I've posted Diamond's videos elsewhere, but here's another that I just came across that very effectively debunks the still-pervasive hypothesis about cholesterol and heart disease:
It's terribly sad that the medical establishment are so obsessed with cholesterol. They seem to view it as an existential threat to humanity, like the Borg on Star Trek. You will take your statins. Resistance is futile.
The fact that the hypothesis is wrong creates two serious problems: the first is that doctors are treating a disease that doesn't exist (hypercholesterolemia) with drugs that cause more harm than good, and people who could be helped with fairly simple dietary modifications are being turned away from the one thing that could help them.
It's up to all you fellow lunatics on this thread to get the message out there to people who need it.
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TheAwfulToad
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True that. What frustrates me is that people don't even want to listen. I tried it with my sister: her daughter is seriously overweight (she's quite literally addicted to carbs) and she asked me what to do, since I've been successful at losing weight and keeping it off. She simply couldn't accept that deleting carbs from the family diet and adding more fat wouldn't have terrible side effects, even though she can see I'm still alive and healthy.
The really crazy part: her sister (my niece) will graduate from medical school this year. She apparently has no practical advice to offer. When you see the problem that close to home, you figure there's not much hope for the population at large. Assimilation is complete.
Well if it's any consolation i'm actually finding some people at least acknowledging high carbs and they have to sort of accept me eating lots of fat ... but saying cut down/out on bread pasta bread rice etc goes down better as an "everything in moderation" idea (other sugar crap is accepted as such).
It's sad when the ones we care about most can't seem to see the consequences their food choices have on their health and adapt to better choices. I'm trying to get my 15 yo son to completely get on board. He's doing better so that's a positive.
Hopefully the fat documentary will help to inform. The film is complete and will be available as soon as the distribution is worked out. Likely in February.
Thanks for posting this TheAwfulToad . I must admit, so many people have told me my heart and arteries are suffering from this diet (even though they all say I look great, I look so healthy, my skin is glowing etc!) that I have booked a blood test in the New Year just to see. Watching this has really changed my view on cholesterol and although I will still have the blood test - I am having a general MOT one so not just looking at Cholesterol - I am not going to be worried if my levels are high. Really interesting. It makes me angry as well though!!!
The "you have too much cholesterol" thing brings to mind that long-ago medical theory that sick people have "too much blood", which could be cured with leeches or blood-letting.
Diamond merely scratches the surface of all the evidence ranged against the diet-heart hypothesis: there are literally volumes of it, going back decades, showing that cholesterol (or LDL-C) it can't possibly be the proximate cause of heart disease. The fact that statins have no effect on all-cause mortality (despite their dramatic effect on LDL-C) should have been the final nail in the coffin for this ridiculous superstition. But no, it still lurches on, refusing to accept that it's dead, coming back over and over again to feast on our brains.
Anyway - enjoy your high-fat Christmas (I certainly am!) and let us know what your test results are . I'm intending to get mine done too, just out of idle curiosity.
I'll do same - got to do before review for DVT in Jan (plus will have results of the one that tests for lupus antibodies which to cut a long research short aint the same as having lupus)
I seem to be making Xmas to New Year one festive season!! Not intentional ... but just as I get my halo on to go swimming a mate reminds me we're meeting up for a drink - what a shame guess what won!!!!!
It's a tough to keep on the wagon this time of year! Normality will resume soon! I am in holiday from tomorrow so I am just going to get back on it when I get home
I've bought 00 tonic and have the gin in the fridge but unfortunately usually drink out ... and starting on shorts in afternoon is really not a great idea for me LOL
replies crossed in post so to speak - unfortunately I go out in day as often it's lovely weather to enjoy so it's my habit - I broke the drinking beer bit ... til this week when it is getting a bit out of hand .... but hopefully I KNOW it's only festive season!!! (Put it another way, if I'm still on beer in 2019 all you lot are going to tell me off enough to stop it - how lovely is this community!!!!!)
PS We also have red wine but doesn't mix well with San Miguel unless after food.... I'm too used to beer from previous life so that's what I revert to.....
I have gone cold turkey on beer and feel so much better for it! I only have 2 glasses of red wine twice a week now, really cut it down but this got waivered a little bit over the festive season!
I did that when started new life at end of June - from 7- 8 330cl bottles a day (which sounds a lot til you spread it out over a few hours) to just iced water - I surprised myself how easy it was!! Giving up a gooey cake (and in Spain they are REALLLY gooey) and I knocked most of my excess calories/carbs on the head!
If I can anyone can !!!!!!!!! You'll get there ( Ido have the advantage of not working so not that stress :)) Talk again soon must go as I try to stick to (advent challenge) deadline of NO computer after midnight (which is 11pm in UK)
Thanks so much for this link. I love listening to this guy. And such good news that yet another person is out there spreading the word. After seeing what statins did to my mother before she passed away, I've been on that soapbox myself for several years. There are loads of blogs, books, etc now that expose this whole cholesterol myth for what it is. One of the best- How Statin Drugs Really Lower Cholesterol: And Kill You One Cell at a Time by the Yosephs. amazon.com/Statin-Drugs-Rea... They expose the fraud that brought this stuff to market with actual images of actual documents. It's beyond appalling. If anyone is interested, there's a Facebook group called Stopped Our Statins with well over 2000 members that discuss what they've been through- facebook.com/groups/1274471... The discussion often turns to having to stand up to their doctors. This stuff is deadly, but the profits are indeed obscene. People have to quit checking their brains at the doctor waiting room door! Oh, love the Borg reference! I'll be checking to see if this Diamond guy has a blog, books, etc.
He's an engaging speaker, isn't he. What baffles me about this whole charade is that the statistical manipulation that Diamond mentions (quoting relative risk instead of absolute risk) is a standard trick in a lot of "science" literature. Anyone who has studied a science to degree level - any science - will have done a module on statistics and a module on interpreting scientific papers (ie., how to spot bad experimental design). I did. I'm pretty sure doctors do. There are a couple of doctors that I know of (Ben Goldacre and Anthony Daniels aka Theodore Dalrymple) who write amusing and very astute articles about precisely this problem. You can barely call it fraud because it's hidden in plain sight: nobody's telling lies as such. So why is it that virtually NOBODY in the medical profession will admit that the emperor has no clothes? Is it fear? Is it some sort of collective madness? I've never seen anything like it.
Anyway, stay on your soapbox! Statins are horrible drugs that are inherently toxic - they work by destroying a crucial metabolic reaction sequence (the mevalonate pathway). In fact it's a testament to the resilience of the human body that it can keep functioning under such an assault: when you look at the details, you wonder how it can be possible for someone to even stay alive with such a massive spanner thrown in the works.
The house of cards will come crashing down eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later, it's not going to be pretty when it does.
Yeah, I got educated on the whole relative vs absolute issue early on. Amazing isn't it? Jason Fung has an article/post at his website IDM entitled The Corruption of Evidence Based Medicine- Killing for Profit- idmprogram.com/the-corrupti... He quotes Marcia Angell who was the former editor in chief of the NEJM and author of The Truth About the Drug Companies. I'm getting quite the book collection on the subject including Angell's book, 2 of Ben Goldacre's books, since you mention him, and then there's Selling Sickness (Moynihan), Are Your Prescriptions Killing You (Armon) and what seems like a bit of a sleeper- Food Is Better Medicine than Drugs (Holford). And I'm sure the list is growing every year. Then the list of books exposing the cholesterol myth and the dangers of statins is getting huge as well. Yep, I got educated about that mevalonate pathway in the book I linked in my original response. If that book doesn't convince the reader, nothing will.
I'd love to get your reaction to one of my latest posts at blogger.com, Challenging the Concept of White Coat Authority- chronicdiseaseprevention29.... See what you think!
Hi TheAwfulToad, I had a blood test three weeks into LCHF, and still struggling and falling off the LCHF path, but regardless my HBAc1 went from 49 to 48! But cholesterol went from always being between 4-5, to over 5, and I could see my GP panicking as my father suffered a major heart attack and cardiac arrest putting him on heart transplant list at the age of 42, my age as of yesterday!!
But he remained so for 12 years and the next two years suffered a painful illness of a kidney tumour, which sadly eventually spread.
I am not worried about cholesterol but I will keep an eye on it in relation to diabetes results.
I have a question for induction, on dietdictor there is a recipe for coconut naans, how many carbs is this and should I even add this in to my meal plans or just stick to veg, @praveen55 also if you are able to help.
This forum is a lifesaver for me as I didn’t know why my weight was going up and up but I want to finish planning and trying recipes this week then from 1st January I just want to keep my head down and focus 100% on me!!! Impossible as I have 4 little “me’s” to focus on 😂😂😂😂😂But that is the plan anyway!!!!!
Sorry to hear about your dad. I think nearly every family has a similar story these days, and it makes me really, really mad that medical professionals - people we trust to give us correct advice - are leading us all down the garden path regarding the causes.
If it's on DietDoctor it's probably fine (I'm not promoting the site - I just happen to think they're on the level). However if you're attempting induction I would avoid low-carb substitutes for breadlike products: not just because of the (relatively) high carb count, but because you'll retain a taste for bread, and the aim is to try to break that habit.
As for your cholesterol, this is where doctors REALLY need to go back and read their textbooks. The risk of heart disease for diabetics is sky-high. Diabetes causes heart disease; there is absolutely no argument about that. So if you can fix that, you fix your hear-disease risk too. Total cholesterol, on the other hand, isn't even a risk factor. Non-diabetic women develop heart disease at a rate far lower than men of the same age. Don't take my word for this: have a look at the research. There is NO predictive value in a high TC reading, and you may even find your doctor will admit this if you press him on it. Apart from anything else, 5 isn't high. It's only high today because the NHS unilaterally decided that it's not normal anymore, thus expanding the market for statins to a whole load of perfectly healthy people.
The only number that has any predictive value is HDL:triglycerides, but remember a risk factor is just that: an indication of risk, with an associated false-positive and false-negative rate. Predicting the future is something that humanity has never been much good at, and in this particular case the correlation is so poor that there's actually an ongoing argument about which lipoprotein subfractions should be used for diagnostics.
The problem is TheAwfulToad, I really don’t like the taste or texture!!! I was just experimenting in case I liked it but I don’t. What kind of things do you have for breakfast and then dinner??
ha! That's the other problem with bread substitutes - they're no good.
If you can just go cold turkey on bread, you'll find that you're able to enjoy it later in modest amounts. Every so often you'll want to eat bread; you'll eat some; and then you'll go back to not wanting it.
My induction breakfast was bacon, a homemade sausage patty, a couple of eggs (often scrambled, with cream), fried mushrooms, a large side salad (which offsets the grease nicely), some homemade Greek yoghurt, and coffee with cream. Later on I added a spoonful of muesli with milk.
My dinners are very repetitive: I have the same thing almost every day:
Where I live, this is cheap, convenient,filling, and inherently low-carb (as long as you skip the rice). There are actually many different variants so it's hard to get bored with it, but if I feel like a change, I have a standard Chinese meal, which consists of a selection of vegetables - usually fried in oil - and some meat, often slow-cooked with soft fat.
I rarely eat lunch because I'm just not hungry. If I do, it usually involves eggs and cheese!
As I've probably mentioned elsewhere, LCHF involves a radical switch in the way you cook. It's not just a simple matter of deleting the carbs from your plate.
You might want to give this one a try. It's called a keto mug muffin. Just do one to see if you like it- drop 1 tbsp butter in the bottom of a microwaveable mug and melt it. Then drop in 1 egg. Whip that up, add 1/3 c almond flour and 1/2 tsp baking powder and mix well. Nuke for 90 seconds. When it's done, whack it out onto a paper towel (it will be moist), cut it in half or thirds so you can drop a slice into the toaster. Then top with butter, peanut butter, almond butter, whatever. To me it's an acceptable substitute and really hits the spot! I use a little glass leftover dish instead of a mug so it will spread out a little more. And you can google "keto mug muffin" and find plenty of variations. Hope it works for you!
Aww thank you, yes I find myself eating the same things over and over. Your hotpot sounds tasty, if you are able to give me a rough recipe eg which veg and which spices you add I might play around with this for the next week. Thanks again
Our staple diet at home is really good but everything is with a chapatti or rice!!!! And so I struggle with how to keep it least complicated as possible.
To play devils advocate the French also eat a lot of bread crusty bread, sweet patisseries, croissants, garlic breads, their basically pastry masters.. risotto rice, flour to make basic bechmel sauce and use flour over their meat to thicken sauces.. including cornflour which is quite starchy.. different varieties of beans on their cooking.. They drink wine 😊👍 they have their crepes creme anglaise, Crewe patte all very sweet ..
I’m new to the low carb and high fat diet. I’m trying to get my head around a new way of thinking.
I was worried about cholesterol also as I’ve had people close suffer from strokes due to eating a bad diet. I asked the question in a thread and was directed to the link.
I completely understand his criticism about that guy whose on the front of time magazine. I can’t belive that no one has used scientific data to discredit his findings. Especially dictating dietary requirements to a mass population.
When I did my dissertation in social science when we came up with a hypothesis we had to do multiple tests to see if the hypothesis was correct or not. A conclusion through repetition of experiments including all the variables accounted for and considered can be inconclusive.
I don’t know how that guy came up with what he did and was allowed with no scientific experiments to carry on. It makes the scientific community look like a shambles.
I thought all papers had to be doctored by peers. Obviously his team was biased and they carried on printing discredited peer reviewed papers. I know I’ve gone a bit off topic but it’s really surprised me how he’s got away with it 😱
Maybe this would also put your mind at rest healthunlocked.com/lchf-die... and if you scroll through the other posts on the LCHF forum, you'll see others in a similar vein.
The argument between the "fat" camp and the "carb" camp lacks subtlety, IMO. Clearly, humans have been eating both for millennia, and thriving on all sorts of combinations of carbs + fat. My view is that three components have to be in place to cause metabolic disease:
1) People must be eating a lot of heavily processed carbs. That's sugary drinks, white bread, white rice, pot noodles, and similar. If these are churned out cheaply and promoted as "healthy", people will eat more of them than they otherwise might.
2) The belief that fat is bad inevitably means that people will eat more of their daily energy requirement as carbs instead of fat. If those carbs turn out to be mostly processed carbs (which they will be, since they're cheap and readily available), there will be trouble.
3) The intake of (processed) carbs must meet a certain threshold. Human metabolism has a brittle failure mode - reason being, it's a closed-loop system attempting to maintain homeostasis, which it will do over a wide range of inputs. It'll only fail when it's pushed beyond its capacity to adjust, and at that point it fails catastrophically.
As regards the French and their rate of heart disease - I lived there for a while when I was younger, and the crucial point is this: it's a two-tier society. There are the middle classes, who have a proper croissant with their coffee and a wide range of expensive, good-quality food. While they do eat sweet stuff, they're not stuffing their faces with it all the time: a cake is expensive, and it's considered an occasional treat. Then there are those on social support, who eat utter rubbish. In the 80s at least, they had a system similar to US food stamps, whereby low-income people could claim cheap, low-quality food from special stores - heavy on processed carbs, synthetics (eg., fake cheese) and sweet drinks. It may be different now, but I doubt it - their heart disease rates are creeping up, and I suspect that's simply due to a growing underclass skewing the averages.
Although everyone pokes fun at the social sciences, my psychology degree was extremely rigorous. I imagine yours was too. A whole module was devoted specifically to spotting pseudoscience and BS, and we had another on statistics (I still have nightmares about my statistics exam). I also have an engineering degree, and I find the overlap very useful in assessing nutrition papers. The sad fact is that there is little or no science being done in the field of nutrition. Virtually none of the players understands the scientific process (ie., build a hypothesis and then try to knock it down). Or if they do, it's routinely ignored. It's more reminiscent of a religion than a science, with a few high priests telling the faithful what to believe and expelling the heretics.
If I handed in a paper with the only research that I had been to Italy to support a hypothesis For fat being the cause of a heart attack I’d have failed.. and that dissertation would be thrown back at you .. it’s mad how he’s pioneering a false message using no science at all
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. I'm intending to get mine done too, just out of idle curiosity.
Cholesterol