28.6.14

Olive Oil Is Not Healthy - Michael Klaper MD




Published on 1 Feb 2013
If you read the studies, the Mediterranean Diet is healthy IN SPITE OF olive oil, not because of it.
For more info and to get the full talk on DVD: https://secure2.vegsource.com/catalog...

This is a short excerpt from the talk of Michael Klaper MD at the Healthy
Lifestyle Expo 2012, and comes from the Bronze DVD set.

If you have read about a recent study on the Mediterranean Diet (2/2013) which
seemed to promote olive oil and nuts, read this link to get the facts on
this study: http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2013o...

24.6.14

Biliary colic - Gallstones: symptoms - myDr.com.au

Gallstones: symptoms - myDr.com.au



Attacks of biliary colic are commonly recurrent (repeating). They often
occur after a fatty meal, as fat intake stimulates the gallbladder to
squeeze its stored bile into the small intestine to help digestion
Biliary colic - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gallstones.PNG
Biliary colic



Biliary colic
is the term used to describe a type of pain related to the gallbladder that occurs when a gallstone transiently obstructs the cystic duct and the gallbladder contracts.[1] Cholelithiasis refers to the presence of gallstones and cholecystitis
to the inflammation associated with irritation of the viscera secondary
to obstruction of the cystic duct by gallstones. 'Biliary colic'
differs from renal colic in that it relates to the gallbladder, rather
than the kidneys.

Pathophysiologically, gallstone formation occurs from the
precipitation of crystals that aggregate to form macroscopic stones. The
most common form is cholesterol gallstones.[2] Other forms include calcium, bilirubin, pigment and mixed gallstones.[2]


23.6.14

Swedish Expert Committee: A Low-Carb Diet Most Effective for Weight Loss | DietDoctor.com

Swedish Expert Committee: A Low-Carb Diet Most Effective for Weight Loss | DietDoctor.com



2Obesity

Which diet is the most effective for weight loss?

This
could be a historic day in Sweden. Today it became official. After over
two years of work, a Swedish expert committee published their expert
inquiry Dietary Treatment for Obesity (Google translated from Swedish).

This report from SBU (Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment) is likely to be the basis for future dietary guidelines for obesity treatment within the Swedish health care system.

The health care system has for a long time given general advice to avoid fat and calories. A low-carbohydrate diet (such as LCHF) has often been dismissed as a fad diet lacking scientific foundation. The time has now come to update knowledge in this area.

According
to SBU, the only clear difference among different dietary
recommendations is seen during the first six months. Here a
low-carbohydrate diet, such as LCHF, is clearly more effective than today’s conventional advice.

From fad diet to best in test.

Here are some more highlights from the report: 

Health Markers

In addition, health markers will improve on a low-carbohydrate diet, according to SBU. You’ll get:

…a
greater increase in HDL cholesterol (“the good cholesterol”) without
having any adverse affects on LDL cholesterol (“the bad cholesterol”).
This applies to both the moderate low-carbohydrate intake of less than
40 percent of the total energy intake, as well as to the stricter
low-carbohydrate diet, where carbohydrate intake is less than 20 percent
of the total energy intake. In addition, the stricter low-carbohydrate
diet will lead to improved glucose levels for individuals with obesity
and diabetes, and to marginally decreased levels of triglycerides.
So,
all important health markers improved or unchanged on a stricter
low-carbohydrate diet. Just like an international review of all research
in the area showed last year:

Systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials of the effects of low carbohydrate diets on cardiovascular risk factors

Long-term Uncertainty

Long
term, studies show no statistically significant differences among
different diets, and the differences decrease with time. The SBU
suggests that this is because of decreasing compliance with time. People
simply tend to fall back to old habits.

The more studies we add,
the better we can see the clear advantage of low-carbohydrate diets.
Unfortunately SBU has excluded all studies examining both obese and
overweight people. If you include studies on weight loss where
overweight people are included – to get a greater scientific basis – a
clear advantage for the low-carbohydrate diet was seen even after a
year:

New Analysis: LCHF Best For Long-Term Weight and Health Markers

A
well-designed study, which for the same reason as above, was dropped
from the SBU report’s analysis, still showed a persistent advantage for
the LCHF-like diet (Atkins) after two years, despite the difficulty with
such long-term diet studies.

For the long-term effect, if you keep to a strict low-carbohydrate diet, there are only anecdotal reports on weight and cholesterol levels.

Physical Activity

SBU also kills the idea that exercise plays an important roll in weight loss. Exercise may be very good for health, but:

Systematic
reviews of the literature show that the addition of physical activity
to a dietary intervention for individuals with obesity have, if any, a
marginal effect on weight loss at the group level.
The effect of exercise on weight in studies is in other words marginal or non-existent. Just like you read about here.

Warnings Against LCHF Dismissed

There’s a great lack of knowledge today on what dietary guidelines are best for long-term health. We simply don’t know.

Recent
cautions on low-carbohydrate diets are at best based on statistical
associations derived from food questionnaires from people who didn’t (!)
eat a low-carbohydrate diet. The SBU also dismisses these warnings:

Most
of these studies suffer from major shortcomings, which make them
difficult to interpret. The foremost shortcoming in these studies is
that it’s often impossible to determine whether those with the lowest
intake are knowingly eating a moderate low-carbohydrate diet for health
reasons, or if they are high consumers of fast-food.
The
breakdown of carbohydrates, fat and protein, which in such studies are
imaginatively labeled “a low-carbohydrate diet” is usually very similar
to the macronutrient distribution in a hamburger with fries and soda…

Towards the Future

What will be the consequences of today’s report?

Advice
on a low-carbohydrate diet is however very rare, if we look at the
practice survey. It’s not clear how common it is to actively discourage
patients from the strict low-carbohydrate diet. A low-carbohydrate diet,
even the stricter form, will lead to a greater weight loss in the short
term than the low-fat diet, and studies have indicated no adverse
effects on blood lipids, provided that the weight stays low. One
possible consequence of this report will therefore be an increased use
of a strict low-carbohydrate diet for short-term weight reduction.
SBU
will always express itself very carefully. But it can’t be said much
clearer: It’s high time for the health care system to take seriously
advice on LCHF for weight loss!

This is also interesting:

…it’s
not possible to draw any conclusions about the relationship between a
low-carbohydrate diet – regardless of fat content – and cardiovascular
disease. Here we could apply the precautionary principle, and advise
some restraint on saturated fat intake, as long as the documentation of
the long-term effects are inadequate.
Many health
care workers will no doubt (without any better reasons than
preconceptions) be wary of dietary advice on more saturated fat. I was
once scared of saturated fat myself.

I think that SBU is keeping a
reasonable attitude here, as it isn’t even necessary to give advice on a
lot of saturated fat for a low-carbohydrate diet. You can eat even a
strict low-carbohydrate diet (such as LCHF) emphasizing unsaturated fats. This has been shown to be effective in studies:

It
would be wonderful if the health care system started to apply the
benefits of a low-carbohydrate diet, even before the outdated fear of
butter has melted away everywhere.

The SBU-report Dietary
Treatment for Obesity is a gigantic step towards more effective dietary
guidelines within the health care system. This is a historic day in
Sweden.

Media Coverage

Today’s big news created quite a media frenzy in Sweden, here Google translated from Swedish:

More on the SBU report Dietary Treatment for Obesity:

More

LCHF for Beginners

Just a few examples of that today’s news could mean for more and more people:

18.6.14

What alcohol is really doing to you - body+soul

What alcohol is really doing to you - body+soul



Think that nightly glass of wine isn't doing you any harm? This research may surprise you.
What alcohol is really doing to you



Everyone knows tobacco is a deadly carcinogen, but how many of us realise that alcohol is considered a potential cause of cancer? Startling new research shows that just one drink a day can drastically increase your risk of cancer.
Those who drink seven or more standard drinks a week are almost three
times as likely to get cancer of the oesophagus as those who drink less
than one drink a week. Even those consuming one to six drinks a week are
67 per cent more likely to get stomach cancer
than those who have less than one drink a week, according to the study
of 3571 Canadian men published in the journal Cancer Detection And
Prevention.

Cancer Council Australia CEO Professor Ian Olver warns that there is
no totally safe level of drinking. He says it's only fairly recently
that scientists have discovered that alcohol is a risk factor for some
of the most common cancers, including bowel and breast, and not just the
rarer forms, such as mouth cancers. "That makes it a risk factor for a
far greater proportion of the population," Professor Olver says.

"Once you start getting into the common cancers, everyone has to
understand that alcohol is a risk." Think you're not at risk because you
only drink wine? Professor Robin Room, acting director of Turning Point
Alcohol and Drug Centre in Melbourne, says growing evidence suggests
that wine is no different from other forms of alcohol.

Almost 3000 Australians were diagnosed with cancer caused by
excessive consumption of alcohol in 2005. More women than men are
victims and the numbers appear to be rising. Paula Green*, 54, a mother
of twins from NSW, gave up alcohol 21 years ago after drinking heavily
for about 20 years. She was shocked to be diagnosed with breast cancer
in 2003, and even more so when she learned that alcohol is a key factor
in the disease. "I was pretty horrified - I realised that things could
have been so different," says Green, who is recovering from her battle
with booze with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous.

"I think alcohol was one of many factors [that caused the breast
cancer], but a very important one. I gave up drinking because I was
concerned about the health effects, but I didn't realise until after I
was diagnosed that alcohol is actually a trigger for breast cancer."
Alcohol has been estimated to cause between three and 12 per cent of
breast cancer cases. The Canadian study emphasises that the more you
drink, the greater your risk of developing cancer is.

That's of grave concern, because binge drinking is rising in
Australia, particularly among young women. One alarming study by Turning
Point found that the rate of alcohol-induced hospital admissions among
women in Victoria aged 18 to 24 almost doubled from 1998 to 2006. And
the really bad news for women? Drinking the same number of drinks per
day as a man carries a much greater health risk.

If a man and women both down 10 drinks a day, the woman is far more
likely to fall victim to cancer or liver cirrhosis, because of
physiological differences between the genders, including different
fat-to-water ratios. "Don't assume you can drink as much as a man,"
warns Professor Ann Roche, director of the National Centre for Education
and Training on Addiction at Flinders University in Adelaide. "We
simply cannot metabolise alcohol as effectively as men."

On the flipside, light drinking may protect against cardiovascular
disease. But you only need half a standard drink a day, or one every
second day, and experts say very few people drink so little. "If you
really are sticking to only a glass of wine a night, at this point the
best guess is that the benefits with respect to heart disease will
outweigh the risks from cancer," Professor Room says. But Professor
Olver warns that drinkers need to understand that any alcohol is doing
some harm. "People have got to know that although with one glass a day
the harm is  fairly minimal, it's not zero."

Read our fact sheet on Alcoholism.

Alcohol is a risk factor for:

  • Cancer of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, oesophagus, breast, bowel, liver, pancreas, stomach, lung, prostate.
  • Liver cirrhosis.
  • Stroke.
  • Cardiovascular disease.

What are you risking?

Increases risk of lip, oral and pharyngeal cancers

                            MEN .... WOMEN

1 DRINK A DAY ....... 31% ..... 33%

2 DRINKS A DAY .... 67% ..... 72%

3 DRINKS A DAY .... 108% ... 118%

6 DRINKS A DAY .... 253% ... 288%

10 DRINKS A DAY ... 457% ... 551%



Liver cirrhosis

                          MEN .... WOMEN

1 DRINK A DAY ....... 21% ..... 32%

2 DRINKS A DAY .... 45% ..... 73%

3 DRINKS A DAY .... 72% ..... 125%

6 DRINKS A DAY .... 171% ... 364%

10 DRINKS A DAY ... 338% ... 969%



Breast cancer

Women

1 DRINK A DAY ....... 8%

2 DRINKS A DAY .... 17%

3 DRINKS A DAY .... 26%

6 DRINKS A DAY .... 58%

10 DRINKS A DAY ... 115%

16.6.14

Another B#llshit Anti-Red Meat Study « AnthonyColpo

Another B#llshit Anti-Red Meat Study « AnthonyColpo

Posted In Health,Nutrition,Quacks, Scams & Pseudoscience

Another Bullshit Anti-Red Meat Study


It’s that special time of year, folks!



Yes, step right up ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 2014 Annual Red Meat Causes Cancer Wankfest!



Never heard of the ARMCCW, you say? No idea what it involves?

Well, let me tell you all about it, then.

Every year, the deluded sods that largely comprise the nutritional epidemiology community partake in a ritual where they “associate”
red meat with cancer incidence. Sometimes it’s overall cancer, other
times they zero in on a particular malignancy such as colon, rectal,
prostate, or pancreatic cancer.

Sometimes, they get a wee bit depressed by the whole cancer thing, so instead temporarily try their hand at “associating”
read meat with heart disease. But cancer is where the real action is at
when it comes to bashing red meat, so that’s where the epidemiological
shysters tend to focus their energy.

Before we learn which cancer is the star of 2014’s ARMCCW, let’s take
a quick look behind the scenes to see exactly how this farce operates.

The Sham, and How It Works

I’ve written about this appalling charade before here and here, so long-time readers probably already know where this is heading. And so I’ll try to be brief(ish).

Basically, epidemiologists dredge large confounder-prone prospective
studies, jump all over a pathetically weak statistical association
between meat and their malignancy of choice, then carry on like it’s
causal.

It’s a prolific scam, because they can always count on red meat to show an association with cancer risk.

Not because red meat is carcinogenic. Unless you regularly consume
charred or overcooked red meat, it isn’t. Red meat, in fact, is the
healthiest, most nutrient-dense food known to mankind. That’s why our
ancestors often placed themselves in great physical danger to get at it.
What, you think they would’ve risked life and limb to get fresh red
meat if their nutritional needs could’ve been met by wild spinach and
acorns?

Yeah, right. Only vegetarians believe absurd shit like that.

So why, then, would meat ever be associated with cancer in these epidemiological studies?

Because, invariably, people who eat the most red meat in these
studies also have the highest rate of truly unhealthy behaviours like
smoking, low physical activity, excess alcohol consumption, excess
caloric consumption, and on and on and on.

Why would people who eat the most red meat exhibit poorer overall health practices?

Because people who care less about their health don’t just ignore perfectly sensible health messages like “Don’t Smoke”, “Do Regular Exercise” and “Eat Your Veggies”. They also ignore patently idiotic health messages with no foundation in reality, such as “Avoid Red Meat”!

And so people who smoke more, exercise less, hit the booze more
often, eat a poorer diet overall, have a higher bodyweight, etc, etc,
also tend to eat more red meat.

These people, not surprisingly, will be at higher risk of cancer. And so red meat becomes guilty by association.

If the nutritional epidemiologists responsible for these studies
weren’t so deluded, they’d stop right there, and admit their work
provides nothing but statistical associations of unknown origin. To
establish the origin of those associations as causal, they’d need to
conduct randomized clinical trials comparing groups of subjects randomly
assigned to diets containing red meat, or to diets not containing red
meat.

They’d let these trials run for a good stretch of time, then at the
end tally up the number of people who got cancer in each dietary group.
If the red meat group had a significantly higher incidence of cancer
during the trial, then we’d have pretty strong grounds for believing red
meat causes cancer. Of course, we’d need follow-up RCTs to replicate
these results and confirm they weren’t just a “fluke” finding.

But epidemiologists don’t like RCTs, and here’s why:

–The results of quality RCTs have an annoying habit of showing
epidemiological findings to be utter bollocks. An excellent example of
this is the “Whole-Grains are Good for You!” sham.
Epidemiological studies supporting this terribly mistaken notion are a
dime a dozen, but every time an RCT (both the parallel arm and crossover
variety) has examined this issue, the whole-grain group has fared worse. Because that flies in the face of all the “healthy whole-grain”
propaganda that we’ve been bombarded with by health ‘experts’ and
‘authorities’, those ‘experts’ and ‘authorities’ do what most people
heavily vested in a false belief do:

Evade reality.

They simply pretend the RCTs don’t exist, and completely ignore them
when writing and talking about the issue. Instead, they enthusiastically
cite all the epidemiological studies showing an “association”
between whole grain cereals and reduced disease risk (I’ve discussed
this disgraceful phenomenon thoroughly but concisely in my most recent
book Whole Grains, Empty Promises).

–RCTs are expensive, and they involve a lot of work. And even the
best RCTs are usually only good for a handful of journal articles.
Epidemiological studies, on the other hand, are like popular prime time
soap operas and reality shows: A lucrative, never ending bounty of
bullshit.

In epidemiological studies, you don’t need to randomize people, you
don’t need to give them detailed instruction, and you don’t need to take
any measures to encourage or monitor compliance with any intervention.
Shit, you don’t even need an intervention!

In an epidemiological study, you simply recruit a bunch of people,
give them a questionnaire at the start and, if you can be assed, a
follow-up survey every few years.

When the forms come back in the mail, you fire up the computer, run some data analyses and – bingo! – you’ve got a paper!

Or, more likely, you’ll have twenty papers. Or if you’re from the
Harvard Public School of Health, you’ll eventually have dozens upon
dozens of papers from the one study!

Because they’re far less sophisticated and hence easier to conduct,
epidemiological studies can involve far larger numbers of subjects. In a
world where B-I-G things – be they incomes, buildings, boats, or boobs –
tend to impress more people, studies involving tens of thousands and
sometimes hundreds of thousands of subjects have a giddying effect on
researchers and journalists.

Also, because there’s no intervention, you aren’t forced to focus on a
specific health issue, which is the case with an RCT. You can’t, for
example, conduct an RCT testing the effect of red meat intake on cancer,
then use the data from that RCT to also publish a paper on the effect
of blueberry intake on haemorrhoid incidence. The design of the study
just won’t allow it.

But you can do exactly that with an epidemiological study in which
you have intake data for dozens of foods and questionnaires that ask
about the incidence of a whole host of health ailments. Never mind that
this intake data is self-reported and therefore well-established to be
of highly dubious quality – epidemiologists certainly don’t. They just
go ahead and take it seriously, crunch the numbers, and spit out papers
one after the other.

For researchers and academics, there’s a lot of prestige attached to
being a prolific author of published, peer-reviewed papers. The more the
merrier. And a large nutritional epidemiological study offers a
limitless opportunity for the researchers involved to accumulate
published titles to their names. Don’t believe me? Fine, enter the
following into Pubmed and see what happens: “Nurses’ Health Study”, “Harvard Physicians’ Study”, “Framingham Study”, “INTERHEART”

It’s the old quantity versus quality scenario in full effect. RCTs
might be considered the gold standard of scientific research, but we
live in a world where fiat currencies rule the roost. And like the fifty
dollar note in your pocket that is nothing but ink on a bit of paper
(actual worth of ink + paper = a few cents), all is not what it seems
with epidemiology.

The 2014 Wankfest

ARMCCW 2014 involves the Nurses’ Health Study II, emanating from Ground Zero of epdemi-hogwash: The Harvard School of Public Health.

It’s a hallowed place, Harvard. Which, sadly, gives the nonsense
emanating from their nutritional epidemiologists a veneer of prestige
and respectability. But make no mistake: Underneath that smart-looking
polished mahogany exterior lies the same old confounder-prone rot.

Soooo … what cancer is taking centre stage at this year’s ARMCCW?

Breast cancer.

The researchers claim “each serving per day increase in red meat was associated with a 13% increase in risk of breast cancer.”

They further claim:

“When this relatively small relative risk is applied to breast
cancer, which has a high lifetime incidence, the absolute number of
excess cases attributable to red meat intake would be substantial, and
hence a public health concern. Moreover, higher consumption of poultry
was related to a lower incidence of breast cancer in postmenopausal
women. Consistent with the American Cancer Society guidelines,
replacement of unprocessed and processed red meat with legumes and
poultry during early adulthood may help to decrease the risk of breast
cancer.”


What this shows is that, even if you work at The World’s Most
Prestigious University!™, you can still be utterly clueless about
scientific reality. Modern humans have constructed a societal structure
in which bullshit can flourish and wield great influence, and
nutritional epidemiology thrives as a result.

Before I explain in more detail why the association between red meat
and breast cancer doesn’t even begin to qualify as causal, I’d like to
address the observation that “higher consumption of poultry was related to a lower incidence of breast cancer in postmenopausal women.”

This is hardly the first epidemiological study to notice that poultry and/or fish are “associated” with improved health outcomes.

Why?

For the very same reason that red meat is “associated” with
poorer outcomes: Health conscious individuals who smoke less, exercise
more, don’t binge drink etc, etc, etc are more likely to eat white meat
instead of red. Because that’s what all the public health messages and
poncey “wellness” magazines they read tell them to do.

Anyway, let’s look at the study itself.

It involved 88,803 premenopausal women from the Nurses’ Health Study II who completed a “semi-quantitative” food frequency questionnaire
in 1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007 asking about usual dietary intake
and alcohol consumption for the previous 12 months. The researchers also
asked about things like weight, family history of breast cancer,
smoking, race, age at menarche, parity (ie, number of children they’d
given birth to), and oral contraceptive use.

They followed the women for an average of 20 years, during which time 2,830 cases of breast cancer were documented.

When carrying out their pre-determined task of linking red meat to
cancer risk, the researchers divided the women up into 5 categories
according to their red meat consumption. And sure enough, as red meat
consumption went up, so too did breast cancer risk.

But take a look at Table 1 from the study below:

Table 1

You can see that as red meat consumption went up, the number of smokers
also went up in a perfect linear fashion. The group with the highest red
meat intake had 67% more smokers.

Gee, you think that might increase their breast cancer risk?

Naaaah…

Now, if smoking went up in step with red meat consumption, you’d
expect other unhealthy behaviours including physical inactivity, junk
food consumption, recreational drug use, and erratic sleep habits to
increase along with red meat consumption. Despite their overwhelming
importance, the researchers didn’t see fit to ask about and/or include
these variables in Table 1.

But we do know as red meat intake rose, so too did total caloric consumption and BMI.

But that’s not all. Take a look at the second last line, the one that begins with “Parity ≥3 (%)“.
The figures that follow are the percentage of women in each group who
reported giving birth to 3 or more children. Again, as red meat intake
goes up, so too does the number of women reporting having 3 or more
kids. The difference is quite pronounced – those with the highest red
meat intake were more than twice as likely to have had 3 or more full
term pregnancies.

Why does this matter?

Because parity is an important risk factor for breast cancer. While
giving birth to one’s first child at a young age has been consistently
associated with a lower risk of late onset cancer, the risk of early
onset cancer (i.e. the type of cancer that would be more likely to occur
during a study like this) rises with each and every pregnancy a woman has.

I won’t go into the physiological reasons for this – if you’re
interested consult Dr Google and you’ll find plenty of information. All I
will point out here is the bleeding obvious: The number of children a
woman bears has little if anything to do with the amount of red meat she
eats and everything to do with the amount of fornication (sans
effective contraception) she engages in when ovulating.

Fucking duh (evidently, the epidemiologists at The World’s Most
Prestigious University!™ need a little more basic sex education).

But again, blaming clearly established risk factors like smoking and
higher parity for breast cancer doesn’t sit too well with the anti-red
meat agenda. Yep, this is the Blame Red Meat Wankfest, gotta get with
the festive spirit!

But how do you do that when starkly contrasting smoking and parity rates threaten to ruin the party?

Easy.

You pull out the favourite prop of epidemiologists all around the world – the statistical wand!

You take this pretty pink little wand, you wave it all about, and when you finish you pretend you have magically “adjusted” for such pesky confounders as smoking and parity!

The only way you can truly adjust for anything is to take your
subjects and randomly assign them to either an intervention (red meat)
or control (no red meat) group. In other words, you do a randomized
clinical trial (RCT). The randomization process negates the problem that
plagues nutritional epidemiological studies – confounding. That’s
because randomly assigning people to the intervention and control groups
means people with unhealthy habits are just as likely as people with
healthy habits to end up in the no-red meat group. And vice versa.

But as we’ve already seen, epidemiologists hate RCTs. So what they do
instead is engage in an Emperor-has-no-clothes charade where they use
formulas – derived Ponzi-style from other confounder-prone
epidemiological studies – to statistically “adjust” for confounding variables. They honestly believe they can tease out the effect of these variables after the fact.

You and I might call this delusional. Epidemiologists call it “multivariate analysis.”

For a sterling example of how multivariate analysis routinely falls flat on its face, I refer you back to the “whole-grains are healthy!”
hyperbole. Again, really big epidemiological studies whose crude data
was carefully massaged, uh, I mean, adjusted, show wonderfully lower
rates of morbidity and mortality among those eating the most
whole-grains.

But when the theory is put to the test in randomized clinical trials,
those assigned to eat more whole-grains or cereal fibre (the exact
component of whole-grains we are supposed to believe is wonderfully
healthy) are the ones who suffer higher rates of morbidity and
mortality. Again, if you want a detailed but easy-to-read breakdown of
this phenomenon, grab yourself a copy of Whole Grains, Empty Promises
(all proceeds support the International Ramone Foundation, a non-profit
organization devoted to keeping my dog happy, well-fed, and built like a
brick outhouse).

Remember, quality (RCTs) versus quantity (epidemiology).

So there it is, folks. Now you know all about the Annual Red Meat
Causes Cancer Wankfest, and how it works. Think of an Olympic Torch, but
one that spouts bullshit instead of flames. It travels the world,
getting handed from one anti-red meat group to another, passing with
unusual frequency through Boston, Massachusetts.

One last thing before I sign off. I’ve actually made this point
before, but because a lot of people are dumb as shit I need to make it
again. I sound like I have a very low opinion of epidemiology and … well
… I do. The amount of utter bullshit that is propped up and made to
look like science as a result of garbage epidemiological studies is
truly astounding. And quite disheartening, when you think of all the
unnecessary misery and mortality that has resulted from totally missing
the boat on what really causes things like cancer and heart disease.

It’s an absolute disgrace.

However, I’m not against all epidemiology. The link between
cigarette smoking and lung cancer owes much to epidemiology. Ditto with
infectious disease or food poisoning outbreaks – epidemiology allows
researchers to determine key similarities among those afflicted and
track down the source so they can begin containing the problem as
quickly as possible.

It’s when epidemiology turned its attention to dietary intake and
chronic disease that things really turned to crap. Epidemiology is well
suited to situations like those I listed above, because the factors
being studied are so clear cut and the mechanisms so obvious, there’s
far less doubt about the relationship that intertwines them all. For
example, it doesn’t take a brain (or lung) surgeon to realize the
possibility that smoking cigarettes and filling your lungs with noxious
fumes for years on end might cause lung cancer.

Nor do you need to be particularly bright to realize what might be
going on when people all over the country suddenly start showing up at
emergency wards vomiting their guts out, and subsequent investigation
reveals that the one thing they all have in common is that they ate a
particular brand of pre-packaged raw salad, emanating from a single food
processing plant in Boise, Idaho.

But when epidemiology experienced these early successes, developed
way too much of a cocky swagger, and figured it would turn its attention
to the link between diet and chronic disease … that’s the point at
which it crossed the line from utilitarian and helpful and instead
started venturing into downright delusional territory.

Not only are the confounding variables
involved in diet and lifestyle too numerous for any non-omnipotent
creature (i.e. any human researcher) to fully account for, but it’s also
well established that misreporting in dietary questionnaires is not the
exception but the norm.
The continual and unavoidable presence of confounding and
misreporting in population-based studies is why most nutritional
epidemiology is absolute bullshit.

Don’t base your health decisions on absolute bullshit.



Absolut_Bullshit

The favoured drink of epidemiologists worldwide.
Note: The
author has no relationship whatsoever with the meat industry – nor any
other food-related industry – aside from that of paying consumer. 




Anthony Colpo is author of The Fat Loss Bible, The Great Cholesterol Con and Whole Grains, Empty Promises.

Copyright © Anthony Colpo.

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15.6.14

Every drop of vegetable oil takes us further along the path to Parkinson’s Disease | David Gillespie

Every drop of vegetable oil takes us further along the path to Parkinson’s Disease | David Gillespie

ong the path to Parkinson’s Disease







Michael J Fox has it, Muhammad Ali has it, Billy Connolly
has it and more than 100,000 Australians have it.  About 30 new cases
of Parkinson’s disease are being diagnosed every day in this country. 
If you want to avoid adding your name to that list there is one thing
you should do.  Don’t eat seed oils.


James Parkinson, surgeon, geologist and palaeontologist first described what we now call Parkinson’s disease in his paper on shaking palsy in 1817.  He was born on April 11, 1755, which is why April 11 is World Parkinson’s Day.
Dr Parkinson described a condition which caused involuntary tremors
when a limb is at rest, rigidity, slowness of movement and a propensity
to bend forwards and slow gait when walking.  There was no known cause
or cure.

We now know that Parkinson’s is caused by the death of cells in our pars compacta –the part of our brain which controls motor function (the Substantia nigra pars compacta
if you want to get all technical).  That part of the brain is a central
switching room for movement, attention, learning and reward-seeking
(which makes sure we keep eating and having sex).

The pars compacta exerts its control using dopamine. When everything
is working well, our bodies are inhibited from moving by the part of our
brain which contains the pars compacta (the basal ganglia for
Latin freaks).  When we decide to move something (our eyes or limbs
etc), the pars compacta squirts out dopamine to take the brakes off.

If the neurons responsible for producing the dopamine are damaged,
Parkinson’s disease is the result.  Our brain is pretty durable, because
we lose around 50%
of our dopamine manufacturing neurons before there are any symptoms. 
But once they are gone, these neurons are gone forever.  As the numbers
decrease, a Parkinson’s sufferer has to exert greater and greater effort
to produce movement.

The only effective treatment is medication which can increase
dopamine production  by squeezing a little more out of the remaining
neurons (we can’t just give dopamine as it isn’t able to cross the blood-brain barrier). 
Obviously if the destruction of the neurons continues (as it does in
most) that is only a temporary solution.  Before medication was
introduced in the 1970s a Parkinson’s patient was expected to live 9.5
years after diagnosis.  The drug assisted life expectancy is now 15
years.

Because the disease is the result of cumulative destruction, it is most prevalent in people over 50 but 20 per cent of cases are diagnosed between 20 and 50.  Michael J Fox was diagnosed when he was just 30.

There are very few places in the world where accurate long term
statistics have been kept on the incidence of Parkinson’s disease, but
they have done just that in Olmstead County, Minnesota (pop: 100,000). 
There, researchers have concluded
annual new cases almost doubled between 1944 and 1984 (using consistent
diagnostic rules).  And like Type II Diabetes, other studies tell us
that Parkinson’s occurs much less frequently in populations not exposed
to a Western Diet (processed food).

The official position on the cause of Parkinson’s disease is that nobody has the slightest clue what causes the dopamine producing neurons to die.
The official position on the cause of Parkinson’s disease is that nobody has the slightest clue what causes the dopamine producing neurons to die. 
The only official risk factor is age.  But I think some dots need
joining and when that is done the culprit becomes very clear.

We know that a diet high in seed oils
causes the levels of Omega-6 fats in our cell membranes to rise
rapidly.  Those fats react quickly with oxygen and push the body into a
state of cascading cell damage called oxidative stress.   We also know that a major product of the oxidation of omega-6 fats is something with the charming name of 4-Hydroxynonenal (I’ll just use its street name of 4-HNE).  And we know that 4-HNE, whilst generally dangerous, is especially toxic to the neurons responsible for producing dopamine in our brain.

There, dots joined (it wasn’t that hard was it?).  Eating seed oils
(or anything which contains large amounts of omega-6 fats) induces the
production of a molecule which we know kills the neurons we depend upon
for dopamine production.  Kill enough of them and you have Parkinson’s
disease.

Thanks to the efforts of the processed food industry (aided and
abetted by the Heart Foundation), our diet is now completely saturated
with omega-6 fats.  Everything in a package uses it.  Every deep frier
uses it.  Every baker
uses it.  And every little bite of it is taking out the neurons you
depend on to keep you from the ravages of Parkinson’s disease.

Nothing I can say will restore the neurons you’ve already killed but I can stop you killing any more.

Don’t eat seed oils.

3.6.14

The Heart Association’s Junk Science Diet - The Daily Beast

The Heart Association’s Junk Science Diet - The Daily Beast



Science shows the low-fat diet to
be BS, and yet the American Heart Association keeps touting it as the
‘heart healthy’ choice. Why? The quick answer: money, honey.
The dogma that saturated fat causes heart disease is crumbling.

A
recent Cambridge University analysis of 76 studies involving more than
650,000 people concluded, “The current evidence does not clearly support
guidelines that [recommend]… low consumption of total saturated fats.”

Yet
the American Heart Association (AHA), in its most recent dietary
guidelines, held fast to the idea that we must all eat low-fat diets for
optimal heart health. It’s a stance that—at the very best—is
controversial, and at worst is dead wrong. As a practicing cardiologist
for more than three decades, I agree with the latter—it’s dead wrong.

Why does the AHA cling to recommendations that fly in the face of scientific evidence?

What
I discovered was both eye-opening and disturbing. The AHA not only
ignored all the other risk factors for heart disease, but it appointed
someone with ties to Big Food and bizarre scientific beliefs to lead the
guideline-writing panel—just the type of thing that undermines the
public’s confidence in the medical community.

The AHA guidelines warrant that saturated fat make up no more than 5
to 6 percent of daily calories for adults because this will lower “bad”
(LDL) cholesterol. And, for those people who need blood pressure
control, the guidelines also suggest lowering sodium (salt) intake to no
more than a teaspoon (2,300 mg) daily.

Despite many other known
risk factors for heart disease, salt and fat were, astonishingly, the
only two considered by the AHA panel writing the guidelines. There are
many other recognized risk factors the AHA ignored, including blood
sugar level, low “good” (HDL) cholesterol, insulin levels, and body
weight—all of these are influenced by diet.

In fact, most people
who have heart attacks don’t have elevations in bad cholesterol. They
are much more likely to have metabolic syndrome—a condition that puts
you at high risk for diabetes and heart disease. Metabolic syndrome is
defined when you have three of the following: high triglycerides (blood
fats), high blood sugar, high blood pressure, low “good” cholesterol
(HDL-C), and a large abdomen measurement (abdominal obesity).

In
their annual report for 2012-2013, the AHA lists among its lifetime
donors of $1 million or more Conagra, Quaker Oats, and Campbell Soups,
among others.
Interestingly enough, blood triglycerides do not
go up with eating fat—they go up if you eat a diet high in processed
grains, starches, and sugar. Unfortunately for the proponents of
high-carbohydrate diets, high blood triglycerides are a major risk
factor for heart disease. In addition, low fat/high carb diets lower
protective “good” cholesterol and raise insulin. These diets are
implicated in the development of diabetes, which is a potent risk factor
for developing heart disease.

The writers of the 2013 statin
guidelines based their recommendations on studies that looked at the
reduction in the risk of events like heart attacks in people treated
with statins, compared to people on a placebo. The AHA dietary
guidelines do not cite any diet studies that looked at whether
following a specific diet lowered the risk of developing cardiac
events—yet they are giving dietary advice. Why?

There might be two plausible reasons. One is the AHA’s moneymaking
“Heart Check Program.” The second is the conflict of interest (and
curious beliefs) of Robert Eckel—the co-chair of the panel that wrote
the guidelines.

The AHA introduced the Heart Check Program in 1995
and it has been quite the moneymaker, as the AHA sells the Heart Check
stamp-of-approval to food manufacturers. Food companies shell out
between $1,000 and $7,500 to be certified by the Heart Check Program—and
then there are yearly renewal fees. The program currently endorses 889
foods as “heart-healthy.”

And the Heart Check Program is not the
only way the AHA benefits from Big Food companies. In their annual
report for 2012-2013, the AHA lists among its lifetime donors of $1
million or more Conagra, Quaker Oats, and Campbell Soups, among others.

Forty-five
percent of these “heart healthy” foods—over 400 of them—are meat; 92
are processed meats—which have been shown to have either neutral or
negative effects on heart health.

Even more problematic are the
foods containing added sugar. The AHA recommends that women consume less
than 6 teaspoons (100 calories) of sugar a day and less than 9
teaspoons (150 calories) for men. Yet there are items that get the nod
of approval from the Heart Check program despite being near or at the
sugar limit, like Bruce’s Yams Candied Sweet Potatoes and Healthy Choice
Salisbury Steak. Indeed, until 2010, the Heart Check imprimatur was
stamped on a drink called Chocolate Moose Attack, which contained more
sugar per ounce than regular Pepsi.

And until this year, Heart
Check approved many foods with trans-fats, which raise bad cholesterol
and lower good cholesterol, among other deleterious effects on health,
like increasing inflammation and the laying down of calcium in arteries.

Like
the dietary guidelines, the AHA Heart Check Program appears to address
only the effect of foods on cholesterol level and blood pressure.
Meanwhile, since the 1970s, our yearly sugar consumption has skyrocketed
along with the incidence of diabetes and obesity.

This brings us to Dr. Robert H. Eckel, the co-chair of the Working Group. He is a consultant for Foodminds,
which specializes “in food, beverage, nutrition, health and wellness.”
Foodminds works with more than 30 leading food, beverage, and nutrition
to offer a “one stop shop of…consulting…to guide food and beverage
companies in navigating the complexities around the upcoming FDA
Nutrition Facts label overhaul.” In other words, Foodminds is a lobbying
firm for “Big Food.”

And then there is this:

Dr. Eckel describes himself
as “a scientist and professing six-day creationist and a member of the
technical advisory board of the Institute for Creation Research…” Many
scientists are religious. This is not to question Dr. Eckel’s religious
beliefs, but to question his ability to think scientifically. He
believes there is scientific proof that the world was created in six
days and that evolution does not exist. This should at least raise
eyebrows when the co-chair of an influential panel charged with giving
scientifically sound dietary advice has a financial conflict of interest
and proselytizes for beliefs that are anti-scientific.

Practice
guidelines affect both public policy and medical practice. We should
expect professional medical organizations—like the American Heart
Association—to examine all the evidence relating to diet and heart disease risk.

The American people should be able to trust that only impartial
scientists write guidelines. We should be confident that those experts
are not working to advance corporate interests and that they do not
espouse beliefs that are well outside the scientific mainstream. An
avowed creationist who consults for a food lobby hardly seems an
appropriate choice to fulfill these criteria.

For the last several
decades, the AHA has promoted a low-fat high-carbohydrate diet as a
cornerstone of heart health. It has taken a very public position that
saturated fats are a major driver of heart disease risk and the mounting
tide of evidence that this is dead wrong must put them it in a very
uncomfortable position. And yet a fundamental requirement of science—as
opposed to propaganda—is that when evidence that contradicts a
hypothesis is replicated over and over again, that hypothesis must be
abandoned.

The idea that eating high amounts of saturated fat causes hardening
of the arteries—the so-called “diet-heart hypothesis”— deserves to be
jettisoned along with other discredited belief systems. Creationism
comes to mind. Will the AHA step up to the plate?

The American Heart Association had not returned an inquiry for comment at the time of publishing. 

Joe Rogan Exposes Dave Asprey and Bulletproof Coffee for False Claims on...



Published on 24 Mar 2014
Joe Rogan exposes the lies of Dave
Asprey the owner of Bulletproof Coffee about how he lied and said 70% of
coffee is contaminated with mycotoxins without any evidence. Onnit labs
tested random coffee including Starbucks, and the results showed they
contained NO mycotoxins. Coffee growers have already known how to remove
toxins from their beans decades ago. This clip is from The Joe Rogan
Experience #459 with guest Dr. Rhonda Patrick