Tag Archives: anti-inflammatory

Zone diet validation studies

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Weight Loss

Any diet that restricts calories will result in equivalent weight loss. However, the same doesn’t hold true as to what the source of that weight loss is. Weight loss from either dehydration (such as ketogenic diets) or cannibalization of muscle and organ mass (such as low-protein diets) has no health benefits. Only when the weight loss source is from stored fat do you gain any health benefits. Here the Zone diet has been shown to be superior to all other diets in burning fat faster (1-4). It has been demonstrated that if a person has a high initial insulin response to a glucose challenge, then the Zone diet is also superior in weight loss (5,6). A recent study from the New England Journal of Medicine indicates that a diet composition similar to the Zone diet is superior to other compositions in preventing the regain of lost weight (7). This is probably caused by the increased satiety induced by the Zone diet compared to other diets (1,8,9).

Reduction of cellular inflammation

There is total agreement in the research literature that the Zone diet is superior in reducing cellular inflammation (10-12). Since cellular inflammation is the driving force for chronic disease, then this should be the ultimate goal of any diet. Call me crazy for thinking otherwise.

Heart disease

It is ironic that the Ornish diet is still considered one of the best diets for heart disease, since the published data indicates that twice as many people had fatal heart attacks on the Ornish diet compared to a control diet (13). This is definitely the case of don’t confuse me with the facts. On the other hand, diets with the same balance of protein, carbohydrate and fat as the Zone diet has have been shown to be superior in reducing cardiovascular risk factors, such as cholesterol and fasting insulin (14,15).

Diabetes

The first publication validating the benefits of the Zone diet in treating diabetes appeared in 1998 (16). Since that time there have been several other studies indicating the superiority of the Zone diet composition for reducing blood glucose levels (17-20). In 2005, the Joslin Diabetes Research Center at Harvard Medical School announced its new dietary guidelines for treating obesity and diabetes. These dietary guidelines were essentially identical to the Zone diet. Studies done at the Joslin Diabetes Research Center following those dietary guidelines confirm the efficacy of the Zone diet to reduce diabetic risk factors (21). If the Zone diet isn’t recommended for individuals with diabetes, then someone should tell Harvard.

Ease of use

The Zone diet simply requires balancing one-third of your plate with low-fat protein with the other two-thirds coming from fruits and vegetables (i.e. colorful carbohydrates). Then you add a dash (that’s a small amount) of heart-healthy monounsaturated fats. The Zone diet is based on a bell-shaped curve balancing low-fat protein and low-glycemic-index carbohydrates, not a particular magic number. If you balance the plate as described above using your hand and your eye, it will approximate 40 percent of the calories as carbohydrates, 30 percent of calories as protein, and 30 percent of the calories as fat. Furthermore, it was found in a recent Stanford University study that the Zone diet provided greater amounts of micronutrients on a calorie-restricted program than any other diet (22).

Eventually all dietary theories have to be analyzed in the crucible of experimentation to determine their validity. So far in the past 13 years since I wrote my first book, my concepts of anti-inflammatory nutrition still seem to be at the cutting edge.

References

  1. Skov AR, Toubro S, Ronn B, Holm L, and Astrup A. “Randomized trial on protein vs carbohydrate in ad libitum fat reduced diet for the treatment of obesity.” Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord 23: 528-536 (1999)
  2. Layman DK, Boileau RA, Erickson DJ, Painter JE, Shiue H, Sather C, and Christou DD. “A reduced ratio of dietary carbohydrate to protein improves body composition and blood lipid profiles during weight loss in adult women.” J Nutr 133: 411-417 (2003)
  3. Fontani G, Corradeschi F, Felici A, Alfatti F, Bugarini R, Fiaschi AI, Cerretani D, Montorfano G, Rizzo AM, and Berra B. “Blood profiles, body fat and mood state in healthy subjects on different diets supplemented with omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids.” Eur J Clin Invest 35: 499-507 (2005)
  4. Layman DK, Evans EM, Erickson D, Seyler J, Weber J, Bagshaw D, Griel A, Psota T, and Kris-Etherton P. “A moderate-protein diet produces sustained weight loss and long-term changes in body composition and blood lipids in obese adults.” J Nutr 139: 514-521 (2009)
  5. Ebbeling CB, Leidig MM, Feldman HA, Lovesky MM, and Ludwig DS. “Effects of a low-glycemic-load vs low-fat diet in obese young adults: a randomized trial.” JAMA 297: 2092-2102 (2007)
  6. Pittas AG, Das SK, Hajduk CL, Golden J, Saltzman E, Stark PC, Greenberg AS, and Roberts SB. “A low-glycemic-load diet facilitates greater weight loss in overweight adults with high insulin secretion but not in overweight adults with low insulin secretion in the CALERIE Trial.” Diabetes Care 28: 2939-2941 (2005)
  7. Larsen TM, Dalskov SM, van Baak M, Jebb SA, Papadaki A, Pfeiffer AF, Martinez JA, Handjieva-Darlenska T, Kunesova M, Pihlsgard M, Stender S, Holst C, Saris WH, and Astrup A. “Diets with high or low protein content and glycemic index for weight-loss maintenance.” N Engl J Med 363: 2102-2113 (2010)
  8. Ludwig DS, Majzoub JA, Al-Zahrani A, Dallal GE, Blanco I, Roberts SB, Agus MS, Swain JF, Larson CL, and Eckert EA. “Dietary high-glycemic-index foods, overeating, and obesity.” Pediatrics 103: E26 (1999)
  9. Agus MS, Swain JF, Larson CL, Eckert EA, and Ludwig DS. “Dietary composition and physiologic adaptations to energy restriction.” Am J Clin Nutr 71: 901-907 (2000)
  10. Pereira MA, Swain J, Goldfine AB, Rifai N, and Ludwig DS. “Effects of a low-glycemic-load diet on resting energy expenditure and heart disease risk factors during weight loss.” JAMA 292: 2482-2490 (2004)
  11. Pittas AG, Roberts SB, Das SK, Gilhooly CH, Saltzman E, Golden J, Stark PC, and Greenberg AS. “The effects of the dietary glycemic load on type 2 diabetes risk factors during weight loss.” Obesity 14: 2200-2209 (2006)
  12. Johnston CS, Tjonn SL, Swan PD, White A, Hutchins H, and Sears B. “Ketogenic low-carbohydrate diets have no metabolic advantage over nonketogenic low-carbohydrate diets.” Am J Clin Nutr 83: 1055-1061 (2006)
  13. Ornish D, Scherwitz LW, Billings JH, Brown SE, Gould KL, Merritt TA, Sparler S, Armstrong WT, Ports TA, Kirkeeide RL, Hogeboom C, and Brand RJ, “Intensive lifestyle changes for reversal of coronary heart disease.” JAMA 280: 2001-2007 (1998)
  14. Wolfe BM and Piche LA. “Replacement of carbohydrate by protein in a conventional-fat diet reduces cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations in healthy normolipidemic subjects.” Clin Invest Med 22: 140-1488 (1999)
  15. Dumesnil JG, Turgeon J, Tremblay A, Poirier P, Gilbert M, Gagnon L, St-Pierre S, Garneau C, Lemieux I, Pascot A, Bergeron J, and Despres JP. “Effect of a low-glycaemic index, low-fat, high-protein diet on the atherogenic metabolic risk profile of abdominally obese men.” Br J Nutr 86:557-568 (2001)
  16. Markovic TP, Campbell LV, Balasubramanian S, Jenkins AB, Fleury AC, Simons LA, and Chisholm DJ. “Beneficial effect on average lipid levels from energy restriction and fat loss in obese individuals with or without type 2 diabetes.” Diabetes Care 21: 695-700 (1998)
  17. Layman DK, Shiue H, Sather C, Erickson DJ, and Baum J. “Increased dietary protein modifies glucose and insulin homeostasis in adult women during weight loss.” J Nutr 133: 405-410 (2003)
  18. Gannon MC, Nuttall FQ, Saeed A, Jordan K, and Hoover H. “An increase in dietary protein improves the blood glucose response in persons with type 2 diabetes.” Am J Clin Nutr 78: 734-741 (2003)
  19. Nuttall FQ, Gannon MC, Saeed A, Jordan K, and Hoover H. “The metabolic response of subjects with type 2 diabetes to a high-protein, weight-maintenance diet.” J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2003 88: 3577-3583 (2003)
  20. Gannon MC and Nuttall FQ. “Control of blood glucose in type 2 diabetes without weight loss by modification of diet composition.” Nutr Metab (Lond) 3: 16 (2006)
  21. Hamdy O and Carver C. “The Why WAIT program: improving clinical outcomes through weight management in type 2 diabetes.” Curr Diab Rep 8: 413-420 (2008)
  22. Gardner CD, Kim S, Bersamin A, Dopler-Nelson M, Otten J, Oelrich B, and Cherin R. “Micronutrient quality of weight-loss diets that focus on macronutrients: results from the A TO Z study.” Am J Clin Nutr 92: 304-312 (2010)

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.

What are we really entitled to?

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For the past year the future of the American economy has centered on the word “entitlement,” especially in terms of health care. But no one is quite certain about what the word means. Social Security is not really an entitlement because it is a forced savings program that promises you the money you put into an old-age fund will be given back to you when you need it, some time in your 60s. The fact that the government has been using that account as a piggy bank to fund itself without raising taxes and leaving behind government I.O.U.s in place of the funds is another matter. But you are definitely entitled to at least get back the money you put into it.

Medicare is a completely different matter. In this case, you put very little money into a fund (which is also heavily borrowed from by the government), and you expect to get a lot more back. In my view, you are entitled to get back the money you paid into Medicare, and anything more should be considered a gift from a rich uncle (Sam), who is no longer very rich.

In an attempt to resolve this problem, Congressman Paul Ryan came up with a plan that went nowhere but had at least some intellectual merit: You pay into the medical fund for old age, and you get back what you paid in (and a little more) at age 67. The most notable feature of this plan was getting an annual voucher for about $6,000 based on 2012 dollars to be applied for private health insurance premiums after age 67.

At the current Medicare tax rate, the only way to pay in more than $6,000 into proposed trust fund on an annual basis is if you make more than $200,000 per year. Since there aren’t too many Americans making that type of salary, it’s your rich uncle who must make up the difference. Even if you were making $200,000 per year for 40 years and only planned to live another 15 years after retirement, it is still a pretty good deal, as it is forced savings for health-care insurance in the future. Any overpayment on your part will only help those who are not lucky enough to make $200,000 a year for 40 years. Unfortunately, this proposal was politically dead on arrival

The real problem with any health-care entitlement program was pointed out in a well-reasoned article in the May 19th issue of The New Republic — you can’t cure chronic disease, you can only manage it (1). In addition, new research analyses of the current state of Americans in old age indicates that we aren’t doing a very good job of managing chronic diseases (2). Although Americans are living longer, the length of life with chronic disease and loss of functional mobility (i.e. independent living) have rapidly increased since 1998. We are living longer because the elderly are essentially on life support generated by increasingly more expensive drugs that only marginally extend the lives of the very sick. We are not going to cure heart disease, cancer, stroke, and definitely not Alzheimer’s. The best we can do is to help manage their outcomes. Unfortunately, these are also diseases of the elderly, and the cost of increasing each year of life after 65 has risen from about $50,000 in the 1970s to nearly $150,000 in the 1990s. This could possibly be justified if the rich uncle were still rich.

The solution according to the authors of the New Republic article is redirecting the money that we can spend to maximize expenditures on public health care (prevention and elongation of independent living) as opposed to “curing” elderly with chronic disease that usually results in the decreased quality of life (1). The primary beneficiaries of this shift in medical thinking should be children followed by working adults, with the lowest health-care priority going to those over age 80. It sounds harsh, but that is exactly how socialized medicine works in Europe.

So what do you do to protect yourself in the future, especially if you are nearing 65? My suggestion is to start aggressively reducing cellular inflammation by following an anti-inflammatory diet and lifestyle. That’s the only thing you are really entitled to and that will also be the only thing your “rich” uncle can realistically pay for in the future.

References

  1. Callahan D and Nuland S. “The quagmire: how American medicine is destroying itself.” The New Republic. May 19, 2011
  2. Crimmins EM and Beltran-Sanchez H. “Mortality and morbidity trends: is there compression of morbidity?” J Gerontol B Physchol Soc Sci 66: 75-86 (2011)

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.

The dangers of over-analyzing too much data in prostate study

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In the last week there has been a constant buzz about an online pre-publication of a new research article that suggests that high concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids promote aggressive prostate cancer (1). Well, that really isn’t the case, in spite of the press reports. That’s why you have to carefully read the article before jumping to conclusions.

Prostate cancer, like all cancers, is driven by cellular inflammation. The level of cellular inflammation is defined by the AA/EPA ratio of isolated serum phospholipids. When you analyze the data correctly in that article, you find that there was no difference in the AA/EPA ratio between the low-aggressive, high- aggressive, or control group. In fact, all the groups had the same elevated AA/EPA ratio of 18.8. Since I like to have individuals try to maintain an AA/EPA ratio of less than 3, all of these groups could be considered to be inflamed.

Not surprisingly, when you look at either EPA or AA levels separately in each group, they are identical. It’s only when you look at the DHA levels, do you see a small difference statistically, but it’s meaningless clinically. There was a 2.5 percent increase in the DHA levels in the high-aggressive group compared to the control group. In the paper, authors state their error in measuring DHA is ± 2.4 percent. Call me crazy, but I don’t see the big difference between the reported results and their error measurements. To further cloud the results, the authors also find that the levels of trans-fatty acids are lower in the aggressive prostate cancer patients than the controls. So I guess if you wanted to take their data at face value, DHA makes prostate cancer more aggressive and trans-fatty acids found in junk foods make prostate cancer less aggressive.

I believe this is simply a case of over-interpretation of massive amounts of collected data. If you get enough data points, you can always make some type of correlation, but that’s all it is. At some point you also have to allow common sense to enter the final analysis.

Nonetheless, let’s say their data might be correct. How could excess DHA increase the aggressiveness of any cancer? Well, it might decrease the levels of dihomo gamma linolenic acid (DGLA) as I have explained in many of my books (2-5). DGLA is the building block for a powerful group of anti-inflammatory eicosanoids, and its formation is inhibited by DHA. Depressing DGLA levels would reduce the body’s ability to hold back the inflammation that drives the tumor. Unfortunately, with all the data they accumulated, they forgot to publish the changes in the DGLA levels in the various groups. Oops.

So even if there were not any changes in the AA/EPA ratio between groups, a depression of DGLA levels in the aggressive prostate cancer group would easily explain the clinical observation. Unfortunately, that interpretation requires an extensive background in understanding eicosanoid biochemistry, which is not easily found in academic clinical-research centers.

This is not the first time that the potential benefits of DHA are in question. In the largest cardiovascular intervention study ever done, it was demonstrated that adding high levels of EPA to the diet of Japanese patients with high cholesterol levels (who already with a very low AA/EPA ratio of 1.6), dramatically decreased their likelihood of future cardiovascular events (6). This reduction was only correlated with increases in EPA levels as well as with a decrease in the AA/EPA ratio from an already low 1.6 to an even lower 0.8 (7). The levels of DHA in these patients had no significance for predicting future cardiovascular events.

Likewise other studies using DHA alone to treatment post-partum depression, improve neurological functioning of children or treating Alzheimer’s have also been found to be negative (8,9).

It’s not that DHA is bad, it just doesn’t do much to reduce cellular inflammation. DHA does a lot of other useful things, but reducing cellular inflammation in not one of them.

References

  1. Brasky TM, Till C, White E, Neuhouser ML, Song X, Goodman P, Thompson IM, King EB, Albanes D, and Kristal AR. “Serum phospholipid fatty acids and prostate cancer risk.” Amer J Epidem 173: doi 10:1093/aje/kwr9027 (2011)
  2. Sears, B. “The Zone.” Regan Books. New York, NY (1995)
  3. Sears, B. “The OmegaRx Zone.” Regan Books. New York, NY (2002)
  4. Sears, B. “The Anti-inflammation Zone.” Regan Books. New York, NY (2005)
  5. Sears, B. “Toxic Fat.” Thomas Nelson. Nashville, TN (2008)
  6. Matsuzaki M, Yokoyama M, Saito Y, Origasa H, Ishikawa Y, Oikawa S, Sasaki J, Hishida H, Itakura H, Kita T, Kitabatake A, Nakaya N, Sakata T, Shimada K, Shirato K, and Matsuzawa Y. “Incremental effects of eicosapentaenoic acid on cardiovascular events in statin-treated patients with coronary artery disease.” Circ J 73:1283-1290 (2009)
  7. Itakura H, Yokoyama M, Matsuzaki M, Saito Y, Origasa H, Ishikawa Y, Oikawa S, Sasaki J, Hishida H, Kita T, Kitabatake A, Nakaya N, Sakata T, Shimada K, Shirato K, and Matsuzawa Y. “Relationships between Plasma Fatty Acid Composition and Coronary Artery Disease.” J Atheroscler Thromb 18:99-107 (2011)
  8. Makrides M, Gibson RA, McPhee AJ, Yelland L, Quinlivan J, and Ryan P. “Effect of DHA supplementation during pregnancy on maternal depression and neurodevelopment of young children: a randomized controlled trial.” JAMA 304; 1675-1683 (2010)
  9. Quinn JF, Raman R, Thomas RG, Yurko-Mauro K, Nelson EB, Van Dyck C, Galvin JE, Emond J, Jack CR, Weiner M, Shinto L, and Aisen PS. “Docosahexaenoic acid supplementation and cognitive decline in Alzheimer disease: a randomized trial.” JAMA 304: 1903-1911 (2010)

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.

Where does fat go?

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Many years ago I saw a great cartoon of farmer harvesting bales of fat on a tractor with the caption reading, “That’s where they grow fat”. Now let’s fast forward to our current obesity epidemic. The fastest and most popular (although costly) way to lose fat is to simply suck it out of the body. Plastic surgeons have been doing this for the past 40 years. Yet for some reason their patients keep coming back every 12 months needing a new liposuction touch-up, like taking your car in for an oil lube and tire change at your local garage. Maybe these patients simply have no willpower to keep the fat off.

Now a new study in an online pre-publication article (1) indicates liposuction recipients may not be so “weak-willed” after all. After one year compared to a control group (who were promised discount prices for their liposuction if they would agree to wait for the outcome of the study), the females who had liposuction had no change in their body weight or their percentage of body fat 12 months after the operation. All the fat that had been removed by liposuction had returned. More ominously, the new fat appeared in the wrong places. Initially, it was taken from the hips, and 12 months later it reappeared on the abdomen. In essence, the liposuction had transformed the patients from a pear shape (with few long-term cardiovascular consequences) to an apple shape (with greater long-term cardiovascular consequences). While there was no short-term deterioration in their metabolic markers suggestive of future diabetes or heart disease, the change in the body shape is still an ominous predictor for their future health.

Why the body would grow new fat cells in different parts of the body is still a mystery. But it does indicate the body’s ability to defend itself against rapid fat loss. Fat loss must be a slow, continuous process to avoid activating these “fat-defending” systems. It is impossible to lose more than one pound of fat per week. You can lose a lot more weight, but that difference in weight loss primarily comes from either water loss or loss of muscle mass. This is why you see large of amounts of weight loss during the first week or two of any quick weight-loss diet (primarily water loss) followed by a much slower weight loss (now consisting of fat loss but at a much slower rate).

This is also why it is much easier to lose a lot of weight on shows like “The Biggest Loser” but very difficult to lose the last 10-15 pounds of excess weight (which is usually stored body fat). Apparently, it is only through the slow, steady loss of body fat that there isn’t any activation of the hormonal signals that activate the formation of new fat cells in other parts of the body to restore fat levels. Liposuction is rapid fat loss, and hence those hormonal signals are activated, which leads to the increased production of new fat cells in different parts of the body. People don’t like to hear this, but unfortunately it is the truth.

What drives fat gain is cellular inflammation that creates insulin resistance, as I explain in my book “Toxic Fat” (2). To lose excess body fat, you must first reduce cellular inflammation. That can only be done by an anti-inflammatory diet. There is no secret about it. What you must do is eat adequate protein at every meal, primarily eat colorful vegetables as carbohydrate choices, and avoid the intake of excess omega-6 (i.e., vegetable oils) fats and saturated fats by primarily using monounsaturated and omega-3 fats. You have to do this for a lifetime. Of course, if you do, then you will become thinner, healthier, and smarter.

The alternative is to turn yourself from a pear into an apple with liposuction.

References

  1. Hernandex TL, Kittelson JM, Law CK, Ketch LL, Stob NR, Linstrom RC, Scherziner A, Stamm ER, and Eckel RH. “Fat redistribution following section lepectomy: defense of body fat and patterns of restoration.” Obesity doi:1038/oby.2011.64
  2. Sears B. “Toxic Fat.” Thomas Nelson. Nashville, TN (2008)

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.

The fallacy of using DHA alone for brain trauma

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I am constantly amazed by the lack of understanding by neurologists of basic essential fatty acid biochemistry in the treatment of brain trauma and concussions. They often blindly believe that the only omega-3 fatty acid that has any impact in the treatment of concussions is DHA alone. Their blind faith is based on the observation that you find a lot of DHA in the brain and little EPA. This obviously means that EPA must not be important for brain function. This is similar to stating the world is flat because it appears that way to the naked eye.

I have mentioned many times in my books that EPA and DHA have different functions, and that’s why you need both of these essential omega-3 fatty acids (1-4). This is especially true for the brain. EPA produces most of the anti-inflammatory properties of omega-3 fatty acids since it’s structurally similar to arachidonic acid (AA) as they both contain 20 carbon atoms with approximately the same spatial configuration. As a result, EPA can inhibit the enzymes that would otherwise produce pro-inflammatory eicosanoids from AA. It is AA that generates the inflammation caused by brain trauma. DHA, on the other hand, is primarily a structural component of neural tissue. They do different jobs, and that’s why you need both in combination.

So why isn’t there as much EPA in the brain compared to DHA? The reason is simple. EPA enters the brain just as quickly as DHA, but it is rapidly oxidized, whereas DHA is sent off to long-term storage in neural tissue (5-7). The lifetime of DHA in the human brain is measured in years, whereas the lifetime of the EPA is measured in days. So obviously when you kill an animal and look at the brain, you are not going to find very much EPA.

What complicates the issue is that if you only treat a concussion with DHA, some of the DHA will be converted to EPA. This gives the appearance that DHA is working to reduce inflammation. Since brain trauma and concussions generate inflammation in the brain, doesn’t it make more sense to provide as much EPA as possible to reduce the inflammation as opposed to supplementing only with DHA and hoping some fraction of it will be converted to EPA?

To answer that question, it is useful to look at two recent studies that used the same protocol to study inflammation induced by a concussion injury (8,9). The same total amount of omega-3 fatty acids was used to treat the animals after the concussion injury. One experiment used a 2:1 ratio of EPA to DHA, and the other experiment used only DHA. If the DHA was so important, then the animals treated with the DHA alone should have demonstrated three times the reduction of neuro-inflammation compared to the group that received omega-3 fatty acids containing only one-third as much DHA.

In fact, just the opposite was the case. The 2:1 EPA/DHA group demonstrated greater benefits compared to the DHA-alone group in reducing neuro-inflammation induced by a concussion. Why? EPA is a far more powerful anti-inflammatory agent than DHA. This is why in both studies the AA/EPA ratio was used as the marker of inflammation induced by the concussion injury. Since the AA/EPA ratio was decreased in both studies, this meant that some of the pure DHA was converted to EPA providing at least some anti-inflammatory actions. Thus giving 100 percent DHA is not exactly the most efficient way to decrease neuro-inflammation induced by a concussion injury. This is further emphasized by a recent study that indicated that 1 gram of DHA per day for an 18-month period had no impact in the cognitive improvement of Alzheimer’s patients (10), even though Alzheimer’s is known to be a neuro-inflammatory disease (11).

Does this mean that DHA is not important for brain repair? Of course not. This is because you need both EPA and DHA for optimal repair of brain damage after a concussion. You need the EPA to reduce the neuro-inflammation, and you need the DHA to help rebuild new neurons. But to give DHA alone without additional EPA to maximally reduce neuro-inflammation caused by concussions simply makes no sense.

References

  1. Sears B. “The Zone.” Regan Books. New York, NY (1995)
  2. Sears B. “The OmegaRx Zone.” Regan Books. New York, NY (2002)
  3. Sears B. “The Anti-inflammation Zone.” Regan Books. New York, NY (2005)
  4. Sears B. “Toxic Fat.” Thomas Nelson. Nashville, TN (2008)
  5. Chen CT, Liu Z, and Bazinet RP. “Rapid de-esterification and loss of eicosapentaenoic acid from rat brain phospholipids: an intracerebroventricular study.” J Neurochem 116: 363-373 (2011)
  6. Chen CT, Liu Z, Ouellet M, Calon F, and Bazinet RP. “Rapid beta-oxidation of eicosapentaenoic acid in mouse brain: an in situ study. “Prostaglandins Leukot Essent Fatty Acids 80: 157-163 (2009)
  7. Umhau JC, Zhou W, Carson RE, Rapoport SI, Polozova A, Demar J, Hussein N, Bhattacharjee AK, Ma K, Esposito G, Majchrzak S, Herscovitch P, Eckelman WC, Kurdziel KA, and Salem N. “Imaging incorporation of circulating docosahexaenoic acid into the human brain using positron emission tomography.” J Lipid Res 50: 1259-1268 (2009)
  8. Mills JD, Bailes JE, Sedney CL, Hutchins H, and Sears B. “Omega-3 fatty acid supplementation and reduction of traumatic axonal injury in a rodent head injury model.” J Neurosurg 114: 77-84 (2011)
  9. Bailes JE and Mills JD. “Docosahexaenoic acid reduces traumatic axonal injury in a rodent head injury model.” J Neurotrauma 27: 1617-1624 (2010)
  10. Quinn JF, Raman R, Thomas RG, Yurko-Mauro K, Nelson EB, Van Dyck C, Galvin JE, Emond J, Jack CR, Weiner M, Shinto L, and Aisen PS. “Docosahexaenoic acid supplementation and cognitive decline in Alzheimer disease: a randomized trial.” JAMA 304: 1903-1911 (2010)
  11. Akiyama H, Barger S, Barnum S, Bradt B, Bauer J, Cole GM, Cooper NR, Eikelenboom P, Emmerling M, Fiebich BL, Finch CE, Frautschy S, Griffin WS, Hampel H, Hull M, Landreth G, Lue L, Mrak R, Mackenzie IR,McGeer PL, O’Banion MK, Pachter J, Pasinetti G, Plata-Salaman C, Rogers J, Rydel R, Shen Y, Streit W, Strohmeyer R, Tooyoma I, Van Muiswinkel FL,Veerhuis R, Walker D, Webster S, Wegrzyniak B, Wenk G, and Wyss-Coray T. “Inflammation and Alzheimer’s disease.” Neurobiol Aging 21: 383-421 (2000)

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.

Omega-3 fatty acids and blood pressure

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Blood Pressure CuffIt was recognized many years ago that fish oil has a dose-dependent effect on lowering blood pressure (1). So how does it do it? There are a lot of different ways.

The first is the ability of the omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil to alter the levels of a group of hormones known as eicosanoids (2,3). These are the hormones that cause blood vessels to contract, thereby increasing the pressure needed to pump blood through the arteries. The omega-3 fatty acids, especially eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), inhibit both the synthesis and release of the omega-6 fatty acid arachidonic acid (AA) that is the molecular building block necessary to produce those eicosanoids that cause constriction of blood vessels.

The second way that fish oil helps reduce blood pressure is to accelerate weight loss. When you lose excess weight, blood pressure invariably decreases. A recent trial has indicated that when you add fish oil to a calorie-restricted diet, there is greater weight loss (4). This study was followed by an additional trial that indicated when adding fish oil to a weight-reduction diet, there was a further effect on lowering blood pressure (5). So how does fish oil help you lose excess weight? The answer lies in the ability of the omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil to reduce cellular inflammation in the fat cells (6). It's that cellular inflammation that makes you fat and keeps you fat. Reducing that cellular inflammation in the fat cells is the key to weight loss.

Finally another cause of increased blood pressure is increased stress. It was shown in 2003 that high levels of fish oil reduce the rise of blood pressure induced by mental stress (7).

Of course, the best way to reduce blood pressure is to follow an anti-inflammatory diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids. That means a diet rich in fruits and vegetables with adequate levels of low-fat protein and low levels of omega-6 and saturated fats. It's also commonly known as the Zone diet.

References:

  1. Morris MC, Sacks F, and Rosner B. “Does fish oil lower blood pressure? A meta-analysis of controlled trials.” Circulation 88: 523-533 (1993)
  2. Sears B. “The Zone.” Regan Books. New York, NY (1995)
  3. Sears B. “The OmegaRx Zone.” Regan Books. New York, NY (2002)
  4. Thorsdottir I, Tomasson H, Gunnarsdottir I, Gisladottir E, Kiely M, Parra MD, Bandarra NM, Schaafsma G, and Martinez JA. “Randomized trial of weight-loss diets for young adults varying in fish and fish oil content.” Int J Obes 31: 1560-1566 (2007)
  5. Ramel A, Martinez JA, Kiely M, Bandarra NM, and Thorsdottir I. “Moderate consumption of fatty fish reduces diastolic blood pressure in overweight and obese European young adults during energy restriction.” Nutrition 26: 168-174 (2010)
  6. Sears B. “Toxic Fat.” Thomas Nelson. Nashville, TN (2008)
  7. Delarue J, Matzinger O, Binnert C, Schneiter P, Chiolero R, and Tappy L. “Fish oil prevents the adrenal activation elicited by mental stress in healthy men.” Diabetes Metab 29: 289-295 (2003)

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.

New solution or simply admitting failure?

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SurgeryLast week the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) announced that gastric bypass surgery is a cost-effective treatment for type 2 diabetes. This marks the first time in modern medicine that cutting out normal tissue is now considered good medicine. It also indicates the pathetic state of medical science for the treatment of diabetes.

Make no mistake: Type 2 diabetes is now a pandemic, affecting approximately 300 million people worldwide. This is projected to increase to some 450 million people worldwide by 2030. Since diabetes is one of the most costly chronic disease conditions, it is the most likely to break the financial backbone of health-care systems in every advanced country.

The typical gastric bypass surgery costs from $15,000 to $24,000. Just for argument's sake, let's assume it is $20,000 for each surgery. Since some 26 million people in the United States have type 2 diabetes, then a mere $520 billion dollars spent on gastric bypass surgery would solve our growing epidemic. Obviously we don't have that type of money floating in the health-care system.

Furthermore, the 10-year failure rate is relatively high for this type of surgery (1). For example, 20 percent of patients who were initially obese (BMI >50 percent) could not maintain their long-term BMI below 35 percent (the definition of morbidly obese). This failure rate rises to 58 percent for those whose initial BMI was greater than 50.

The key feature as to why gastric bypass surgery works is the almost immediate suppression of hunger, mediated by improved release of hormones from the gut (i.e. PYY) that go directly to the brain to tell the patient to stop eating. Over time it would appear that this initial enhancement of PYY release is being compromised. As a result, those patients regain the lost weight.

So maybe gastric bypass is not the best long-term solution (and definitely not a cost-effective one in those patients that regain much of their lost weight) for solving the current epidemic of diabetes. So what's the alternative? One solution would be an anti-inflammatory diet that supplies adequate protein to stimulate PYY release as well as control the levels of cellular inflammation in the pancreas, the underlying reason why insufficient insulin levels are secreted in the first place (2).

Call me crazy, but this dietary approach appears far more cost-effective.

References

  1. Christou NV, Look D, and MacLean LD. “Weight gain after short- and long-limb gastric bypass in patients followed for longer than 10 years.” Ann Surg 244: 734-740 (2006)
  2. Donath MY,Boni-Schnetzler M, Ellingsgaard H, and Ehses JA. “Islet inflammation impairs the pancreatic beta-cell in type 2 diabetes.” Physiology 24: 325-331 (2009)

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.

Mythologies in treatment of childhood obesity

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childhood obesityWe all know that obese children tend to be inactive. This leads to the “obvious” conclusion that the solution to childhood obesity is simply more exercise. But what if that conclusion is totally wrong?

There is no mistaking that obesity and lack of physical activity are linked. But which comes first? The answer appears to be obesity (1). A study published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood followed young children over a four-year period carefully measuring their physical activity with accelerometers to measure physical activity for seven consecutive days as well as their percentage of body fat using DEXA scans. What they found was that physical inactivity was not related to the increased accumulation of body fat, rather they found that increased body fat was the cause of decreasing physical activity. This is also the situation with adults (2-5).

So why do so many researchers believe that inactivity leads to fatness? Because it just has to be the answer. This belief persists in spite of numerous studies that demonstrate that increased physical activity has little impact on reducing childhood obesity (6). This is a classic case of don't confuse me with the facts, since in my heart I know I am right.

This is not to say that exercise has no benefits in obese children. In fact, the same authors had published an earlier study indicating that while intense exercise had little impact on fat loss, there is a significant benefit in reducing insulin resistance (7).

The implications of this study in children are immense. In essence, increasing public expenditures to increase physical activity will not address the childhood obesity epidemic no matter how much money you throw at the problem. Instead you have to focus on reducing calorie intake. However, this decrease in calorie consumption is not going to be accomplished by increased willpower, but by increasing satiety (lack of hunger) in obese children.

As I pointed out in my most recent book, “Toxic Fat,” if you want to increase satiety, you must reduce cellular inflammation in the brain (8). That is best accomplished by a combination of an anti-inflammatory diet coupled with high-dose fish oil.

Of course, as an alternative, you could always consider gastric bypass surgery.

References

  1. Metcalf BS, Hosking J, Jeffery AN, Voss LD, Henley W, and Wilkin TJ. “Fatness leads to inactivity, but inactivity does not lead to fatness.” Arch Dis Chil doi:10.1136/adc.2009.175927
  2. Bak H, Petersen L, and Sorensen TI. “Physical activity in relation to development and maintenance of obesity in men with and without juvenile onset obesity.” Int J Obes Relate Metabl Disord 28: 99-104 (2004)
  3. Petersen L, Schnorhr, and Sorensen TI. “Longitudinal study of the long-term relation between physical activity and obesity in adults.” Int J Obes Relate Metabl Disord 28: 105-112 (2004)
  4. Mortensen LH, Siegler Ic, Barefoot JC, Gronbaek M, and Sorensen TI. “Prospective associations between sedentary lifestyle and BMI in midlife.” Obesity 14: 1462-1471 (2006)
  5. Ekelund U, Brage S, Besson H, Sharp S, and Wareham NJ. “Time spent being sedentary and weight gain in healthy adults.” Am J Clin Nutr 88: 612-617 (2008)
  6. Wareham NJ, van Sluijs EM, and Ekelund U. “Physical activity and obesity prevention: a review of the current evidence.” Proc Nutr Soc 64: 229-247 (2005)
  7. Metcalf BS, Voss LD, Hosking J, Jeffery AN, and Wilkin TJ. “Physical activity at the government-recommended level and obesity-related outcomes.” Arch Dis Child93: 772-777 (2008)
  8. Sears B. “Toxic Fat”. Thomas Nelson. Nashville, TN (2008)

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.

New food trends may be dysfunctional

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dysfunctional food trendsAs our obesity epidemic gets worse and the general health of Americans continues to decline, people are always searching for new food trends to make us thinner, happier and smarter.

The leading contenders for the next new thing are functional foods. Frankly, these are simply processed foods with added dietary supplements to make you more likely to purchase them compared to the competition on the same shelf. Of course, this means the functional food can’t be too much more expensive than its competitor (and ideally the same price) without affecting the taste of the product. As an afterthought, it might even have some health benefit for you.

Frankly, there are only two functional foods that have been truly successful over the years. The first is Gatorade. Originally developed to reduce minerals lost during exercise, the original Gatorade tasted terrible. So they simply added some sugar to make it taste better and called it a sports drink. Gatorade is basically a Coke or a Pepsi with minerals, but you feel better about yourself when you guzzle down those carbohydrates. The other commercial success was Tropicana Orange Juice with Calcium. The makers of Tropicana didn’t ask you to pay a premium for this functional food since it was exactly the same price as Tropicana Orange Juice without calcium. That’s why the sales of this functional food dramatically increased. Who doesn’t want something extra (and it might even be healthy) for free?

It’s been a long time since any new functional foods tried to break into the market. The two most recent have been POM and Activia yogurt. POM contains polyphenols from the pomegranate seed. That’s good because polyphenols are excellent anti-oxidants and potentially good anti-inflammatory chemicals. But like the minerals in Gatorade, they taste terrible. So when you purchase a bottle of POM, what you are getting is a mass of added sugar. I guarantee you that the intake of these polyphenols in POM is not worth the extra sugar.

Another “new” source of polyphenols we hear about comes from chocolate, which is now being promoted as the new super-fruit (1). Like all polyphenols, the polyphenols found in chocolate are intensely bitter. That’s why no one likes to eat unsweetened Baker’s Chocolate even though it is polyphenol-rich. But if you add a lot of sugar to it, then it tastes great. In fact, it’s a candy bar. Again like most functional foods, these polyphenol functional foods represent one step forward in that you are consuming more polyphenols, but two steps backwards for consuming too much sugar.

Tasting bad is something that has really prevented yogurt sales from taking off in America. The solution was simple. Add more sweetness, usually in the form of fruit plus extra sugar. Finally, natural yogurt became acceptable. But to turn it into a functional food, Dannon decided to add more probiotics to its already sugar-sweetened yogurt and call it Activia, promoting it to help soothe an angry digestive system. In December 2010 the Federal Trade Commission stepped in and hit Dannon with a $21-million fine for false advertising (2). Not only were the levels of probiotics in Activia too low to be of any health benefit, but Dannon was also making drug-claims on a food to boot. Not surprisingly, the FTC is also after POM for similar misleading claims (3). Darned those regulators. They take all the fun out of marketing functional foods.

The list goes on and on. Whether it is vitamin waters, or micro-encapsulated fish oil, vitamin D, etc., trying to put bad-tasting nutritional supplements that have some proven benefits into foods and charge the consumer a higher price is never going to work. To prevent the poor taste, you have to microencapsulate the supplement to make it sound high-tech, (they call it nanotechnology) and this costs a lot of money. Adding the bad-tasting nutritional supplement without the microencapsulation to a food makes it taste worse (unless you are adding a lot of sugar at the same time, of course eroding all the potential health benefits of the supplement). Finally, the consumer will only buy this new functional food if it is the same price as what they usually purchase.

So what’s the next new thing in functional foods? In my opinion, it is returning to the concept of cooking for yourself in your own kitchen using food ingredients you buy on the periphery of the supermarket, and then taking the nutritional supplements that have proven efficacy (like fish oil and polyphenols) at the therapeutic level to produce real health benefits. Now you have real functional foods that finally work at a lower cost than you would pay for in the supermarket.

Now, that’s a radical new food trend that just might work.

References

1. Crozier SJ, Preston AG, Hurst JW, Payne MJ, Mann J, Hainly L, and Miller DL. “Cacao seeds are a ‘super fruit’: A comparative analysis of various fruit powders and products.” Chem Central J 5:5 (2011)

2. Horovitz B. “Dannon’s Activia, DanActive health claims draw $21M fine.” USA Today. December 15, 2010

3. Wyatt E. “Regulators Call Health Claims in Pom Juice Ads Deceptive.” New York Times. September 27, 2010

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.

What’s the story on chocolate?

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chocolate and polyphenolsChocolate is big business, generating about $50 billion in annual worldwide sales. But is it good medicine? Before I get to that answer, let me give you some background on the manufacturing of chocolate.

The first use of chocolate appears to be about 3,000 years ago in Central Mexico to produce an intensely bitter drink called xocolatl. Today, we still get the raw material for chocolate from the seeds of the cocoa tree. However, now they are fermented and roasted prior to extracting the raw cocoa beans from their pods. The raw cocoa mass is then ground and heated to produce what is called chocolate liquor.

This chocolate liquid is exceptionally bitter because it is rich in polyphenols. This is what you get when you buy unsweetened baker’s chocolate. Keep in mind that even with the extreme bitterness of unsweetened baker’s chocolate, the total polyphenol content is only about 5 percent of the total mass (the rest is cocoa butter). This means that purified chocolate polyphenols are about 20 times bitterer than the taste of unsweetened baker’s chocolate.

The chocolate liquor can also be further refined. The most common way is to remove the fat portion (i.e., cocoa butter) from the chocolate liquor by simple pressing. What remains is the cocoa powder that retains all of the polyphenols but in a dry form that can be ground to a powder. The isolated cocoa butter is the base for making white chocolate. Although it is free of any of the beneficial polyphenols, it still retains the excellent mouth feel of the cocoa butter. Add some extra sugar, and it is a great-tasting snack that has absolutely no health benefits.

You can always add more sugar to the cocoa liquor to sweeten the chocolate taste. That’s the ”dark chocolate” that dominates the market today. Of course in the process, you dilute out the polyphenols, which give chocolate all of its health benefits, not to mention increasing calories and increasing insulin levels because of the added sugar. That’s why eating dark chocolate will not help you lose weight. When you add more sugar and milk to the dark chocolate, the bitter taste (and the health benefits) is even reduced further. Now you have a milk chocolate candy bar.

Now what about the health benefits of the chocolate polyphenols before you start diluting them out with added sugar? Here the research data are clear. If you consume enough chocolate polyphenols, you will reduce blood pressure (1). This is probably due to the increase of nitric oxide production and its beneficial effects on relaxing the endothelial cells that line the blood vessels (2). How much is enough? Over a two-week period about 500 mg of polyphenols per day (this is the amount found in a typical 100-gram bar of unsweetened baker’s chocolate) can significantly reduce blood pressure by about 4 mm Hg (3). If you are willing to consume smaller amounts of very dark chocolate (providing 30 mg of polyphenols per day) for a much longer period of time, there is an improvement in endothelial cell relaxation, but without a reduction of blood pressure (4). Therefore, the blood pressure benefits of chocolate consumption appear to be dose-related. There is also evidence of chocolate polyphenols having some anti-inflammatory properties (5).

Considering these benefits, should chocolate be considered a “super fruit”? To answer that question, a recent publication compared the ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorption Capacity) values of unsweetened cocoa to similar-size servings of other fruit powders from “super fruits,” such as blueberries, pomegranate and acai berries (6). The ORAC value is a measure of the ability of the dried fruit to quench free radicals. The cocoa powder had a significantly higher ORAC value per serving than the other fruit powders. Before you get too excited, keep in mind that the typical cocoa powder in the supermarket has been treated with alkali (i.e. Dutch-treated) to remove much of the bitterness of the polyphenols and in the process remove most of their health benefits (6).

So if you want the health benefits of chocolate, just make it bitter (i.e. unsweetened baker’s chocolate) and eat a lot of it (about 100 grams per day). You won’t lose any weight, but your blood pressure will come down a bit. Now if you want some real anti-inflammatory benefits, eat the chocolate, take 2.5 grams of EPA and DHA and follow an anti-inflammatory diet. Now you have a far more powerful dietary approach for reducing cellular inflammation and its clinical consequences, such as elevated blood pressure.

References

1. Ried K, Sullivan T, Fakler P, Frank OR, and Stocks NP. “Does chocolate reduce blood pressure? A meta-analysis.” BMC Med 8:39 (2010)

2. Taubert D, Roesen R, Lehmann C, Jung N, and Schomig E. “Effects of low habitual cocoa intake on blood pressure and bioactive nitric oxide: a randomized controlled trial.” JAMA 298: 49-60 (2007)

3. Grassi D, Lippi C, Necozione S, Desideri G, and Ferri C. “Short-term administration of dark chocolate is followed by a significant increase in insulin sensitivity and a decrease in blood pressure in healthy persons.” Am J Clin Nutr 81: 611-614 (2005)

4. Engler MB, Engler MM, Chen CY, Malloy MJ, Browne A, Chiu EY, Kwak HK, Milbury P, Paul SM,Blumberg J, and Mietus-Snyder ML. “Flavonoid-rich dark chocolate improves endothelial function and increases plasma epicatechin concentrations in healthy adults.” J Am Coll Nutr 23: 197-204 (2004)

5. Selmi C, Cocchi CA, Lanfredini M, Keen CL, and Gershwin ME. “Chocolate at heart: The anti-inflammatory impact of cocoa flavanols.” Mol Nutr Food Res 52:1340-8 (2008)

6. Crozier SJ, Preston MG, Hurst JW, Payne JM, Mann J, Hainly L, and Miller DL. “Caco seeds are a super fruit,” Chemistry Central Journal 5:5 (2011)

Nothing contained in this blog is intended to be instructional for medial diagnosis or treatment. If you have a medical concern or issue, please consult your personal physician immediately.