Eat to Live: The Amazing Nutrient-Rich Program for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss (20 page)

FISH WITH HIGHEST AND LOWEST MERCURY LEVELS

Higher levels of mercury found in mothers who eat more fish have been associated with birth defects, seizures, mental retardation, developmental disabilities, and cerebral palsy.
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This is mostly the result of women having eaten fish when they were pregnant. Scientists believe that fetuses are much more sensitive to mercury exposure than are adults, although adults do suffer from varying degrees of brain damage from fish consumption.
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Even the FDA, which normally ignores reports on the dangers of our dangerous food practices, acknowledges that large fish such as shark and swordfish are potentially dangerous. Researchers are also concerned about other toxins concentrated in fish that can cause brain damage way before the cancers caused by chemical-carrying fish appear.

Fish may also lower the effectiveness of our immune system. Those on high-fish diets have lower blood markers of immune system function, representing a lowered defense against infection and cancer.
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Another problem with fish is that because fish oils inhibit blood clotting, they increase the likelihood that the delicate vessels in the brain can bleed, causing a hemorrhagic stroke. At the same time fish reduces the risk of heart attacks, it may be increasing the risk of a bleeding problem. Regular fish consumption or fish oil supplements should be avoided if a person has a family history or is at risk of hemorrhagic stroke or other bleeding disorders.

The bottom line: Choose fish over other animal products, but be aware that the place where it was caught and the type of fish matter. Don’t accept recreational fish from questionable waters. Never eat high-mercury-content fish. Don’t eat fish more than twice a week, and if you have a family history of hemorrhagic stroke, limit it further to only once a month.

Americans consume large quantities of oil, a refined food processed at high temperatures. When oils are subject to heat, the
chemical structure of the essential fatty acids is changed to create toxic derivatives known as lipid peroxides and other toxic and potentially cancer-causing by-products.
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Clearly, it is best to avoid fried foods and heated oils, not only because they will destroy your chances to achieve a normal weight but also because they are potentially cancer-causing.

Get your fats as nature packaged them. It is best to consume the small amount of fats we need in their original unprocessed, unheated, and natural packages: whole foods. Ground flaxseeds are healthier than flaxseed oil, as they contain valuable fiber, lignans, and other phytonutrients, not just omega-3 fat. Raw sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, corn, and avocados are healthy, but their extracted oils may not be. Even cold-pressed oils are subject to the damaging effects of heat and contain lipid peroxides. So I usually recommend to my patients that instead of consuming the oils, they consume a tablespoon of ground flaxseeds daily, or some walnuts, to ensure adequate omega-3 fat intake.

Remember, when you extract the oil from the whole food it was packaged in, you remove it from its antioxidant-and phytochemical-rich protective environment. You turn a moderate nutrient-to-calorie food into a low nutrient-to-calorie food, and at the same time damage the quality of the fat with heat. Romaine lettuce, kale, collards, and Swiss chard are rich in fiber, vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, vegetable protein, and essential fats—another reason I consider leafy green vegetables the king of all foods.

Your diet should not be fat-free
. Indeed, it would be nearly impossible to make this diet fat-deficient, because even green vegetables and beans contain beneficial fats. The focus should be on reducing (or removing) the harmful and processed fats, and instead consuming the healthy fats that are naturally contained in whole natural foods. Nonprocessed fats contained in avocados, sunflower seeds, and almonds, to name just a few sources, can be healthy additions to a wholesome diet of natural foods. Even though these foods have lots of calories, they pack a significant nutritive punch; they are rich in vitamin E and other antioxidants
and are not nutrient-depleted the way the oil is when it is extracted, processed, and put in a bottle.

Be aware, however, that unless you are physically very active and slim, you should watch the amount of these relatively fat-rich plant products, as they obviously could interfere with reaching your ideal weight. If you are slim and exercise regularly, you can consume three to four ounces of raw nuts or seeds daily, an avocado, or a little olive oil. Growing children, or an individual who is having difficulty gaining weight, can eat a little more dietary fat, but it still should mostly be fat from the wholesome foods described above.

When you are overweight, you have a good store of fat on your body, so you don’t need to worry about not ingesting enough fat. You are not going to become fat-deficient, even if your diet is low in fat. As you lose weight, you will actually be on a “high-fat diet,” as you will be utilizing the fat you have around your midsection for energy. The only concern is to maintain a healthy ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids, so I advise ingesting one tablespoon of ground flaxseeds every day, if possible. Many like to sprinkle it over fruit or add it to a salad.

There is considerable evidence that while animal fats are definitely associated with an increase in heart disease, more fat may offer protection against hemorrhagic stroke.
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Of course, recent investigations have shown the strong protective effects of fruits and vegetables, but some data suggests that fat, even animal fat, offers some protection to the smaller intracerebral vessels that cause hemorrhagic strokes.
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There are two main types of strokes: ischemic and hemorrhagic. Almost all heart attacks and the vast majority of strokes are associated with ischemia (lack of blood flow) from blood clots. The small percentage of strokes that are hemorrhagic (approximately 8 percent) result not from a cholesterol-laden vessel
leading to a clot but from a rupture of a small artery in the brain as a result of years and years of high blood pressure.
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Some of these small, fragile blood vessels in the brain possibly become more resistant to rupture when they are more diseased with fat. It is entirely possible that in certain cases, the same diet that leads to abnormal clot formation and causes 99 percent of heart attacks and over 90 percent of strokes may help the small intracerebral vessels resist the tendency to rupture from years of uncontrolled hypertension that results from a high-salt diet. This is in no way a legitimate excuse to eat more animal products. It makes more sense to eat the healthful anti–heart attack diet and keep your blood pressure down by not consuming much added salt.

The data is so confusing because many of the studies group all types of strokes together, when they are in fact very different diseases with completely different causes. Considering ischemic (or embolic) strokes, the data from both human and rat studies illustrates the importance of adequate essential omega-3 fat intake, including an increased omega-3:omega-6 ratio.
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These omega-3 fats are the same ones that protect against heart attacks, which are also of an ischemic nature. Keep in mind, saturated fat intake has consistently been associated with an increase in strokes in general because most strokes are of the ischemic (embolic) variety.
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Finally, to make things even more confusing, some monounsaturated fat intake offers a degree of protection against strokes and does not have the cholesterol-raising and other negative effects of saturated fats.
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The studies showing the nutritional value of monounsaturated fats lend support to the Mediterranean diet and those advocating a diet rich in olive oil.

Obviously, some omega-6 fat is still essential and necessary for normal disease resistance. My view is that thin individuals should consume more monounsaturated fats from wholesome high-fat vegetation such as avocados, raw nuts, and seeds. Heavier people, because of their higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer, as well as the very limited occurrence of hemorrhagic stroke in the overweight, should limit their intake of these fats. Since heavier people have more stored fat on their body, they do
not benefit from a higher intake of dietary fat the same way thin individuals do. As the overweight lose weight, they are already on a high-fat diet, consuming their stored body fat.

Let me remind you that the best fats are the monounsaturated fats and essential fats (omega-3 and omega-6) present in whole, natural plant foods, including avocados, and raw nuts and seeds. Studies continue to show that consumption of raw nuts protects against both heart attack and stroke, without the risks of increasing heart disease and cancer, as is the case with the high consumption of animal-origin fats.
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When the fats you consume are from whole foods rather than oil, you gain nature’s protective package: a balance of vitamins, minerals, fibers, and phytonutrients.

Raw nuts and seeds are packed with nutrients. Lignans, bioflavonoids, minerals, and other antioxidants protect the fragile freshness of the nut and seed fats, and plant proteins and plant sterols naturally lower cholesterol.

Perhaps one of the most unexpected and novel findings in nutritional epidemiology in the past five years has been that nut and seed consumption offers such strong protection against heart disease. Several clinical studies have observed beneficial effects of diets high in nuts (including walnuts, peanuts, almonds, and other nuts) on blood lipids.
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A review of twenty-three intervention trials using nuts and seeds convincingly demonstrated that daily consumption decreases total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol.
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Not only do nuts and seeds lower LDL cholesterol, but they also raise HDL (good) cholesterol. Interestingly, they can help normalize a dangerous type of LDL molecule—the small, dense LDL particles that are damaging to blood vessels, particularly to the endothelial cells lining the blood vessels.
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When specifically compared with changes in known risk factors, such as lowering blood glucose or cholesterol levels, eating nuts and seeds has been found to decrease cardiovascular death
and increase life span.
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To date, five large studies (the Adventist Health Study, the Iowa Women’s Health Study, the Nurses’ Health Study, the Physicians’ Health Study, and the CARE Study) have examined the relationship between nut and seed consumption and the risk of atherosclerotic heart disease. All found a strong inverse association.

Based on the data from the Nurses’ Health Study, it was estimated that substituting the fat from one ounce of nuts for the equivalent energy from the carbohydrate in an average diet was associated with a 30 percent reduction in heart disease risk. The substitution of nut fat for saturated fat was associated with a 45 percent reduction in risk.

The Physicians’ Health Study added much more to the story. The most fascinating, and perhaps most important, finding is that nuts and seeds do not just lower cholesterol and protect against heart attacks. Components of nuts and seeds also seem to have anti-arrhythmic and anti-seizure effects that dramatically reduce the occurrence of sudden death.
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The Physicians’ Health Study followed 21,454 male participants for an average of seventeen years. Researchers found a lower risk of sudden cardiac death and other coronary heart disease end points after controlling for known cardiac risk factors and other dietary habits. When compared with men who rarely or never consumed seeds or nuts, those who consumed two or more servings per week reduced the risk of sudden cardiac death by about 50 percent. Sudden cardiac death is not a heart attack, but rather a life-threatening cardiac arrhythmia called ventricular fibrillation or ventricular tachycardia. People who have heart disease do not always die of a heart attack; they can die of an irregular heartbeat that prevents the heart from pumping properly.