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Oil Your Hair, Not Your Food

If you put oil in your dog’s food, it supposedly makes his coat glossy. If we eat too much fat, we can end up with a coat that is too glossy, with too much oil on our skin and hair. But what if your hair is dry? Does that mean that you should eat more fat? Definitely not. To find cases of people with a genuine dietary deficiency of fat, you have to look at people who were being fed nothing but sugar intravenously. If your hair is dry, add oil directly to the hair, not to your food!

One effective way to add oil to your hair is with a hot oil treatment. I tried this yesterday and am thrilled with the results. My hair is curly and very thick, and it tends to misbehave, especially in the summer. So I heated up a few tablespoons of olive oil in the microwave for a few seconds (not too hot!) and applied it directly to my hair. I couldn’t believe how much oil my hair absorbed! So I heated up more oil and added that. I let the oil soak in for about 15 minutes, then I shampooed my hair: lather and rinse, no repeat.

My hair turned out soft and manageable. I think that next time I’ll try a mixture of olive and coconut oil, to see how that works!

Photo by Internet Archive Book Images

Bill Clinton Eats Plants!

A few years ago, Dr. John McDougall wrote a controversial essay explaining that Bill Clinton was probably suffering from the side effects of his coronary bypass operation.

Fortunately, Bill Clinton eventually got the message about a healthy diet. To lose weight for his daughter’s wedding, Clinton joined the growing list of powerful people who have adopted a healthy, low-fat, plant-based diet. Evidently, he’s still sticking to his healthy diet. Good for him!

Photo by marctasman

Why I Don’t Worry About Sugar

Most of the people I talk to about nutrition are convinced that carbohydrates are their enemy. They think that “sugar spikes” cause diabetes. (They have it backwards. Sugar spikes are the result, not the cause of diabetes!) People seem to be particularly worried about the effects of a sugar called fructose. Personally, I’m not worried about carbohydrates, even fructose, as long as it’s found in an unrefined plant source. I even think that adding a spoonful of sugar or perhaps some maple syrup every now and then could help a lot of people stick to a healthy low-fat, plant-based diet.

Genetically, human beings are almost identical to chimpanzees. Our DNA is almost exactly the same as theirs, which means that our body chemistry is also almost exactly the same as theirs. Since chimpanzees, like many other apes, are mainly fruit-eaters (frugivores), it stands to reason that they probably thrive on a diet that contains a lot of fructose, which is a sugar that is common in fruit. However, the fructose that wild chimpanzees eat is diluted with water and fiber and packaged along with plenty of other nutrients, along with antioxidants and other good things.

Yes, you can make yourself sick by eating too much sugar. However, it would be difficult for most people to get that much sugar from eating fruit! One study found that eating way too much added sugar (at least 25% of total calories!) is associated with only a relatively small increase in the amount of fat (triglycerides) in the blood and a small decrease in the level of HDL (“good”) cholesterol. Of course, if you are having a problem with triglycerides, you should probably cut way back on your consumption of table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup.

Sugar does rot your teeth, at least if you don’t brush carefully after meals. As a result, chimpanzees are prone to dental caries (cavities), just as humans are. However, wild chimpanzees don’t seem to be fat and diabetic and they don’t get heart disease. So why should I imagine that I would get fat and diabetic and suffer from heart disease if I ate a lot of fruit?

Eating lots of sugar does not cause diabetes. Instead, cow’s milk seems to be the culprit in causing type 1 diabetes. A diet that is high in fats and animal protein seems to be the underlying cause in type 2 diabetes.

Eating too many calories from any kind of diet tends to make people gain weight. However, you gain a lot more weight from extra calories from a fatty diet than from extra calories from a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet. Converting sugar to fat wastes calories. That’s why it’s hard to fatten on carbs but easy to fatten on fats.

Of course, there are a few people with genetic disorders that make it hard for them to tolerate fructose. One of them is hereditary fructose intolerance. Another is fructose malabsorption.

Hereditary fructose intolerance is a potentially fatal genetic disorder that occurs in about 1 out of 20,000 people in European countries. The disorder results from the lack of an enzyme called aldolase B. In people with this disorder, eating anything containing fructose, including sucrose (table sugar), sets off a series of complicated metabolic problems that can ultimately cause liver damage. The only solution is for these people to avoid any foods that contain sucrose or fructose.

Fructose malabsorption is an unrelated problem that is far more common but much less serious than hereditary fructose intolerance. Fructose malabsorption results from the absence of fructose transporters in the cells that line the small intestine. Without fructose transporters, the person cannot absorb fructose from his or her food. Even people who have some fructose transporters might be able to absorb only a limited amount of fructose. The remaining fructose will then remain inside the intestines, where it will be fermented by bacteria. The result is syndrome that looks a lot like lactose intolerance: gas and diarrhea. Fructose malabsorption is a common but often undetected cause of recurrent abdominal pain in children.

Fortunately, I don’t have hereditary fructose intolerance or fructose malabsorption. This means that I can eat as much fruit as I like!

Note: For a clear explanation of how the body handles sugar, see my book Thin Diabetes, Fat Diabetes: Prevent Type 1, Cure Type 2.

Why I Don’t Take Fish Oil

I have never liked seafood. It smells bad to me. I’m so sensitive to that smell that I don’t even like sitting next to someone who is eating seafood. Even the idea of taking a fish oil capsule makes me queasy because I don’t want to end up tasting or smelling fish if I belch. So I was greatly relieved to discover that human beings don’t need to eat fish or take fish oil! The diseases that fish oil is supposed to help prevent are rare to nonexistent among people who eat a low-fat, plant-based diet. Also, a recent study showed that vegans (people who don’t eat any animal foods) had plenty of the long-chain omega 3 fatty acids in their bloodstream, even though they weren’t eating any of the long-chain omega 3 fatty acids and were eating relatively little of their precursor, alpha-linolenic acid. (For an explanation of the essential fatty acids, click here.)

Fish oil is fat from a fish. An oil is just a fat that is liquid at room temperature. The fat from fish tends to stay liquid at room temperature because it is rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids. (For an explanation of the different kinds of fats, click here. Fish oil contains a lot of omega 3 fatty acids, which are much less plentiful than omega 6 fatty acids in the standard American diet. Like humans, however, fish CANNOT make their own supply of omega 3 fatty acids. The omega 3 fatty acids in fish came from the plants at the bottom of their food chain.

Your body can make all the saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids that it needs. However, it can’t make omega 6 or omega 3 fatty acids. The only two fatty acids that are considered essential (which means that they have to be found ready-made in your food) in human nutrition are an omega 6 fatty acid called linoleic acid and an omega 3 fatty acid called alpha-linolenic acid. However, it’s extremely rare to find anyone with a real dietary deficiency of either one. It’s the sort of thing that happens only in tube-fed patients who are being fed fat fat-free solutions or being given an unbalanced fat supplement. Their needs for these essential fatty acids can be met by rubbing a small amount of vegetable oil on their skin.

Your body uses the omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids as raw materials to make eicosanoids and leukotrienes, which are signaling molecules that play important roles in inflammation and immunity. These molecules also serve as messengers in the nervous system. Because the eicosanoids that are made from omega 6 fatty acids interact with the ones made from omega 3 fatty acids, it’s probably important to get a reasonable balance between these two kinds of fatty acid in the diet. The most sensible way to do this is to cut way back on fat consumption and eat lots of fresh vegetables. For an extra margin of safety, you can add a spoonful of ground flaxseed to your cereal in the morning. Flaxseed is a good source of alpha-linolenic acid.

The omega 3 fatty acid that is found in plants is alpha-linolenic acid. Like fish, human beings can lengthen the carbon chain of alpha-linolenic acid to produce other fatty acids that the human body needs: docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). DHA is found in the cell membranes in the nervous system, including the retina of the eye. EPA is used to make some important eicosanoids that help to moderate the effects of the eicosanoids that are made from omega 6 fatty acids.

The Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences does not consider DHA or EPA to be essential nutrients, which means that those fatty acids don’t have to be found in your food. For a technical discussion of which fatty acids are essential and how much of each you need, see this report from the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences: https://www.nap.edu/read/10490/chapter/10

Because of the complicated roles that the essential fatty acids and DHA and EPA play in the immune and nervous system, there’s been a lot of interest in using supplements of these fatty acids as drugs. As with any drug treatment, the decision of how and when to use these supplements should be based on clinical trials, whenever possible. Since most of the diseases that fish oil is being used to treat are rare in populations that eat a low-fat, plant-based diet, it makes sense to try correcting the diet before using fish oil supplements.

It is theoretically possible that some people, especially those who have trouble absorbing fat from their food or who have a rare metabolic disorder, might benefit from taking some form of fat supplement. However, many people refuse for various reasons to use fish products. Fortunately for those people, DHA and EPA supplements made from marine algae are available.

High-Fat Diet and Cigarette Smoking Cause Low Back Pain

Most people think that chronic low back pain is simply due to wear and tear on the muscles and cartilage of the spinal column. In reality, one of the major causes of low back pain is poor circulation to the structures of the intervertebral disks, as a result of atherosclerosis and/or cigarette smoking. That’s why low back pain is most common in the populations that also have high rates of heart attack!

Check out the review article I wrote about this subject for chiropractors. If you want to keep your back in good shape, start by keeping your arteries clean! If your total cholesterol is below 150 mg/dL, which is easy if you eat a low-fat, purely plant-based diet, your arteries become self-cleaning!

Cigarette smoking makes the problem worse because the nicotine causes the arteries to tighten up. It’s like putting your thumb over the end of a garden hose. It raises the pressure but decreases the flow.

Photo by sandiegopersonalinjuryattorney

Don’t Buy the Snake Oil, Or the Butterfat!

I wrote this as a letter to the editor of Mother Earth News, which is a generally good publication that sometimes publishes bad dietary advice:

In The Fats You Need for a Healthy Diet (August/September 2011 of Mother Earth News), Oscar H. Will, III, provides dangerously misleading dietary advice. Saturated fat does not “do a body good.” You don’t need to get any saturated, monounsaturated, or trans fatty acids whatsoever from the diet. Only two fatty acids are essential, which means that they must come from the food. One is an omega-6 fatty acid called linoleic acid. The other is an omega-3 fatty acid called alpha-linolenic acid. However, the dietary requirement for these fatty acids is so small that you can find true cases of deficiency only in extreme situations, such as people who were being fed nothing but sugar intravenously. For those patients, the requirement for essential fatty acids could be met by rubbing a small amount of vegetable oil on the skin. Fat deficiency is practically nonexistent because even a diet based on low-fat grains and vegetables provides enough of the essential fatty acids

The usual problem is that the person is eating too much fat. Excess fat of any kind promotes obesity, atherosclerosis, diabetes, and other chronic diseases. The omega-3 fatty acids tend to have a blood-thinning effect, which offsets some of the effect of their contribution to atherosclerosis. An excess of the polyunsaturated fatty acids (omega-3 and omega-6) has been linked to an increased risk of cancer, possibly because of their effect on the immune system.

Even vegetarians and vegans often eat too much fat, and they tend to eat a disproportionately large amount of omega-6 relative to omega-3 fatty acids because of a large intake of nuts and oils. The obvious solution to this problem is to restrict the overall fat intake and add a small amount of ground flaxseed to the diet. Flaxseed is an excellent source of the relatively scarce omega-3 fatty acids.

Conjugated linolenic acid is found almost exclusively in foods of animal origin. Yet nutritional epidemiology studies show that those foods promote the sorts of diseases that the dairy industry is claiming that conjugated linolenic acid is supposed to help prevent.

Sources:

http://gorillaprotein.com/efa/
https://www.nap.edu/read/10490/chapter/10
http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2007nl/aug/oils.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9860369?dopt=Citation

Frying Onions Without Oil

Nearly every time I cook a meal, the first step is to fry some onions. When people hear that I cook without fat, they want to know how I fry my onions. Believe it or not, I fry onions in a dry pan. Sometimes, I even fry onions in a plain stainless steel frying pan or pressure cooker. You don’t even need a nonstick coating or any of that oil-in-a-can stuff.

The secret is to keep a cup of water handy. When the onions start to stick, I add a splash of water, which boils off almost instantly. Sometimes, I keep on frying the onions until they are nicely browned. This caramelizes the sugars and gives a rich flavor. If you want to cook something fancy, you can also fry things in a splash of wine!

Needless Tragedy: Multiple Sclerosis and Jacqueline du Pré

The movie Hilary and Jackie tells the tragic story of a little girl (Jacqueline du Pré) who grew up to be one of the world’s greatest cellists, only to have her musical career and then her life cut short by multiple sclerosis. The truly sickening part of the story is that the importance of diet in arresting the development of that debilitating and sometimes fatal disease had been published long before du Pré started having symptoms of the disease. Tragically, the medical profession is still largely ignoring the role of a strict, low-fat diet in arresting multiple sclerosis.

Photo by amadeusrecord

My Cholesterol Is Too Low for the Heart Attack Risk Calculator!

I tried to use the National Cholesterol Education Program’s Risk Assessment Tool for Estimating Your 10-Year Risk of Having a Heart Attack. I entered my data on the form, and I got back an error message, telling me to enter a total cholesterol value of 130 or greater! According to the calculator, even if my cholesterol went up to 130 mg/dL, I’d still have less than a 1% chance of having a heart attack within the next 10 years.

(Note: here’s a live version of the tool, which does not give an error message: https://www.cardiosmart.org/healthwise/calc/006/calc006)

If I ran the National Cholesterol Education Program, I’d really educate people about cholesterol. I’d tell them the simple truth: that when you keep your total cholesterol at less than 150 mg/dL, coronary artery disease ceases to exist. Nearly everyone can easily achieve that goal by eating a low-fat (<10% of calories), plant-based diet.

Instead, the NCEP tells people that a total cholesterol level of up to 200 mg/dL is “desirable.” Lots of people with this “desirable” cholesterol level are dying of heart attacks, which is why many people, including many doctors, are confused.Photo by winnifredxoxo