The South Beach Diet Supercharged: Faster Weight Loss and Better Health for Life (11 page)

Fight breast cancer.
As I sit writing this chapter, a newly released French study of more than 3,600 women has shown a significantly reduced risk of breast cancer among women with the highest dairy intake. This is consistent with US studies that found that premenopausal women who consume higher amounts of calcium and vitamin D appear to have a lower risk of breast cancer.

The “Good” Fats

I wish I could think of another word for
fat
. Despite all the recent studies confirming that certain types of fat found in fish, nuts, and vegetable oils are essential for health, some of my patients are still skeptical when I tell them that fat can be good. In fact, good fats have been shown to:

Improve triglycerides, lower cholesterol, and protect against diabetes.
Let’s start with nuts, which have gotten a bad rap for years. I am a great proponent of eating nuts in moderation. While they are high in fat, it’s good monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fat. In fact, the amount of fat varies from nut to nut, with chestnuts having the least and macadamias the most (although 70 percent of the fat in macadamias is monounsaturated). Consider walnuts, which are rich in alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), a heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acid that has been shown to help keep triglycerides, the bad fat associated with prediabetes, under control. Not only do walnuts help lower triglycerides, but the mono- and polyunsaturated fats they contain also help lower blood cholesterol when these nuts are substituted for saturated fat in the diet. Whenever I recommend nuts to South Beach dieters, I do add a word of caution: Because they’re high in calories and it’s easy to eat more than a handful, you need to be careful about how many you consume during the weight-loss phases of the diet, and even when you’re on Phase 3. (See
“Phase 1 Foods to Enjoy”
Section for specific advice.)

Decrease heart attack risk.
Good fats can be great for your heart, especially the omega-3 fatty acids found in cold-water fatty fish such as salmon, tuna, and sardines and also in walnuts, flaxseed, and some vegetable oils. One of the first and most impressive trials to show this was the Lyon Diet Heart Study, reported in 1994. It tested the effect of the Mediterranean diet on 605 patients who had already suffered a heart attack. Those on the diet were told to eat more omega-3-rich oils from both plant and animal sources, especially in the form of a canola oil spread. The results were pretty amazing: The dieters had a 73 percent decrease in recurrent heart attacks and other heart-related problems. What really struck me, though, was that this was a far better result than we were getting at the time with our medications. Interestingly, the diet did this without significantly altering the patients’ cholesterol values.

Today, as part of the South Beach Diet, I encourage people to eat fish several times a week, and with good reason. The overwhelming majority of studies have reported that fish consumption is associated with a lower risk of heart attack and sudden death. In addition, a high-dose omega-3-rich fish-oil supplement is particularly useful in patients with very high triglyceride levels. (If you are pregnant or breastfeeding, however, be sure to consult your physician about which fish may be high in mercury or other contaminants and whether you can take an omega-3 supplement.)

Beat inflammation.
Fish oil also appears to protect against inflammation. A 2005 study published in the
Journal of American College of Cardiology
reported that fish eaters have lower blood levels of inflammatory markers, such as C-reactive protein (CRP) and TNF-alpha, which are linked not only to heart disease but also to rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, asthma, and other diseases caused or aggravated by inflammation.

In fact, the FDA was so impressed with the heart-healthy effects of omega-3 fatty acids that in 2004, the agency issued a ruling that allowed food manufacturers to make the following claim on labels: “Supportive but not conclusive research shows that the consumption of EPA and DHA omega-3 fatty acids may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease.”

As I’ve noted earlier, EPA (ecosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) are most widely found in abundance in fatty cold-water fish. Consumers may find information on the amount of EPA and DHA on food packaging or through other labeling, including shelf labels, signs, posters, or brochures displayed in close proximity to the fish.

Improve smarts and mood.
Omega-3 fats are not just important for maintaining heart health. As it happens, DHA is found in the brain in high concentrations, which could explain why fish have earned a reputation for being brain food.

Omega-3s also appear to play a positive role in mood and other brain functions. It’s been shown that people who don’t get enough omega-3 fats in their diet are at greater risk of depression, dementia, and learning problems, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which can affect adults as well as children. So if you want to be happy, healthy, and wise, keep eating these good fats, and try to get your kids to eat fish on a regular basis as well.

As you’ll soon discover, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, low-fat dairy, and good fats—just some of the foods we recommend on the South Beach Diet—are a veritable food pharmacy! Because you’re eating a diet that is abundant in vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other key nutrients, you’ll keep your body running at optimal levels while you lose and then maintain your weight. Not only will you look and feel terrific, but you’ll be avoiding many of the chronic diseases so prevalent today.

There is a health crisis in America today, and it involves our children’s deteriorating nutrition and lack of exercise. The number of severely overweight children in this country has tripled since 1980. Today, roughly one in three American children or adolescents is overweight or obese, and the proportion approaches one in two in certain minority groups. How did we reach this crisis situation?

While we have always identified malnutrition with starving Third World children (and it still is a major health concern in many underdeveloped nations), we’ve never thought of our own children as having this problem. And yet, in America today, our children, while clearly overfed, are often undernourished.

In the past, undernutrition and malnutrition were considered the result of a lack of calories, and that usually meant not getting enough healthy nutrients, either. As recently as the start of World War II, many of our young army recruits were found to be too thin. They were undernourished, the government realized, and needed to be fattened up. To prevent the problem from recurring, the federal government created guidelines for minimum caloric intake in school lunch programs. Ironically, the problem today is the opposite of what it was back then—our children are consuming way too many calories at school and elsewhere.

So if our kids are getting all those calories, how can they be malnourished? Just as our hunter-gather ancestors had a sweet tooth that led them to gather sweet fruits and vegetables (which also happened to be full of antioxidants and fiber), our children have a major sweet tooth. The problem is, they’re satisfying it with highly processed starchy and sugary fast foods devoid of the vitamins, minerals, and fiber found in fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains.

Over the past decade, we have learned that there are literally thousands of antioxidants and other micronutrients found in the healthy foods that kids are not eating, and we now know that these nutrients are essential to our health. Ten years ago, we thought we might be able to give children and adults vitamin pills to make up for poor food choices, but so far studies have shown that this doesn’t work. For now we must get our vitamins and other nutrients from whole foods.

A Generation at Risk

The future does not bode well for our overweight, undernourished youngsters. A child who is overweight during adolescence stands a 70 percent chance of being overweight as an adult and an 80 percent chance of being overweight if his or her mom or dad is. In my cardiology practice, I’m already seeing heart problems in young adults who grew up eating fast food and sitting in front of the TV, and large studies back this up. In the famous and ongoing Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study (CARDIA Study), for example, investigators initially measured cardiac risk factors in young adults ages 18 to 30 (this was in 1985). They included waist circumference and waist-to-hip ratios as indirect measures of the amount of belly fat a person had. Fifteen years later, the researchers performed CAT scans of the subjects’ hearts to detect the presence of plaque in the coronary arteries, a sign of developing heart disease. They found that the presence of abdominal obesity, which had been determined 15 years earlier, was a predictor of future heart disease.

And There’s More Bad News

Poor nutrition is having other unfortunate health ramifications for our children as well. In June 2007, James Perrin, MD, of Harvard Medical School, and others from the Harvard School of Public Health published an editorial in the
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
showing that the incidence of chronic health conditions in American children had increased dramatically over recent decades. Overall, the percent of US children with chronic conditions that interfere with their daily lives is more than 7 percent, compared with less than 2 percent in the 1960s, when I was a teenager. Asthma, obesity, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) top the list. In fact, asthma affects about 9 percent of children and teens today, double what it was in just the 1980s. And when I was growing up, you rarely heard the term
ADHD
. The study authors emphasize that beyond the individual tragedies represented by these problems, the cost to our health-care system, both in the near and not so distant future, will be increasing dramatically.

Not long ago, I heard a politician remark on the increased incidence of asthma in Harlem, which he then equated to the air quality there. I immediately thought to myself that Harlem’s air quality must have improved over recent decades due to stricter emission standards. What has gotten worse, however, is the greater dependence on convenience, processed, and fast foods, not only in our inner cities, but throughout America. And with this has come widespread obesity.

In fact, there is a direct association between obesity and the incidence of asthma. Obesity promotes inflammation, which is widely believed to aggravate, if not cause, this disease. Studies show that an improved diet can help. The results of the Childhood Asthma Prevention Study (CAPS) were reported in 2004. The study found that in young children at high risk for asthma, getting supplementation in the form of omega-3 fish oils significantly decreased the incidence of cough over the next 3 years. In general, I don’t recommend supplements over whole foods (you can get omega—3s from fatty cold-water fish such as salmon, herring, and sardines), but when it comes to omega-3 fish oil supplements, I make an exception.

As for ADHD, it is thought that poor nutrition, particularly in young mothers and young children, contributes to this problem. But I believe that ADHD is only the tip of the iceberg when we consider nutrition-related academic and behavioral problems in schoolchildren. It was my cousin, a recently retired math teacher, who first alerted me to a very common observation among teachers. She told me to ask any teacher about the sugar high kids experience after a fast-food-type lunch. “They appear to be hyperactive, jumping off the walls,” she said, “and then, an hour later, they fall asleep.”

I see many current and retired teachers in my practice, and they all confirm that the attention of schoolchildren today has deteriorated, whether due to ADHD or not. An example came from one of my patients who had worked as a park ranger in the Everglades for 25 years. As part of her job, she had lectured about the national park to groups of Florida students. She told me that over the years, she had to shorten her lectures from 45 to 15 minutes because of the decreasing attention span of her young listeners.

Another cause of academic and behavioral problems in kids—one that’s also associated with poor nutrition and weight gain—is sleep apnea, a problem characterized by pauses in breathing during sleep and that you probably thought occurred only in adults. This fatiguing ailment is actually quite common in children, and it can occur in those who are only mildly overweight. Not surprisingly, sleep apnea has been associated with hyperactivity, inattention, and aggression in children. And, as in adults, weight loss is the best treatment for this problem if the child is overweight.

In addition, sleep apnea has been associated with insulin resistance—the problem that leads to prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is another disturbing nutrition-related health phenomenon in children that was previously associated only with adults. You may remember that type 2 diabetes used to be called adult-onset diabetes because it occurred after many years of stress on the pancreas from eating the wrong foods. Ultimately, the pancreas couldn’t produce sufficient insulin, and blood sugars became elevated. Today, because of the sugary, starchy, bad-fat-laden diet of many of our children, coupled with the fact that they’re getting minimal exercise, we’re seeing type 2 diabetes in more and more teens and even preteens.