The Deadliest Diagnosis

Let me preface this post by saying a few things:

• If you're going to read, devote enough time to finish...at least a half hour unless you're a bionic speed reader.  This post is VERY long, unlike most of my posts.  The information is too useful to leave out.
• I am not forcing the idea of the "Zone Diet" on anyone.  I am just providing the facts given by one man who seems to have found something that works.  I fully support that everyone should find the way of eating that works for them and that feels best.  These ideas can simply be a support in mode of thinking when you decide how to eat.  Or it can be nothing to you at all.  We are all free to take what we want out of theories.

What is the deadliest diagnosis today?  The topic of silent inflammation is an interesting one.  In a lecture given by Barry Sears, PhD, I learned a whole lot about inflammation and its’ nature and causes.  Inflammation is traditionally defined as redness, swelling, and pain.  The modern approach to treating inflammation is anti-inflammatory drugs (Aspirin, Aleve, Motrin, Cortisone and the list goes on).  All these drugs do is change the level of chemical in the body that causes pain.  A more dangerous type of inflammation (discussed by TIME magazine) is silent inflammation.  This kind of inflammation can linger for decades without even presenting pain, and causing more harm over length of time.  This inflammation below the perception of pain attacks the brain, heart, and immune system.  If under attack for long enough, the body is then riddled with cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, etc.  The purpose of this post is to help us wake up to the possibility of silent inflammation within ourselves even if we don’t notice it, and how we can try to combat it.  Silent inflammation is the root of the cause of so many deaths.  By using diet as medicine, we can keep it in check.

Obesity and type 2 Diabetes are some of the most deadly diseases in America today (caused directly by silent inflammation).  Asthma, allergies, and any condition ending in “itis” is caused by silent inflammation.  There are three stages of disease; in America we tend to focus on the last stage.  This last stage is chronic disease, it’s what we see the doctor for.  We can then take drugs every day the rest of our lives to control inflammation.  The problem with this approach toward wellness is that these drugs have side effects such as immune suppression, osteoporosis, heart failure, and finally: death.  More people die in America from taking the prescribed dosage of anti-inflammatory medicine, than from AIDS.  So what can we do?  We can think of our food as a drug.  Yes we eat dinner with our families, holiday meals, but it is so much more than that.  All of the nutrients we eat at every meal interact with each other to control our hormonal responses.  Hormones are ten times more powerful than any pill you take.  The food you eat can either increase or decrease the inflammation in your body.

I can’t go into the explanation of specific hormones and their reactions without writing a short book, but if you’re interested you can read up on insulin, glucagon, and eicosanoids.  Eicosanoids aren’t a popular topic in the world of nutrition today, and they are very sparingly discussed, but they are VERY important to this process.

Where did all of this come from?  To start, let’s talk about the increased consumption of refined carbohydrates (bagels, pasta, junk food). Have you ever seen a bagel tree, or a pasta bush?  Nope!  On top of this increase, our levels of Omega 6 fatty acids has sky rocketed…this means more oils we never used before.  This adds a flame to the kerosene when we’re talking about inflammation.  One thing that does control inflammation is the consumption of Omega 3 fatty acids.  When consumed at high enough levels, this can be the biggest factor that can control inflammation.  Unfortunately our intake of these acids have decreased significantly.

This is mostly a case of good genes turning bad.  The genes of our ancestors are now being turned against us.  We’re changing the expression of our genes.  Thousands of years ago they never knew where the next meal would come from.  These days we define famine as more than two hours between meals and snacks.  Years ago the only medical treatment that could prevent you from dying early was a strong immune system.

We’re told that low fat diets are the way to go.  “If no fat touches your lips, it won’t touch your hips”…right?  Hormonally, not so much.  Fat is not the villain!  Replacing fats with carbohydrates does not reduce the risk of coronary disease, according to leading nutrition experts.

We can re-think our epidemic of obesity not as sloth and laziness.  Obesity is adipose tissue and excess fat.  When these tissues grow, it’s a tumor.  When we think of obesity as a tumor, the options of treatment becomes different.  We say we eat too much and don’t exercise enough…so we try to eat less and exercise more.  Somehow this doesn’t seem to be working! 

What does a calorie really represent?  A calorie is nothing, if you put it in a furnace and turn the heat up, you see how much energy is released.  This process is different in the body.  The calories come in the body and are converted into chemical energy (we’re talking the process of ATP and how it runs the body.  Without ATP, we’re dead within seconds).  When thinking of metabolism, the metabolic rate simply tells you how efficient your body is in turning those calories into ATP.  Those with a slow metabolism are efficient in making the chemicals of life.  Those with a fast one are not as good at making the necessary chemicals…they pay the price down the road that they never anticipated.

Our genetic tendencies to become overweight is just the same as our tendency to reach the height we’re at.  This doesn’t mean we will become fat, it just means we have that gene.  This is all about how we express our genes.  Obesity is a fat trap…the excess calories we can’t use at that time are converted into fat and stored.  Those who are overweight aren’t bad people, they simply have more of a fat trap.  They have to eat more food to feel okay to function throughout their day.  If we consume too many calories, then we’re seen as a glutton.  It’s important to know whether you have genetic predisposition for obesity, and to watch our your body expresses it’s genes. 

If we don’t have a fat trap, we erase the calories quickly and make enough ATP and life is great…right?  Like those people who eat excessively and never gain a pound.  The fact is they are simply inefficient at converting calories into adequate ATP.  They too have to consume more calories, otherwise their cells run out of fuel.  They have a high metabolic rate, which seems like a good idea, except the calories they’re consuming are wasted in free radical generation.  Simply because they can eat all they want and look great in designer clothes, doesn’t mean their insides are healthy.  They are putting themselves at risk, and that is how the aging process is accelerated.

In either case, what happens when those who have a fat trap or a high metabolism try to cut back on calories?  Easy answer: starvation.  When we lose fat rapidly, our body starts using itself, literally.  Our muscles and organs are cannibalized.  That’s why when overweight people claim that they don’t eat a lot, they’re telling the truth…they really don’t.  If the fat trap is operating (can’t use the fat) and we reduce calories, the body has to get the energy from somewhere.  First choice is muscle and then organ tissue.  This is how highly motivated people lose weight, plateau, and gain weight back again.  This is the starvation format: they must either have more calories, or they slow down.  It’s all an energy balance.  Overweight people don’t keep expanding until they take up the whole room, nor do people who lose weight keep losing weight….eventually the body will balance itself out.

Unfortunately there is no cure for heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and obesity.  But we can manage these conditions over a lifetime.  We can keep it within our reach so it doesn’t get out of hand.  Does the obesity cause inflammation, or does inflammation cause obesity?  When there’s no clear answer, tons of smart people get together to talk for days and figure it out.  Harvard medical school held a conference to discuss and finally reached the conclusion that inflammation proceeds obesity…”we don’t have an obesity epidemic, we have an inflammation epidemic.  It’s not obesity that causes the disease; it’s only when the obesity spreads to other parts of the body that we get chronic disease.”  One treatment for diabetics is to give them Aspirin…this balances blood sugar almost automatically.  The problem there is they have to take a very high dose and this kind of dosage continually holds the risk of death.  Dr. Barry Sears asks what if we had an anti-inflammatory diet that we could use day in and day out to ensure our good health?

It’s a fact by data that overweight people live longer in the US than normal weight people.  Many obese people are actually healthy.  There are actual health benefits from extra fat, until it starts to spread into the organs.  One of the issues with rapid fat loss is that as you lose a lot of weight fat cells shrink.  The toxins are squeezed out of the fat cells into the blood stream.  The toxins then look for the next best place that is rich in fat….which is the brain.

Understanding the concept of the glycemic load measures the rate at which carbohydrates enter the blood stream.  Before this system came to be known nutrition was simple: there were good (complex) carbs, and bad (simple sugars) carbs.  Then someone did an experiment that proved that bad carbs entered the blood stream slower than the good carbs.  Unfortunately the glycemic index is useless in terms of the real world (it’s great in laboratories).  It’s been impossible to test the real effects of carbs from vegetables (it’s impossible to get one person to eat pounds of greens in one day).  What’s important is to think about the glycemic load (this measures the amount and the quality of carbs and how one meal effects the body).  For example the glycemic index is about the same for a serving size of a carrot, a potato, and a Coca-Cola.  The glycemic load, however, is drastically different…the carrot is the lowest, then the potato, and the Coca-Cola throws blood sugar into a roller coaster.

Harvard medical school tells us it’s important to rate everything we eat based on glycemic load.  The rate is higher for heart disease, diabetes, and obesity the higher the glycemic load in the diet.  So, we all know junk food is bad (very high glycemic load).  What we sometimes don’t consider is the glycemic load of “healthy” foods such as rice, pasta, and whole grains.

Ok so all of this basically sucks and we’re all doomed…what are we going to do, right?  Wrong!  It can be simple.  Dr. Sears weighs the pros and cons of major diets followed by most people in the US (in the end one is the best to reduce silent inflammation).  There’s Atkins (carbs are bad, evil, don’t eat them especially in the beginning).  The next is the Zone diet (not too much carbs but you need some, carbs in moderation).  Next we have the diet promoted by the US government, the Food Pyramid.  This is the high glycemic load diet (the typical American diet).

First discussed is the Atkins diet.  At first dieters lose a lot of weight, but most of it is water and muscle mass.  They have eggs, sausage, and steaks!  This diet is difficult to maintain not because people cheat, but because the hormonal reactions are difficult to manage.  Who would want to cheat on this diet with what you get to eat?  People typically lose a lot of weight in the first 6 months and then gain it back in the second half of the year.  Another issue without a lot of the good healthy carbs is that people miss the vitamins and minerals.

Next the Food Pyramid, which preaches that fat is bad.  The government spends billions of our tax dollars to push the idea that fat is bad for us.  Telling us to eat lots of grains and starches, the USDA’s primary goal is to promote agriculture and business.  What do we grow the most of in the US?  Grains and starches!  Easy formula huh?  Dr. Sears joked: “How dare I say that the US government may be lying to you?”  The Harvard medical school said “The USDA food pyramid is built on shaky scientific ground.  It offers wishy washy scientifically un-sounded advice.  It has never been tested to see if it really works.”  Would you go to a doctor who asked you to try a medicine that has never been tested?  Unfortunately the USDA food pyramid has been adopted by other countries in the world as the “right way to eat.”

Next we come to the Zone diet (between the two extremes).  The Zone diet isn’t high in anything…any diet that is “high” or “low” in anything, is probably hard to sustain.  The kind of diet we want to be eating uses moderation: moderate fat, moderate protein, moderate carbs.  This is based on the glycemic load: lots of fruits, vegetables, and a balance of carbs and fat.  Moderate in the carbs and fats.  It’s flexible: you eat anything you want (within reason) as long as you can balance out the carbs and fats.  This is more a way of life than a diet.  It’s sustainable for a lifetime.  In every study, the Zone diet has been found superior in insulin control, blood glucose control, blood lipid control, appetite suppression, fat loss, and reduction of inflammation.  It’s confusing why most doctors are still recommending the USDA food pyramid diet to patients, when in a test done at Harvard medical school showed that without fail, the Zone diet was more effective in reducing chronic disease.

This can be really confusing without a personal computer to calculate everything you eat.  Dr. Sears tries to put it into simpler terms to use in the real world: for every one gram of fat, consume two grams of protein, and three grams of carbs at every meal.  It’s simple as 1 2 3!  The trick is to do it the best you can every day.  To understand this balance, we can use simple rhymes such as “protein moves around, carbs grow on the ground.”  So fish and chicken = protein.  Carbs can be the hard one: wheat, breads, pasta is obviously a carb.  But what is asparagus?  Welllllll it grows on the ground…..ding ding, carb!  Apples are carbs too.  Fruits and vegetables are low glycemic load carbs though, which is what sometimes confuses people thinking about carbs.  At each meal divide the plate into three equal sections.  One section is for one serving of protein no bigger than a hand (yes some hands are bigger than others, tough luck for the small boned people!)  The other two thirds are filled with low glycemic load carbs.  A hint is, these carbs should have COLOR!  Then you add fat.  How much?  A DASH = a SMALL amount.  Mostly mono-unsaturated fat (olive oil, guacamole).  The burning question (and possibly the decision maker for some) is: can I drink alcohol?  Good news is that alcohol pulls out the color from what it’s made from.  Those properties that pull out the color (in high concentrations) are anti-inflammatory agents.  The bad news is the more alcohol you drink, the more pro-inflammation you produce.  So we come back to moderation.  That means one glass of wine is good, two may be pushing it….one bottle empty on your own = you may have more to worry about than your glycemic load.  At the end, the Zone diet looks a lot like the Mediterranean diet.  The one difference is you eat less high glycemic load carbs like pastas and breads, and replace those with fruits and vegetables.  More vegetables is always the answer, because 200 calories per day is the desired amount of vegetables to be eaten in one day…this is two pounds of vegetables.  If the Italians can do it, we can do it.

Dr. Sears also goes into detailed studies done with animals that are deprived of fats.  Quick summary = not good…we need fat!  The only way to squeeze off inflammation is to control the diet.  He discusses a patient of his in Mexico who weighed 1,230 pounds.  This man was obviously highly inflamed.  Desperate, the patient worked with Dr. Sears.  He has lost 400 pounds so far and he has a lot more to go before he reaches 200 pounds.  He’s already eating as if he weighs 200 pounds…it’s hard for this man to eat as much as Dr. Sears wants him to eat.  And the shocking fact is that all of his blood work is normal and 100% healthy.  He may be the healthiest man on our side of the world!  Yes he has a tumor (obesity), but it is benign and it’s still shrinking in size.

The last point Dr. Sears stresses is the importance of taking fish oil.  When taken in consistent high dosage and when one uses the best quality, this is a major anti-inflammatory drug.  After discussing a study that showed that even when pigs were living on a “krispy kreme diet”, if they took the fish oil, their inflammation was kept at bay.  This doesn’t mean we should try to live on a krispy kreme diet, but it gets the point across.  He also discusses other examples of treatment of extreme illness with fish oil as a last resort, and that patients had miraculous recoveries.  For example, multiple sclerosis is inflammation of the brain.  A study that gave patients tons of fish oil and advised them to eat more fruits and vegetables, patients were having improved symptoms.  It’s not that the progression was stopped, it was literally beginning to reverse.  This is because drugs don’t get in the brain readily…but long chain fatty acids can.  If we get enough in the brain, we reduce inflammation.  Another study discussed the use of fish oil to treat children with ADHD…it worked!  Childrens’ behavior significantly improved but as soon as the children stopped taking the fish oil their behavior once again turned bad.  I’m not going to discuss this study at length because this post is already painfully long.  Point is, the clinical benefits of using fish oil as a drug is robust.

Unfortunately there is no fish in this world today that is not contaminated.  Even the purest kind, still toxic on some level.  So when you buy the fish oil at the health food store, you’re buying the sewer of the sea (in capsule form).  It was discovered how to make pure, concentrated fish oil.  This is the kind we use for children with ADHD, for the patients who need real medical treatment.  We need to buy the kind of fish oil that is EPA / DHA concentrates.  This is “weapons grade” fish oil.  If you’re healthy, a moderate regular dose is for maintenance.  If you’re sick, the dosage goes up based on your toxicity level.

Let’s think about the future.  If you’re a diabetic, try this: close your eyes.  Lift one left.  Try to walk around.  This is what the future will hold.  The costs for health care for diabetics is increasing.  Though we can’t cure these diseases, we can manage them by using food as medicine.  The future of Medicare holds asking recipients:

• Do you mind if we withhold your free healthcare for 5 more years?  Well this won’t happen because they will vote.
• You paid 1970’s dollars so now we’ll give you 1970’s healthcare.  This means here’s two Aspirin and call me in the morning.  This won’t happen either because they vote.

On the other side let’s think about those whom are under the age of qualifying for Medicare.  Ask them if instead of paying 2.9% of income for Medicare, how about paying 29%?  That won’t happen either because they vote too.  So then what happens?  The government prints more money. 

No…in all seriousness, this will happen unless we can turn back the tides of diabetes, the most expensive of all diseases.  This can be done not with new drugs or gastric bypass surgery, but with an anti-inflammatory diet!

If this is the only paragraph you read in this entire post, remember it!  This is your job for the rest of your life:

• Take fish oil daily (the pure kind)
• Do your best to balance out the glycemic load of every meal.  Food should maintain satiety (lack of hunger)…snacking a lot should not be necessary because it simply changes the hormones and blood sugar in a way that we don’t need.
• Moderate exercise is a must (for most Americans this can mean 15 minutes of brisk walking). 
• Sit back to “smell the roses” as Dr. Sears puts it.  This is hard to do when we have so many things on our to-do list, but it’s important.  Sit back in a comfortable chair and think of absolutely nothing for 20 minutes.  Some may call this meditation, some may call it zoning out.  Whatever it is for you, do it.

** Information and data for this post taken from Dr. Barry Sears lecture on “Silent Inflammation."  Barry Sears, PhD is the founder of the Zone Diet, a pioneer in bio-technology and nutritional research, developing drug-delivery systems for cancer and heart patients, and a former MIT researcher.  He holds over 13 patents for cancer treatments and the dietary control of hormones.  For more information visit www.DrSears.com and www.zonediet.com.

My next post will be on the pharmaceutical drug industry, it goes hand in hand with some of the information discussed here.