THE TOP 10 MOST IMPORTANT NUTRITION AND LIFESTYLE RESEARCH ARTICLES OF 20014
Over the past year I’ve shared with you over seventy postings containing the most important research findings reported in the areas of nutrition, natural treatments, and lifestyle factors that we in Integrative Medicine believe are the best treatments now and for the future.
On this ninth day of our daily countdown please see #2 of my TOP 10 research articles of the year. The most important criteria that I considered for inclusion in the list was the study’s importance in changing our understanding or treatment approach to any disease. Today’s pick is about crucial evidence that proves we need to change the longstanding dietary advice that medicine and public health officials have been promoting to the public for many years. They have been telling us to avoid eating saturated fat like eggs, while the evidence shows that eating too much sugar and processed carbohydrate is the more important connection for understanding how heart disease is promoted in the typical American diet. This study in tandem with the #1 TOP 10 pick (coming up next in the countdown), tells us we need to change our standard advice regarding preventing cardiovascular disease. This is the single most important message that we should take from the year 2014 in nutritional research. Heart disease is our number one killer and people have not been advised correctly about how to prevent it.
In that regard it is my hope that some reader(s) of my top 10 Research Articles of 2014 will take any of the information to heart and it can inspire them to enjoy better health in their lives. If I am of help to any reader in this way, my job will have been well done.
Thank you and HERE”S #2
New Study Proves that Eating Saturated Fat Does Not Increase Fats in the Blood
Going against the standard dietary advice that has been advocated for years, a new controlled scientific study has shown that increasing levels of carbohydrate in the diet increases fats in the blood but increasing saturated fat does not. Lead researcher J. Voleck of Ohio State University says that this new study “challenges the conventional wisdom that has demonized saturated fat and extends our knowledge of why dietary saturated fat doesn’t correlate with disease.”
“There is widespread misunderstanding about saturated fat, ” Dr. Volek explains. “In population studies, there’s clearly no association of dietary saturated fat and heart disease, yet dietary guidelines continue to advocate restriction of saturated fat. That’s not scientific and not smart. When you consume a very low-carb diet your body preferentially burns saturated fat,” he said. “We had people eat 2 times more saturated fat than they had been eating before entering the study, yet when we measured saturated fat in their blood, it went down in the majority of people. Other traditional risk markers improved, as well.”
In this study the participants were fed a reduced carbohydrate diet for three weeks and then the diet was changed every three weeks , increasing the carbohydrate level in the diet. As the carbohydrate level of the diet increased so did the level of saturated fat in the blood. Dr Volek states, “People believe ‘you are what you eat,’ but in reality, you are what you save from what you eat,” he said. “The point is you don’t necessarily save the saturated fat that you eat. And the primary regulator of what you save in terms of fat is the carbohydrate in your diet. Since more than half of Americans show some signs of carbohydrate intolerance, it makes more sense to focus on carbohydrate restriction than fat restriction.”
For the best care in Integrative Medicine call Henry C. Sobo, M.D., at 203-348-8805 or write us at [email protected]