current health articles

What Is Epigenetics

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Can What We Eat Affect Our Kids?

Author: Dr. Stephen Chaney

 

what is epigeneticsWhat is epigenetics?  For me, the first stages of understanding came a while back.  When I was a young graduate student (which is more than just a few years ago), I was taught that all genetic information resided in our DNA. During conception, we picked up some DNA from our dad and some from our mom, and that DNA was what made us a unique individual.

We knew that environmental influences such as diet, lifestyle and exposure to toxic chemicals could affect our health personally. However, we never dreamed that the effects of those environmental influences could actually alter our gene expression, and that those genetic alterations could be passed on to our children.

Today we know that environmental influences can actually modify our DNA and that those modifications can be passed on to our offspring – a process called epigenetics.

What Is Epigenetics & How Does It Affect Gene Expression?

Simply put, epigenetics involves modifications to our DNA. DNA can be methylated or acetylated and the proteins that bind to our DNA can be modified in multiple ways. That is important for two reasons:

  • These alterations can turn genes on and off. That means that epigenetic modifications can alter gene expression.
  • These alterations can be influenced by our environment – diet, lifestyle, and exposure to environmental chemicals

In a previous “Health Tips From the Professor” article titled “Can Diet Alter Your Genetic Destiny?”  I discussed recent research suggesting that a healthy diet and lifestyle causes epigenetic changes in the DNA that may reduce your risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

That alone was a monumental discovery. Even more monumental is the recent discovery that at least some of those epigenetic changes can be passed on to our children, which brings me to the question I posed in the title of this article: “Can what we eat affect our kids?”

Animal Studies Showing That Epigenetic Changes Can Be Inherited

epigenetic changes are inheritedAs is often the case, the first definitive study showed that epigenetic changes were heritable was an animal study. This study was done with a mouse strain called agouti (Waterman and Jirtle, Mol. Cell. Biol. 23: 5193 – 5300, 2003). Agouti mice can have two remarkably distinctive phenotypes. They can either have a yellow coat, become obese as adults and be prone to cancer and diabetes as they age or they can have a brown coat and grow up to be lean and healthy.

It had been known for some time that these phenotypic differences were controlled by the epigenetic methylation of a specific gene called the agouti gene. The agouti gene codes for a genetic regulator that controls coat color, feeding behavior, and body weight set-point, among other things. When the agouti gene is under methylated it is active. As a consequence the mice have yellow coats and are prone to obesity. When the agouti gene is highly methylated it is inactive. The mice have brown coats and are lean and healthy.

Moreover, methylation of the agouti gene is not a purely random event. Mothers with the yellow, obese phenotype tended to produce a preponderance of offspring with the same phenotype and vice-versa. In short, the epigenetic methylation pattern of the agouti gene could be passed from generation to generation. It was heritable.

Waterman and Jirtle’s research broke new ground by showing that the methylation of the agouti gene could be strongly influenced by what the mother ate while the fetal mice were still in the womb.

When they fed agouti mothers a diet with extra folic acid, B12, betaine and choline (all nutrients that favor DNA methylation) during conception and pregnancy the agouti gene of their offspring became highly methylated. A high percentage of those offspring had brown coats and grew up to be lean and healthy.

However, when Waterman and Jirtle put agouti mothers on a diet that was deficient in folic acid, B12, betaine and choline during conception and pregnancy the agouti gene of their offspring was under methylated. Many of those offspring had yellow coats and grew up to be fat and unhealthy.

Subsequent studies from the same laboratory have shown that:

  • Addition of genistein, a phytonutrient from soy, to the maternal diet also favors methylation of the agouti gene and protects against obesity in agouti mice (Dolinoy et al, Environmental Health Perspective, 114: 567-572, 2006).
  • The addition of the environmental toxin bisphenol A to maternal diets causes under methylation of the agouti gene and predisposes to obesity in agouti mice, but this effect can be reversed by also feeding the mother genistein or folic acid and related nutrients during pregnancy (Dolinoy et al, PNAS, 13056-13061, 2007).

The agouti mice studies provide a dramatic example of how diet and environmental exposure during pregnancy can cause epigenetic changes in fetal DNA that have long term health consequences for the offspring. However, they are animal studies. Does the same hold true for humans?

Diet, Epigenetic Changes, and Obesity in Humans

diet-epigenetic-changes-obesityWith humans, it is really difficult to determine whether epigenetic changes that occur during conception and pregnancy affect our children. That is because when you measure an epigenetic effect in a child or adult, it is difficult to sort out how much of that effect was caused by what the mom ate during pregnancy and how much was caused by how the family ate as the kids were growing up.

Unfortunately, there is a tragic human experiment that shows that the same kind of epigenetic changes are heritable in humans. I’m referring to what is known as the “Dutch Hunger Winter”. This was a period of starvation during 1944-1945, the final year of World War II, when the Germans set up a blockade that prevented food from reaching western Holland. During that few months even pregnant women were forced to live on food rations providing a little as 500 calories a day.

This was an event without parallel in human history. Holland is not a third world country. Once the blockade was lifted children born during the Hunger Winter had the same plentiful supply of food as every other Dutch citizen. This has allowed generations of research scientists to ask what were the effects of a brief exposure to malnutrition during conception and pregnancy.

The health consequences were dramatic. 50 years later individuals who were conceived during the Hunger Winter weighed about 14 pounds more, had waists about 1.5 “ larger, and were three times more likely to have heart disease than those born to mothers who were in their second or third trimester of pregnancy during that time. By the time they reached age 63, they experienced a 10% increase in mortality.

What caused those health consequences? Could the cause have been epigenetic? Recent research suggests that the answer might be yes.

A recent study analyzed epigenetic changes in DNA from blood samples of survivors born during the Hunger Winter that had been collected when they were 59 years old (Tobi et al, Int. J. Epidemiology, doi: 10.1093/ije/dyv043, 2015). This study showed:

  • A distinct pattern of DNA methylation was observed in survivors who were conceived during the Hunger Winter. This pattern of DNA methylation was not observed in survivors who were in their second or third trimester during the Hunger Winter. It was also not seen in people who were conceived immediately before or after the Hunger Winter.
  • Some of the genes with distinctive methylation patterns were genes that affected things like cholesterol levels and insulin sensitivity, which have the potential to increase disease risk.
  • Other genes with distinctive methylation patterns were genes that affected metabolism. They were “thrifty” genes that increased the efficiency of metabolism. Increased efficiency of metabolism is beneficial when calories are scarce, but can lead to obesity when calories are plentiful.

That is a truly remarkable finding when you think about it. If these data are true, they suggest that starvation during early pregnancy caused the fetus to make epigenetic changes to its DNA that allowed it to become more efficient at energy utilization, and those epigenetic changes have lasted a lifetime – even when food was abundant throughout the rest of that lifetime.

What Is Epigenetics And Can What We Eat Affect Our Kids?

can what we eat affect our kidsThe studies I featured in this article are powerful “proof of concept” that diet and environmental exposure during conception and pregnancy can result in epigenetic changes to the DNA of the offspring that can persist throughout their life and dramatically affect their health. However, it is not yet clear how they apply to you and me.

  • Agouti mice are a very special strain of mice. It is not yet clear what effect folic acid, genistein and bisphenol A have on epigenetic modification of specific human genes, and whether those epigenetic modifications will have health consequences in humans.
  • The specific circumstances of the Dutch Hunger Winter are unlikely to be repeated on any significant scale. The closest approximation I can envision would be a woman who becomes pregnant while on a very low calorie fad diet.

There are, of course, many other examples of heritable epigenetic modifications. For example:

  • When female rats are maintained on a “junk-food diet” high in fat and sugar during pregnancy and lactation their offspring show a marked preference for high fat foods (Ong & Muhlhausler, FASB J, 25: 2167-2179, 2011). They also show epigenetic alterations of the central reward pathways that may pre-condition them to require higher intakes of fat to experience pleasure from eating.
  • When rats are fed diets deficient in omega-3 fatty acids, adolescent rats from the second and subsequent generations display marked increases in hyperactivity and anxiety (For more details, see my “Health Tips from the Professor” article titled “The Seventh Generation Revisited”.
  • In a clinical trial of 162 obese Canadian mothers who had children before and after weight loss surgery, the children born after weight loss surgery were half as likely to grow up overweight or obese as the children born before the weight loss surgery (Smith et al, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism 94: 4275-4283, 2009), and this correlated with epigenetic modification of genes that play a role in obesity, diabetes, cancer and heart disease (Guernard et al, PNAS 110: 11439-11443, 2013).

Taken together, the existing data suggest that our diet and environmental exposure during conception and pregnancy can cause epigenetic changes to our children’s DNA that may affect their future health in ways that we can only begin to understand at present. It is a sobering thought.

 

The Bottom Line

 

  • The term epigenetics describes modifications to our DNA that turn our genes off and on.
  • In this article I discussed two powerful “proof of concept” studies, one in rats and the other in humans, showing that diet and environmental exposure during conception and pregnancy can result in epigenetic changes to the DNA of the offspring that can persist throughout their life and dramatically affect their health.
  • The health consequences of these epigenetic modifications include obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, hyperactivity, anxiety and many more.
  • This is a new paradigm. Most prenatal nutrition advice is currently based on what it takes to have a healthy baby – not on what it might take for your child to experience better health throughout their life.
  • Of course, the science of epigenetics is relatively new. It will be many years before we will be able to make specific recommendations as to what your diet should be like during pregnancy and lactation if you wish to make beneficial modifications to your baby’s DNA.
  • However, you should be aware that what you eat during pregnancy & lactation may influence the health of your children – not just at the time of their birth – but throughout their life, and that a high calorie, “junk-food” diet or a fad weight loss diet just may not be your best choice.

*The agouti mice picture is by Randy Jirtle and Dana Dolinoy (E-mailed by author) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

 

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Can Food Affect Your Mood?

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An Apple A Day Keeps The Blues Away

Author: Dr. Stephen Chaney

 

Can food affect your mood? In rural North Carolina you still occasionally see bumper stickers that say “Life Happens”. Of course, the word they use isn’t exactly “Life”, but you get the point.

can food affect your moodWe can’t always control what happens to us. What is important is how we react when bad things happen to us. Do we brush them off and move on, or do we let them get us down? There is no shortage of experts telling us how we can keep the blues away. We are told to count our blessings, meditate, think happy thoughts, develop support groups – the list goes on and on.

But is there perhaps one important parameter that most of these experts are missing? Could the foods we eat make us blue?

The standard American diet (S.A.D.) is high in processed foods, fat (especially saturated and trans fats), refined grains, simple sugars, salt and calories. As I’ve said before, almost anything would be better.

You probably already know that the S.A.D. leads to obesity and a whole host of diseases – including heart disease, cancer and diabetes – just to name a few. But did you know that the S.A.D. could make you sad? That’s what two recent studies suggest.

Can Foods Affect Your Mood? Does Junk Food Make You Sad?

The first study by Akbaralay et al (British Journal of Psychiatry, 195: 408-413, 2009) looked at the dietary patterns and mental health outcomes of 3486 participants in the Whitehall II Prospective Study.

In case you didn’t know it, Whitehall is the central district in London where most of the British government offices are located. So the 3486 participants in this study were bureaucrats. They were middle aged (average age 55.6 years old) office staff (74% men, 26% women) who spent most of their day sitting and really didn’t like their jobs very much. (I made up the part about not liking their jobs. It is hard to imagine that kind of job would be deeply fulfilling, but I’m sure that some of the bureaucrats liked their jobs better than others – which is the whole point of this study.)

At the beginning of the study the participants were given a 127 item food frequency quiz to fill out. Interestingly enough, the food preferences of the participants in this study clustered neatly into two groups.

The diets of the processed foods groups predominantly consisted of sweetened desserts, chocolates, fried foods, processed meats, refined grains and high fat dairy products. In short the diet of this group was pretty similar to what we think of as the Standard American Diet (S.A.D.). In contrast, the diets of the whole foods group consisted mostly of vegetables, fruits, fish and whole grains.

Five years later the study participants were analyzed for depression using a 20 item standardized depression scale.

The results were pretty eye-catching. The processed food group was 58% more likely to suffer from depression than the whole food group! And this was after correction for age, gender, weight, marital status, education, employment grade, physical activity, smoking and diseases (high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and stroke).

The reasons for this astounding correlation between diet and depression are not clear. Can food affect your mood? Does this give us more insight?

The authors speculated that the diets of the whole food group were likely higher in antioxidants, folic acid and omega-3 fatty acids than the diets of the processed food group – and studies have suggested that each of these nutrients may protect against depression.

The authors also suggested that it might be an indirect effect. Diets that are high in saturated fats and refined grains and low in omega-3 fatty acids increase inflammation, and studies have suggested that inflammation can lead to depression.

Can Food Affect Your Mood? Does Healthy Food Make You Glad?

an apple for healthy fruitThe previous study suggested that junk food may make you sad. So you might be asking: “Does that mean that healthy foods can make you glad?” According to one recent study (Br J Health Psychol, Jan 24, 2013, doi: 10.1111/bjhp.12021) the answer may be yes.

A team from the University of Otago in New Zealand enrolled 281 young adults (average age = 20) in a study that looked at the effect of diet on their mood. Each day for 21 consecutive days they recorded their mood and what foods they ate using an online questionnaire. In particular, they reported the number of servings of fresh fruit and vegetables and of several unhealthy foods such as biscuits or cookies, potato chips or French fries and cakes or muffins.

The investigators correlated the foods eaten with the moods reported by the participants on the same day, and again on the day after those foods were eaten. Once again, the results were pretty impressive.

On the days when people ate more fruits and vegetables they reported feeling calmer, happier and more energetic than they did on other days (p = .002 – anything less than .05 is considered a statistically significant difference). And the good effects of fruit and vegetable consumption carried over to the next day as well (p < .001).

Can food affect your mood? While I paraphrased the “apple a day” quote to introduce this study, one apple won’t quite do it. According to this study it takes about 7-8 servings of fruits and vegetables to positively affect mood. In addition, it probably wasn’t just the fruits and vegetables that made the difference. Based on the previous study I would guess that the participants in the study may have eaten other healthy foods such as whole grains and fish on their good days.

Can Food Affect Your Mood?

Taken together these two studies suggest that the next time you feel a little blue you may want to look at your diet. You may want to include a healthier diet along with the meditation and positive thinking.

Of course, these studies both measured correlations between diet and mood, and any good scientist will tell you that correlations do not prove cause and effect. It could be that when people are “down in the dumps” they just naturally reach for junk foods rather than fruits and vegetables.

However, since there is no downside to consuming fruits and vegetables, I feel fully comfortable recommending more fruits and vegetables in our diets. If their health benefits aren’t enough to motivate you, maybe the possibility of improving your mood will!

There are some things you just can’t control. To paraphrase those country songs, you can’t keep your girl and dog from running off. Life happens to all of us. Can food affect your mood? If you want to keep your mood where it should be, you can always reach for those fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and sources of omega-3 fatty acids.

 

The Bottom Line

  • Two recent studies have suggested what we eat can affect our mood.
  • The first study showed that people who habitually consumed a diet consisting of sweetened desserts, chocolates, fried foods, processed meats, refined grains and high fat dairy products were 58% more likely to suffer from depression than people who habitually consumed a diet consisting mostly of vegetables, fruits, fish and whole grains.
  • The second study showed that the subjects in their study reported feeling calmer, happier and more energetic on the days when they ate more fruits and vegetables than they did on the days they ate junk foods.
  • Of course, these studies both measured correlations between diet and mood, and any good scientist will tell you that correlations do not prove cause and effect. It could be that when people are “down in the dumps” they just naturally reach for junk foods rather than fruits and vegetables.
  • However, since there is no downside to consuming a healthier diet, I feel fully comfortable recommending more fruits and vegetables, whole grains and omega-3s in our diets. If their health benefits aren’t enough to motivate you, maybe the possibility of their improving your mood will!

 

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Do Supplements Cause Cancer?

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Danger

The Kernel of Truth Behind the Scary Headlines

Author: Dr. Stephen Chaney

DangerOnce again the sky is falling! Some of the recent headlines have been downright scary. You’ve probably seen headlines saying things like “The American Association for Cancer Research reports that dietary supplements increase cancer risk” and “A recent study shows that taking extra vitamins and minerals may do more harm than good”. You’re probably asking yourself if you should throw away those vitamin and mineral supplements that you have been taking.

Let me start by correcting some of the more misleading statements in the recent headlines:

•    This was not a position statement from the American Association for Cancer Research. It was a talk presented by a single scientist at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting.

•    This was not a new study. The talk was based on a paper published in 2012 (Martinez et al., Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 104: 732-739, 2012).

•    This was not even a study. It was a review of previously published studies.

•    When you read the paper you find that the majority of studies found no effect of supplementation on cancer risk, a few suggested that supplementation might decrease cancer risk, and a very few suggested that supplementation might increase cancer risk. However, the scientist giving the talk at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting choose to emphasize the few studies suggesting increased risk.

Should We Worry About A Few Studies Suggesting Increased Cancer Risk?

The important question is whether we should be concerned about even a few studies suggesting that supplementation increases cancer risk. As a mythsresearch scientist I am not particularly concerned. That’s because I realize that there is always some variability in the results of clinical trials.

•    Sometimes that’s because an individual clinical study was poorly designed. Those are studies that are easy to eliminate from consideration.

•    However, many times we do not know why an individual study is an “outlier”. We only know that it is different from all the other studies. Good scientists base their opinions on the weight of the evidence from all available clinical studies, not individual studies – particularly if the individual studies are outliers.

Unfortunately, that’s not the way it works in the “real world”. In the real world individual studies that support a particular viewpoint are often quoted over and over until they become “generally accepted as true” – even if multiple subsequent studies have come to the opposite conclusion. They become what I call “nutrition myths”.

In this issue of “Health Tips From the Professor” I will briefly debunk some of these nutrition myths about the cancer risk of supplementation by exposing the clinical studies that were poorly designed and/or have been contradicted by multiple subsequent studies.

However, there is often a “kernel of truth” buried in all the hype. This kernel of truth is the main focus of this issue because it should guide our decisions about supplementation – not the scary headlines.

Antioxidants & Cancer Risk – A Poorly Designed Study

One of the most widely quoted studies supporting the claim that antioxidant supplements increase the risk of cancer was a meta-analysis of 66 published clinical studies (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 297: 842-857, 2007). It came to the conclusion that consumption of extra vitamins A, E, and beta-carotene were associated with up to a 16% increased risk of cancer. However, that study included only those studies in which adverse outcomes were reported. 400 studies with no adverse outcomes were ignored.

More to the point, another group of scientists came back and re-analyzing the same data set a couple of years later (Nutrients, 2: 929-949, 2010). When they looked at same 66 studies included in the original meta-analysis, they reported that 60% of the studies showed no effect of supplementation; 36% of studies showed a benefit of supplementation; and only 4% showed an increased cancer risk.

You might ask yourself, “If only 4% of the studies showed any increase in cancer risk, how could the meta-analysis of all 66 studies report a 16% increase in cancer risk?” That’s because of a statistical quirk. In a meta-analysis the outcome of a single very large study can swamp the conclusions of multiple smaller studies. In this case, the increased cancer risk reported in the original meta-analysis was almost entirely due to a single study in which participants using vitamin E were also on hormone replacement therapy. That’s a concern because we now know that hormone replacement therapy significantly increases cancer risk.

In short, this was a flawed study, but it is cited over and over as “proof” that antioxidant supplementation may increase cancer risk.

Examples of Nutrition Myths Disproved by Subsequent Studies

Antioxidants & Cancer Risk

antioxidant supplementsI have covered this topic in a previous “Health Tips From the Professor” so I’ll just give you a brief summary here. In short, the flawed paper suggesting that antioxidants has been followed by several major studies that have come to the opposite conclusions. For example:

•    One study followed 24,000 adults in Germany for 11 years and found that those consuming antioxidant supplements at the beginning of the study had a 48% decrease in cancer mortality and a 42% decrease in overall mortality (European Journal of Nutrition, 51: 407-413, 2012).

•    A US study followed 15,000 male physicians for 10 years and found that multivitamin supplementation decreased cancer incidence by 8% (JAMA, 308: 1871-1880, 2012).

•    Another study with the same group of 15,000 physicians found that vitamin C and E supplements had no effect on cancer risk over an 8 year period. But, when the study was extended by an additional 3.8 years vitamin C supplementation decreased the risk of colon cancer by 46% (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 100: 915-923, 2014).

•    Finally, a study of 7,728 women with invasive breast cancer showed that multivitamin use increased breast cancer survival by 30% (Breast Cancer Research & Treatment, 141: 495-505, 2013).

Folic Acid & Cancer Risk

I have also covered this topic in a previous “Health Tips From the Professor”, so, once again, I will be brief.

•    The study (JAMA, 297: 2351-2359, 2007) that is widely quoted as suggesting that folic acid supplementation might increase the risk of developing colon cancer in people over 50 didn’t actually look at colon cancer. It looked at adenomas in the colon. That is an important distinction because adenomas are benign. They can develop into a cancerous lesion over time, but that is not inevitable.

•    Two major studies since then (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 94: 1053-1062, 2011 and Gastroenterology, 141: 98-105, 2011) have reported that folic acid supplementation does not increase the risk of colon cancer.

•    In fact, the second study showed that people with the highest intake of both folic acid from supplementation and folates from food significantly decreased their risk of developing colon cancer.

The Kernel of Truth Behind the Headlines

While the scary headlines about supplements causing cancer are clearly misleading, I would be doing my readers a disservice if I didn’t discuss the Newspaper Headlineskernel of truth behind the headlines.

Let me start by saying that I am not a big fan of high dose, high purity individual supplements. In foods vitamins and minerals tend to occur in a natural balance. When we take individual nutrients in high doses, they often interfere with our body’s ability to absorb and utilize similar nutrients from the foods we eat. We create an imbalance.

That is the “kernel of truth” behind the headlines. High dose, high purity supplements have the potential to create nutritional imbalances. They have the potential to cause harm. Let me give you some examples in the context of cancer risk.

•    Alpha-tocopherol is the most abundant form of vitamin E in foods. However, there are many other forms of vitamin E in foods and high dose, pure alpha-tocopherol suppresses their absorption. This is a potential concern because some of them – gamma-tocopherol and the tocotrienols, for example – are more effective than alpha-tocopherol at reducing the risk of certain cancers in animal studies. This selective anticancer effect has not yet been demonstrated in humans, but it does raise some concern about the use of high dose, high purity alpha-tocopherol supplements.

•    Antioxidants are generally found in combination in foods, not as isolated nutrients. This is important because antioxidants work together. For example, vitamin E reduces free radicals to chemically unstable intermediates that have the potential to damage cells and cause cancer. A selenium-containing enzyme is required to convert these unstable intermediates into completely harmless compounds. This is thought to be the reason why a recent study found that high dose alpha-tocopherol increased prostate cancer risk in men with low selenium status, but not in men with high selenium status (Journal of the National Cancer Institute, doi: 10.1093/jnci/djt456, 2014).

•    Beta-carotene is the most abundant carotenoid in foods, but there are many other naturally occurring carotenoids – some of which appear to have unique anticancer activity in animal studies. This has been suggested as the reason why several studies have shown that diets high in carotenoids decrease the risk of lung cancer in smokers, but high dose beta-carotene alone appears to increase the risk of lung cancer in smokers.

•    B vitamins are best utilized in balance. That is especially true for folic acid, B12 and B6, which probably explains a recent study that suggested high dose B6 and folic acid supplements were associated with an increased risk of mortality, but a B complex supplement containing the same doses of both folic acid and B6 was not associated with increased mortality (Archives of Internal Medicine, 171: 1625-1633, 2011).

Do Supplements Cause Cancer?

Now that you understand the “kernel of truth” behind the headlines you can better understand why some experts recommend getting our vitamins and minerals from foods rather than supplements. While I understand the logic behind that recommendation, I consider it an imperfect solution to the problem for three reasons:

#1: Most of us don’t eat the way that we should. The USDA tells us that only 3-5% of Americans eat a healthy diet on a daily basis.

#2: Most of us don’t eat enough variety of foods. Even if we eat some healthy foods, we won’t get the balance of essential nutrients we need unless we eat a wide variety of healthy foods.

#3: Some of us have increased nutritional needs. Poor diet, genetic predisposition and poor health can all increase our needs for certain essential nutrients – and we may not know about those increased needs until it is too late.

Supplementation to fill nutritional gaps is still a good choice for many Americans, but I recommend avoiding the high dose, high purity individual supplements. For example:

•    Choose a supplement that contains all the naturally occurring forms of vitamin E and selenium in addition to alpha-tocopherol.

•    Choose a supplement that contains a variety of carotenoids, not just pure beta-carotene.

•    Choose a supplement that contains the B vitamins in balance, not just high dose individual B vitamins like folic acid or vitamin B6.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. If you take individual high purity, high dose supplements you might actually increase your cancer risk. For the most part, the increased cancer risk has not been proven, but it is theoretically possible. A better approach is to choose supplements that are designed to mimic the balance of vitamins and minerals found in the foods we eat.

The Bottom Line

•    Ignore the scary headlines warning that supplement use may increase your risk of cancer. For the most part, those headlines are based on a few flawed studies that have been refuted by multiple subsequent studies which have come to the opposite conclusion.

•    However, there is a kernel of truth behind the idea that certain supplements might have the potential to increase cancer risk. High dose, high purity individual supplements such as alpha-tocopherol, beta-carotene and folic can interfere with our body’s ability to absorb or utilize related nutrients that are important for cancer prevention. In short, high dose, high purity supplements can create nutrient imbalances that have the potential to increase cancer risk.

•    That doesn’t mean that we need to avoid supplements entirely. It does mean that we need to make wise choices about the supplements we use. My recommendations are:

o    Choose a supplement that contains all the naturally occurring forms of vitamin E and selenium in addition to alpha-tocopherol.

o    Choose a supplement that contains a variety of carotenoids, not just pure beta-carotene.

o    Choose a supplement that contains the B vitamins in balance, not just high dose individual B vitamins like folic acid or vitamin B6.

o    I could go on, but you get the idea. You want to choose supplements that are designed to mimic the balance of nutrients we find in nature.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Are Sports Supplements Safe?

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Are There Any Sports Supplement Companies You Can Trust?

Author: Dr. Stephen Chaney

 

are sports supplements safe“Pump up your muscles”, “Explode your muscles”, “”Blast your fat”, “Annihilate your fat”, “Ramp up your energy”: The claims leap off the page of the ads for many sports and weight loss supplements.  But, are sports supplements safe?

The easiest way to ramp up your energy and annihilate your fat is to put amphetamines or other illegal stimulants in the supplement. The easiest way to pump up your muscles is to put steroids in the supplement. Unfortunately, there are always a few unscrupulous companies that are only too willing to do just that.

Well, the chickens have come home to roost. It’s been a bad few weeks for the sports supplement industry. It seems like every time you turned around there was another article about a sports supplement making fraudulent claims, containing illegal ingredients, or actually harming people. It makes you wonder whether you should just completely avoid sports supplements all together.

That would be unfortunate because sports supplements can help with hydration, endurance and recovery. They can help you maximize the benefits of your exercise program. Furthermore, there are a lot of reputable sports supplement companies out there. The problem is that there are a few “bad apples” in the industry, and the FDA is not really doing its job to protect the American consumer from their deceptive and dangerous products.

Even worse, when the FDA acts, major retail nutrition stores often drag their feet at actually removing the products from their shelves (https://chaneyhealth.com/healthtips/are-dietary-supplements-safe/), and the unscrupulous manufacturers just switch to another equally dangerous stimulant.

It is, therefore, important for those of us who are nutrition educators to warn consumers like you about the dangerous products that are in the marketplace. The FDA will eventually act, but you need to know about those products now!

I have previously warned you about sports nutrition products containing the amphetamine-like stimulants DMAA (https://chaneyhealth.com/healthtips/are-dietary-supplements-safe/), DEPEA (https://chaneyhealth.com/healthtips/are-fat-burning-sports-supplements-safe/) and DMBA (https://chaneyhealth.com/healthtips/supplements-to-avoid/). As you might guess from the names, these are all structurally related compounds. They have several other characteristics in common:

  • They are all synthetic amphetamine analogs.
  • The sports nutrition companies selling products with these ingredients tried to fool the public (and the FDA) by claiming that they were natural components of the herbal ingredients in their product.
  • None of them had ever been tested for safety and efficacy in humans. Some of them actually killed people before the FDA stepped in and banned them.

Amphetamine and amphetamine-like substances are popular in sports nutrition and weight loss products because they increase energy levels and speed up metabolism. Unfortunately, they also cause high blood pressure, arrhythmia, heart attacks and death.

Are Sports Supplements Safe?  Yes and No.

sports supplementsSports Supplements Containing a Form of Amphetamine

Yet another analog of DMAA called beta-methylphenethylamine (BMPEA) has appeared in the sports nutrition marketplace. It is an isomer of amphetamine that was first synthesized in the 1930’s. Because it is an analog of amphetamine, BMPEA is classified as a banned substance by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Unfortunately, its story is all too familiar.

The FDA first reported the presence of pharmacological doses of BMPEA in 43% of sports and weight loss supplements containing the herbal ingredient Acacia rigidula in 2012. The manufacturers claimed that the BMPEA in their products came from the Acacia rigidula even though there was no scientific evidence that it had ever been successfully extracted from Acacia rigidula.

BMPEA causes high blood pressure in animals and has never been tested for safety or efficacy in humans. Its close analog, DMAA, caused scores of deaths before the FDA finally banned it. However, the FDA did not warn consumers that supplements with the ingredient Acacia rigidula might contain BMPEA and might, therefore, be dangerous.

A group led by Dr. Pieter Cohen of Harvard University (Cohen et al, Drug Testing and Analysis, DOI: 10.1002/dta.1793, 2015) recently decided to analyze sports and weight loss supplements containing Acacia rigidula to see whether some companies had voluntarily removed DMPEA from their products over the last two years. One might hope that at least some of those companies might have been more motivated by protecting the health of their customers than by profit.

Not a chance! Dr. Cohen and his colleagues tested 21 products containing Acacia rigidula and found that 11 of them (52%) contained BMPEA – some in amounts as high as 94 mg/serving.

Dr. Cohen was quoted as saying “More than two years after the FDA’s discovery [of BMPEA in sports supplements], the FDA has yet to warn consumers about the presence of an amphetamine isomer in supplements. This is really about the FDA and why the FDA is not enforcing the law. This is a great example of how the FDA could so easily move now and not wait like it did with DMAA, wait until strokes and heart attacks had become front page news.”

After Dr. Cohen’s article became front page news several Senators called on the FDA to ban BMPEA. A week later the FDA finally caved in and announced that BMPEA was not a legal ingredient and that any products listing it on the label must be withdrawn from market. A skeptic might note that this was a full two years after the FDA discovered the existence of products containing BMPEA. The FDA’s announcement also did not cover BMPEA-containing products listing only Acacia rigidula on the label – which made up most of the BMPEA-containing products identified by Dr. Cohen and his colleagues. As the old saying goes, the FDA action was “a day late and a dollar short”.

Sports Supplements Containing Steroids

sports supplements containing steroidsA week later the FDA issued a warning to consumers to stop using a product call Tri-Methyl Extreme because of reports of serious liver damage in people using it. The product contained the anabolic steroids methyl-stenbolone, MAX LMG (a non-methylated prohormone) and epistane.

There are two important take home lessons from this incident.

  • The product actually claimed that it contained anabolic steroids. Anabolic steroids are known to cause liver damage, heart attack and stroke, testicular cancer, infertility and mood disorders. It is hard to imagine why anyone would use a product that claimed to contain anabolic steroids. Unfortunately, some people are willing to do almost anything that will increase muscle mass and strength.
  • The FDA often only acts once a product has either seriously injured or actually killed people. I tend to agree with Dr. Cohen that it would be far preferable for the FDA to be proactive and warn consumers about products that have the potential to do harm.

Sports Supplements That Cause Cancer

As if that weren’t bad enough, at about the same time a paper was published reporting that use of muscle-building supplements by young men may increase their risk of testicular cancer by up to 177% (Li et al, British Journal of Cancer, DOI: 10.1038/bjc.2015.26).

The incidence of testicular germ cell cancer in men 15-39 years old has increased 1.6-fold between 1975 and 2011. The reason for that increase is not known, but the authors of British Journal of Cancer article noted that the use of performance-enhancing supplements in that group has also increased dramatically during the same time period.

A previous study of testicular cancer patients reported that a high percentage of them (~20%) had used performance-enhancing supplements, but no control group was included in that study. Thus, the authors of this study set out to carefully match testicular cancer patients with healthy men of the same age and demographics – something we scientists call a case-control study.

The study compared 356 testicular cancer patients age 18-55 from Connecticut and Massachusetts with 513 controls that were matched by age, race, education, tobacco and alcohol use, exercise level, injury to testes or groin, and family history of testicular cancer. The results were pretty scary.

  • Use of muscle building supplements increased the risk of testicular cancer by 65% compared to men who never used that kind of supplement.
  • For men who started using muscle building supplements before they were 25, the risk of developing testicular cancer increased by 121%.
  • For men who used muscle building supplements for more than 3 years, the risk increased to 156%.
  • For men who used more than 2 types of muscle building supplements, the risk increased to a whopping 177%. That’s almost double.

This study did not identify the actual ingredients that caused the increased testicular cancer risk, but with so many of the muscle-building supplements on the market containing dangerous and/or illegal ingredients it is perhaps not surprising that they might increase cancer risk. After all, this demographic (young males) is the group most likely to choose the “Monster Muscle Builder” products rather the less glamorous, but safer, sports supplements.

Sports Supplements That Mislead

sports supplements companies that misleadAt the same time that we were hearing about sports supplements with dangerous and illegal ingredients and sports supplements that may cause cancer, the Advertising Standards Authority (the British equivalent of the FTC) accused a British sports supplement company of making false and misleading ingredient claims. That’s a polite way of saying they were lying!

In particular, they disallowed claims that:

  • CLA builds lean muscle and attacks fat stores, promotes fat loss, improves mood and focus and boosts energy.
  • Acetyl-L-Carnitine aids weight loss, burns fat, boosts energy, improves mental performance, and improves focus.

There were more claims they disallowed (click here for the complete report) (http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2015/4/Protein-World-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_288571.aspx#.VS2VbJOk9RN), but I included those two because you’ve probably seen similar claims for those ingredients on this side of the Atlantic. Those claims are just as bogus in the United States as they are in England.

How To Choose A Sports Supplement Company You Can Trust

safe sports supplementsBy now you are probably convinced that you should never use a sports supplement product again. However, as I said above good sports supplements properly used can improve hydration, endurance, recovery and the results you obtain from your exercise program. Here are the questions to ask.  Are sports supplements safe?  They can be.   Which sports nutrition products can you trust? Here are some simple guidelines to help you choose a trustworthy sports supplement company.

  • Avoid the hyped claims. If the supplement makes claims like “Get ripped fast”, “Intense Energy”. “Extreme Energy”, “Eviscerate fat”, “Makes fat cells self-destruct” or “boosts testosterone”, you should run the other direction.
  • Ignore testimonials. The placebo effect is close to 50% for things like energy, and if an athlete “thinks” they have more energy every time they work out, they will get stronger.
  • Look for published clinical studies showing that the product is safe and effective. Those clinical studies should be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. If the company just cites their own “studies” or “white papers”, ignore them. They may look impressive, but they have not been peer reviewed. You have no idea whether they are accurate.
  • I could tell you to look for rigorous quality control standards, but every company claims they have excellent quality controls. Instead I will tell you to look for supplements that are used by medal winning Olympic athletes. Why Olympic athletes? That is because Olympic athletes are more rigorously drug tested than any other athlete. They absolutely cannot afford to have any stimulants, steroids or other banned substances in their body at any time. They need products that are pure, safe and effective.
  • Finally, avoid products with artificial ingredients. While the risks associated with artificial sweeteners, artificial flavors and artificial colors are not as great as the risks associated with stimulants and steroids, they are still ingredients to be avoided. We simply do not know the long term health consequences of artificial ingredients.

 

The Bottom Line

  • There are a few bad apples in every barrel, and the sports supplement industry is no exception. Are sports supplements safe?  Over one two-week period lately we have learned:
  • Over 50% of sports nutrition products labeled as containing an innocuous sounding herbal ingredient were actually found to contain an amphetamine isomer called BMPEA that has been banned by the World Anti-doping Agency. After years of dragging its feet, the FDA finally banned some of the products containing BMPEA, but left many others on the market. As the old saying goes, the FDA was “a day late and a dollar short”.
  • Even though they are extremely dangerous, new sports supplements with anabolic steroids keep popping up online. Once again, the FDA has had to warn consumers not to use a new muscle building supplement containing steroids because several people using that supplement suffered severe liver damage.
  • A study reported that young men who use muscle building supplements may increase their risk of testicular cancer by up to 177%.
  • The British equivalent of our FTC has told a British sports supplement manufacturer that it must stop making false and misleading claims about ingredients like CLA and acetyl-L-carnitine. That is noteworthy because some sports supplement companies in the US make very similar claims for the same ingredients.
  • You shouldn’t necessarily avoid sports supplements because of a few bad apples. Good sports supplements properly used can improve hydration, endurance, recovery and the results you obtain from your exercise program. There are a few simple guidelines that can help you choose the good sports supplement companies and avoid the bad ones:
  • Avoid the hyped claims.
  • Ignore testimonials.
  • Look for published clinical studies showing that the product is safe and effective.
  • Look for supplements that are used by medal winning Olympic athletes. That’s because Olympic athletes absolutely need products that are pure, safe and effective.
  • Avoid products with artificial ingredients.

 

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

What Causes Back Pain?

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Natural Remedies for Back Pain

 

Author: Julie Donnelly, LMT –The Pain Relief Expert

Editor: Dr. Steve Chaney

 

What Causes Back Pain? 

Exploring the Overlooked Muscular Causes:

 

what causes back painYour back is a symphony of overlapping, interconnected, groups of muscles, tendons, and nerves. Each muscle merges into a tendon, which then crosses over a joint and inserts into a bone. When the muscle contracts it will pull on the tendon and the joint moves.

Your spine has 7 cervical vertebrae, 12 thoracic vertebrae, and 5 lumbar vertebrae, each separated by a gelatinous disk that acts as a cushion to separate the bones and protect them from wear. Muscles span your entire spine, in some cases originating on the vertebrae and connecting each vertebra to the next, in some cases the muscles originate on the ribs and insert into the vertebrae in order to move your spine in the infinite number of angles, and in other cases the muscles originate on your vertebrae and insert into moveable bones such as your shoulder blade, pulling it in various directions.

In order to move in the opposite direction, the contracted muscle needs to relax to remove the strain from the bone, and the muscle on the opposite side contracts to pull the bone in the opposite direction. If the muscle that needs to release is in a spasm it can’t relax, and you have the muscles pulling in two opposite directions – and you have back pain.

The answer to what causes back pain is so broad that it needs to be broken down into four categories:

(1)   Why a Muscular Component Can Be What Causes Back Pain

Back pain is commonly caused by repetitively straining the muscles that insert into the vertebrae and ribs.  The list of muscles that insert into the bones of your back is long, with each muscle potentially causing pain when it is in spasm and pulling on the bone. Your back is a system of overlapping muscles, so many times when you are treating a muscle for one thing, you are also treating the source of a totally different problem.

This commonly happens when you are treating a thigh muscle that causes knee pain, but is also a key muscle that causes back pain, groin pain, and sciatica.

Natural Remedies for Back Pain

natural remedies for backTreating the muscle is one of the natural remedies for back pain. For this muscle treatment I suggest you use a 12″x 1 1/2″ length of PVC pipe and slide (don’t roll) from the top of your thigh to just above your knee.  The main area of treatment is shown in this picture.  It’s NOT on the front of your thigh, and it’s NOT on the outside of your thigh, but instead it is in between these two lines.

As you go down your thigh you’ll go over several “bumps,” which are actually large spasms that are pulling down on the front of your pelvis. The pelvis rotation causes a strain on your low back, and presses your posterior pelvis up into your sciatic nerve.

There’s a lot more to this muscle, but it’s so broad that it can’t be explained properly here. In fact, each of the muscles that cause back pain are fully explained, and treatments are demonstrated in my Trigger Point Yoga kit.

(2) Why a Bulging or Herniated Disk Causes Back Pain

herniated disk can be what causes back painThe disk between each vertebra is meant to be a cushion for the bones so they don’t rub on each other.  However, tight muscles that originate on each vertebra can pull the bones together, pressing down on the disks and cause them to either bulge in the opposite direction, or herniate.  For example, if the muscles on the right side of the spine are tight, they will bring the vertebrae closer together on the right, causing the disk to bulge toward the left.

If the muscles on both sides of the spine are tight, they will draw the vertebrae closer together and potentially cause the disk to herniate.

In either case the disks will put pressure on the spinal cord and causes back pain to be severe in that area.  However, if it is treated before permanent damage is done, releasing the muscle tension on the vertebrae will move the bones off the disk and the pain will be eliminated.

(3) Why a Vertebra Out of Alignment Can Be What Causes Back Pain

out of alignment can cause back painYour spine stays in perfect alignment because muscles are putting the exact amount of “pull” on each side. In fact, without muscles the spine would just hang straight and not be able to move at all — like a skeleton on a hook.  It is only because of muscles that the spine has any mobility at all.

The only way a vertebrae can move is either by a traumatic accident (such as falling down a flight of steps, or having a car accident), or by muscles pulling on the bones.

However, if muscles are pulling more on one side than the other the vertebrae will move toward the tight muscles.

The tension in the muscles must be released first if the bones are to be moved back into alignment and not be pulled out again by the tight muscles.

(4) Scoliosis, Osteoporosis, Spinal Stenosis, and other Causes of Back Pain

There are medical conditions such as scoliosis, osteoporosis, spinal stenosis, diabetes, and cancer that are also causes of back pain.  These are serious conditions that need medical attention.  It is always important to eliminate the possibility of any serious health risks before embarking on a path of treatment for back pain.

Conclusion

Obviously, as noted in #4 above, there are medical causes of back pain, but it is clear that the one that is consistently overlooked, and therefore not treated, is the muscular component.  My experience with thousands of clients over the years, both at my office and virtually online, is that muscles are frequently what causes back pain, and that the pain can be lessened or eliminated by treating the tight muscles demonstrating one of the natural remedies of back pain.

You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain, by exploring the muscular component to back pain!

 

Wishing you well,

Julie Donnelly

 

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

 

About The Author

julie donnellyJulie Donnelly is a Deep Muscle Massage Therapist with 20 years of experience specializing in the treatment of chronic joint pain and sports injuries. She has worked extensively with elite athletes and patients who have been unsuccessful at finding relief through the more conventional therapies.

She has been widely published, both on – and off – line, in magazines, newsletters, and newspapers around the country. She is also often chosen to speak at national conventions, medical schools, and health facilities nationwide.

Food Ingredients To Avoid List

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Food Ingredients to Avoid Part 2: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Author: Dr. Stephen Chaney

 

food additivesIt is getting really hard to find a food or food supplement that doesn’t have any ingredients on the internet “naughty list”. The problem is that many of the internet warnings about food ingredients are what I call “urban nutrition myths”.  Want to know the truth about which additives should be on the  food ingredients to avoid list?

Last week I identified the top 25 food ingredients on the internet “naughty list” and told you which ones were actually “good” – OK for most people most of the time. This week I’m going to tell which ones are “bad” and which ones are truly “ugly”.

Food Ingredients to Avoid List?  The Bad

food ingredients to avoid badThe term “bad” for the food ingredients in this list is a bit of a misnomer. These are food ingredients that some people will want to avoid, but are perfectly OK for many people. In some cases, the type of food the ingredients are added to determines whether the ingredient is OK or should be avoided.  So, the following could possibly be on your food ingredients to avoid list.

Sodium Nitrate and Nitrite: This is a topic I have covered in a previous article titled “Nitric Oxide Benefits and Side Effects” . It is a perfect example of a food ingredient that can be “bad” in certain foods and “good” in others. Briefly:

  • When sodium nitrate and/or sodium nitrate are added to processed meats, they can combine with the amino acids from the meat in the intestine to form cancer-causing nitrosamines. As you might suspect, this is not a good thing.
  • On the other hand, when sodium nitrate or sodium nitrite are found in fruits are vegetables or combined with natural antioxidants such as vitamin C, they are converted to nitric oxide, which has a number of beneficial effects in the body. So when they are present in these foods or food supplements, they are actually beneficial.

Sugar & High Fructose Corn Syrup: As I said in my video “The Truth About Sugar” , there are no sugar villains and there are no sugar heroes. For example, high fructose corn syrup has been particularly vilified in recent years, but its chemical composition is not significantly different from honey and agave nectar, which are considered to be “good” sugars.

The problems associated with sugars of all types in the American diet are related to the amount of sugar in our diet (too much) and the kinds of foods they are found in. Let’s focus on that last one for a minute.

  • When sugars are consumed as a part of foods that are rich in fiber and/or protein they have much less of an effect on blood sugar levels (a lower glycemic index) than when they are consumed in sodas, juices and highly processed foods. That’s important because the bad health consequences of sugars are primarily caused by foods that lead to high blood sugar levels. See, for example, my article “Can Soft Drinks Cause Heart Disease?” .
  • Consequently, we should be focusing on the glycemic index (the effect on blood sugar levels) of the foods we eat rather than obsessing about the amount or kinds of sugar on the label.

MSG: MSG, or monosodium glutamate, is a particularly interesting case. MSG is the sodium salt of the amino acid glutamate.

Glutamate is a neurotransmitter.

  • When MSG is used as a flavor enhancer in foods with a low protein content, the glutamate is very rapidly taken up by the brain and can overstimulate some neurons.
  • For most people this is no problem, but a small number of people experience what used to be called “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” due to the large amounts of MSG used in some Chinese foods.
  • The common symptoms associated with “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” are headache, sweating, skin flushing, nausea & fatigue. Allergic reactions to MSG can even be life threatening in some individuals.

Glutamate is also found in every protein we eat. Consequently, we create lots of MSG in our intestine every time we eat and digest protein. In this situation it is no more harmful than any other amino acid in the proteins we eat.

  • The most logical explanation for this phenomenon is that when all of the amino acids are in our bloodstream simultaneously they compete with glutamate for uptake into the brain. This slows the entry of glutamate into the brain and prevents overstimulation of neurons.

The bottom line is that MSG as a flavor enhancer is harmless for most people, but problematic for some. MSG as a component of hydrolyzed vegetable protein or sodium caseinate is harmless because it is in balance with the other naturally occurring amino acids. Some websites claim that MSG is found in maltodextrin and citric acid. It is not.

Salt (Sodium): I could, and probably should, write a whole article on sodium intake. Suffice it to say that 1) most of us consume too much sodium, 2) most of that sodium is hidden in the foods we eat rather than added at the table, and 3) some people are more sensitive to the bad effects of sodium than others.

Refined Grains: Again, this could be a whole article. Suffice it to say that 1) whole grains are better than refined grains and 2) most of us would benefit from eating fewer grains in any form and more fruits and vegetables in their place.

Food Ingredients to Avoid List: The Ugly

Finally, there are some food ingredients that most experts (except for those in the food industry) agree should be avoided. I call them the dirty dozen. All should be on everyone’s food ingredients to avoid list.  They are:

food ingredients to avoid ugly

  • Trans fats (also known as partially hydrogenated vegetable oils).
  • Aspartame
  • Acesulfame-K
  • Sucralose
  • Artificial colors
  • Artificial flavors
  • BHA & BHT
  • Propyl gallate
  • Sodium and potassium benzoate
  • Potassium bromate
  • Potassium sorbate
  • Polysorbate 80

 

The Bottom Line

If you were to believe everything you read on the internet about food ingredients that you should avoid, you could end up spending most of your day reading food labels and still find very few foods that you could eat. Some of those warnings are true, some are partially true, and some are mostly myths.

To help you determine which to place on your food ingredients to avoid list,  I have identified the top 25 food ingredient warnings and have divided them into the good, the bad and the ugly.

  • The “good” are those food ingredients that are perfectly OK for most people, most of the time. Here are some examples (see the article above for a full explanation).
  • Soy: The supposed dangers of soy have been disproven by numerous clinical studies, but the myths persist. I do recommend that you choose non-GMO soy protein.
  • GMO: GMO foods and proteins are a concern but purified food ingredients obtained from GMO foods pose no health risks. There are, however, possible environmental concerns due to the overuse of Roundup.
  • Carrageenan and Caramel Color: In this case it is contaminants rather than the food ingredients themselves that are the problem. As long as you choose a manufacturer who performs rigorous quality control tests on their ingredients, you need not be concerned about these ingredients.
  • Canola Oil, Maltodextrin and Soy lecithin: The supposed dangers of these food ingredients are myths. They are not backed up by credible clinical studies. However, they are generally derived from GMO foods, so there is a possible environmental concern.
  • The “bad” are the food ingredients that do pose a problem for some people, particularly when those ingredients are found in the wrong kinds of foods. However, those same ingredients are OK for many people when they are in the right foods.
  • Sodium nitrate and nitrite: Those ingredients are a concern when added to processed meats, but are actually healthy when found in fresh fruits and vegetables or combined with antioxidants such as vitamin C.
  • Sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup: We definitely need to reduce the amount of sugar in our diet. However, when looking at individual foods we should focus more on glycemic index than on the amount or kind of sugar.
  • MSG: MSG is a concern for some individuals when used as a flavor enhancer in low protein foods. However, it poses no risk when it is present as a component of partially digested proteins such as hydrolyzed vegetable protein or sodium casseinate.
  • The “ugly” are those ingredients that most experts agree we should avoid. They include trans fats, artificial sweeteners, artificial colors, artificial flavors, artificial preservatives and a few others listed above.

 

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Food Ingredients To Avoid

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Food Ingredients to Avoid-Part 1: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Author: Dr. Stephen Chaney

 

I have been getting a lot of questions lately about food ingredient labels. That’s because in today’s internet world everyone is an “expert” wanting to be heard. Couple that with the fact that old news is boring, and we have a problem. All of these experts have to keep coming up with information that is novel and scary. It doesn’t need to be true – just novel and scary.

food ingredients to avoidThe warnings about which food ingredients to avoid are a perfect example. A few years ago it was pretty simple to know which ingredients to avoid. If you avoided foods with sugar, refined flour, trans fats and all that artificial stuff, you were OK. However, in recent years the list of additives to avoid keeps getting longer and longer.

It has reached the point where it is getting really hard to find a food or food supplement that doesn’t have any of the ingredients on the “naughty list”. You may even be wondering if there is anything besides organic fresh fruits and vegetables that you actually can eat. How did we get to this point?

The answer is obvious. All the internet “experts” needed something new to warn us about so they took molehills and turned them into mountains. They took food ingredients that might cause a few problems for a limited number of people and characterized them as ingredients that were dangerous for everyone. Their posts were picked up and repeated by other “experts” and pretty soon everyone thought they had to be true. The warnings about food ingredients became what I call “urban nutrition myths”.

It is time for a myth buster to come along and help you sort through all of the ingredient warnings so that you know which ones are true and which are myths. That’s something I enjoy doing. Let me be your guide.

Which Food Ingredients Should You Avoid?

My “research” for this article began by Googling “Food Ingredients to Avoid” to see what was on the internet. Starting from the top of the list that came up on Google, here are the articles I found:

Men’s Fitness: “The 9 Scariest Food Additives You Are Eating Right Now “ (http://www.mensfitness.com/nutrition/avoid-these-9-worst-food-ingredients)

Waking Times: “20 Ingredients to Memorize and Avoid In Any Food You Consume (http://www.wakingtimes.com/2013/03/04/20-ingredients-to-memorize-and-avoid-in-any-food-you-consume/)

Women’s Health: “7 Ingredients Nutritionists Always Avoid” (http://www.womenshealthmag.com/nutrition/avoid-these-ingredients)

Reader’s Digest: “4 Most Harmful Ingredients In Packaged Foods” (http://www.rd.com/health/diet-weight-loss/4-most-harmful-ingredients-in-packaged-foods/)

Huffington Post: “10 Of The Worst Toxic Food Ingredients” (http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/04/17/worst-toxic-food-ingredients_n_3101043.html)

WebMD did not even weigh in on the issue of food ingredient warnings. Reader’s Digest and the Huffington Post included mostly the ingredient warnings that we have been hearing about for years. The other three articles included some of the newcomers to the ingredient warning list. By combining all 5 of those articles, I came up with 25 of the most frequently mentioned “dangerous” food ingredients to avoid and have divided them into 3 categories. I call them “The Good, The Bad and the Ugly”.

This week I will help you identify the “good ones” – those food ingredients that are on many of the internet “naughty lists”, but are actually OK for most people most of the time. Next week, I’ll be back with the bad and the ugly lists.

Food Ingredients: The Good

good food ingredientsI would be the first to admit the using the word “good” as a descriptor for food ingredients is a bit of a misnomer. The word “good” should really be reserved for organic fresh fruits and vegetables along with other whole, unprocessed foods. Of course, the problem is that most of us don’t eat enough of those foods, so we need to know which ingredients in the processed foods and food supplements we eat are OK.

The list of food ingredients that are perfectly OK for most of us would be a long one, so let me just mention a few that have inadvertently slipped onto the online “naughty lists” that you may have seen.

GMO: Let me be perfectly clear. I am no fan of GMO foods, but ingredients derived from GMO foods are a very different story. I have covered this topic in detail in my previous articles “Should GMO Labeling Be Required For All Food Ingredients?” (https://chaneyhealth.com/healthtips/gmo-labeling-required-food-ingredients/) & “Will Non-GMO Foods Be Less Nutritious?” (https://chaneyhealth.com/healthtips/will-non-gmo-foods-be-less-nutritious/) and my webinar “The Truth About Genetically Modified Foods” (https://chaneyhealth.com/healthtips/videos/), so let me just summarize the key points here.

  • GMO foods and proteins derived from GMO foods can be a problem because of food sensitivities to the modified proteins. That risk is real, but is difficult to quantify.
  • All other food ingredients derived from genetically modified foods contain no genetic information or proteins. They are chemically & biologically indistinguishable from the same ingredients derived from non-GMO foods. Consequently, there are no health risks associated with these food ingredients.
  • I am aware of the recent internet chatter about the WHO declaring that Roundup can cause cancer. What is missed in these discussions is that Roundup is also approved for use just prior to harvest for non-GMO foods such as wheat and beans. That means that some non-GMO foods are more likely to be contaminated with Roundup residues than are GMO foods.
  • That just leaves the environmental issue. Roundup does break down relatively quickly in the environment, but I do have concerns about spraying tons of the stuff on our crops every year. However, I must acknowledge that many of my scientific colleagues do not share this concern, and they are not all in bed with Monstanto.

Soy: This is another topic I have covered extensively in my previous articles such as “Soy and Breast Cancer Recurrence” (https://chaneyhealth.com/healthtips/soy-and-breast-cancer-recurrence/) & “Soy and Breast Cancer” (https://chaneyhealth.com/healthtips/soy-breast-cancer/) and my video “The Truth About Soy” (https://chaneyhealth.com/healthtips/videos/). Once again, I will just give a brief summary.

  • The myths that soy consumption causes breast cancer or any other cancer, lowers testosterone levels in men and interferes with thyroid metabolism have been disproven by multiple clinical studies.
  • The idea that soy has to be fermented to be healthy is also a myth. Most soy products are processed in such a manner that the toxins in the soy bean are removed.
  • For ingredients made from soy such as soy lecithin, there are no health risks associated with sourcing them from GMO soy (see above). If you are consuming a soy protein product, however, I do recommend that you choose non-GMO soy.

CarrageenanCarrageenan: Carrageenan comes from seaweed and red algae. It has been used in foods for thousands of years because of its gelling properties. In the supplement world it is used to improve consistency and the disintegration of tablets.

There is a lot to like about carrageenan. It is natural, organic and non-GMO. Why then has it become an internet villain in the food ingredient world? The problem is that most of the internet “experts” who are vilifying carrageenan are not distinguishing between carrageenan and its breakdown product poligeenan. Here are the facts:

  • In some animal studies poligeenan at very high doses has been shown to cause diarrhea, hemorrhaging & ulcerations of the colon and even colon cancer. Not all animal studies agree, but this does raise the possibility that high doses of poligeenan might cause the same effects in humans.
  • Food grade carrageenan contains <5% poligeenan and does not raise the same concerns.
  • Food grade carrageenan does not cause gastrointestinal problems in most animal studies. Nor has it been shown to cause cancer in any animal study.
  • The FDA, USDA and WHO have reviewed all available studies and have concluded that food grade carrageenan is safe.
  • The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has concluded that carrageenan does not cause cancer.

Caramel Color: I won’t go into detail here, but the argument is similar to carrageenan. It is a minor impurity of caramel coloring that is the concern. However, caramel coloring itself should not be a concern for products made by any reputable manufacturer that employs rigorous quality control tests on their ingredients.

Canola Oil: Canola oil is an excellent source of monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated fats, especially the beneficial omega-3 polyunsaturated fats. In supplements it is primarily used as a source of healthy fats and to improve taste, aroma or texture. There are some legitimate concerns with canola oil, but they have been considerably overhyped. This is a perfect example of a molehill being turned into a mountain. Let’s look at the myths that are simply untrue and the facts that have been overhyped.

  • Myth #1: Canola oil contains the same toxins as the original rapeseed oil. Fact: The toxins found in rapeseed oil has been removed through conventional plant breeding. Canola oil is toxin free.
  • Myth #2: Canola oil is toxic in animal studies. Fact: When you look at those studies carefully they were either done with rapeseed oil or were done under conditions where almost any vegetable oil would have been problematic.
  • Fact #1: Canola oil is highly processed. That’s true, but so are most other vegetable oils. If you want a less processed oil, choose virgin olive oil. (Unfortunately, it is not found in many processed foods or food supplements – probably because of cost). Some experts recommend palm oil or coconut oil, but they have their own problems because of their high saturated fat content.
  • Fact #2: Most canola oil comes from GMO plants. That is true, but canola oil is a highly purified food ingredient. As described above, that means there are no health concerns from eating GMO canola oil, only a possible environmental concern.

Maltodextrin: Maltodextrin is a natural food ingredient made from enzymatically digesting starch. It is used as a stabilizer and thickener in foods. It is also combined with glucose and fructose in sports drinks to provide sustained energy.

  • Myth #1: The internet is filled with claims that maltodextrin causes gastrointestinal problems or that it is unsafe. There is very little evidence to back that up, and we need to consider those claims in light of the fact that we produce lots of maltodextrin in our intestines every day as we digest the starches in our diet.
  • Myth #2: “Maltodextrin is just another sugar. It is just another way for food manufacturers to hide the total amount of sugar in their products.” Maltodextrin is actually less sweet than most sugars. As described above, it is primarily added to foods for reasons other than to impart sweetness.
  • Fact: Most of the maltodextrin in the US does come from GMO corn. Once again, it is a highly purified food ingredient. As with canola oil that means there are no health concerns, only possible environmental concerns.

Just because these ingredients are on my “good list” doesn’t mean that they won’t cause problems for some people. Lots of people have food allergies. My dad, for example, was allergic to chocolate, which has to be one of the cruelest food allergies that someone could have. Sometimes food allergies can be quite severe. Just ask someone with severe peanut allergies what life can be like if they even come near a peanut.

My point is that any natural food or food ingredient can cause allergic reactions in some people. That doesn’t make them bad. It is just part of normal living.

Next week I will be back with “the bad and the ugly” food ingredients. Stay tuned.

 

The Bottom Line

If you were to believe everything you read on the internet about food ingredients that you should avoid, you could end up spending most of your day reading food labels and still find very few foods that you could eat. Some of those warnings are true, some are partially true, and some are mostly myths.

To help you sort through this confusing information I have identified the top 25 food ingredient warnings and have divided them into the good, the bad and the ugly. This week I covered the “good ones”.

The “good” are those food ingredients that are perfectly OK for most people, most of the time. Here are some examples (see the article above for a full explanation).

  • Soy: The supposed dangers of soy have been disproven by numerous clinical studies, but the myths persist. I do recommend that you choose non-GMO soy protein.
  • GMO: GMO foods and proteins are a concern, but purified food ingredients obtained from GMO foods pose no health risks. There are, however, possible environmental concerns due to the overuse of Roundup when those GMO foods were grown.
  • Carrageenan and Caramel Color: In this case it is contaminants rather than the food ingredients themselves that are the problem. As long as you choose a manufacturer who performs rigorous quality control tests on their ingredients, you need not be concerned about these ingredients.
  • Canola Oil, Maltodextrin and Soy lecithin: The supposed dangers of these food ingredients are myths. They are not backed up by credible clinical studies. However, they are generally derived from GMO foods, so there is a possible environmental concern.
  • Just because these food ingredients made my good list doesn’t mean they are OK for everyone. People can be allergic to certain food ingredients, just as they can be allergic to certain foods so for some, these can still be food ingredients to avoid.

 

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Risk Factors for Diabetes

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Are Statins Dangerous?

Author:  Dr. Stephen Chaney

 

statins side effectsSeveral years ago I recall a cardiologist telling my class of first year medical students that statins were so beneficial that we should just put them in the water supply. He said it in a lighthearted manner, but I think he really believed it. [In actuality, statin drugs are so widely prescribed that they already are in the water supply of some major US cities (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-10-drugs-tap-water_N.htm).]

The Pros And Cons of Statins

When taken by people who have already had a heart attack, statins clearly save lives. However, as I documented in my eBook “The Myths of the Naysayers” (scroll down to Check It Out if you would like to learn how you can get that eBook for FREE) the benefits of statins are marginal at best in healthy people who have not yet had a heart attack.  So are statins one of the risk factors for diabetes?

Statin Side Effects

In addition, statins have some significant side effects. For example, up to 5% of people taking statins develop muscle pain. For most people the muscle pain is merely an inconvenience, but in a small percentage of cases it can lead to fatal complications.

More concerning are the required label warnings that statins can lead to memory loss, mental confusion, high blood sugar and type 2 diabetes. In other words, they may not kill you, but they sure can make life miserable.

Because of the marginal benefits in healthy people and the multiple side effects, some experts are starting to step up and say that statins may be overprescribed. For example, Dr. Roger Blumenthal, MD, a professor and director of the Ciccarone Preventive Cardiology Center at Johns Hopkins recently said: “Statin therapy should not be approached like diet and exercise as a broadly based solution for preventing coronary heart disease. These are lifelong medications with potential, although rare, side effects, and physicians should only consider their use for those patients at greatest risk…”

Dr. Blumenthal made that statement a few years ago when we thought that statins only increased diabetes risk by 9-22%. The latest study suggests that statins may increase diabetes risk by as much as 46%. That, in my opinion, is a game changer.

Statins And Diabetes Risk?

statins and diabetes riskThe idea that statins increase the risk of type 2 diabetes is not new. Previous studies have reported that statins increase the risk of diabetes anywhere from 9% to 22%. As a consequence, the FDA required that “increased risk of elevated blood sugar and developing type 2 diabetes” be added to the warning label on statin drugs starting in 2012.

The authors of the current study (Cederberg et al., Diabetologia, DOI 10.1007/s00125-015-3528-5) felt that previous studies may have underestimated the true risk of developing diabetes because:

  • Previous studies were often done with patient populations at very high risk of cardiovascular disease. In today’s world statin drugs are often prescribed for patients at moderate or low risk of cardiovascular disease. The authors felt that the effect of statins on diabetes risk might not be the same in these two populations.
  • Previous studies relied on self-reported diabetes or fasting blood glucose levels as the criteria for classifying the study subjects as diabetic. In today’s world there are a wider array of diagnostic tests that are used to confirm a diagnosis of diabetes.

This study looked at the risk of developing type 2 diabetes associated with statin treatment over a 6-year period in a group of 8,749 Finnish men (aged 45-73 years) who were enrolled in the Metabolic Syndrome in Men (METSIM) study. That means that the men had metabolic syndrome (they were pre-diabetic), but none of them were yet diabetic at the beginning of the study. Other important characteristics of the study were:

  • This was a healthy cross-section of the Finnish population. Only 24.5% of the study participants were using statin drugs.
  • The diagnosis of diabetes was based on multiple criteria: fasting blood glucose levels, an oral glucose tolerance test, and hemoglobin A1c (a measure of blood sugar control over the last 6 weeks).

As you might suspect, the increased risk of developing diabetes during the 6-year trial was greatest for those who were older, more obese, less physically active and had more advanced metabolic syndrome at the beginning of the study. What was surprising, however, were the other conclusions of the study.

  • Statin treatment increased the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 46%, and the increased risk of developing diabetes directly correlated with the dose of the statin drug.
  • Insulin sensitivity was decreased by 24% and insulin secretion was decreased by 12% in individuals on statin treatment. In layman’s terms that means the pancreas was 12% less able to release insulin and tissues in the body were 24% less able to respond to insulin. That’s a double whammy!

Even though this study is a significant improvement over previous studies, it does have some limitations of its own.

  • The study population was exclusively white, Finnish men. The conclusions may not apply to other population groups.
  • Simvastin (Zocor) and atorvastatin (Lipitor) were the most widely used statin drugs in this study (84% of the study participants taking statins were on one of these two drugs). These two statins clearly increased the risk of developing diabetes in a dose-dependent manner. There were not enough subjects on the other statin drugs to evaluate their effect on diabetes risk, but previous studies have suggested that other statins may be less prone to increase diabetes risk.

Should You Take Statins If you are Diabetic or Pre-Diabetic?

statins and diabetesLet’s start by identifying the symptoms of metabolic syndrome or pre-diabetes. They are:

 

  • Abdominal obesity (waist size of greater than 35” for women & 40” for men)
  • Slightly elevated triglycerides (greater than 150 mg/dl)
  • Low HDL cholesterol (less than 50 mg/dl for women and 40 mg/dl for men)
  • Slightly elevated blood pressure (greater than 130/85
  • Slightly elevated blood sugar (greater than 100 mg/dl fasting blood glucose)

If you have three or more of these symptoms, you likely have metabolic syndrome or pre-diabetes.

The medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry are circling their wagons and assuring us that the benefits of taking statins clearly outweigh the risks – even if you are diabetic or pre-diabetic. I’m not so sure

The problem is that the benefits of statin therapy in healthy individuals who have not had a heart attack are modest at best. This sets up a real “Catch 22” situation. Diabetes and pre-diabetes increase the risk of heart disease, so current guidelines recommend that statin drugs should be prescribed for individuals who are pre-diabetic or diabetic. However, we now know that those very same statin drugs increase the risk of you becoming diabetic if you are already pre-diabetic. Because they decrease insulin production and increase insulin resistance they may also make your diabetes worse if you are already diabetic, but that has not been directly tested.

That is concerning because diabetes can lead to very serious complications such as neuropathy (numbness in the extremities), kidney disease & kidney failure, high blood pressure and stroke, and cataracts & glaucoma. Of course, you can always use diabetes medications to counteract the diabetes-enhancing effect of the statins, but those medications also have serious side effects. The pharmaceutical merry-go-round continues!

Are There Alternatives For Reducing the Risk Of Heart Disease?

alternative is eat healthyIf statins are only modestly effective at reducing the risk of heart disease in otherwise healthy individuals and they significantly increase the risk of developing diabetes, it is perhaps prudent to ask whether there are alternative, non-drug approaches that can significantly reduce your cholesterol levels and allow you to avoid statins altogether?

According to the National Heart Lung & Blood Institute the answer to that question is a resounding yes! They call it Therapeutic Lifestyle Change or TLC (http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/resources/heart/cholesterol-tlc). The TLC recommendations are:

  • Eat less than 7 percent of your daily calories from saturated fat
  • Eat less than 200 mg a day of cholesterol
  • Get only 25–35 percent of daily calories from total fat (this includes saturated fat calories)
  • Other diet options you can use for more LDL lowering are:
    • Add 2 grams per day of plant stanols or sterols
    • Add 10–25 grams per day of soluble fiber
  • Consume only enough calories to reach or maintain a healthy weight
  • In addition, you should get at least 30 minutes of a moderate intensity physical activity, such as brisk walking, on most, and preferably all, days of the week.

The NHLB Institute recommends that the TLC approach always be tried first, and that statins only be used if the lifestyle approach fails – a message that seems to have gotten lost in the translation in many doctor’s offices.

I have also discussed some natural alternatives in my previous articles such as “Does An Apple A Day Keep Statins Away?” (https://chaneyhealth.com/healthtips/apple-day-keep-statins-away/) and “Is Fish Oil Really Snake Oil?” (https://chaneyhealth.com/healthtips/fish-oil-really-snake-oil/).

What Should You Do?

Perhaps it is time to have a serious discussion with your doctor about following the National, Heart Blood & Ling Institute’s TLC recommendations – either as an alternative to statins or as something that will allow your doctor to reduce the amount of statins that your need to take.

I also recommend that you make lots of fresh fruits and vegetables and either oily fish or fish oil supplements part of your regular diet.

The old professor is just like the rest of you. My cholesterol gets a bit high from time to time and my doctor suggests going on a statin. Instead I ramp up my exercise, watch what I eat a bit more carefully, and use a supplementation program that includes stanols, sterols and omega-3 fatty acids.

My cholesterol gets back to where it is supposed to be. My doctor is happy, and I am happy.

 

The Bottom Line

  • The news about statin drugs keeps getting worse. Not only are they only marginally effective in healthy people who have not yet had a heart attack, but the latest study suggests that they may increase the risk of developing diabetes by up to 46%.
  • That is concerning because the complications of diabetes can be quite serious, and diabetes drugs have side effects of their own.
  • In addition to the TLC program I recommend lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, oily fish or fish oil supplements, and a supplement that provides the TLC-recommended 2,000 mg of plant stanols and sterols.

If you have been prescribed statin drugs, it may be time to make a serious commitment to the TLC lifestyle change and have a discussion with your physician about reducing or eliminating your statins. This is especially true if you are already pre-diabetic or diabetic.

 

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Do Avocados Lower Cholesterol?

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Should Avocados Be On The Super Fruits List?

Author: Dr. Stephen Chaney

 

super fruits listYou may have seen the recent headlines suggesting that avocados lower cholesterol, are a miracle fruit, and reduce your risk of heart disease. Some of those articles are suggesting that you try to eat an avocado every day. Are those headlines true? Should you be eating more avocados?

If you are like me that would be a bit of a stretch. I prefer my fruits tastier and a bit less greasy, but I won’t let my personal preferences color my analysis of the data. Let’s start by looking at the rationale for testing the effect of avocados on cholesterol levels.

The 2013 American Heart Association Guidelines on Lifestyle Management to Reduce Cardiovascular Risk recommends reducing saturated fats to no more than 5% to 6% of total calories (In the typical American diet about 13% of calories come from saturated fat). The AHA recommends replacing the saturated fat with either monounsaturated fat or polyunsaturated fat (vegetable oils and fish oil).

In addition, a major clinical study has recently shown that a Mediterranean diet supplemented with either olive oil or mixed nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts and almonds) lowers cholesterol and reduces the incidence of major cardiovascular events by ~30% over 5 years in men and women aged 50 to 80 who were at high risk for cardiovascular disease (Estruch et al, N Engl J Med, 368: 1279-1290, 2013).

One avocado has about the same amount of oleic acid (a monounsaturated fat) as 2 tablespoons of olive oil or 1.5 ounces of almonds, so it is logical to suspect that avocados might have a similar effect as olive oil or nuts.

How Was The Clinical Study Designed?

Because there is still a lot of controversy as to whether diets in which the saturated fat is replaced with healthier fat or no fat at all (low fat diets) are better, this study (Wang et al, J Am Heart Assoc, 2015;4: e001355 doi:10.1161/JAHA.114.001355) compared 3 diets:

  • A low fat diet in which most of the saturated fat was replaced with carbohydrate (24% total fat, 7% saturated fat, 11% monounsaturated fat, 6% polyunsaturated fat, 59% carbohydrate, 16-17% protein).
  • A moderate fat diet in which most of the saturated fat was replaced with pure oleic acid (34% total fat, 6% saturated fat, 17% monounsaturated fat from oleic acid, 9% polyunsaturated fat , 49% carbohydrate, 16-17% protein).
  • A moderate fat diet in which most of the saturated fat was replaced with avocado (34% total fat, 6% saturated fat, 17% monounsaturated fat from avocado, 9% polyunsaturated fat , 49% carbohydrate, 16-17% protein).

The study subjects were 45 healthy overweight or obese men and women (age 21 to 70, average = 45). Each subject was put on all 3 diets sequentially for 5 weeks each in a random order. That way each subject served as his or her own control.

The diets were carefully controlled to keep the calories the same so that none of the subjects lost weight during the study (weight loss would have confounded the results because weight loss lowers cholesterol in most individuals). The subjects were also told not to change their exercise habits. In short, it was a small study, but it was very well designed.

When the low fat diet was compared to the moderate (healthy) fat diets, the results were pretty similar to a number of other studies:

  • Total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol (the bad type) were lowered to about the same extent by both types of diets.
  • Triglycerides were higher and HDL cholesterol (the good type) was lower for the low fat diet compared to the moderate (healthy) fat diets.

Because this has been shown in previous studies, I won’t discuss it further here.

Do Avocados Lower Cholesterol?

lower cholesterolWhen the authors compared the diet in which saturated fat was replaced with avocados to the diet in which saturated fat was replaced with oleic acid there were a number of significant differences.

  • Both LDL-cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol were significantly lower on the avocado diet than the oleic acid diet. The decrease was about 10%. Based on the metrics adopted by the American Heart Association this has the potential to translate into a 20% decrease in heart disease risk.
  • The avocado diet was the only one of the three diets that significantly decreased LDL particle number, small dense LDL cholesterol and LDL/HDL ratio, Many experts think that these parameters are better indicators of hearts disease risk than LDL cholesterol levels.

Do avocados lower cholesterol?  The short answer is yes, eating an avocado a day can lower cholesterol levels and might possibly lower heart disease risk. But to understand the true implications of this study we need to dig a little deeper.

What Is the Significance of This Study?

This study has one important take home lesson and raises two important questions.

Take Home Lesson: Foods Are More Important Than Fats We often hear about the benefits of including more monounsaturated fats in our diet, but when you actually make a direct comparison, such as was done in this study, it turns out that it is the foods that contain monounsaturated fats that make the difference, not the monounsaturated fats themselves. The oleic acid diet was only marginally better than the low fat diet at lowering total and LDL cholesterol.

This was the major conclusion of the authors of the study. Everything else was made up by the non-experts who write the articles that you see in the papers and on the internet. It is yet one more example of the headlines getting ahead of the science.

The authors admitted that we have no idea why avocados are more effective at lowering cholesterol than an equivalent amount of oleic acid. They speculated that it could be due to the high content of phytosterols in avocados. However, while the 114 mg of plant sterols in an avocado makes it an excellent source of plant sterols, it is far below the 2,000 mg of plant sterols that the NIH considers optimal for lowering cholesterol levels.

The authors also mentioned soluble fiber and specialized sugars in an avocado, but none of those was present in sufficient quantities to explain the cholesterol-lowering effect of avocados by itself. It is likely that all of those constituents plus others that we have not yet identified are what make avocados more effective than oleic acid at lowering cholesterol.

Question 1: Do We Really Want To Eat An Avocado a Day?

We need to keep in mind that a single avocado weighs in at around 234 calories. That is:

  • 2.5 times the calories in an apple
  • 4.7 times the calories in a peach or a cup of strawberries
  • 5.7 times the calories in a half cup of blueberries
  • 7.3 times the calories in a half cup of raspberries or blackberries

You get the point. What made this study so effective is that all three diets were designed to provide exactly the same number of calories so that nobody gained or lost weight. If you are thinking of adding an avocado a day to your diet, you are going to need to significantly cut back on calories somewhere else, or your weight gain will drive your cholesterol levels in the wrong direction.

Question 2: What Are The Long Term Implications of This Study?

The bottom line is that this and previous studies suggest that avocados should rightfully be included along with olive oil and nuts as healthy sources of monounsaturated fats that can help you lower cholesterol levels and may reduce your risk of heart disease.

However, we need to keep in mind that while a major clinical study has shown that adding either olive oil or nuts to your diet can reduce heart disease risk, we don’t have a comparable study showing that adding avocados to your diet will have the same benefit. It is plausible, but has not yet been demonstrated.

 

The Bottom Line

  • A recent clinical study has shown that eating an avocado a day was more effective at lowering bad cholesterol than adding an equivalent amount of the monounsaturated fat oleic acid to the diet. This suggests that it is the foods that contain the monounsaturated fats that make the difference, not the monounsaturated fats themselves.
  • This and previous studies suggest that avocados should rightfully be included along with olive oil and nuts as healthy sources of monounsaturated fats that can help you lower cholesterol levels and may reduce your risk of heart disease.
  • However, we need to keep in mind that while a major clinical study has shown that adding either olive oil or nuts to your diet can reduce heart disease risk, we don’t have a comparable study showing that adding avocados to your diet will have the same benefit. It is plausible, but has not yet been demonstrated.
  • You also need to keep in mind that a single avocado contains 234 calories. What made this study work so well is that each diet was carefully designed to provide exactly the same number of calories. If you are thinking of adding an avocado a day to your diet, you are going to need to significantly cut back on calories somewhere else, or your weight gain will drive your cholesterol levels in the wrong direction.
  • Finally, the American Heart Association Guidelines are to reduce saturated fats to no more than 6-7% of total calories. So while the low-carbohydrate, butter, bacon, and steak diet may give you temporary weight loss, it is definitely NOT recommended if you want to reduce your risk of heart disease. For more on this important topic, see my previous health tip “Are Saturated Fats Good For You?”

 

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

No Viagra Side Effects?

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A Big, Fat Problem With Testosterone

Author: Dr. Stephen Chaney

 

viagra side effectsYou can’t turn on the TV nowadays without seeing ads for medications to prevent erectile dysfunction and allow you to be ready “when the moment is right.” You have probably also heard the ads for testosterone creams to treat “low T”. Similar ads seem to find their way into our email inbox almost every day.  Evidently, we guys must have a problem. Drugs that increase sexual potency appears to be a topic of much relevance to many of us.

But if you listen to the ads carefully, you will discover that all of these drugs have serious side effects.  Here are some of the viagra side effects.

  • Sudden drops in blood pressure
  • Sudden decreases or loss of vision or hearing
  • Chest pain, dizziness and nausea
  • And many more

What if there were a way to increase your testosterone levels and enhance your sexual potency without side effects? In fact, there is a proven way to do that, and it involves treating the cause of the problem – not just the symptoms.

Can Obesity Affect Your Sex Drive?

 While millions of American women are on a diet at any one time, many men just ignore those extra pounds. Things like heart disease, cancer and diabetes seem to be much more distant threats to us. The male ego also allows us to stand in front of a mirror, pot belly and all, and visualize ourselves as we were in our college years.

lose weightBut, what if obesity lowered your testosterone levels and caused erectile dysfunction? Would that get your attention?

That is why a recent study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism should be of great interest to all of us. This study looked at 1700 men of all weights and showed that weight gain of 30 pounds lowered testosterone levels as much as if the men had aged 10 years.

Low testosterone levels in men lead to depression, loss of muscle mass and bone density, feminization, and that all important loss of sexual drive and performance.

Viagra – Without The Side Effects

 So guys, if you are concerned about your sexual performance, but don’t want to take drugs that may have viagra side effects, you have another option. Just take off some of that extra weight you have accumulated over the years. That may just increase your testosterone levels and your sexual performance naturally. And you won’t have any side effects, just side benefits.

The Bottom Line

So guys, if you are not motivated to lose those extra pounds by how you look or by the increased risk of heart disease, cancer & diabetes, now you have yet another reason to shed those extra pounds. Perhaps this should be the year that you actually stick to your new year’s resolution to lose weight.

 

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

Health Tips From The Professor