Open Future Health Blog

May 2016 - 5 items

Open Future Health Blog

Your habits when you are in your 40's and 50's are the foundation for your good health and fitness at 85. Improved diet is the low cost alternative to extensive medical intervention later in life. The body has the ability to heal itself, if we treat it with respect. ANYBODY who adopts a healthy diet, at ANY AGE, will benefit, and as the months go by, those benefits will multiply.

DON'T start a new diet, Begin a New Education

A good friend told me two days ago that she had traveled overseas with Hugh Butler PhD., who had written a book about better health, called "The Take-Out Diet." Since then I've tracked him down, purchased his book and read more than half of it.

Mr Butler is right on target. His experience is similar to my own. He thought he was healthy, but approaching 60 his health began to decline. In particular his weight increased, and five years of effort to change that were ineffective. His family history indicated that he might live for a long time, but the last 8 to 10 years might be years of illness or dementia. Rather than just accept his health as it was, and call it old age coming on, he decided to investigate more.

Hugh Butler's training is in Agricultural Science, with a PhD in plant physiology and biochemistry. He has read hundreds of scientific papers and has written more than a few himself. He spent 12 years working as a biochemist. In his professional life he had migrated into statistics and change management, and these are skills he brings to an exploration of nutrition science.

It was very clear that the health knowledge in the news media and in the public mind was confused and unhelpful. Butler believed that science gave clear answers, and that there must be a consistent and clear scientific way to understand health and nutrition, that wasn't confused by marketing messages and propaganda.

The Take-Out Diet

In "The Take-Out Diet" Hugh Butler identifies a lot of good science. He makes clear statements about what is and is not scientifically proven. When he's finished there are a few things he recommends, and a lot of things that people commonly do that they should stop doing or avoid.

Butler says "Never go in a diet" because when you do that, you are telling yourself that one day you'll come off that diet. What we need to do is undertake and education. Education never stops. Further, your education should not be focused on weight loss, in fact forget about the scales, and forget about calories. Learn about real food, about metabolism, about how the body is controlled by hormones, and the meaning of the term homeostasis.

As your knowledge grows, how you need to change your life, the direction you will travel, will become crystal clear. Change as little as possible, change one thing at a time. Change only the one thing that will make the biggest difference now with the least effort. If these are part of your life, begin here; smoking, drug use, too much alcohol, excessive exercise, and vegetarian diets, all of which are clearly harmful to your health, as shown by scientific studies. You don't have to be clever to know that.

The title, The Take-Out Diet, refers to six things you need to take out of your life forever. Clue: the first one is sugar and it's substitutes. There are other things that you'll discover when the need arises. Meanwhile, find out what sugar and it's substitutes are, and try to take them out of your life.

In the next year, if you make four or five changes like that, your health will have improved considerably, even if your weight remains the same. All you need to do is understand the science, and unlearn some of the things that are today preventing you from being more healthy.

The Faulty Ideas in our Heads

For many years, I've eaten more than 5 fruit and vegetable servings a day. Often eight or more. I've always enjoyed fruit. Eating a large serving of fruit with muesli and low-fat milk for breakfast, was my routine for 20+ years. This was the diet that made me fat, because I relied on carbohydrates for energy.

We all have faulty ideas in our heads that stop us adopting a better diet. We are all indoctrinated, full of food propaganda, from family, the education system and the food industry. The most common of those faulty ideas, is, that fat in your diet is bad. (See "Basic Metabolism" in the website, for more about that.) For myself, the "fruit is good for you" idea became a problem.

Some you will know that 30 months ago my research into diet, began with a rash that my doctor and I decided to call, hives, medically called Urticaria. It was certainly some sort of autoimmune problem, causing inflammation. My doctor said I'd never discover what caused it, and that in it's own time it would go away. The problem lasted for more than 12 months.

My Old Fruit Breakfast

During that time, I kept cutting foods out of my diet. Reluctantly, after many months I went gluten free, and then wheat free. That seemed to help, then I discovered the ketogenic diet with a cooked breakfast. There were several health benefits, and the rash went away very slowly. (I was thinking, leaky gut problems; therefore grains were the issue.)

The one food I was sure was "safe" was the fruit I was eating. (The photo shows what was a typical fruit breakfast, after I stopped having meusli with it. Note the bottle of cream. ) The ketogenic diet stopped me eating so much fruit. The rash slowly went away. I was still eating some fruit every day, having not yet connected my "healthy fruit" with my rash.

After many months in ketosis and after losing a lot of weight, at the end of March and through April, this year (2016) there were pears and peaches galore, all from our own trees or the close neighbours. I began to eat large fruit and cream meals for lunch every day. Sometimes, a fruit desert as well in the evening. The sugar in the fruit took me out of ketosis, but I thought that eating seasonal foods, for a short time, would be OK.

After six weeks, I began to develop some itchy skin problems. Then I cooked up some quinces. The bitterness of the quince and the sweetness of the pears and peaches were delicious together. But over three days itchiness increased, and then suddenly, the hives were back. This wasn't just a little patch of hives, it was full blown, over my whole body. I stopped eating fruit. In 24 hours, the hives was hardly visible. In three days later it was gone, although some tendency to have itchy skin remained.

My belief that fruit was healthy to eat, has caused me quite a bit of grief. I suffered for a over a year with chronic hives. Recently, it was only the fact that I was on a restricted diet, that I learned how excess fruit can upset my normal good health. That was a lesson I needed to learn.

I'm still not entirely on top of this problem. It may be that either green tea of coffee influence the development of itchy skin too. Perhaps that only occurs when I've been eating too much fruit. There is another story too. The story about fructose in our diet. That's an area where the science is either unknown or in dispute. I will write about that in the website at some future time.

We all have faulty ideas that undermine out efforts to be healthy. Often the idea that's causing the problem, is the one we are most sure, is no problem at all. That's a rediscovery for me, in my life. And I've seen it repeated several times in science too. For instance Crick and Watson struggled for several years to prove what RNA "did." What they "knew" stopped them from finding the answer. RNA didn't do anything, it was just a messenger.

What Foods do you Crave for?

You know that young children given free choice of food actually choose a diet that's remarkably mixed and healthy. Our bodies tell us what we need, unless your body has become damaged by poor eating habits over a long period of time. This comes back to homeostasis. Your body will create cravings to eat certain foods in order to restore homeostasis.

If your system is out-of-order, those cravings will restore you to the unhealthy state you consider normal.

For most of us that means we crave too much sugar, too many carbohydrates (more sugar), making us continually "hungry" and leading to metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, and a cascade of end of life health problems. 75% of the population are on that trajectory, CAUSED by the "healthy diet" we are eating that's not healthy at all.

Making Saturated Coffee

If you do as Open Future Health suggests, cut out the sugar, and cut back on the carbohydrates, your weight will begin to fall. You are probably eating 300gm of carbohydrate a day. If you can cut to less than 120gm a day, you'll most likely begin to lose weight. That's one "secret."

Another open secret I keep repeating is, "make your dinner the last thing you eat each day," followed by "change what you eat for breakfast." That simple formula will allow everyone to lose weight if they want to.

NOTE: two things are important. BOTH; what you eat, and when you eat it.

If you eat as instructed the only problem you might have is a mild craving for something sweet or carbohydrate between 8pm and bed-time. It's not real hunger; your glucose levels are falling, just ignore it. Drink saturated tea or coffee if you wish, by adding butter. (As illustrated with my coffee above.)

Three to four hours after your evening meal your glucose levels will be normal, insulin will turn off, and normal fat burning will begin and run all night. In the morning, if you avoid ALL sugar and carbohydrate, and eat a cooked breakfast, you won't feel hungry until lunch time. (Or maybe until much later.) And fat burning will continue, until you break the cycle by eating carbohydrate.

Once you give yourself a sugar boost, by eating sweet or carbohydrate, you'll begin craving more every two hours. Back to being continuously hungry.

Seed and Nut Crackers

These nut and seed based cracker biscuits have almost zero carbohydrates. You can butter them, of have butter and cheese, or cream cheese on them. If you are having a drink, when others are "eating" you can eat ONE of these with the topping and be perfectly satisfied. (If you eat too many; you'll have very soft poo. Too much fruit does that too.) Search for nut and seed crackers online and you'll find many versions.

Most people will prefer the variety, of the mixed diet, where nothing is banned, just restricted. You'll feel a little bit hungry, and have to say "no" to your craving for carbs once a twice a day, but that's not too hard to do. "Success." That's how my wife chooses to eat.

I've chosen to be a bit stricter. I cut back on carbohydrates to less than 50gm a day. When you do that, in 7 days or less, your body will be in ketosis, running on fatty acids and ketones, instead of glucose. When in ketosis, you never feel hungry. You never feel a craving for sugar or for carbohydrates. For energy, you MUST eat a lot of fat, and that's both tasty and enjoyable. I do have cravings when in ketosis, for fruit. (I wrote about my problems with fruit above.) You can eat fruit, but not too much at a time. (1/4 of an apple.)

Many people in ketosis, living a Banting lifestyle, make a choice to eat a meal only twice a day. That's a decision I made about two weeks ago. It seems to work well, there is no hunger, and it frees up your day. Very convenient actually.

Many Medical Experts Are Certain They know What a Healthy Diet Is.

The wrong ideas of Ancel Keys, were widely accepted because they seemed to agree with good common sense. One gram of fat contains 9 calories and one gram of carbohydrate contains 4 calories. Surely it's obvious that eating high density fat, causes people to be fat. That sounds like science, but it has zero relationship to human biochemistry, and the way fats and carbohydrates are metabolised in the body.

Prof. Richard Feinman

In the 1970's there was very little real dietary science. Dietician's were not scientifically trained. (They are still not scientifically trained for the most part.) Anyone trained in biochemistry was in high demand in many industries, so almost nobody with that degree of training, took any notice of human nutrition. Biochemist Richard Feinman, taught human metabolism to medical students for many years. Late in his career (2000), he was asked to prepare some lectures as part of a standard course in human nutrition. It was then that he discovered the non-science, that passed for nutritional knowledge. He was shocked that such faulty material still existed in the university system, and was being taught to medical students, nurses and dietician's.

In the previous blog I referred you to the Women's Health Initiative (1991). Today we might look at the Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial. MrFit (Pronounced Mr. Fit). The director of the study, Jeremiah Stamler, a heart disease specialist, and associate of Ancel Keys was confident of success. This was an early sign that "Everyone knows what a healthy diet is," might not be as simple as everyone expects. The trial began in 1973, and from a group of 361,000 middle aged men, they chose 12,000, who were high risk for future for heart disease. They formed a control group, and a multiple intervention group.

There were FOUR things they strongly encouraged the men in the multiple intervention group to do. These four things are still part of what "everyone knows." Stop smoking, take blood pressure medication if needed, eat a low-cholesterol diet, and eat a low-fat diet. So the "healthy diet" emphasised eating lots of vegetables, drinking skim milk, eating margarine, only two eggs a week, avoiding meat and cutting out deserts. The control group could do what they liked.

If you ask people what a healthy diet is, most people today would still consider that the diet these men ate was healthy. As I keep saying we all have a lot of faulty dietary ideas, and our wrong ideas get us into trouble. There is an essay about the history of wrong dietary ideas here.

The men in the intervention group were quite successful in making lifestyle changes. The intervention group did have lower rates of total cholesterol, yet the men in the intervention group died at a higher rate than those in the control group. The trial was stopped. This FAILURE was embarrassing and the result was set aside, because it wasn't understandable. Clearly they did not know what caused heart disease. Years later Dr Stamler was asked what went wrong. He replied honestly; "I don't know."

This was fairly clear evidence away back in 1982, that total cholesterol is not the villain that causes heart disease. Last year, 2015, cholesterol was officially taken off the list of dietary concerns. There are two reasons. You can't control serum cholesterol by dietary methods. HDL-C is proven beneficial and LDL-C is not shown to be harmful, although a question remains about small dense particles in LDL-C. That raises a serious question about taking statins, but I don't know enough about that to comment.

MrFit was also a weak pointer, to suggest that the low fat diet, might not the as "healthy" as everyone was thinking either. Today, forty-three years on, we can see that the low fat diet begins to cause problems in older people. The evidence for that is all about us. Scientifically that was best demonstrated by the Women's Health Initiative Dietary Study, 1991-1998, and reported as "having no health benefits" in 2006.

The National Obesity (UK) Forum's Ten Points:

Around the world there are now numerous conferences where health professionals are educating each other about the health value of low-carbohydrate and high-fat diets. The National Obesity Forum (UK), just concluded, is an example. The benefits include; good weight control, stable glucose control for type 2 diabetes, a cure for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and we expect many other benefits because metabolic syndrome disappears.

National Obesity Forum's Ten Points

Eating fat does not make you fat.

Bad Nutritional Information is Confusing

This is simple bio-chemistry. Dietary fat's can only become belly fat, if there is a gross excess of glucose in your system. Fat when digested forms free fatty acids, and are normally used as fuel.

In the presence of excess glucose, which is common in modern high carbohydrate diets, glucose is converted into fatty acids, and glucose is used to make glycerol phosphate. That enables the building of the triglycerides that become belly fat. This process is controlled by the hormone insulin. Eat a low-carbohydrate diet that normally keeps insulin turned off.

Saturated fat does not cause heart disease.

Fat does not clog your arteries. Full-fat dairy is likely protective. Butter is much better for you than margarine. Lard which was the fat our grandparents used is 40% saturated fat, and 59% unsaturated fat, and the main fat is oleic acid (44%) the same fat that's in olive oil. There is no correlation between saturated dietary fat and heart disease.

Avoid processed foods labeled "low fat", "lite", "low cholesterol."

These foods will be tasteless unless they are sugar filled in some way. The sugar can be disguised in labels using more than 100 names, for various manufactured carbohydrates, all of which are just sugar.

Limit starchy and refined carbohydrates.

Starchy foods, and manufactured foods, are preferred by retailers because they don't spoil. They are shelf safe. But they are essentially just sugar, and are highly fattening. Breakfast cereals and low fat "slim" crackers are among the worst foods, they are not satiating, and you want more, when you've just had some.

Optimum sugar consumption for health is ZERO.

The sugar industry tries to tell us, that we can eat sugar if we like it. "Sugar is part of a balanced diet," they say, "All we need to do is exercise more." The demand that you must exercise more, comes from industry not from science. Industry wants to maintain sales.

Industrial vegetable oils should be avoided.

Many seed oils from plants that don't seem to be oily, were promoted to lower your heart disease risk by reducing total cholesterol. But these manufactured oils have proven to be harmful to health, and cholesterol turns out to be protective rather than harmful.

Stop counting calories.

You cannot count calories in any sensible way. If you eat only one extra mouthful a day, you'll get fat trying to do that. It's simple: count carbohydrates, roughly is near enough. Control how often you eat. In particular don't eat after your evening meal, until breakfast. Try then to eat a breakfast free of carbohydrates. If in a week or so you are not losing weight, stop cheating, eat less carbohydrate and eat more fat.

You cannot outrun a bad diet.

Despite what the sugar industry says, exercising is not a sensible way to lose weight. The Green Prescription, promoted in New Zealand, is a BAD idea if you are overweight, but it's a GOOD idea once your weight is near normal. The Swedish Experts Committee made it clear in 2013, that exercise has zero or minimal effect on body mass.

Snacking will make you fat.

Each time you snack, you are likely to boost glucose in the blood, and bring insulin into play to remove the excess glucose. That is a normal process, but if insulin is "on" almost all day, because you keep snacking, you damage your homeostatic setting, and eventually you damage your body. Build a long fast into every day. A 14 hour daily fast is easily possible.

Evidence-based nutrition should be incorporated into education curricula for all health care professionals.

The public expects doctors and nurses to know about eating a healthy diet. In fact they usually have very poor knowledge, and most of what they do know is wrong. They will know about the Standard American Diet (SAD), or it's equivalent in your country. Sadly, nutrition professionals are also well trained in using the SAD, and usually know very little about ketogenic diets, and the theory behind them.

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