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Keeping Better Score of Your Diet

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How can you get a perfect diet score? How do you rate the quality of people’s diets? Well, “what could be more nutrient-dense than a vegetarian diet?” Indeed, if you compare the quality of vegetarian diets with non-vegetarian diets, the more plant-based diets do tend to win out, and the higher diet quality in vegetarian diets may help explain greater improvements in health outcomes. However, vegetarians appear to have a higher intake of refined grains, eating more foods like white rice and white bread that have been stripped of much of their nutrition. So, just because you’re eating a vegetarian diet doesn’t mean you’re necessarily eating as healthfully as possible. Those familiar with the science know the primary health importance of eating whole plant foods. So, how about a scoring system that simply adds up how many cups of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, chickpeas, split peas, and lentils, and how many ounces of nuts and seeds per 1,000 calories (with or without coun...
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How Low Can LDL Cholesterol Go on PCSK9 Inhibitors?

People with genetic mutations that leave them with an LDL cholesterol of 30 mg/dL live exceptionally long lives. Can we duplicate that effect with drugs? Data extrapolated from large cholesterol-lowering trials using statin drugs suggest that the incidence of cardiovascular events like heart attacks would approach zero if LDL cholesterol could be forced down below 60 mg/dL for first-time prevention and around 30 mg/dL for those trying to prevent another one. But is lower actually better? And is it even safe to have LDL cholesterol levels that low? We didn’t know until PCSK9 inhibitors were invented . Are PCSK9 Inhibitors for LDL Cholesterol Safe and Effective? I explore that issue in my video of the same name. PCSK9 is a gene that mutated to give people such low LDL cholesterol, and that’s how Big Pharma thought of trying to cripple PCSK9 with drugs. After a heart attack, intensive lowering of an individual’s LDL cholesterol beyond a target of 70 mg/dL does seem to work better t...
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How to Beat Heart Disease Before It Starts

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Why might healthy lifestyle choices wipe out 90% of our risk for having a heart attack, while drugs may only reduce risk by 20% to 30%? On the standard American diet, atherosclerosis—hardening of the arteries, the number one killer of men and women—has been found to start in our teens. Investigators collected about 3,000 sets of coronary arteries and aortas (the aorta is the main artery in the body) from victims of accidents, homicides, and suicides who were 15 to 34 years old and found that the fatty streaks in arteries can begin forming in our teens, which turn into atherosclerotic plaques in our 20s that get worse in our 30s and can then become deadly. In the heart, atherosclerosis can cause a heart attack. In the brain, it can cause a stroke. See the progression below and at 0:35 in my video Can Cholesterol Get Too Low? . How common is this? All of the teens they looked at—100% of them—already had fatty streaks building up inside their arteries. By their early 30s, most alrea...
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Is Fasting an Effective Treatment for Diabetes?

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By losing 15% of their body weight, nearly 90% of those who have had type 2 diabetes for less than four years may achieve remission. Currently, more than half a billion adults have diabetes, and about a 50% increase is expected in another generation. I’ve got tons of videos on the best diets for diabetes, but what about no diet at all? More than a century ago, fasting was said to cure diabetes, quickly halting its progression and eliminating all signs of the disease within days or weeks. Even so, starvation is guaranteed to lead to the complete disappearance of you if kept up long enough. What’s the point of fasting away the pounds if they’re just going to return as soon as you restart the diet that created them in the first place? Might it be useful to kickstart a healthier diet? Let’s see what the science says. Type 2 diabetes has long been recognized as a disease of excess, once thought to afflict only “the idle rich…anyone whose environment and self-support does not require ...
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All About Allulose

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Sugar and high fructose corn syrup are the original industrial sweeteners —inexpensive, filled with empty calories, and contributing to diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, cavities, and metabolic syndrome. Artificial sweeteners, like NutraSweet, Splenda, and Sweet’N Low, are the second-generation sweeteners. They are practically calorie-free, but cautions have been raised about their adverse effects . Sugar alcohols, such as sorbitol, xylitol, and erythritol, are the third-generation sweeteners. They’re low in calories but carry laxative effects or even worse . What about rare sugars like allulose?   What Is Allulose? Allulose is a natural, so-called rare sugar, present in limited quantities in nature. “Recent technological advances, such as enzymatic engineering using genetically modified microorganisms, now allow [manufacturers] to produce otherwise rare sugars” like allulose in substantial quantities.   Allulose and Weight Loss What happened when resear...
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Can Olive Oil Compete with Arthritis Drugs?

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What happened when topical olive oil was pitted against an ibuprofen-type drug for osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis? Fifty million Americans suffer from arthritis, and osteoarthritis of the knee is the most common form, making it a leading cause of disability. There are several inflammatory pathways that underlie the disease’s onset and progression, so various anti-inflammatory foods have been put to the test. Strawberries can decrease circulating blood levels of an inflammatory mediator known as tumor necrosis factor , but that doesn’t necessarily translate into clinical improvement. For example, drinking cherry juice may lower a marker of inflammation known as C-reactive protein , but it failed to help treat pain and other symptoms of knee osteoarthritis. However, researchers claimed it “provided symptom relief.” Yes, it did when comparing symptoms before and after six weeks of drinking cherry juice, but not any better than a placebo, meaning drinking it was essentially no ...
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The Hidden Costs of Bariatric Surgery

Weight regain after bariatric surgery can have devastating psychological effects. How Sustainable Is the Weight Loss After Bariatric Surgery? I explore that issue in my video of the same name. Most gastric bypass patients end up regaining some of the fat they lose by the third year after surgery, but after seven years, 75% of patients followed at 10 U.S. hospitals maintained at least a 20% weight loss. The typical trajectory for someone who starts out obese at 285 pounds, for example, would be to drop to an overweight 178 pounds two years after bariatric surgery, but then regain weight up to an obese 207 pounds. This has been chalked up to “grazing” behavior, where compulsive eaters may shift from bingeing (which becomes more difficult post-surgery) to eating smaller amounts constantly throughout the day. In a group of women followed for eight years after gastric bypass surgery, about half continued to describe episodes of disordered eating. As one pediatric obesity specialist ...
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