Monthly Archives: April 2011

Ancient Atherosclerosis

(NPR photo)

A few days ago, National Public Radio did a story on Egyptian mummies with heart disease. When the mummies guts were scanned using a CT machine, lo and behold, these ancient folks arteries were chock full of cholesterol and plaque.

According to Dr. Greg Thomas, who is one of the scientists that discovered these mummies, early Egyptians ate mostly fruits and vegetables, were active, did not use tobacco and ate very little meat. The fact that they developed heart disease given their diet and lifestyle threw Dr. Thomas for a loop. Befuddled, he stated that he feels current science must be missing a risk factor.

Well, risk factors are risk factors. Causes are causes. What we should be looking for are causes. Being human is a risk factor for death but it sure isn’t the cause – ya know what I mean?

He also stated that a known cause of heart disease is dietary cholesterol.

Says Dr. Thomas:

Right now we know that high blood pressure, smoking, cholesterol, inactivity and other things cause athersosclerosis, but I think that we’re less complete than we think.

Buzzer! Ding! Nope – we sure don’t know that dietary cholesterol causes atherosclerosis (spelled incorrectly above by NPR). Just because you eat cholesterol doesn’t mean it high tails it straight into the old pipes. (Dr. Oz does however.)

Think about it – every single cell in your body needs cholesterol to “live.” Cholesterol is good – really good for us in fact. And you really can’t eat too much of it. If you eat a lot of it, your body makes less. If you eat less, your body makes more.

So why might cholesterol get taxi cabbed into arterial walls and deposited there?

It seems that cholesterol gets deposited in our arteries when arteries become damaged in some way. Think of it as plaster on a cracked wall. If a wall gets a split or a crack in it, we put plaster on it to mend it. Your body does this too when it is damaged. But our bodies put the plaster in the inside of the wall and this forces the artery to become smaller in diameter as the damage and repair process continues.

But the plaster is not the villain – it’s actually the hero. The villain is the thing that is causing the need for the plaster.

Unfortunately Dr. Thomas is, like so many other people including cardiologists, plagued by biases when it comes to heart/vascular disease. Dr. Thomas mentions that he and his co-workers were shocked when they saw that the mummies had atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). But because of their bias in favor of whole grains, fruits and vegetables and against meat, he can’t see that if the Egyptians were indeed mainly vegetarians and active, eating cholesterol and meat can’t be the culprit – then or now.

In fact, if we look at what we eat today (grains, vegetables, fruits and meat) and what the Egyptians ate then (exactly the same things but less meat), since they had ZERO access to junk food and tobacco, AND since they were more physically active, AND since they did not have environmental pollutants, the only thing we can conclude is that maybe, just maybe, grains, vegetables and fruits might indeed be the cause!

Capeesh? Yes? No?

Hear me out now – if your diet is rich in grains, fruits and veggies and low in fat and protein, your blood glucose level is chronically elevated. In fact, if the early Egyptians ate little meat, their blood sugar levels might have been even higher than ours on average. Chronically elevated blood glucose levels are very inflammatory and this can indeed be artery damaging. This is one of several papers that support this crazy idea.

Fat does not elevate blood sugar. Protein does an eensy bit if you eat a ton of it, but certainly no where near as much as grains, fruits and vegetables do.

Something to think about at least. Your thoughts?

Certainty Isn’t Arrogance

We had a new client come in the other day who asked our fantastic instructor Neil Holland about why we don’t do aerobic exercise (and a few other things like stretching) at Serious Strength.

To be clear, he asked Neil the question. Neil did not launch into a sermon on the subject out of nowhere. Like the uber-instructor Neil is, he answered the client as thoroughly and as specifically as he could.

The client, while listening, became pensive. Neil was obviously telling him things that flew in the face of what he already believed to be true about cardiovascular/aerobic training and this put the client, or rather, the client put himself on the defensive.

Neil told him many things that are scientifically true – facts that are inarguable. Yet, the client refused to accept the information in favor of what he already thought was true. This situation, as you might guess, happens from time to time when you educate people that aerobic exercise pales in comparison to resistance training at providing virtually every possible physiological benefit including cardiovascular benefits.

As the client listened and grew ever more discombobulated, he told Neil that he was being “arrogant.” But was he? No. Neil wasn’t being arrogant, he was being honest and providing the information asked of him with certainty. Certainty isn’t arrogance but it can be perceived as such when educating someone who already believes something that is completely incongruous to what you are saying to them.

This is a good lesson for all instructors/personal trainers to learn from. And anyone else for that matter.

Whenever you are in a similar situation, before you launch into the facts, first assess your audience and tailor your talk to them so that they can “hear” you. It won’t work very well if you flat out tell a vegan that meat is more nutrient dense than vegetables. They’ll just freak.

But if instead you agree with them that vegetables are highly nutritious and berries are the gift of God and then mention that, while killing animals for food certainly can be considered abhorrent, meats and fish do contain all of the vitamins and minerals people need, you at least have a shot of them accepting that fact.

A very good book for helping anyone to communicate better is Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
(affiliate link).

After reading this book, you’ll be able to sell catnip to a dog – or maybe even meat to a vegan!

Slow Pushups

Right now, without thinking, do some slow push-ups till you’re tuckered.

Do them regular or do them on your knees as you see above.

Count five seconds to go down, 5 seconds to go up.

Don’t rest at the top by locking you’re elbows.

Breathe freely on every one. Go!

You’ll feel great afterwards.

You’re welcome!

Why Is Your Kid Fat?

There is no doubt that the surge in adolescent obesity is real. As a father of two wonderful young lasses, I am in their school yards virtually everyday and see it first hand. I will say however that, at least in New York City, most kids appear to be of normal body weight. The truly obese kids – the ones who need immediate care – are rare.

In my book Strong Kids, Healthy Kids: The Revolutionary Program for Increasing Your Child’s Fitness in 30 Minutes a Week (affiliate link), I discuss the relationship between physical activity and obesity. I spent a year researching the issue and could not find any evidence that obese kids are less active than lean kids. None. I discussed this at length a couple of years ago with Oprah Winfrey’s trainer Bob Greene. The idea, it seems, is a myth. A wive’s tale. Or as my friend Tom Naughton puts it, a load of bologna.

The fact is that there are many active obese kids and many lean inactive kids. I’m here to tell you people, physical activity – or the lack of it – has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not your kid is lean or fat, short or tall. So sorry Michelle, I know you mean well but your Let’s Move organization is misnamed. It should be renamed Let’s Eat Less Sugar.

Speaking of eating, kids need to eat and they need to eat as much as they need. Cutting back on their calorie intake will also cut down on their nutrient intake. They are also growing. So, the other commonly cited solution to obesity – eating less food – is certainly not the right way to go about helping a child to lose fat. So what is?

OK, here’s the solution to adolescent obesity: Cut the carbs, up the fat.

That’s it. Keep cutting the carbs and replace those calories with fatty animal matter like salmon, steak, eggs, duck, etc. until the child is lean. Even if you are a staunch “lipophobe” who believes the propaganda that eating fat and cholesterol directly cause heart disease, aside from medical issues, have you ever in your life known a person who gradually went from obese to lean but became less healthy?

Neither have I.

On the Let’s Move website under the heading Eat Healthy is says the following:

Nutrition Information
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, put forth by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), provide science-based advice for individuals over the age of two to promote health and reduce the risk of major chronic diseases. The current Dietary Guidelines, encourage most Americans to eat fewer calories, be more physically active, and make wiser food choices.

Science-based? I don’t think so.

A while back I blogged on this issue and made the point that, if the food pyramid was actually science based, would not fruits and vegetable be placed at the bottom of the pyramid or given the new design (see above), get the largest slice of the pyramid pie? After all, fruits and vegetables are more nutrient dense (by far) and provide much more fiber. Not that fiber is as important as the USDA claims it is but if it were, grains don’t hold a candle to veggies in terms of fiber content.

So this alone proves that the pyramid is by no means science-based.

On top of this, meats are the most nutrient dense of all the foods yet as foods go, they are given the smallest slice of the pie. They are also lumped together with beans for some strange reason. Why aren’t beans in with vegetables and fruits? After all, they’re plants. I just asked my wife this question and she said maybe because they are so starchy and starch is so fattening. Good point but then, why aren’t they at the bottom with the other fattening starches?

Perhaps because they have protein? But broccoli has protein too.

Meat AND beans. Kinda weird if you ask me and certainly not scientific.

And what’s with calling dairy, milk? Milk?

Where’s the nuts and seeds?

Here is a pyramid that is far more science based:

Follow this pyramid and if you are obese, you will no longer be so because you’re health will improve markedly. Eating like this also prevents obesity. In fact, you could not become obese if you tried eating according to this pyramid. No need to do silly things like count calories eating like this either.

So, parents, caregivers, grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, and other people who influence and control how a child eats, alter how you feed young Jane and Johnny to this way of eating and you’ll be glad you did. Not only will the child you care for become healtier, she’ll sleep better, think better, play better and one day if she has children, pass this way of eating onto her progeny.

In a single generation we could see obesity vanish and the lives of people flourish. Think of how productive this world could be!