Dear Reader,
Have you heard? Today is “No Meat Monday”. It appears that my nice, thick steak, cooked medium bloody is Public Enemy Number One.
It is according to my medical colleagues’ latest health initiative, the “Meatless Monday Campaign.” It’s a new version of an old message: Foods high in saturated fat raise your cholesterol and therefore increase your chance of heart attack or stroke. But what about…
Many native cultures eat diets extremely high in saturated animal fats. The Masai people of eastern Africa for instance, subsist on nothing but animal meat and raw milk. Yet their rate of heart disease is almost zero.
In fact, as long as you follow a few simple guidelines, you can eat all the meat you want and still live a long, healthy and active life.
Think about it. If saturated fats are so bad for you, why is it that over the past 50 years – as the American medical community’s obsession with “low-fat” dieting has swept the nation – rates of heart disease have increased more than tenfold?1 It’s not because we’ve increased the amount of saturated fat in our diet.
Drug makers put all the emphasis on driving down LDL, your “bad cholesterol.” But only because their drugs – like Zocor, Lipitor, and Crestor – lower LDL. The relentless drive to cut LDL levels also lies behind much of the medical advice you’ll hear, including “Meatless Monday.” Again, this is misguided… The real science shows that it’s the ratio of LDL and HDL (your good cholesterol) that matters.
A study published in the American Journal of Medicine showed there was no link between LDL levels and heart attacks. Not only that: As participants got older, the association between cholesterol and heart disease became weaker, not stronger. For men above age 47, cholesterol levels made no difference in cardiovascular death.2
What’s more, the same study found that HDL levels were a good indicator of heart disease risk. In fact, high levels of HDL are directly linked to a lower risk of heart disease. In fact, if your HDL is above 85, you’re at no greater risk of having a heart attack if your total cholesterol is 350 or 150.
This means that if you increase HDL, you can reduce coronary disease, regardless of your LDL cholesterol levels.3
So I propose changing “Meatless Monday” to “No Bull Monday”.
Try taking these simple steps instead:
• Restore omega-3s to your diet. Wild-caught fish, grass-fed beef, free-farmed, organic poultry, nuts, olive, eggs and avocados are all rich in “good” fat. And cod liver oil – the best omega-3 supplement – will boost your HDL levels naturally.
• Know your lipid profile. Be sure to focus on your HDL level. If it’s below 35, you should take steps to increase it. Steps like exercise, niacin and garlic.
• Niacin lowers both LDL and triglycerides and allows for increases in HDL. The best source of niacin in foods is in nuts and dried beans. In addition, many meats such as liver, poultry and fish contain niacin.
• A low-carb diet will help to balance your HDL and reduce your LDL.
• My PACE program boosts reserve capacity in your heart – critical for avoiding heart attacks – and raises HDL.
You can easily learn and apply these and other winning strategies in The Doctor’s Heart Health Cure.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
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1 A. Keys, “Atherosclerosis: A problem in newer public health,” Journal of Mount Sinai Hospital, 1953; 20, 118-119.
2 T. Gordon et al, “High density lipoprotein as a positive factor against coronary heart disease. The Framingham Study,” American Journal of Medicine, 1997; 62(5): 707-714.
3 A. Castiglioni et al, “HDL Cholesterol: What is its true clinical significance?”, Emergency Medicine, 2003; 4(1): 30-42