 30
percent, the AHA concludes from its review of trials that used the
scientific gold standard for research – randomly assigning some
participants to get the intervention being tested and others to receive
an alternative or no treatment.
Cardiovascular disease is the
leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for 17.3 million fatalities
a year, researchers note in the advisory.
Studies in many
populations showed that lower intake of saturated fat coupled with
higher intake of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fat is associated
with lower rates of cardiovascular disease.
For optimal heart
health, the AHA recommends the Dietary Approaches To Stop Hypertension
(DASH) diet or a Mediterranean–style diet. Both diets emphasize
unsaturated vegetable oils, nuts, fruits, vegetables, low–fat dairy
products, whole grains, fish and poultry and both limit red meat, as
well as foods and drinks high in added sugars and salt.
Even eating like this some of the time may help, said Dr. John Potter of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.
“Small changes may be relevant,” Potter, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.
These
might include cutting saturated fat with one meatless dinner a week,
reducing sugar by eating one less cookie or drinking one less can of
soda, having one less glass of alcohol or getting a few extra minutes of
exercise every day, Potter suggested.
Portions also matter, said Dr. Lennert Veerman of the Cancer Council NSW in Sydney, Australia.
“Baking
with coconut oil may not raise heart disease risks as much as, for
example, a generous amount of butter on a 12–ounce steak, not to speak
of the steak itself,” Veerman, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by
email. “But then again, a small reduction of risk every day adds up, so
replacing coconut oil with olive oil may be an easy way to reduce risk a
bit.”
—Lisa Rapaport
Ask your doctor exactly what saturated fat is, and have her/him create a diet protocol with specifics, not just the general crap of the MIND diet or the Mediterranean diet, neither of which is useful to the layperson.
The
American Heart Association doubled down on its dietary recommendations
in an advisory calling for switching poly- and mono-unsaturated
vegetable oil for saturated fats to help prevent heart disease.
"Taking into consideration the totality of the scientific evidence,
satisfying rigorous criteria for causality, we conclude strongly that
lowering intake of saturated fat and replacing it with unsaturated fats,
especially polyunsaturated fats, will lower the incidence of CVD," said
the advisory, published Thursday in Circulation.
The
AHA president-initiated advisory acknowledged that meta-analyses have
disagreed about whether dietary saturated fat really hurts the heart. It
has been even more hotly debated on social media and the popular press.
"We want to set the record straight on why well-conducted scientific
research overwhelmingly supports limiting saturated fat in the diet to
prevent diseases of the heart and blood vessels," lead author Frank
Sacks, MD, of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, said in an
AHA press release.
It emphasized that the fat intake recommendations are only as part of
an overall healthful dietary pattern, such as DASH or the Mediterranean
diet. Reduction in total dietary fat or a goal for total fat intake
were not recommended.
The evidence cited centered on four trials comparing high saturated
fat intake against high intake of polyunsaturated fats with at least 2
years of sustained intervention, objective adherence measures, and
validated cardiovascular event monitoring. Together, those trials showed
a relative risk of 0.71 for coronary heart disease (95% CI 0.62-0.81).
Replacing saturated fat with refined carbohydrates and sugars doesn't have a benefit, other studies suggested.
One largely saturated
fat that many see as healthy -- coconut oil -- raised LDL
cholesterol more than safflower or olive oil in carefully-controlled
studies, on par with other saturated fats like butter and beef fat. Given the lack of "offsetting favorable effects, we advise against the use of coconut oil," the advisory noted.
Two members of
the panel disclosed relationships with industry and advocacy
organizations, including Amarin, the California Walnut Commission, Ag
Canada, the Canola Oil Council, National Cattlemen's Beef Association,
Seafood Nutrition Partnership, TerraVia, and Avocado Nutrition Science
Advisors.
Another excuse for your doctor not to create a diet protocol for you. You are completely on your own to figure out what your stroke rehab diet protocol is, your stroke prevention diet protocol, your dementia prevention diet protocol, your blood pressure reduction diet protocol. Why even have a doctor who doesn't give you one damn protocol for anything you need? All stroke protocols should be publicly available and easily accessible by anyone. Which is why our fucking failures of stroke associations are so bad. http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/DietNutrition/63227?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2017-02-18&eun=g424561d0r&pos=0
Eight nutrition experts give the skinny on fats
by Alexandria Bachert Staff Writer, MedPage Today
In a recent interview with MedPage Today, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health's Walter C. Willett, MD, DrPH,
agreed that the occasional piece of buttered toast isn't going to kill
anyone, but opting for poly- and mono-unsaturated fats like olive oil is
likely the healthier choice.
But the optimal level of fats in the diet, and which kinds, remain a
topic of heated debate, as does the process by which the government's official dietary guidelines
have been developed. In particular, the role of the U.S. Department of
Agriculture has been questioned, given its mission to promote food
producers' interests. Do you agree that it's still a good idea to avoid butter and other animal fats? Christopher D. Gardner, PhD, Stanford University:
I would be more comfortable with agreeing to the statement that, "I
agree it is a good idea to avoid excessive amounts of butter and animal
fats, just as it is in general a good idea to avoid excess of just about
anything in our daily diet." When we focus on single foods or specific
nutrients to avoid, it reinforces the idea that the mere absence of
these will be virtuous and healthful. Connie Diekman, MEd, RD, LD, FADA, Washington University in St. Louis:
The goal for limiting animal fats is more of a moderation rather than a
"must avoid." Just as important as limiting saturated fats is what do
you replace these fats with? Boosting carbohydrates in place of fats is
not a good step but choosing polyunsaturated fats instead of animal fats
will help lower LDL-C. Alice H. Lichtenstein, DSc, Tufts University:
We should no longer be talking about saturated fat in isolation. The
important factor is the relative amount of unsaturated to saturated fat,
in favor of the former and limited in the latter. What should be
avoided is the replacement of animal and dairy fat with refined
carbohydrate, as we saw in the 1990's during the low-fat craze. Dean Ornish, MD, Preventive Medicine Research Institute: I do think it's wise to avoid butter and animal fats. TIME magazine reported
that "butter is not linked to a higher rate of heart disease" but
neglected to mention that it IS directly linked with all-cause
mortality, which is even more important. Telling people what they want
to hear is a good way to sell magazines and books, but it isn't true. Randomized
trials are probably out of the question, so how can we ever determine
for sure whether particular foods contribute to long-term adverse
outcomes? David L. Katz, MD, MPH, True Health Initiative:
Randomized trials are not out of the question. They are part of it.
Importantly though, they are only part of it. I think people sometimes
use the idea of science as an excuse for abandoning sense. The only real
problem with common sense is that it isn't nearly common enough.
Science without sense is very prone to generating answers to all the
wrong questions. Diekman: Until we learn how to use the genetic map
to identify what each one of us needs to stay healthy, diet advice will
rely on RCT's that look at risk factors – which are not the same as
RCT's that focus on disease outcomes – and then extrapolate those
outcomes to diet guidelines. Diet guidelines provide just that,
guidelines that offer information on how to structure eating plans that
allow for variance but still will promote health. Lichtenstein: It is unlikely any single food
determines long-term health outcomes. Emphasis should be focused on the
whole diet. The important point, sometimes missed, is balance -- more
of some things and less of others. Gardner: As far as I know, we still don't have any
randomized trials that parachutes can be used effectively to save the
lives of people jumping out of planes, and yet skydivers continue to use
them!? Some questions don't lend themselves to randomized trials, and
that is particularly true of food and nutrition questions that involve
how to prevent long-term chronic degenerative non-communicable diseases.
Fortunately we have mechanistic studies, observational studies, and
randomized trials of short-term outcomes involving risk factors for
chronic diseases. Lee M. Kaplan, MD, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital:
Even without randomized trials, there are good epidemiological studies
demonstrating the adverse effects of different macro- and
micronutrients. However, evidence is now accumulating that different
people respond differently to different nutrients. We need more research
on the medical effects of dietary manipulation. These studies need to
be carefully controlled, and they need to be large enough to account for
the wide variability among different people, but they don't necessarily
need to be randomized, controlled trials. Should the USDA be involved in developing dietary guidelines? Kaplan: The USDA has resources that allow it to do a
better job than most other groups in supporting the careful evaluation
of nutritional research. Far better than excluding the USDA from the
development of national dietary standards would be better transparency
and conflict of interest rules that insulates USDA staff and
investigators from outside influences. Frank B. Hu, MD, MPH, PhD, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health:
To develop guidelines that can help people make healthy food and
beverage choices, it is critical for the process to be evidence-based,
transparent, and free of political and industry influences.
Unfortunately this has not been the case. For example, the
recommendation on reducing red meat intake and environmental
sustainability by the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC)
was removed in the official 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans
due to pressure from the Congress and the meat industry. Gardner: Given the obvious and inherent conflict of
interest involved, it would be appropriate to lessen the role of the
USDA in the development of the national dietary guidelines to that of an
advisory role, rather than their current role in overseeing and
releasing those updates every 5 years. Robert Lustig, MD, University of California San Francisco:
The USDA in charge of the Dietary Guidelines is like the fox in charge
of the hen house. While the DGAC is made up of scientists who want to
see science used for good, the USDA has for decades ignored the DGAC's
advice, and promulgated that which benefitted the industry at the
public's expense. One DGAC chairperson confided in me that the DGAC is
ineffective because "it has no teeth." Katz: No.
Don't follow this until another 50 years have passed and your stroke doctors have finally come up with a diet protocol. http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=170594&CultureCode=en
A new Norwegian diet intervention study (FATFUNC), performed by
researchers at the KG Jebsen center for diabetes research at the
University of Bergen, raises questions regarding the validity of a diet
hypothesis that has dominated for more than half a century: that dietary
fat and particularly saturated fat is unhealthy for most people.
The researchers found strikingly similar health effects of diets
based on either lowly processed carbohydrates or fats. In the randomized
controlled trial, 38 men with abdominal obesity followed a dietary
pattern high in either carbohydrates or fat, of which about half was
saturated. Fat mass in the abdominal region, liver and heart was
measured with accurate analyses, along with a number of key risk factors
for cardiovascular disease.
"The very high intake of total and saturated fat did not increase the
calculated risk of cardiovascular diseases," says professor and
cardiologist Ottar Nygård who contributed to the study.
"Participants on the very-high-fat diet also had substantial
improvements in several important cardiometabolic risk factors, such as
ectopic fat storage, blood pressure, blood lipids (triglycerides),
insulin and blood sugar."
High quality food is healthier
Both groups had similar intakes of energy, proteins, polyunsaturated
fatty acids, the food types were the same and varied mainly in quantity,
and intake of added sugar was minimized.
"We here looked at effects of total and saturated fat in the context
of a healthy diet rich in fresh, lowly processed and nutritious foods,
including high amounts of vegetables and rice instead of flour-based
products," says PhD candidate Vivian Veum.
"The fat sources were also lowly processed, mainly butter, cream and cold-pressed oils."
Total energy intake was within the normal range. Even the
participants who increased their energy intake during the study showed
substantial reductions in fat stores and disease risk.
"Our findings indicate that the overriding principle of a healthy
diet is not the quantity of fat or carbohydrates, but the quality of the
foods we eat," says PhD candidate Johnny Laupsa-Borge.
Saturated fat increases the “good” cholesterol
Saturated fat has been thought to promote cardiovascular diseases by
raising the “bad” LDL cholesterol in the blood. But even with a higher
fat intake in the FATFUNC study compared to most comparable studies, the
authors found no significant increase in LDL cholesterol. Rather, the
"good" cholesterol increased only on the very-high-fat diet.
"These results indicate that most healthy people probably tolerate a
high intake of saturated fat well, as long as the fat quality is good
and total energy intake is not too high. It may even be healthy," says
Ottar Nygård.
"Future studies should examine which people or patients may need to
limit their intake of saturated fat," assistant professor Simon Nitter
Dankel points out, who led the study together with the director of the
laboratory clinics, professor Gunnar Mellgren, at Haukeland university
hospital in Bergen, Norway.
"But the alleged health risks of eating good-quality fats have been
greatly exaggerated. It may be more important for public health to
encourage reductions in processed flour-based products, highly processed
fats and foods with added sugar," he says.
The study was published online on November 30 2016 in The American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition: Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Facts: The FATFUNC-study
* The Study is named (FATFUNC) and was performed by researchers at
the KG Jebsen center for diabetes research, Department of Clinical
Science at the University of Bergen.
* In the randomized controlled
trial, 38 men with abdominal obesity followed a dietary pattern high in
either carbohydrates (53 % of total energy, in line with typical
official recommendations) or fat (71 % of total energy, of which about
half was saturated).
* Fat mass in the abdominal region, liver and
heart was measured with accurate analyses (computed tomography, CT),
along with a number of key risk factors for cardiovascular disease. http://www.uib.no/en/node/103172
Is your doctor making sure you aren't doing these and thus handicapping your recovery? What is your doctor doing to increase your cognition? ANYTHING AT ALL? 7 Everyday Ways You Are Lowering Your Intelligence
How feeling like an expert, googling it and more could be lowering your intelligence.
No Evidence to Support Dietary Fat Recommendations, Meta-Analysis Finds
Dietary Saturated Fat Has Undeserved Bad Reputation, Says Review
A high-fat, high-sugar diet causes significant damage to cognitive flexibility, a new study finds.
Cognitive flexibility is the ability to adjust and adapt to changing situations.
The research was carried out on laboratory mice.
They were given either a normal diet, a high-fat diet or a high-sugar diet.
After four weeks the mental and physical performance of mice on the high-fat or high-sugar diet began to suffer.
2. Multimedia multitasking shrinks the brain
Using laptops, phones and other media devices at the same time could shrink important structures in the brain, a new study indicates.
For the first time, neuroscientists have found that people who use
multiple devices simultaneously have lower gray-matter density in an
area of the brain associated with cognitive and emotional control.
Multitasking might include listening to music while playing a video
game or watching TV while making a phone call or even reading the
newspaper with the TV on.
3. Googling it makes you feel cleverer than you are
Searching the internet makes people feel they know more than they really do, a new study finds.
And it doesn’t seem to matter much that people don’t actually find the information for which they were searching.
Matthew Fisher, who led the research, said:
“The Internet is such a powerful environment, where you
can enter any question, and you basically have access to the world’s
knowledge at your fingertips.
It becomes easier to confuse your own knowledge with this external source.
When people are truly on their own, they may be wildly inaccurate
about how much they know and how dependent they are on the Internet.”
4. Too much sugar damages memory
Otherwise healthy people with high blood sugar levels are more likely to have memory problems, according to a recent study published in the journal Neurology.
One of the study’s authors, Dr. Agnes Flöel, said:
“…even for people within the normal range of blood sugar,
lowering their blood sugar levels could be a promising strategy for
preventing memory problems and cognitive decline as they age.
5. Experts know less than they think
‘Know-it-alls’ don’t know as much as they think, new research finds.
The more people think they know about a topic, the more likely they
are to claim that totally made-up facts are true, psychologists have
found
Ms Stav Atir, the study’s first author, explained:
“The more people believed they knew about finances in
general, the more likely they were to overclaim knowledge of the
fictitious financial terms.
The same pattern emerged for other domains, including biology, literature, philosophy, and geography.
For instance, people’s assessment of how much they know about a
particular biological term will depend in part on how much they think
they know about biology in general.”
6. Poor sleep ruins thinking skills
The damage that poor sleep does to your thinking skills is mammoth.
Sleepy brains have to work harder while short-term and long-term memory is worse.
Attention and planning are worse and it’s easier to follow habits and difficult to create new strategies.
Sleep deprivation even damages the ability to read other people’s facial emotions.
Read on: Lack of Sleep: The 10 Most Profound Psychological Effects
7. Physical exhaustion hits mental performance
Both mental and physical stress can interact to cause fatigue, a new study finds.
The brain’s resources in the prefrontal cortex — an area used for
planning and control — are divided during physical and mental activity,
the research found.
The research is one of the first to show how mental and physical tasks can interact to fatigue the brain.
Well, there seems to be other research out there that doesn't point directly to cognition but other health measures that saturated fat is not bad for you. If your doctors were any good at all they would have all the hospital nutritionists get together and create a stroke diet protocol. There are two variables here; saturated fat and fish oil; bad research because you don't know which one caused the effect. Is it that fish oil is so good for you? Or that saturated fat is that bad? You can't tell from this research anything at all. You should never have more than one variable in research.
Some fats have an amazing negative effect on cognitive function and, potentially, eating habits.
Diets high in saturated fats can slow brain function, new research finds.
Saturated fats have a direct effect on the hypothalamus, an area of the brain which is critical for regulating hunger.
Eating saturated fats could, therefore, make it difficult to control your eating habits.
They can make it difficult to control how much you eat, the types of foods you choose to consume and when to stop eating.
Saturated fats are typically found in:
lard,
butter,
or fried food.
Unsaturated fats are typically found in:
fish,
avocado,
or olive oil.
Professors Marianna Crispino and Maria Pina Mollica, two of the study’s authors, said:
“These
days, great attention is dedicated to the influence of the diet on
people’s wellbeing. Although the effects of high fat diet on metabolism
have been widely studied, little is known about the effects on the
brain.”
The study on rats compared the effects of feeding them fish oils or a lardy diet over a period of six weeks.
Professors Crispino and Mollica said:
“The difference was very clear and we were amazed to establish the impact of a fatty diet onto the brain.
Our
results suggest that being more aware about the type of fat consumed
with the diet may reduce the risk of obesity and prevent several
metabolic diseases.”
The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience (Viggiano et al., 2016).
Objective To
examine the traditional diet-heart hypothesis through recovery and
analysis of previously unpublished data from the Minnesota Coronary
Experiment (MCE) and to put findings in the context of existing
diet-heart randomized controlled trials through a systematic review and
meta-analysis.
Design The MCE (1968-73)
is a double blind randomized controlled trial designed to test whether
replacement of saturated fat with vegetable oil rich in linoleic acid
reduces coronary heart disease and death by lowering serum cholesterol.
Recovered MCE unpublished documents and raw data were analyzed according
to hypotheses prespecified by original investigators. Further, a
systematic review and meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials that
lowered serum cholesterol by providing vegetable oil rich in linoleic
acid in place of saturated fat without confounding by concomitant
interventions was conducted.
Setting One nursing home and six state mental hospitals in Minnesota, United States.
Participants Unpublished
documents with completed analyses for the randomized cohort of 9423
women and men aged 20-97; longitudinal data on serum cholesterol for the
2355 participants exposed to the study diets for a year or more; 149
completed autopsy files.
Interventions Serum
cholesterol lowering diet that replaced saturated fat with linoleic
acid (from corn oil and corn oil polyunsaturated margarine). Control
diet was high in saturated fat from animal fats, common margarines, and
shortenings.
Main outcome measures Death
from all causes; association between changes in serum cholesterol and
death; and coronary atherosclerosis and myocardial infarcts detected at
autopsy.
Results The intervention group had significant reduction in serum cholesterol compared with controls (mean change from baseline −13.8% v
−1.0%; P<0.001). Kaplan Meier graphs showed no mortality benefit for
the intervention group in the full randomized cohort or for any
prespecified subgroup. There was a 22% higher risk of death for each 30
mg/dL (0.78 mmol/L) reduction in serum cholesterol in covariate adjusted
Cox regression models (hazard ratio 1.22, 95% confidence interval 1.14
to 1.32; P<0.001). There was no evidence of benefit in the
intervention group for coronary atherosclerosis or myocardial infarcts.
Systematic review identified five randomized controlled trials for
inclusion (n=10 808). In meta-analyses, these cholesterol lowering
interventions showed no evidence of benefit on mortality from coronary
heart disease (1.13, 0.83 to 1.54) or all cause mortality (1.07, 0.90 to
1.27).
Conclusions Available evidence
from randomized controlled trials shows that replacement of saturated
fat in the diet with linoleic acid effectively lowers serum cholesterol
but does not support the hypothesis that this translates to a lower risk
of death from coronary heart disease or all causes. Findings from the
Minnesota Coronary Experiment add to growing evidence that incomplete
publication has contributed to overestimation of the benefits of
replacing saturated fat with vegetable oils rich in linoleic acid.
Complete article at link if you want to try wading thru it.
Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study investigators†