Advanced Mediterranean Diet

The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reports the sad and disturbing case of an 8-year-old boy being removed from his family home and placed in foster care simply because government bureaucrats thought his mother didn’t do enough to reduce his weight. He weighed over 200 pounds (91+ kg).

I don’t have all the details of the case.  But this just seems wrong.  Very wrong. 

Kudos to the reporter, Rachel Dissell, for well-done article. 

Steve Parker, M.D.

LCHF Cheese

Dr. Eenfeldt of DietDoctor.com gave a talk at the recent Ancestral Health Symposium in California, on the rationale of the current low-carb, high-fat diet (LCHF) so popular in his home country of Sweden.  It’s very understandable to the general public and is a good introduction to low-carb eating.  The entire YouTube video is 55 minutes; if you’re pressed for time, skip the 10-minute Q&A at the end.

He also discusses the benefits of LCHF eating for his patients with diabetes.

If you reduce carbohydrates, you’re going to replace it with either protein, fat, or both.  As Dr. Eenfeldt recommends, the Ketogenic Mediterranean and Low-Carb Mediterranean Diets replace carbs more with fats than protein.

Steve Parker, M.D.

Parents in hunter-gatherer societies know why kids don’t like to retire alone to a dark room at night, writes Peter Gray, a psychologist:

Until a mere 10,000 years ago we were all hunter-gatherers.  We all lived in a world where any young child, alone, in the dark, would have been a tasty snack for nighttime predators.  The monsters under the bed or in the closet were real ones, prowling in the jungle or savannah, sniffing around, not far from the band’s encampment. A grass hut was not protection, but the close proximity of an adult, preferably many adults, was protection.  In the history of our species, infants and young children who grew frightened and cried out to elicit adult attention when left alone at night were more likely to survive to pass on their genes to future generations than were children who placidly accepted their fate. In a hunter-gatherer culture only a crazy person or an extremely negligent person would leave a small child alone at night, and at the slightest protest from the child, some adult would come to the rescue.

Safer than sleeping alone on the ground

I gotta confess I’d never thought about it this way before.  Makes sense. Read the rest of Dr. Gray’s post.

Steve Parker, M.D.

h/t to Amy Alkon

Exercise is not supposed to be fun.  If it is, then you should suspect that something is wrong.

That quote is from an essay by Ken Hutchins posted at the Efficient Exercise website.

When I was a young man in my 30s, I was jogging 20 miles a week and ran a couple marathons (26.2 miles).  I enjoyed it and didn’t do much else for exercise or overall fitness. I thought I was in pretty good shape.  You can get away with that when you’re 35, but not when you’re 50.  At 57 now, I can’t think of any single recreational activity that can help me maintain the overall strength, functionality, and injury resistance I want and need as I age. 

I’ve come to view exercise as a chore, like flossing/brushing teeth, changing the oil in my car, and sleeping when I’d rather not.  I’ve got my current exercise chore whittled down to an hour three times a week.  OK, sometimes just twice a week.

Skyler Tanner takes a thoughtful and in-depth look at the exercise versus recreation dichotomy at his blog.  If you have comments, more people will see them at his site than here.

Steve Parker, M.D.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports this month that the prevalence of self-reported coronary heart disease declined from 6.7% of the population in 2006, to 6% in 2010.  Figures were obtained by telephone survey.  Coronary heart disease, the main cause of heart attacks, remains the No.1 cause of death in the U.S.

Self-reports of heart disease may not be terribly reliable.  However, I remember an autopsy study from Olmstead County, Minnesota, from 2001 that confirmed a lower prevalence of coronary heart disease there.  I wrote about that at the NutritionData.com Heart Health Blog, but those posts may not be around much longer.

The CDC report mentioned also that mortality rates from coronary heart disease have been steadily declining for the last 50 years. 

Improved heart disease morbidity and mortality figures probably reflect better control of risk factors (e.g., smoking, high blood pressure), as well as improved treatments.  I’ve never seen an estimate of the effect of reduced trans fat consumption. 

Obesity is always mentioned as a risk factor for heart disease, yet obesity rates have skyrocketed over the last 40 years.  You’d guess heart disease prevalance to have risen, but you’d have guessed wrong.  In view of high obesity rates, some pundits have even suggested that the current generation of Americans wil be the first to see a decrease in average life span. 

The American Diabetes Association offers a free heart disease risk calculator, if you’re curious about your own odds.  My recollection is that the calculator works whether or not you have diabetes.

Steve Parker, M.D.

Older adults with high olive oil consumption have a lower risk of stroke, according to French investigators.

The Mediterranean diet, rich in olive oil, has long been linked to lower rates of stroke and other cardiovascular diseases.  The French researchers wondered if that might be attibutable to higher olive oil consumption.  Triglyceride esters of oleic acid comprise the majority of olive oil, and oleic acid blood levels reflect olive oil consumption. 

Have you heard of monounsaturated fatty acids?  Oleic acid is one.

Methodology

Over 7,000 older adults without history of stroke were surveyed with regards to olive oil consumption.  Oleic acid plasma levels were measured in over a thousand of the study participants.  Over the course of five years, 175 strokes occurred.

Compared with those who never used olive oil, those with the highest consumption had a 41% lower risk of stroke.  The researchers made adjustments for other dietary variables, age, physical activity, and body mass index.

In looking at the plasma oleic acid levels, those in the highest third of levels had 73% lower risk of stroke compared to those in the lowest third.

Comments

Results suggest that the olive oil in the Mediterranean diet  may help explain the diet’s protection against stroke.  They also support my inclusion of olive oil in the Low-Carb Mediterranean Diet.

Steve Parker, M.D.

Reference:  Samieri, C. et al.  Olive oil consumption, plasma oleic acid, and stroke incidence: the Three-City Study.  Neurology, Published online before print June 15, 2011, doi: 10.1212/WNL.0b013e318220abeb