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Starvation Is NOT Healthy. Stop counting calories & go #SANE w/me at http://SANESolution.com

Want to Improve Your Cholesterol? Don’t Lower It. There’s a Smarter Approach.

“There is a wealth of…evidence that increasing the concentration of HDL cholesterol through diet will lower the risk of coronary artery disease.” –R.P. Mensink, Maastricht University In the last post we showed how Eating Fat Does Not Hurt Cholesterol & It’s Not About Lowering Cholesterol Anyway. Here’s where the confusion about cholesterol comes from […]

2018-02-18/0 Comments/by SANE

Four Reasons a Calorie Is Not a Calorie

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“Attacking the obesity epidemic will involve giving up many old ideas that have not been productive. ‘A calorie is a calorie’ might be a good place to start.” – R.D. Feinman, State University of New York Beyond battling our basic biology, calorie balancing is bound to fail us because a calorie is not a […]

2018-02-18/0 Comments/by SANE

Want to Improve Your Cholesterol? Don’t Lower It. There’s a Smarter Approach.

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2018-02-18/0 Comments/by SANE

Four Reasons a Calorie Is Not a Calorie

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2018-02-18/0 Comments/by SANE

Want to Improve Your Cholesterol? Don’t Lower It. There’s a Smarter Approach.

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“There is a wealth of…evidence that increasing the concentration of HDL cholesterol through diet will lower the risk of coronary artery disease.” –R.P. Mensink, Maastricht University

In the last post we showed how Eating Fat Does Not Hurt Cholesterol & It’s Not About Lowering Cholesterol Anyway. Here’s where the confusion about cholesterol comes from in the first place. There are different types of cholesterol, and most of them are helpful or neutral. The two most commonly discussed are LDL (low-density lipoprotein) and HDL (high-density lipoprotein). They are required to produce new cells and hormones. Because of this critical role, even if we never ate any cholesterol, our liver or intestines would produce it.

What Are Healthy Cholesterol Numbers?

Table of Contents

When it comes to predicting heart health, the American Heart Association, International Diabetes Federation, and World Health Organization agree that low HDL cholesterol—not high LDL cholesterol—is what matters. And that low HDL is bad. Looking at disease and death rates at various levels of LDL and HDL cholesterol, researchers have found that people with low HDL run a much greater risk of heart disease.

Relative Risk of Heart Disease Given Total Cholesterol

(Total Cholesterol in Parenthesis)

There are two things to note about this graphic. First, total cholesterol is irrelevant. If someone tells you their total cholesterol is 185, what is their risk of heart disease? Looking at the preceding table, it is either very low or high, depending on how much of that 185 consists of HDL cholesterol. Similarly, if someone tells you their total cholesterol is 245, they either have a herculean heart or a hemorrhaging heart, depending on their HDL levels.

Second, note how increasing HDL cholesterol is more important for heart health than decreasing LDL cholesterol. High HDL cholesterol protects us from heart problems more than dropping our LDL levels ever could. Heart-healthy diets are not about lowering total cholesterol. They are about raising HDL cholesterol.

“…low HDL-cholesterol levels increase coronary heart disease risk…[programs] resulting in an increase in HDL-cholesterol levels could decrease the incidence of ischemic heart disease.” – J.P. Despres, Laval University

How to Raise HDL Cholesterol

The most effective way to raise our HDL levels is to eat more natural fat and less unnatural starch. Fat raises HDL. Starch lowers HDL.

The Impact of Fat and Starch on HDL and LDL Cholesterol and Health

A Smarter Science of Heart Healthy Foods

Since lower HDL does more harm than lower LDL does good, any diet which tells us to replace SANE sources of fat with inSANE starch worsens our cholesterol. This is why D. Mozaffarian at Harvard University wrote: “[Focusing] on effects of total and saturated fat on…total and low-density lipoprotein [LDL] cholesterol may have failed to reduce coronary heart disease risk and inadvertently worsened…insulin resistance, and weight gain.” Researcher A. Garg wrote the following in the Journal of the American Medical Association: “High-carbohydrate diets…caused persistent deterioration of glycemic control and accentuation of hyperinsulinemia [caused clogs], as well as increased…very-low-density lipoprotein [bad] cholesterol levels.”

Regrettably, under the government’s guidelines, we are supposed to replace natural foods containing fat with low-fat-high-starch products to lower our total cholesterol. Why? Lower total cholesterol is meaningless, and lower HDL cholesterol is terrible for us. Researchers have demonstrated this for decades.

For example, the February 1989 issue of the Diabetes Care journal put out by the American Diabetes Association contained a study comparing the government’s diet with a more SANE way of eating. The study concluded: “VLDL [bad] cholesterol was significantly increased…High-density lipoprotein [good] cholesterol concentrations were significantly decreased after consumption of the 60% carbohydrate diet.”

Comparable results were found with the equally imbalanced U.K. dietary guidelines. In the words of University of Glasgow researcher S.R. Arefhosseini: “Following the U.K. dietary guidelines resulted in changes…more likely to favor an increased risk of coronary heart disease.”

What About Saturated Fat and Cholesterol?

Even saturated fats are not cholesterol criminals. The American Heart Association found:

“No adequately designed randomized controlled study in the general population has shown that…decreasing saturated fat…intake significantly decreases coronary heart disease mortality.”

Bottom Line: Ways to Improve Cholesterol

What is the bottom line? Studies show that any diet telling you to replace SANE sources of fat with inSANE starches is unhealthy and fattening. M.L. McCullough at Harvard University made this point: “Limiting unsaturated fats, which is usually done by increasing carbohydrates…is detrimental…. Low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets provide a higher glycemic load, aggravate hyperinsulinemia [clogging], and may thus increase the risk of diabetes and coronary artery disease.”

Want to improve your cholesterol naturally? Eat more, but smarter.

Sadly, the government’s diet tells us to do exactly what science says we should avoid.

If you think this is troubling, wait until you see what happened when big business jumped on the government bandwagon. We’ll cover that next week.

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Gardner CD, Kiazand A, Alhassan S, Kim S, Stafford RS, Balise RR, Kraemer HC, King AC. Comparison of the Atkins, Zone, Ornish, and LEARN diets for change in weight and related risk factors among overweight premenopausal women: The A TO Z Weight Loss Study: a randomized trial. JAMA. 2007 Mar 7;297(9):969-77. Erratum in: JAMA. 2007 Jul 11;298(2):178. PubMed PMID: 17341711.
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2018-02-18/0 Comments/by SANE

Four Reasons a Calorie Is Not a Calorie

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“Attacking the obesity epidemic will involve giving up many old ideas that have not been productive. ‘A calorie is a calorie’ might be a good place to start.” – R.D. Feinman, State University of New York

Beyond battling our basic biology, calorie balancing is bound to fail us because a calorie is not a calorie. The difference in calorie quality is really important. That’s because the quality of the calories we eat influences our hormones. Those in turn determine our set-point. We can control our weight, just not the way you have been led to believe.

The Calories In – Calories Out theory of weight control depends on the assumption that our bodies work like balance scales. Balance scales do not measure quality. On a balance scale, a pound of feathers weighs the same as a pound of lead. Quality is irrelevant. So on a balance scale, 300 calories of vegetables is the same as 300 calories of pasta. The only problem is that the body is not a balance scale.

Let’s look at the issue another way. Breathing in smoke-filled air for thirty years does something different to our respiratory system than breathing in the same quantity of fresh air. In the same fashion, putting 2,000 calories of low-quality food into our fat metabolism system does something different than putting in the same quantity of high-quality food. Quality counts. Our bodies do not work like balance scales.

The quality of calories depends on four fascinating factors:

Satiety – How quickly calories fill us up and how long they keep us full
Aggression – How likely calories are to be stored as body fat
Nutrition – How many nutrients—aka protein, vitamins, minerals, etc.—calories provide
Efficiency – How many calories can be stored as body fat

The more Satisfying, unAggressive, Nutritious, and inEfficienct a calorie is, the higher its quality. The more SANE it is. The more body-fat-burning hormones it triggers. The more it unclogs our metabolism and prevents overeating.

The more unSatisfying, Aggressive, not Nutritious, and Efficient a calorie is, the lower its quality. The more inSANE it is. The more body-fat-storing hormones it triggers. The more it clogs our metabolism and encourages overeating.

The more we understand the four calorie-quality factors, the more clearly we will see how eating more high-quality SANE food is the only practical way to burn body fat long term. When you stay full of SANE food, you will not have any room for clog-causing inSANE calories. When we are totally full from a super-sized SANE supper, skipping the sundae after isn’t a burden. It’s a blessing in disguise. By staying full of SANE calories, we clear our clog, drop our set-point, and enable our fat metabolism system to burn body fat for us automatically.

“…for the vast majority of people, being overweight is not caused by how much they eat but by what they eat. The idea that people get heavy because they consume a high volume of food is a myth. Eating large amounts of the right food is your key to success…” – Joel Fuhrman, Doctor and Author

Sound too good to be true? More supporting science coming-up shortly.

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Fuhrman, Joel. Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss. London: Little, Brown and Company, 2005. Print.
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2018-02-18/0 Comments/by SANE

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