© Linas Garsys/The Washington TimesIllustration on the harmful effects of carbohydrates
This year, more than 610,000 Americans will die from heart disease. It's the leading cause of death for both men and women.
For decades, doctors and nutritionists prescribed low-fat diets to people trying to lower their risk of heart disease. Saturated fats in meats and dairy products were thought to clog our arteries. Grains - especially "whole" ones - were thought to help everything from high cholesterol to digestion.
A growing body of research suggests this advice was wrong. For most people, it's carbohydrates, not fats, that are the true cause of heart disease.
Consider a report published last year in The Lancet that studied nutrition among more than 135,000 people across 18 different countries - making it the largest-ever observational study of its kind. The researchers found that people who ate the least saturated fat - about the same amount currently recommended for heart patients - had the highest rates of heart disease and mortality. Meanwhile, people who consumed the most saturated fat had the lowest rate of strokes.
Limiting intake of carbohydrates, rather than fats, is a surer way to decrease the risk of heart disease. An analysis of more than a dozen studies published in the
British Journal of Nutrition found that
patients on low-carb diets had healthier body weights and cardiovascular systems than those on conventional low-fat diets. I'm a cardiologist in Virginia and my own patients have seen the benefits of a low-carb, high-fat diet firsthand.
Consider Marj. At age 71, she lost more than 100 pounds in a year without medication, meal replacements or surgery - just by cutting out sugars and starches, and eating healthier food.
Denise had out-of-control diabetes. Her blood sugar was frequently over 250 - a level far above normal - despite being on insulin. Then she started a low-carb diet. After only a week, she was off insulin and had near normal blood-sugar levels.
When Jeff started working with me, he had severe lipid abnormalities. Four months later, his HDL cholesterol - commonly known as "good cholesterol" - had increased by 13 points. And his triglyceride level plummeted from 468 to 78 - well below the normal level of 150. All of this was without medication or exercise.
The mistaken belief that fats cause heart disease stems from weak, outdated research. Back in 1961, the American Heart Association published its first report recommending that people limit consumption of animal fats and dietary cholesterol. The report cited several studies that showed a correlation between high-fat diets and heart problems.But that hypothesis had never been put to the test in a clinical trial. A controlled trial is the only way to prove a cause-effect relationship, rather than a mere correlation that could occur due to random chance or some other unknown variable.As Dr. Phillip Handler, the former president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences stated nearly 20 years later, "What right has the federal government to propose that the American people conduct a vast nutritional experiment, with themselves as subjects, on the strength of so little evidence?"
Eventually, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) started conducting clinical trials. However, these trials were deeply flawed. Additionally, when evidence contradicted the dominant medical narrative, researchers effectively buried it. One NIH study, which found little-to-no relationship between saturated fats and various health problems, was conducted between 1968 and 1973 but wasn't published for another 16 years.Despite the flimsy evidence against saturated fats, mainstream nutritionists still advise people to eat lots of carbohydrates and steer clear of fats. The AHA recommends restricting saturated fat consumption to 6 percent of total calories. Federal guidelines encourage people to eat fat-free or low-fat dairy and plenty of grains.This advice is dooming hundreds of thousands of people to early death and disability. Every 40 seconds, someone in the United States has a heart attack. The disease costs Americans $200 billion annually in medical care and lost productivity.
For decades, our public health leaders have dispensed deadly dietary advice. That needs to change. Many doctors, myself included, have seen with our own eyes how low-carb diets help patients lose weight, reverse their diabetes and improve their cholesterol.
- Eric Thorn is a cardiologist affiliated with the Virginia Hospital Center.
Reader Comments
When I read this, I immediately stopped eating anything with wheat in it! This is not as easy as it sounds. I continued my regular daily workouts of walking and going to the gym. I have lost 40 pounds in the last 4 months. The weight just falls off. I feel better, and being 40 pounds lighter, has given me alot of energy.
To see if I could eat a different strain of wheat I started buying Italian einkorn wheat flour, a variety of wheat that has been grown in Italy for 2 thousand years without hybridization. That kind of wheat doesn't cause the adverse reaction I experience with even organically grown American wheat. It's costly, though, about $3.75 per lb.
I also think there may be a multiplying effect when you combine say Corn syrup, hydro veg oils and wheat. Just makes people blow up like blimps.
This is happening today with issues such as Brexit in UK, where the political class are ignoring the will of the majority of people over those 'experts', 'elites' and corporate entities who think that Brexit will disadvantage them. Anthropogenic global warming is another lucrative (for some), 'expert' driven debacle and just look how Donald Trump's attempts to improve the lot of ordinary Americans, is being challenged at every turn by 'experts' ensconced within the 'deep state'. 'Spin', 'propaganda', 'nudging' is the order of the day but avarice is usually at the bottom of it all.
The name relevant to the saturated fat issue is Ancel Benjamin Keys, the scientist who set the whole debacle off back in the 1950's. No one apparently dared challenge him for fear of adversely affecting their own careers or because it was an opportunity to advance their careers. Despite the fact that Keys was known, or strongly suspected, to have been wrong for decades, no scientist spoke out to correct this debacle (or they spoke out and were silenced?) As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in 2014; “Too much institutional energy and research money had already been spent trying to prove Dr. Keys hypothesis. A bias in its favour had grown so strong that the idea just started to seem like common sense.” As pointed out however, even now, many so called 'experts' are still advocating low fat diets and, as pointed out by an earlier comment, reducing cholesterol, that scientific research suggests could also be responsible for much ill health.
Keys was not the only 'expert' to get it wrong, yet still enjoying widespread support for decades. An even bigger debacle is still being promoted by all and sundry. I refer to the anti-smoker deception that is promoted by fanatics and supported by many apparently respectable, intelligent parties, organisations and institutions.
Prof Richard Doll is to the anti-smoker agenda as Keys is to the saturated fat agenda but Doll is far more revered, and his 1950's smoking harm hypothesis remains apparently intact, despite the evidence of hindsight that shows so-called 'smoke related' illness such as cancers continuing to rapidly increase despite the substantial reduction in smoking over several decades. In the 1950's around one in five of us could expect to suffer from some form cancer, today it is one in two (Dr Kerr, UK cancer specialist, 2012). Over 80% of lung cancers (that has grown to be the biggest of all cancer killers) are suffered by non smokers today (ex and never smokers), (Dr Aldridge, US cancer specialist 2010).
Anyone who has looked at passive smoking evidence of 'harm' will know that it is wholly inadequate, an invention to justify smoke bans.The anti-smoker agenda erroneously claims that today 50,000 - 80,000 Americans die as a result of being 'exposed' to passive smoke, despite the fact that as smoking has substantially reduced and SO HAS passive smoke. In the 1990's the figure was alleged to be about 3000 victims but examination of the evidence led to justify this claim, was rightly rejected by a court of law (Judge Osteen 1998). The reality is that many non smokers are getting cancer and absudly believe that can blame it on a whiff of smoke from a passing smoker.
The anti-smoker prohibition industry cynically claims that millions will be 'saved' if they can only force millions to quit smoking BUT the evidence strongly suggest that it is the anti-smoker agenda itself that is the cause of so many deaths and ill health. Anti-smoker clairvoyance, touted as 'science' extrapolated from mid C20th epidemiology, has proved to have been wrong time after time when alternative scientific methods are considered and also when reality is examined where we can actually see the end results.
No one has been saved!