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5 Things your Doctor Doesn’t Know about High Cholesterol and Diet

When you hear the term, “high cholesterol,” you probably think about heart disease first, and too much saturated fat in the diet, second. But what if neither of these things are true? What if the real cause of heart disease is quite different, and what if your doctor doesn’t know about it? To be sure, […]

2018-04-16/by SANE

Can Menopause and Weight Loss Really go Together? You Bet they Can!

SANE Health

Menopause and weight loss are terms that don’t often go together. There is a reason for that. Statistics show that 90 percent of women gain weight during menopause. But the good news is that menopausal weight gain is not inevitable, nor is the inability to lose weight after menopause. In fact, you can control menopausal […]

2018-04-15/by SANE

5 Things your Doctor Doesn’t Know about High Cholesterol and Diet

SANE Health, Uncategorized

2018-04-16/by SANE

Can Menopause and Weight Loss Really go Together? You Bet they Can!

SANE Health

2018-04-15/by SANE

5 Things your Doctor Doesn’t Know about High Cholesterol and Diet

SANE Health, Uncategorized

To be sure, hearing anything different from the above causes of heart disease will send your head spinning. But which would you rather do: continue believing inSANE lies about high cholesterol, change your diet to reduce your cholesterol, and find out later these changes actually caused your heart attack? Or…would you rather learn the truth and bring some SANEity to your life about diet and high cholesterol?

It’s up to you, of course. But the truth will set you free from old diet myths that do nothing but cause misery and illness.

High Cholesterol, Diet and You?

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If you have high cholesterol, you’re not alone. One in three American adults has cholesterol levels considered too high, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Since high cholesterol is a major risk factor for heart disease, says conventional wisdom, the American Heart Association recommends that you should have your cholesterol and other risk factors checked every four to six years – starting at age 20.

Is this necessary, though? Is cholesterol really the boogeyman of your cardiovascular system? Research in the past few years, as well as a surprising number of medical doctors (including cardiologists) say NO. Which brings us to the first thing your doctor doesn’t know about cholesterol, or maybe he or she has just forgotten it in all the hooey about high cholesterol.

Cholesterol is GOOD for You!

Cholesterol has become so vilified that it might surprise you to learn that this substance is not only good for you, but you also need it to live. Every cell in your body is made from cholesterol. This waxy substance helps your metabolism work properly, as it is essential for the production of Vitamin D and bile acids that help your body digest fat and absorb vital nutrients. Cholesterol is also necessary for the production of steroid hormones, which include estrogen, testosterone and progesterone.

Cholesterol is so important to your survival that it doesn’t rely on you to get it from your diet. Your liver takes care of it for you, producing around 75 percent of your body’s cholesterol. The fact that your liver produces such a substantial amount of cholesterol is a huge sign that cholesterol is GOOD for you. But how does your diet play into all of this? That leads us to the second thing about cholesterol and diet your doctor doesn’t know.

Cholesterol in the Diet does not Cause High Cholesterol.

Cholesterol in the diet comes from meat, poultry and full-fat dairy products. For the past 20 years, experts have cautioned Americans to consume less than 300 milligrams of carbohydrates a day. If you want to reduce your chances of heart disease, then, you really have to cut out eggs and all saturated fats. After all, just one egg yolk has 200 milligrams of this artery clogging gook!

This advice stems from the belief that there is a link between cholesterol in your diet and that in your blood stream. This belief started in the late 50s, with the work of Ancel Keys.

Ancel Keys: Creator of the Cholesterol Myth

Ancel Keys, an American physiologist, had an epiphany one day. He wondered why American business executives – surely, he reasoned, some of the best-fed people in the world – had high rates of heart disease. At the same time, Keys noticed the reverse was true in post-war Europe. With food supplies sharply reduced, European countries saw a decrease in heart disease. Keys theorized that cholesterol played a role in cardiovascular disease (CVD) , and presented his hypothesis at the World Health Organization in Geneva.

From 1958 to 1964, Keys and colleagues visited seven countries and examined their dietary habits against their cholesterol levels and rates of cardiovascular disease. Based on his analysis, Keys concluded that high cholesterol was a risk factor for CVD and that a diet high in saturated fat caused high cholesterol.

There are some problems with Keys’ research, however. The biggest problem is that Keys only selected 7 countries out of 22, and the ones he left out – such as France and Germany – were ones he knew had low rates of heart disease, despite diets rich in saturated fats.

Nevertheless, Keys’ research became the truth about eating a high cholesterol diet and heart disease. The fact that the famous Framington Heart Study, conducted around the same time, found no connection between cholesterol consumption and CVD didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered is that the cholesterol industry could make big money on this new medical condition. Pharmaceutical companies started developing drugs to lower cholesterol and food companies started producing and marketing low-cholesterol foods.

Freed from the Myth, but Doctors Don’t Know Yet

In 2015, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee ruled that, essentially, consuming cholesterol has no effect on your serum (blood) cholesterol level. This committee of experts meets every five years and provides the scientific basis for both medical- and government-established nutritional guidelines.

In their report, the experts said that there would be no more limitations on cholesterol consumption for Americans because there is no evidence that consumption of cholesterol affects serum cholesterol.

Being told, after all these years, that there is NO link between dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol may shock you and your doctor. But it doesn’t surprise Dr. Stephen Sinatra, a board certified cardiologist and co-author of the bestseller, The Great Cholesterol Myth. Dr. Sinatra, who had been a practicing cardiologist for over 40 years, has long known there was no link between dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol, or between cholesterol and heart disease, for that matter. Dr. Sinatra says that cholesterol plays only a “supporting role” in heart disease.

He hopes the next time the Advisory Committee meets in 2020, they make the same decision about saturated fat and cholesterol. This brings us to the third thing doctors don’t know about diet and cholesterol.

Fat in the Diet does not Cause High Cholesterol

Thanks to Keys and other factors – including monetary interests – dietary fat was demonized by experts and the media. Eating fat was believed to raise serum cholesterol, which increased the risk of heart disease. The story behind the demonizing of dietary fat is outrageous! The media and sugar industry literally duped American into believing a lie for decades!

The Great Sugar Conspiracy

Due to increased rates of heart disease in the 1950s and 1960s, researchers were searching for something to blame it on. There were two theories for the rise in heart disease – increased consumptions of sugar and increased consumption of saturated fat.

Several studies had already shown sugar to be a contributing cause of heart disease, and that was not okay for the leaders of the sugar industry. The Sugar Research Foundation secretly funded a scientific review of the research that downplayed sugar’s role in heart disease. Of course, this review, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, appeared to be impartial.

The three Harvard researchers who wrote it were certainly impartial. But what nobody knew at the time is that the Sugar Research Foundation had selected the studies favorable to their industry, ones that also were critical of saturated fat consumption.

That review set off a chain reaction of non-fat, low-fat everything, a dietary recommendation that has hurt more than helped us. In fact, going low-fat caused the obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemic and contributed to many illnesses. Our bodies need dietary fat to function properly.

The Truth about Saturated Fat and Cholesterol

The truth is that there is not one shred of scientific evidence that a saturated fat causes heart disease. In fact, according to Dr. Sinatra, eating a moderate amount of saturated fat is heart healthy, and it is also good for overall health.

However, the quality of the fat you eat can cause abnormal cholesterol levels. Eating huge quantities of saturated fat, trans fats or hydrogenated fats does have a negative effect on your cholesterol. But eating monounsaturated fats and omega-3 fats lowers your cholesterol and improves its quality.

If high cholesterol is not the enemy of the heart, what is? The answer may surprise you – and your doctor.

What Causes High Cholesterol Levels Then?

There are many reasons for high cholesterol. As previously mentioned, eating bad fats can cause abnormal cholesterol levels, as can excess sugar and carbohydrate consumption. Some people are also genetically predisposed to having high cholesterol levels.

High Cholesterol (in the diet or bloodstream) does not Cause Heart Disease

Inflammation is the real cause of cardiovascular disease, as it is for so many other diseases. Inflammation itself is quite natural. It is your body’s way of fighting threats to the system, such as bacteria, environmental toxins, sugar, wounds, etc. It’s only harmful if it becomes chronic.

Cholesterol does create arterial plaque, and it does build up and clog the arteries, but it’s not because the cholesterol level is too high. It is because small, dense LDL cholesterol particles have become oxidized. Oxidation, or free-radical stress, is one of the major triggers for inflammation. According to Mark Hyman, MD, Director of Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Functional Medicine, that’s the real danger of cholesterol. When these small particles are oxidized, it triggers the build-up of plaque or cholesterol deposits in your arteries.

Though doctors test your HDL (good) and LDL (bad) cholesterol levels, and use these numbers to predict your risk of heart disease, it’s much more complicated than that. Research has shown that there are subtypes of both HDL and LDL based on particle size, and they have different effects and come with different risks.

For instance, small, dense LDL particles are more of a predictor of heart disease than large, fluffy particles. Why? Because they are vulnerable to oxidative damage and more likely to become jammed into arterial walls, creating inflammation. Large, fluffy particles, on the other hand, bounce off the arteries. They’re harmless, even if you have high cholesterol.

So knowing your HDL and LDL numbers aren’t much help when determining your risk for heart disease. What is essential, according to Dr. Sinatra, is to know how much of your LDL cholesterol is subtype A and/or B. (Type A particles are large and fluffy; type B particles are small and dense.)

There are two clinical tests that measure the subtypes of HDL and LDL and analyze the particles within them: Vertical Auto Profile (VAP) and the Lipopotein Particle Profile (LPP).

Sugar and Refined-Carbohydrate Consumption is a Bigger Risk for Heart Disease than High Cholesterol

What makes those small LDL particles? According to Dr. Hyman, the culprit is sugar and refined-carbohydrate consumption. Not only does consuming sugar and carbs (white food) create these dangerous particles, but it also lowers good cholesterol and raises triglyceride levels.

Consuming high fructose corn syrup, which is an ingredient in most sweetened beverages and processed foods, is particularly harmful in this regard.

Using Diet to Reduce Inflammation and Risk for Heart Disease

Research has shown some food groups to have an anti-inflammatory effect on the body. Some of these foods include:

Green, leafy vegetables, such as spinach and kale.
Tomatoes
Nuts, especially almonds and walnuts
Fatty fish, such as sardines, salmon and mackerel
Fruits, such as oranges, blueberries and strawberries.

So, if you want to reduce your risk of heart disease, you shouldn’t worry as much about high cholesterol as you do about what is in your diet.

Are you Ready for Some SANEity?

What you eat should be nutritious and anti-inflammatory, such as non-starchy vegetables and nutrient-dense protein. The SANE Solution does just that, focusing on a balanced diet that fills you up fast and keeps you full longer. There is no hunger and no depriving yourself of tasty meals. The goal is to be so full of SANEly good foods, that you can’t even think about reaching for that candy bar or other inSANE food.

Here are the basic food groups:

Non-starchy vegetables: 10+ servings a day. Non-starchy vegetables contain high amounts of antioxidants, which prevent free-radical formation and inflammation.
Nutrient-dense protein: 30-50 grams at each meal. Choices include egg whites, plain Greek yogurt, salmon and chicken. Salmon and other fatty fish have high levels of omega-3 fatty acids, making them an anti-inflammatory treat.
Whole-food fats: 3-6 servings per day. Choices include coconut, avocado, cocoa/cacao, flax seeds. (Be sure to eat the whole food and not just use the oil. The whole food has the fiber and other nutrients that satisfy your hunger.)
Low-fructose fruits: 0-3 servings per day. Good choices include acai berry, blueberries, cherries and strawberries.

Eating SANEly will also lower your setpoint weight, which will result in long-term weight loss and maintenance. This will further reduce your risk for heart disease. So what are you waiting for? Click here to get started. It’s FREE!

Next Step: Treat High Cholesterol with SANE

There is much more to the SANE lifestyle. Getting 7-8 hours of sleep a night, reducing stress, staying hydrated, and performing eccentric exercises are other important factors in lowering your setpoint.

Ready to finally break free from the yo-yo dieting rollercoaster that can lead to diabesity? By balancing your hormones and lowering your body’s set-point weight, SANE is the solution you’ve been dreaming of.

Want to know the exact foods and serving sizes scientifically proven by over 1,300 peer-reviewed research studies to boost metabolism, burn fat and enjoy virtually effortless weight loss like a naturally thin person?

Begin your exciting journey to lasting, healthy weight loss today. Download the free SANE metabolism boosting food list, cheat sheet and “Eat More, Burn More” weight loss program by clicking here

2018-04-16/by SANE

Can Menopause and Weight Loss Really go Together? You Bet they Can!

SANE Health

The SANE lifestyle makes weight loss possible – even during menopause. But before learning about these changes, you might want to know why menopause causes weight gain.

Why Menopause Does Not Promote Weight Loss

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Menopause is the time in every woman’s life in which she reaches the end of her reproductive years. The ovaries stop making estrogen and progesterone, and her menstrual periods cease. If you have gone 12 consecutive months without a period, you have reached menopause. This means that your ovaries are no longer releasing eggs and not producing much estrogen. You are no longer able to become pregnant.

The transition into menopause causes tremendous hormonal fluctuations, which can contribute to weight gain. This process can also cause hormonal dysregulation, a problem that cannot be solved by exercising more and eating less. In fact, using this provably false calorie deficit theory of weight loss to try to reduce your menopause muffin top may backfire and result in weight gain. It definitely will result in frustration.

But the end of your period and beginning of postmenopause is just one small part of the hormonal journey toward this transition. And all of them may affect your weight.

Stages of Menopause

There are three states to menopause: perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause.

Perimenopause: This is the time leading up to your last period. How long you’ll experience perimenopause varies, but the average is four years. (The range is two to eight years.) Perimenopause typically begins in your late 40s, although some women can experience it much earlier.

During perimenopause, your ovaries are unpredictable in the amount of estrogen and progesterone they produce. Sometimes they produce too much, sometimes too little. In addition, your progesterone is likely to fluctuate more than it ever has. This can result in heavy menstrual periods.

At this time, too, your periods become irregular. Your flow will become heavier or lighter than usual, or you’ll miss a month her and there.

During perimenopause, you may experience a variety of other symptoms, including:

Hot flashes
Night sweats
Mood changes
Trouble sleeping
Weight gain

Menopause: Though your periods have ceased now that you’ve hit menopause, you may still experience many of the same symptoms you felt during perimenopause.

Postmenopause: As the term suggests, postmenopause refers to the years after menopause. The huge surges of hormones that characterized the first two stages no longer happen. As a result, the perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms aren’t much of a problem anymore, with one exception – weight gain.

Weight Gain and Weight Loss in Menopause: The Hormonal Link

The transition into menopause affects many hormones, and not just the ones associated with menopause, such as estrogen. In fact, some of the hormones impacted are normally not ones associated with menopause. But they do play a role weight gain and weight loss – during menopause and at other times.

Knowing the hormones responsible for weight gain in menopause will help you to devise SANE strategies to heal these hormones, leading to weight loss.

Hormones that Affect Weight Gain and Weight Loss during Menopause

These four main hormones can affect your weight during menopause.

Estrogen

Estrogen is the main female hormone. It is responsible for regulating the reproductive system and menstrual cycle, and is essential for the development of female sexual attributes, such as breasts. It also plays a role in fat metabolism.

Maintaining proper estrogen and progesterone balance is essential for weight loss and weight maintenance. Studies have shown that having too much estrogen can cause weight gain; in fact, estrogen dominance is a common cause of weight gain in menopause. It can also make weight loss impossible. How can you have estrogen dominance during menopause when your estrogen is supposed to be taking a nosedive?

Estrogen dominance does not mean that you have a significant amount of estrogen. It simply means that you have more estrogen relative to progesterone. Menopause has an effect on all your hormones, many of which will show declining levels, including progesterone. If your levels of progesterone decline faster than your levels of estrogen, you’ll have estrogen dominance.

Estrogen dominance causes you to gain weight, and this fat accumulates in your stomach area. Estrogen dominance is more common than you might think. Indeed, many experts believe that most women have an estrogen dominance, which could partly explain the trouble so many women have with weight loss.

Hormonal shifts in menopause are not the only thing that causes estrogen dominance. Exposure to estrogen-like compounds in foods that contain growth hormones, pesticides, and plastics is a huge contributor to this problem.

Balancing Estrogen for Weight Loss

The best way to balance your estrogen levels for weight loss is to eat a high-fiber diet, which which will help you excrete the excess estrogen from your system. This is a great way to not only balance estrogen, but to also balance your diet.

The SANE Solution to balancing estrogen for weight loss, is to eat at least 10 servings of non-starchy vegetables a day. Aim for at least three servings of vegetables at each meal. Your best choices are green leafy vegetables, and don’t worry if you hate veggies. You don’t have to eat them; you can drink them.

One of the easiest ways to get all your servings of vegetables is to make green smoothies. If you want to supercharge your smoothie’s estrogen-balancing, weight loss benefits, try adding two tablespoons of SANE Garden in my Glass to the mixture.

Cortisol

Levels of the stress hormone cortisol, secreted by the adrenal glands, can become dysregulated during perimenopause and menopause. This is because the adrenal glands take over estrogen production. In addition, the hormonal shifts of menopause can trigger higher stress levels, leading to higher cortisol levels in the blood. Elevated cortisol levels have been shown to lead to weight gain, especially in the belly area.

Lowering Cortisol Levels for Long-term Weight Loss

There are many ways to lower your cortisol levels. Here are just a few of them.

Reduce or remove the source(s) of stress in your life.

This is not an easy step, but it is essential for lowering your cortisol levels for long-term weight loss. Examine your daily routine for unnecessary or almost unbearable sources of stress.

You will likely find stress in several areas of your life. For instance, you may have stressful job and a stressful medical condition that takes a lot of your time and attention to manage. Or you may have several competing commitments in your home life that stresses you out. All of this stress can also interfere with sleep, which also raises your cortisol levels.

To reduce stress and your cortisol levels, take time every day to relax. Meditation, especially mindfulness meditation, has proven to be an excellent way to reduce stress. Yoga, Tai Chi, and Pilates are physical and meditative ways to reduce cortisol levels for long-term weight loss.

Try to find SANEity in all areas of your life, not just in diet. Find things you enjoy doing; find a way to relax; get at least 7-8 hours of sleep a night. All of these things have been proven to help reduce cortisol levels. And they will lead to long-term weight loss, even during menopause.

Do not participate in high intensity exercising that continues for a long time.

Although exercise is good for the body, studies show that as the intensity of exercise increases, cortisol increases. High intensity exercise puts stress on the body, which triggers a release of the stress hormone. So if you are trying to bring your cortisol levels back in balance, lay off the extreme 30-minute P90X or Insanity workouts in favor of more moderate exercise. Studies show that low low intensity exercise does not seem to have a significant effect on cortisol secretion.

The SANE way to exercise for weight loss is performing eccentric exercises once a week. Eccentric exercises focus on the extended part of the movement. For instance, if you’re doing a bicep curl, the concentric part of the exercise is when you curl the weight up toward your chest. The eccentric part is when you lower the weight back down.

Slowly performing the eccentric part of the movement works deep muscle fibers that you have seldom – or never – used with traditional exercises. It creates an immediate metabolic response that burns fat. The reason you do them for only 10-20 minutes a week is because that’s all the exercise you need to do to burn fat, and because your body needs time to heal. Although intense, eccentric exercises are performed for such a short time that they don’t drive up your cortisol.

Avoid calorie restriction.

Though you may be tempted to try to crash diet those excess pounds away during menopause, this is never a good idea. Cutting calories puts stress on your body, which is the wrong thing to do if you want to decrease your cortisol levels. Research has shown that going on a restricted calorie diet for a few weeks damages the metabolism, increases cortisol and impacts thyroid function (which reduces your metabolism even more.)

The negative effects crash dieting can have on your hormones and your metabolism is considerable, and it will result in still more weight gain, the exact opposite of what you want. Instead of cutting calories, it is essential that you give your body the energy it needs. One way to do that is to eat whole foods, as this will take stress off your body and lower your cortisol levels.

When you go SANE, you will eat whole foods that will heal all your hormones and promote weight loss. Consuming at least 10 servings of non-starchy vegetables a day, 3-5 servings of nutrient-dense protein, and 3-5 servings of whole-food fats has been proven to fill you up faster and keep you full longer. (For best results, eat non-starchy vegetables, protein and whole-food fats at every meal.)

Thyroid

And then there’s the thyroid. Chronic stress has been shown to interfere with proper thyroid function. It works like this: when you’re under an extended period of stress, your adrenal glands release cortisol. If this stress goes on too long, it becomes chronic and results in a high cortisol level. Studies show that cortisol may interfere with the conversion of thyroid hormone into the form that regulates metabolism.

Nutritional deficiencies and estrogen dominance or progesterone deficiency, as often occurs in menopause, can also inhibit thyroid function and lead to weight gain or prevent weight loss.

Balancing the Thyroid Hormone for Long-Term Weight Loss in Menopause

There are some easy steps you can take to improve your thyroid function.

Remove gluten from the diet. Research shows that gluten causes inflammation, negatively affecting thyroid function. (Gluten is the protein found in grain products, such as wheat and oats.) If you have had problems with weight loss since menopause, try removing these grains from your diet. You might be amazed at how easily the pounds melt off.
Eat a variety of whole foods. Nutritional deficiencies – such as iron, omega-3 fats, the B vitamins, zinc, and vitamin D – are a key factor in thyroid dysfunction. By eating “real whole foods,” (not processed) you will be able to get the nutrients your body needs to regulate your thyroid hormone and lose weight.

Eating nutrient-rich meals are a central component of the SANE eating plan. The standard SANE plate includes several servings of non-starchy vegetables, a serving of nutrient-dense protein, and a serving of whole-food fats. Eating this way at every meal ensures you’ll get all the nutrients your body needs to regulate your thyroid function.

There is no SANEr way to balance your hormones for weight loss during menopause than the SANE Solution. Why don’t you give it a try? What have you got to lose except maybe 20 or 30 pounds of stubborn menopausal belly fat that you have been unable to shed.

Next Step: Manage Menopause Weight Loss with SANE

Begin your exciting journey to lasting, healthy weight loss today. Download the free SANE metabolism boosting food list, cheat sheet and “Eat More, Burn More” weight loss program by clicking here

2018-04-15/by SANE

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