I love it when Science proves me right.  For years now, I’ve been hunting down and punching in the face anyone who stubbornly insisted on the outdated dogma that red meat is bad for you.

“No, no,” I’d explain, as my blows rained down upon them, “it isn’t red meat that’s the problem.  It’s PROCESSED meat that’s the problem.”

Now, a meta-analysis study published in the journal Circulation is backing me up.  A meta-analysis is where researchers take a whole big giant pile of other research papers and use that data to examine something.   In this case, they sifted through a ton of research studies on red meat and its effects on health and found something interesting.

They found that all these years, most researchers’ conclusions were falling prey to a confounding variable, which is a dirty little detail that throws everything off.  It works sort of like this.  If I see every Ford truck fall on the side of the road because their tires fell off, I might say hey… Fords aren’t so safe.  But, it could be that it’s the TIRES themselves that are the problem, not the entire vehicle.  So it could be that the Michelin Man didn’t do his job and the tires they made for Ford are defective, and Ford vehicles are just fine and dandy… it’s all Michelin’s fault instead.

DISCLAMER.  I think both Ford and Michelin are fine companies and that example shouldn’t be taken as any sort of attack on either company oh PLEASE don’t sue me angry corporate lawyers.

Okay, back to our discussion.  I think we see how a confounding variable works, right?  So the problem with the last few decades of research has been, when researchers found a link between “red meat” and health problems like diabetes or cardiovascular issues, they didn’t pay close enough attention to exactly what was going on.

You see, “red meat” is kind of a broad category.  You could lump steaks, hamburgers, beef hot dogs, and any and all other forms of red meat into this category.  And by just closing your eyes and accepting that broad category as being responsible for health problems, you miss the boat entirely.

What the researchers of this journal article found was that it wasn’t red meat but PROCESSED red meat that seemed to be the culprit behind all these health problems reported over the years. After all, most of the red meat consumed in this country is either highly processed, grain-fed, or eaten mixed in with all kinds of unhealthy crap.    Let’s look at each in turn so we can see where the confusion came from.

Processed Foods

I’ve ranted extensively about the problems with processed foods on many occasions.  To sum it up quickly, any sort of processing makes a normally healthy food into an unhealthy food… usually by adding salt, sugar, and various chemical additives that would downright terrify you if you knew what they did to you biochemically. 

So it isn’t that making beef into hot dog form is the problem, it’s the nitrates and salt  and MSG and other gunk they mix in there that causes all of the problems.

Grain-Fed Cattle

Next, by raising cattle in couped-up pens and stuffing them full of grains, you create an unhealthy animal that produces unhealthy meat.  Cattle are grazers by nature; they are evolutionarily designed to meander around, eating grasses of various kinds and occasionally going “moo”. 

Cattle that are fattened quickly and cheaply by grains become full of the inflammation-causing Omega-6 fatty acids (which I talk about a lot in articles like this).  So, when you eat them, YOU become full of those Omega-6s, and become prone to inflammation, which leads to the release of a hormone called cortisol that creates all kinds of health problems for you.

Here’s more of a discussion on grass-fed animals vs. corn-fed if you want to know more.

Unhealthy Junk On the Side

While a hamburger patty made with grass-fed beef isn’t so bad for you, the high-glycemic bun, the sugary ketchup, the french fries on the side soaked in trans fats and covered in salt and ketchup, and the insanely sweet soda full of high-fructose corn syrup definitely ARE all bad for you.

Barbeque sauce?  Tons of sugar and other chemicals like MSG.  Really, most of the stuff we stick on the side of eating a good old fashioned chunk of beef is just plain garbage.  So, if researchers see people eating steak covered in barbeque sauce getting fat, they might think “It’s that darn red meat again!  Curse its oily hide!” 

When, really, it’s the sugary barbeque sauce that is spiking insulin levels and leading people down the road to diabetes.  Barbeque sauces (or all the other junk food “sides”) are confounding variables.

Healthy Red Meat

So, how exactly DO you eat red meat and not die or get sick from it?  Easy.  Eat it in its most natural state.

Once again, I’ve ranted about a whole foods diet and how it’s the healthiest diet for you in the past.  Basically, the more you process or change a food, the more unhealthy it becomes. 

Cattle in their most natural state are grass-fed, free-range animals.  So start there by buying grass-fed meat.  Grass-fed meat has a balanced Essential Fatty Acid profile, meaning it has a healthy ratio of Omega-3 to Omega-6 fatty acids.  So, your body won’t get inflammed by having too many Omega-6s, and you won’t have any ill health effects from chronic inflammation.

After that, don’t take that lovely grass-fed meat and start mixing it in with a bunch of junk.  If you stuff it in a sausage casing with a bunch of salt and chemicals, then gee, I guess you’ve made it unhealthy, haven’t you?  And if you cover it in sauces that are full of sugar or eat a bag of chips along with it, again, don’t blame the red meat if you get fat and sick.

To sum it all up, red meat is NOT bad for you.  Only when we start messing with it, do we turn it into something unhealthy.  So stick to a grass-fed steak… and stay healthy!

Source article reference:  Micha R, Wallace SK, et al.  Red and processed meat consumption and risk of incident coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes mellitus: a systematic review and meta-analysis.  Circulation, June 2010;1;121 (21): 2271-83.

Maybe the title of this post should be about how SUGAR makes you fat, not insulin, but hey, we’re not looking to point fingers here.  I’m just looking to fill you in on the mechanism of insulin and weight gain, and how those high glycemic index carbs make you fat.

So the first thing that happens is, you eat a big ol’ pile of sugar.  Or bread, or whatever other carbs of choice you want to blame for that bulge in your belly.  Since refined carbohydrates have very little fiber, or filler material, that sugar very very rapidly gets digested and assimilated into your bloodstream.  Unrefined carbs, of course, have a much more muted effect, but with refined carbs you’re basically mainlining sugar.

The immediate effect of this is to dramatically spike the level of sugar circulating in your bloodstream.  As a consequence, your body then releases a massive surge of insulin, which is the hormone the body uses to clear sugar out of the bloodstream.  The more sugar in the blood, the more insulin gets released.

Here’s where we run into the first problem.  High levels of insulin signal the body to store and keep fat.  You’ve essentially just shouted at your stomach, STAY FAT, NO MATTER WHAT.  This holds true regardless of caloric intake.  In the presence of high levels of insulin, your body will not burn fat- instead, it will start to break down muscle and burn that instead. 

You may have encountered this already.  Ever starve yourself like crazy trying to lose weight, and nothing happens?  You were probably eating refined carbs of some sort (when you did eat), and therefore signalled your body to hang on to that fat for dear life.  You probably got sluggish and cranky, but not thin.

There’s more.  Insulin is an antagonist to Human Growth Hormone (HGH) and glucagon, another hormone.  What’s an antagonist?  What it sounds like… it essentially means that insulin blocks or inactivates HGH and glucagon.

So, why should you care?  Well, glucagon is a hormone that tells your body to burn off fat, so I bet you care about THAT.  And HGH not only tells your body to burn fat, it also tells the body to put on lean muscle mass (which increases metabolism and therefore burns off even more fat).

If it sounds like a double whammy, it is.  Insulin itself makes you store fat, and shuts down the hormones that tell you to burn if off.  Bummer, right?

I’m not finished.  Insulin also makes you hungry.  You see, as your blood sugar spikes, your body over-reacts and dumps tons of insulin into your system, which does its job and clears out all of the blood sugar.

As in, ALL of the blood sugar.  So after you spike your blood sugar up, it comes crashing back down.  This is why, after you binge on carbs, you get that sugar rush followed by a huge crash of energy… and a desire for more carbs.  As your blood sugar drops, your energy levels drop along with it.  And, as your body senses a dramatically low level of blood sugar, it gets desperate for exactly that… more sugar.

Kind of a mess, isn’t it?  Plus, refined carbs don’t have any of the fiber to tell your stomach to feel full, so you gobble down tons of the stuff and still feel like eating.  So, let’s sum up:

• You eat a ton of calories but don’t feel full.
• You spike your insulin levels and tell yourself to stay fat.
• You deactivate the hormones that tell your body to burn fat.
• You have a huge energy crash coupled with a fierce desire for more carbs.

Practically makes you think that sugar should be illegal, doesn’t it?  But remember, ANY refined carbohydrates are going to have this effect.  The higher the glycemic index (how sugary the food is), the worse the effect (i.e, the greater the insulin and greater the weight gain).  Quantity of carbs consumed is another obvious factor.

Is it any wonder why I tell people to avoid this stuff?  Refined carbs are practically poison, my friends. As an extra added bonus, there’s some research suggesting spiking insulin levels are a contributing factor to aging. Remember I said it deactivates HGH?  HGH is the hormone that keeps us young (just ask Sylvestor Stallone, he got caught going into Australia with about a million vials of the stuff).

Switch over to a whole foods diet, avoid the carbs, and stay thin and young.  It’s just that simple.

Pass this article along to your sugar-loving friends with the buttons below!

Stay healthy!

A couple of idiot researchers have come up with a fantastic suggestion to actually increase the amount of refined grain products in the diets of children.  Because we’re apparently not fat enough already.

Oh, they think they’re helping.  In fact, the suggestion is basically this:  let kids eat more snacks made with whole grain flour, because hey, it’s whole grain, so it has to be good for you, right?

Wrong.  Listen, folks, just because the food has buzzwords like “whole grain” or “organic” on it, doesn’t mean it’s automatically good for you.  I cringe whenever I hear somebody bragging about scarfing down a bag of cookies that they bought from Whole Foods, like that somehow changes the fact that they just sucked in enough sugar to choke their pancreas for a week.

“Whole grains” are only healthy to eat when you eat them like that… AS WHOLE GRAINS.  As in, oatmeal.  Wild rice.  That sort of thing.  Not if you pound it into flour, add a bunch of sugar, salt, sweeteners, and God only knows what other sorts of processing chemicals, and turn it into a “Whole Grain Snack”.  No, sorry.  A whole grain cracker is still just a cracker, and will still spike your insulin levels and make you fat.

Oh, sure, the fact that you used whole grain flour to make it might make it SLIGHTLY less horrible for you, but that’s like smoking low-tar cigarettes.  It’s still a bad idea.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again.  Any time you process a food, ANY TIME you process a food, you start to make it unhealthy.  The more processed or refined it is, the more unhealthy it is.  The nitwits who wrote this study are trying to make it sound like eating graham crackers- crackers full of sugar and made with hydrogenated vegetable oils- should actually count as a eating whole grains.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.  I guess Grape Soda counts as eating fruit now, too.

If you’re looking for a guarenteed way to get fat and stay that way, start pretending that sugar-filled processed snacks are whole foods. I mean, jeesh, this was an old Bill Cosby comedy routine!  He used to joke about how he baked his kids chocolate cake for breakfast because it contained eggs, milk, and wheat, so it must be healthy!

Part of the problem is the outdated food pyramid and so many researchers’ stubborn refusal to open their eyes and realize that it isn’t working.  Some people simply do as they are told, believe what they are told, and refuse to look into the facts for themselves.  This is a real problem in research, obviously, but that really doesn’t stop it from happening.

If these researcher had stopped to think for a microsecond, perhaps they would realize that a focus on getting anything at all with the words “whole grain” involved into your body might not work out as planned.  However, here’s what happens.  Somebody declares “We need to find a way to get kids to eat more whole grains!” and the solution doesn’t need to make sense so long as the words “Kids eating more whole grains” is somehow involved.

HEY!  I’ve got an idea!  Here’s a way to get kids to eat more whole grains!  Make waffles out of whole grains, and drench them in maple syrup!  Thin City, here we come!  Then we’ll soak spinach in sugar water, and put chocolate sprinkles on carrots… I AM A GENIUS.  I have single-handedly just solved our nation’s obesity epidemic.  Just turn everything into a sugar-covered snack, and it will all work out just fine.

Or, we’ll all explode into fatness even faster than we are now.

And parents, I know kids love snacks.  Of course they do.  Everybody does. They’re tasty.  But pretending a sugary snack is somehow good for you, because some microscopic portion of it is made of something that used to be healthy, isn’t helping.  You can’t fool Mother Nature.  The laws of physiology don’t care if you really, really, REALLY want to believe that eating a graham cracker is the same as eating a bowl of steel-cut oatmeal.

The only way to lose the weight (diet-wise) is to cut out the processed foods, especially those with sugar or sweeteners added, and stick with a whole foods, unprocessed diet.  There’s no real way around it.  So instead of lying to yourself and getting frustrated with not getting any results, simply focus on changing your habits to match up with what works in reality.

In the meantime, I’m going to buy these moronic researchers a bicycle and tell them to pretend it’s a rocket ship.  So they can go straight to the Moon and stop making such stupid claims.

Stay healthy!

Source: http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2010/07/23/Sneaking-in-whole-grains-via-snacks/UPI-82061279937609/

You know, sometimes when people talk about weight loss and what they’ve managed to accomplish with their weight loss, someone will turn up their nose and say “Yeah, but that’s just water weight.  That’s easy to lose.”

Really?  Then why haven’t you done it?  Listen, folks, I’ll be the first person to tell you not to bother with those silly seaweed wrap things that promise to make you  lose insane amounts of “inches” in just an hour or so.  That’s just plain dehydration, and depriving your vital tissues of the fluids they actually need to survive and thrive.  As soon as you start drinking water, you’ll just plump back up.

However, there’s a difference between that and losing excess water weight.  This may sound strange, but there’s a lot of people out there carrying around a ton of weight that isn’t fat, it’s fluid. 

You know what?  That’s still a problem.  Think about it.  No matter if it’s fat or fluid, you still have to haul all of that extra weight around.  Think of the strain having to move an extra twenty or thirty pounds puts on your system- your heart, your blood vessels, your joints, everything.  If you don’t believe me, pick up a twenty pound dumbbell and start walking around for a while.  Then set it down.  Big difference, right?

Plus, all of that stagnant fluid is going to tax your circulatory system, just in a fluid dynamics/how do I push blood around with this pressure backing me up sort of way.  Carrying all that extra fluid can press on internal structures and make the entire internal workings of the body harder to do.  I’ve even had patients who couldn’t lie flat on an exam table because their bloated belly pushed up into their chest and began to smother them.

WHY THE EXTRA WATER WEIGHT?

So where’s all this extra fluid coming from?  Shouldn’t we just pee it out, if it’s water and we don’t need it?

When things are working right, we do.  But, when certain chemistry in our body gets out of balance, it holds the fluid in and makes us swell up like a balloon. 

Basically, what happens is the amount of fluid in the circulatory system increases, which makes some of it push or “leak” out of the tiny little vessels called capillaries (think of them like the tiniest twigs on a tree branch).  This leaked fluid accumulates in areas of the body where it isn’t useful or functional… in other words, you’re not extra-hydrated.  Instead, the fluid sort of sits there and sloshes around uselessly.  Lovely. 

The main culprit behind excess water weight is the balance between potassium and sodium.  Namely, we’ve got way too much sodium, and not enough potassium.  Sodium (salt) is added to just about every refined food out there- yet another reason I tell people to stick to a whole foods diet.  If it’s in a box or a can, odds are, it’s had salt added to it.

It isn’t even always “salt”.  Food manufacturers are sneaky and call salt by different names, or especially, like to use salt-based chemicals to artificially make their foods tastier.  Most of you have heard of MSG (monosodium glutamate), which is a flavor enhancer.  I could write a whole article just on the horrible health effects of MSG, but suffice it to say for today’s purposes, it’s a salt- monoSODIUM glutamate.

This stuff is packed into EVERYTHING.  Seriously.  It’s hard to find a packaged food that hasn’t had MSG added to it.  And there’s a reason why- it works.  It takes a bland food and makes the taste “pop”.  And a food manufacturer’s goal is to make food tasty so you buy a lot of it.  Health concerns really don’t enter into the equation.

BALANCE, YOUNG ONE.  POTASSIUM/SODIUM BALANCE.

Your body uses sodium and potassium in some complicated chemical shenanigans in your cells- it’s not really important to go into the details, but it has to do with how the body generates the electrical charge that travels down a nerve.  The point is, you need this stuff.  But, you need it in a balanced ratio- if sodium starts to predominate, you’ll start to retain fluid and turn into Puff Daddy.

Since you’ve already read the paragraphs above about how we suck down salt like it’s our job, it is probably no shock to hear that most of us are out of balance with these vital nutrients.  But it’s more than just a sodium overuse- it’s also a lack of potassium.

There’s the obvious.  Our diets are crap, mostly, and don’t have a lot of the fruits and vegetables that are packed full of potassium.  But there’s more.  Refined sugar, as a consequence of how our body metabolizes it, sucks potassium out of the body with a vengeance.  Along with salt, sugar is added to an insane amount of our food.  Pretty much anything processed has had some sort of sugar added to it.

I’ve had people tell me that after they eat Chinese food (which has a lot of MSG), they notice their rings get tighter on their fingers because they swell up.  For me, I notice that on my cheat day (when I let myself loose on the sugar), I not only get thirsty, I actually feel a little swollen the next day.  The next day, as I cut out the sugar and get many vegetables in my belly, I start peeing like crazy and that fluid is gone pretty quickly.

In extreme cases, you can see edema (fluid retention) in the ankles get so bad, that if you press on it with a finger, the skin dimples in and STAYS THAT WAY… at least for a moment or two.  Now, when edema gets this bad, it’s often a sign of a side effect of medication or a more serious medical condition, but as people get fatter and fatter in this country, you’re seeing it more and more.  It’s going to get hard to tell if people have one of these edema-causing conditions or are simply obese and retaining massive amounts of fluid due to an out of control sodium/potassium balance.

HOW TO LOSE THE WATER WEIGHT

Now that you’ve read this far, the solution is fairly simple.  Restore the potassium/sodium balance.  Easy for me to say, right?

Actually, it isn’t terribly complicated to do.  Cut out the salt and the sugar, and increase the amount of green vegetables in your diet (they have a lot of potassium in them).

Hey!  I didn’t say it was EASY, I said it wasn’t complicated! 

As many of you consistent HealthyAndy.com readers know, I constantly advocate a whole foods diet.  Some people like to call it a “primal diet”, or a “stone age diet”… really, I don’t care what you call it, as long as you do it.  Whole foods means unprocessed foods; fruits and vegetables (unprocessed, preferably raw), meats, nuts, eggs.  The more a food is altered, the less “whole” it is.

Transitioning to a whole foods diet will fix all kinds of things for you, but since we’re talking water weight…. first off, there’s no added sugar or salt.  If you eat an apple, there’s no MSG added.  So there’s no loss of potassium, no skyrocketing intake of sodium, and all is well in the universe.  It’s nearly impossible to track every crazy chemical added to refined or processed foods, so don’t even try.  You’ll lose.  Just avoid the issue, by sticking to whole foods.

You’ll be shocked how fast you can lose water weight if you follow a strictly whole foods diet.  Take me as an example.  I will typically weigh five pounds heavier early in the week (right after my cheat day) then I do at the end of the week (after I’ve been eating nothing but whole foods all week).  It isn’t fat, folks.  That’s all water weight.  That’s the effects of ONE DAY of salt and sugar and refined foods… and that’s also how quickly it can flush out of the system.

The bottom line is, you don’t want to walk around swollen up like a sponge with excess fluid.  It makes you look thick and squishy, it’s harder on your health, and is all-around a downer.  So stick to a whole foods diet, and get lighter, faster.

Do you notice any foods that make you get puffy and swollen (they usually make you tired and thirsty as well)?  Let me know in the comments section below!

Stay healthy!

Good news for chocolate lovers. Looks like cocoa flavanoids (that’s one of the super-great antioxidants in chocolate) can help your heart.

Specifically, it seems that a high-level flavanol drink, consumed daily, will increase the levels of circulating angiogenic cells (CACs) in the bloodstream.  What the heck’s a CAC?  Hang on, I’ll explain.

Angiogenic Cells

The word “angiogenic” just means “makes new blood vessels”.  As the name implies, these are cells that float around through your body- your bloodstream, in particular- and build up and repair all of your various blood vessels.

You have a massive network of blood vessels in your body.  It’s actually pretty ridiculous, just how intricate and complex the circulatory system is.  Oh, sure, there’s some big, major vessels that everyone (at least, in the health care field) knows by name.  And even a few more that specialists can pick out and put a name to.  But there are nearly countless little branches and offshoots going into every little nook and cranny of the inside of your body.

I was at the Bodyworks exhibit- which is that exhibit of cadavers preserved in a special way and then posed so the public can see what internal anatomy looks like- and one of the presentations was all about the arteries of the head.  They basically filled up the arteries with a red resin and dissolved everything else away, leaving only the resin-filled arteries behind.  Now, this resin got into every tiny branch in this vascular network, and as a result, you could easily see the outline of the person’s face… even though all that was left was arteries.  That’s how intricate and ever-present the circulatory system is in the body.

Another way to look at it is like the network of roads criss-crossing our county.  There’s big ol’ highways, and then smaller offshoots, and then major surface streets, and then a progressively smaller tangle of smaller and smaller roads (and even driveways).  And just like all of those roads get potholes and dings and just plain wear out, so do your blood vessels.

That complex network of roads needs constant maintenance- a little here, a little there, oops, now that spot needs a little- or it will fall apart and become unusable.  Same thing goes for your blood vessels.  Except your body doesn’t have a bunch of fat guys in orange vests who stand around a pothole staring while one of them fills it on for five hours.

Instead, the body has angiogenic cells, which float around and do the metaphoric version of the DOT truck.  They find and fill potholes in your blood vessels.  But they do it pretty efficiently.

How Chocolate Helps The Heart

Okay, so, if flavanols from cocoa help increase the number of pothole-filling guys running around your blood vessels, why does that help your heart? 

Simple.  Your heart needs blood too. 

That may sound stupid- tons and tons of bloods shoot through the heart all of the time, how could it NEED blood?- but it’s not.  You see, the heart can’t use the blood that it pumps.  It doesn’t get delivered slowly and evenly enough throughout the tissue.

The easiest way to think of it is like a guy who’s sorting fish on a conveyor belt.  Sure, lots of food is shooting past him all of the time, but he can’t eat it.  It’s not cooked, it still the head on… and he might get fired for biting into his work.  So, he has to have lunch delivered, and eat that.

The heart works the same way.  It needs to have blood delivered to it to feed it- and it needs lots of it.  The good news is, it can eat while working, as long as the circulation stays consistent.

What all that means is, you’ve got to have a good blood supply to the heart, and that means blood vessels.  The reason why people drop dead from a heart attack is that the heart’s blood supply stops or dramatically decreases, and the heart starves.  This drop in blood supply is usually due to the blood vessels being in lousy shape.

So, if more repair guys are running around fixing blood vessels, and therefore making sure the heart’s blood vessels are in good working order, you’re less likely to keel over dead from a heart attack.  And, there’s research indicating that is indeed the case and that higher levels of angiogenic cells in the blood reduces the risk of heart attack.

Chocolate and The Heart

Let’s go over the particulars of this specific study.  The researchers give people one of two cocoa drinks:  one that was high-flavanol containing, one that was low-flavanol containing.  They chugged this stuff down twice a day for a month.

What they found, was that the flavanol-chuggers had twice the normal levels of angiogenic cells in their blood.  On top of that, they had a reduced systolic blood pressure (that’s the number on the top when somebody says something like 120/80).  Systolic blood pressure is the pressure when the heart squeezes, so it’s the top or maximum pressure- which is important when it comes to diseases like heart disease or stroke.

Finally, it seems to help what’s called flow mediated dilation- big words meaning the ability of the arterty to relax and allow enough blood to flow through.  Arteries actually have a muscular wall around them which determines the size of the hole blood can travel through, so if your arteries are having a tense day and can’t relax, not enough blood gets through to where it needs to be. 

Using our road metaphor, you can think of it like a traffic cop who’s all hot and bothered and tense, and as a consequence, doesn’t let cars through the intersection.  If you chill that guy out, make him relaxed, he lightens up and lets the cars through more quickly.  Same idea.  And better blood flow is a healthy thing to have.

So, to sum up, it seems like the flavanols in chocolate help your heart by helping to fix potholes, reduce the maximum pressure, and relax the arteries so the traffic can get through.  And really, it’s helping the entire circulatory system, which will boost overall health in general- it isn’t just your heart that needs a good blood flow.

One note of caution with this study is that it was done by Mars, a chocolate manufacturer, so there may be a bias inherent in the study design or implementation.  Still, their results were consistent with previous research, and there weren’t any glaring design problems I could spot, so I’m still fairly confident their results are on the level.

Which is good news for my friend Kimberly Riggins (who loves her some healthy chocolate, just read her blog at http://kimberlyriggins.com and see) and really anybody else who digs chocolate, which, of course, is 90% of  people with a soul.

Comments or questions, please leave them below, and send this page link to anyone you know who needs an excuse to eat some chocolate.

Stay healthy!

Source: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/193903.php

Right, so last week was Antioxidant Week… this week, let’s roll with a little Omega-3 information.

I guess I’m giving away the answer to the title with that intro, but hey, this isn’t a mystery novel, it’s a health information site, so that’s okay.

Meat… especially red meat… gets a bad rep, and it really shouldn’t.  Now, if you’re a vegan who does what they do for ethical reasons, that’s cool.  I personally do not subscribe to those beliefs but I do respect them. 

I’m talking about the health reputation of meat.  For a while there, everybody seemed like they wanted to punch red meat in the face, metaphorically speaking, of course.  Fish and chicken, well, that was okay, but red meat… red meat was a dirty SOB who deserved a horrible death.

Well, all that was just plain wrong.  In fact, chicken and fish can be worse for you than red meat.  YES.  You read that right.  There’s probably a lot of out-dated nutritionists pooping in their pants right about now after reading that, and I don’t care.  By the time I’m done with this article, you’ll see why I can make that statement and feel 100% confident about it.

To explain why, first we need to understand WHY red meat was thrown out of the house and sent to die in the woods.  In a word:  fat.  In a couple of words:  The People Who Hate Fat Movement.

Not too long ago, everybody was convinced that a low-fat diet was the way to go.  It made intuitive sense:  if you didn’t want to BE fat, why would you EAT fat?  Surely, the fat on your dinner plate, just transmorphed into fat on your butt.

Red meat tends to have more fat in it than chicken or fish, so, the reasoning went, red meat is bad and will break into your house and steal your TV. 

Plus, there were some studies showing that people who ate red meat tended to keel over and die faster than other people.  So even more reason to hate red meat, right?

WRONG!

The problem is, this reasoning is flawed on several levels.  Let’s start with the first wrong assumption:  that fat is bad.

It’s not.  Fat is actually a vital nutrient our body desperately requires.  It does things like make up cell membranes and build nerves (your brain is included in that, since it’s a big ol’ bundle of nerves) and form the basis for hormones. In particular, there are fats called Essential Fatty Acids (fatty acid is just a fancy word for fat) that are, as the name implies, essential. 

Essential, meaning, you have to eat them, because your body can’t make them by itself.  The main EFAs are called Omega-3 and Omega-6.  You should have a balance between the two, but most of us don’t.  Most of the USA has around a 30:1 ratio in favor of Omega-6, which causes all kinds of health problems (which I don’t have space to go into here, but I talk about it in other posts).  The short version is, a diet high in Omega-6 makes you die young.

Red meat can be a big part of the culprit with that skewed ratio.  Notice I used the words “can be”.  That’s the key.

How’s red meat involved?  Well, because cattle aren’t raised the way they were meant to live.  Namely, they’re not allowed to walk around and eat grass like they’ve done over the course of a couple hundred thousand years’ worth of evolution.  No, instead, we pen them up into tiny spaces and stuff them full of corn, which makes them get big and fat faster (which makes them more profitable).

Corn, by the way, is pretty high in Omega-6 fatty acids.  Not so much that eating a cob of corn is a problem, but when you’re stuffing livestock full of corn almost exclusively, guess what?  All that Omega-6 goes into the cow.

Grass, on the other hand, is high in Omega-3.  Some of you are anticipating where I’m headed with this.  Since we all know “you are what you eat”, if a cow eats mostly food that’s high in Omega-6, what’s it mostly full of?  Yep.  Omega-6.  What sort of fat will be dominant in a corn-fed steak?  Omega-6.

On the other hand, if you have a cow eating mostly food high in Omega-3, what’s it mostly full of?  Omega-3, right. And, of course, a grass-fed steak will be high in Omega-3 compared to Omega-6. 

So, the problem isn’t red meat.  The problem is, how’s the red meat being made?  The fat content is not the issue… the fat QUALITY is the issue. 

Therefore, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with red meat, just because it has fat in it.  So long as the fat quality is good, the meat is healthy.  This also goes for other animal food products, like milk and eggs.  Whatever is in the feed that the livestock is consuming, determines how healthy the food coming from the livestock will be.

Notice I included eggs in that last paragraph.  Remember I said red meat can be healthier than chicken or fish?  Here’s the part where I explain that.

Chicken and fish aren’t magical creatures that automatically get to be healthy for you just because they’re ugly.  Like any other animal, what they eat determines how healthy they are. 

Chickens are also designed to be free-roaming creatures that eat wild grasses and bugs and all sort of stuff.  Guess what most livestock chickens do?  Live in a tiny cage and eat Omega-6 filled corn.  Guess what they’re mostly made of?  If you didn’t say Omega-6, you’ve deeply hurt my feelings.  Guess what a corn-chomping hen’s eggs are mostly filled with?  Omega-6.

Conversely, free-range, grass-fed chickens are chock full of Omega-3s and so are their eggs.  The same principle even applies to fish!  The bottom of the fish food chain is algae, which is like the Big Momma Gold Mine of Omega-3.  So fish eating algae are full of Omega-3, and fish that eat fish full of Omega-3 are also full of Omega-3 and so on and so forth.  This is why fish oils from wild-caught fish are so high in Omega-3s that they form the basis for Omega-3 supplements.

However, some fish is now grown in fish “farms”, pools of water where the fish are corralled and fed a crappy diet.  Which, as you know now, means they become crappy to eat.

So nobody gets a pass just because their name is “beef” or “chicken” or “fish”.  It’s all about how you were raised, and what you were fed while you were being raised.  Remember, quality of fat is more important than quantity of fat.  Animals raised in as close to a natural, wild state as possible, will have the healthiest meat, eggs, and milk.

This is why wild game is a fantastic food source.  By definition, those little buggers are out there running around, feeding on wild grasses, berries, each other, whatever they normally would eat in a natural state.  And, therefore, their bodies are composed of a healthy mix of essential fats (amongst other things, of course, like protein).

So now you know why I get excited when I find another place carrying grass-fed eggs or beef or chicken.  It’s a bit more expensive, but it’s a bazillion times healthier.  What’s your body worth to you?

Questions?  Comments?  Post them below, and if you like what you’re reading, let your friends know about HealthyAndy.com!

Stay healthy!

Recently I had a conversation with someone, a former fitness competitor, that reminded me of the importance of having a cheat day in order to keep yourself healthy and your body fat low in the long run.

Yes, my friends, you’re going to cheat.  You are.  It’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. 

I mean, really… are you REALLY going to give up your favorite indulgences- chocolate, pizza, burgers, whatever- every day, day in, day out, for the rest of your life? 

Of course not.  That’s insane.  You’re not a robot or a cyborg.  And, if you’ve read my post on sugar addiction, you know that you’re fighting something as powerful as a cocaine addiction if you try to never cheat.  So forget it.  You WILL stray from your healthy whole foods diet.

Knowing this, decide right now to cheat smart.  CONTROL your cheating by QUANTIFYING it.  The worst thing you can do is say, “Oh, Healthy Andy, I’ll just let myself have an occasional treat from time to time, and that will be it.” 

WRONG!  Liar!  Because what will happen is, “occasional” will become more and more frequent… especially when you’re feeling stressed, unhappy, tired, that sort of thing.  Does this sound familiar?  “Oh, just this once.  I deserve it.”

“I deserve” is a one-way ticket to Fattown.  No, you can’t trust yourself.  Sorry, you can’t.  The insanely high obesity rates in this country proves it.  Hey, I can’t trust myself, either.  So here’s how you limit your indulgences, to keep them indulgences.

Have a cheat day.  That’s, A cheat day, as in ONE.  One day a week (most people pick Saturday or Sunday), you go hog wild on anything you want.  Pizza, burgers, ice cream, chocolate, I don’t care, stuff it all in like the world is ending.  And then… that’s it.  The other six days, it’s an all whole foods diet, no junk, no exceptions.

You see, there’s only so much you can really stuff in your body in one day.  At some point, you’re going to stop, or get sick.  That sugary awesomeness that you’ve been dreaming about, will, after you’ve overindulged, become so goddamn sweet you can’t stand another bite.  Those burgers will fill your belly till you don’t even want to hear the word “burger” spoken aloud.

In other words, you limit the amount of over-consumption of calories to one day, and you limit the crazed spiking of your insulin levels (from the carbs) to one day.  The other six days, your body will easily recover.

It’s how you have your cake, and eat it too.  After all, you may not be able to give up chocolate forever, but you can give it up for a couple of days.  Especially if you know that you’ve got your cheat day coming up, and anything goes.

Every bodybuilder, fitness model, or other fit person I know that has stayed fit in the long term, uses this approach.  Those that don’t, eventually freak out and don’t just fall off the wagon, they FLY off (and usually stay off!).

You can’t do it overnight, of course.  Most of my weight loss book is all about how to get yourself to that point.  But I don’t want you for a second to think that a healthy lifestyle means no indulgences, ever.  You just have to keep indulgences, INDULGENCES, and not the norm. 

I was the guy who was exercising like crazy and could never lose his gut, until I started using this concept.  Then, I dropped about 25-30 pounds of body fat.  And I still get to wolf down ice cream and pizza until I’m stuffed… from time to time.

Two recent studies show that whether you know it or not, you’re an addict, and your poison is sugar.

The first study is one in which rats were allowed a choice between cocaine and sugar water, and choose the sugar water over the cocaine- even if they were cokehead rats.  Pretty scary.

The second, more recent study published in Nature Neuroscience, shows that the same chemical changes in the brain occur with junk food eating as with drug abuse.  Namely, that the pleasure centers of the brain get overloaded, and you need more and more of the “fix” to just feel like you’re not sliding backwards.

I tell my patients about this all time.  The nervous system has a quality called “accomodation”, meaning, it gets used to stuff.  Stick your hand in a hot bucket of water, and eventually, it won’t feel hot anymore… even if the water is still hot.  Your nerves will change their thermostat, so to speak, to account for this higher stimulus.

So, if you’re constantly bombarding your body with a free-base version of sugar intake, you guessed it, you too will get accustomed to that super-sweet taste.  Soon, even normal tasting stuff will taste bland by comparison.

But these studies suggest something further.  Your body releases chemicals in the brain to make you feel good- that’s how you get runner’s high and stuff like that- and these studies are saying that sugary foods feed into that pathway just like drugs such as cocaine and heroin.  And just like a heroin addict, if you don’t get your artificially inflated “fix” of feel-good chemicals, you will start feeling horrible by comparison.  Remember, you’re not craving sugar because you need sugar.  You’re craving sugar because your feel-good chemicals have returned to normal levels… and because you’re used to an artificially jacked-up level of feel-good chemicals, by comparison, you feel like you’re missing something or need something to make you feel better.

Pretty crazy, hunh?  But as one MD who commented on these articles put it, we bascially do the same thing to our food as we do to cocaine.  Cocaine in its natural state is a green leaf that is chewed on slowly by the natives, and used like that, it acts kind of like coffee.  No big deal.  Then the modern world came along, said “Hey!  We can make THAT better!”, and refined cocaine into a super-powerful substance that directly and massively stimulates the pleasure centers of the brain.

In the case of food, we take a normal, natural, healthy substance, and refine and process it until everything healthy has been stripped out of it and we’re left with a highly concentrated product that, like cocaine, also directly stimulates our brains in a way that it was never meant to handle.  Awesome.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

So, yet one more reason why you should do your best to switch to an unprocessed, whole foods diet ASAP.  And, another reason why you should, just as I suggest in my book, do it by slow degrees.  Because really, you’re a recovering addict.  You just didn’t know it.

Hey everybody, I was shopping in at Whole Foods and saw that they finally have some pasture-raised, grass fed eggs, which got me all excited.

Yes, I get excited about things like that.  Hey, my name is Healthy Andy, what do you expect?

Why is this a big deal?  Because pasture raised, grass fed animal products are of the highest quality from a health perspective.  It’s simple.  You are what you eat, remember?  Well, that goes for animals just like humans- and, if you eat those animals, then you are what THEY eat.  In other words, if your food grew up eating junk food, then it becomes junk food too.

Most livestock is raised on grain (mostly corn) and kept stuck indoors for most of their lives.  Imagine what kind of shape you’d be in if all you ate was corn chips and Wonder Bread and you never left the living room.  Ever.  What kind of shape would you be in?

Most animals are designed through evolution to be outside, eating grasses or other forage, and moving around.  It keeps them healthy.  More importantly to us, it creates a situation where they become healthier to eat.  This includes eggs and milk, of course, because if an animal is going to produce these kinds of things, they will use the building blocks they have available (through their diet).  So a high-quality diet makes for a high-quality animal product, whether it be meat, eggs, or milk.

Then there’s the whole no-antibiotics, no hormones thing, which is always nice.  I hate being involuntarily medicated through my food.  Don’t you?

There is a cost difference, of course, but it’s really not so much.  Grass-fed beef is about a dollar a pound more expensive than grain-fed.  Bison (Buffalo) is usually pasture-raised, and is also comparable in price to grass-fed beef.  Grass-fed eggs are noticeably more expensive- I think the last carton I bought was around six bucks for a dozen.  For me, I’d rather spend the money and get all the health benefits rather than pinch pennies at the grocery store and end up paying out far, far more down the road in doctor’s bills.  I mean, really, how much do you spend on your health insurance, and what are you really getting out of it on a daily basis?  Put in that perspective, a couple of extra bucks in at the grocery store doesn’t seem like much- and will do you far more good in the long run.