Heath Nut My story part 4 Saturated Fat

Fat is your friend. The brain thrives on a fat-rich, low-carbohydrate diet. David Perlmutter
Your levels of cholesterol are primarily dependent on your own body's production rather than the result of eating animal fats. Moreover, some forms of cholesterol are heart healthy. Harley Pasternak
Thin people are beautiful, but fat people are adorable. Jackie Gleason

Note:  This post is not meant to be medical advice.  It is only my experience with and observations about saturated fat.  Always include your doctor in the discussion before you make changes.  

     I was going to write one more post about my food journey in this Health Nut series, but when I was watching a documentary about diets and saw a doctor deriding folks who put butter in their coffee--thereby endangering their lives with saturated fat, I got a little angry. The Low Fat Diet is such an old story that doesn't hold water--it never did and I get tired of hearing it. I decided that saturated fat needed its own post.

     So where did all this hoopla about cholesterol and saturated fat come from?  Not from a distinguished research team who did studies and trials on the effects of fat on people, but from only one man, Ancel Keys. Certainly one man can have a good idea that changes the world, but one person can also be totally wrong and use the power of his or her personality to persuade others...cult leaders are an example.  By studying eating habits in different nations, Mr. Keys became utterly convinced that the epidemic of heart disease was caused by saturated fat and cholesterol.  He wasn't a doctor but a an aggressive and persuasive scientist who pushed his findings until he got the ear of the World Health Organization and the American heart Association.  Once the medical community was on board Ancel's ship, the government changed its diet guidelines and food pyramid while the food industry was revolutionized, totally changing our heath and our way of eating.  Opposing opinions to the saturated fat theory were silenced or ignored but today there those who dispute Mr. Keys' findings saying that he cherry picked his data, while others still defend him. However, I will leave that for now and focus on my own experiences with and observations about saturate fats.

     I have questions.  Since heart disease was a rare condition in the early 1900's and became the number one killer by 1950, why did Mr. Keys blame the fats?  While there were big changes to the American diet by then such as an increased intake of sugar, white flour and processed food, the dietary fat intake was pretty much the way it had always been.  Why was it suddenly the culprit? If we look at our ancestors--and I don't mean the paleolithic cavemen types--but our immediate ancestors, what where they eating during the decades of virtually no heart disease?  I know that my grandparents and beyond were mostly farmers.  Farmers ate food they raised themselves and most weren't vegans.  They ate bacon and butter, red meat and lard.  Have you ever been to a hog butchering? I have.  While the men dressed out the meat, the ladies took care of the lard rendering.  We cut the pork fat --and there was a lot of it-- into little pieces and placed it in a large cast iron kettle over a fire in the yard, where it was cooked down.  It took a long time and required a lot of pot stirring and gossiping, but in the end we wound up with a pot full of lard and a bi-product of "cracklin's (think pork skins.) which was considered a delicious snack.  The lard was packaged up and put in the freezer along with the meat and it was used to cook with.  When I got married and moved South near my husbands people, you could buy lard in the grocery store and every kitchen had a canister for bacon grease that had a special straining lid. No one threw away bacon grease!  And everyone ate bacon...except for maybe me.

     Then all of that started to change after Ancel Keys research. Doctor's prescribed low fat diets. The food industry heavily advertised low fat.  It was suggested that you drink 2% milk with your low fat cake--cake made with applesauce instead of butter.  Butter had to give way to margarine; to cut back further on fat there was diet margarine. Lard was replaced by Crisco and vegetable oil. They even made turkey bacon! No one considered it harmful to remove fat from foods, increasing the carbohydrate content or that margarine contained a myriad of strange  ingredients including trans-fat. 

     Since I was a chronic dieter I got 100% on board with the low fat movement. I bought the vegetable oils but used them sparingly; I cooked stir fry in chicken broth. I used low fat salad dressing (salads will make you skinny, right? No. They only made me hungry for cheeseburgers!) I ate diet margarine, and bought skinless, boneless meat and cut back on eggs. I used low fat coffee creamer and anything else I could get low fat. Oh yeah! low fat cheese! (yuck!)There was no grease clogging up the stove vent in my kitchen!  The main thing I remember about those decades was that I was always hungry. Always. Hungry. I have never forgotten the hunger and every time I see a misinformed doctor or diet guru talk about low fat, I still get a clutch in the gut.  

     So what did all that low fat dieting do for me? Lose weight? No. Create delicious food? No. Satisfying meals? No. Improve my mood and energy? No. Lower cholesterol? NO! Really, the answer to that one is no.

     I started rebelling in small ways in the early 90's while at a weight watcher's meeting the leader said we should eat the egg whites and throw away the yolks because the whites have a substance that lowers cholesterol.  What? Really? I had an epiphany. I looked around the room at the others listening in rapt attention and realized that they didn't get what I just got. The egg white cancels out the cholesterol in the yolk! GOD DONE TOOK CARE OF THE EGG! I started eating eggs again.

      Not long after I gave up on weight watchers, I was scolded by a doctor for high cholesterol. I couldn't believe it. This is when I was on a plant based diet, eating a lot of rice with a little fish.  She put me on a statin which caused side effects I couldn't live with so I stopped taking it.  Then I reread Dr Adkin's Diet Revolution (I read it once before the low fat era).  He said that you don't get cholesterol by eating it. I had another epiphany!  Wait! Beef has cholesterol.  What does beef cattle eat?  Other beef? NO! Grains! Carbs! Beef are fed grains! To fatten them up! Do you get it?  I hope you're getting it.  That is when I stopped the diet margarine and started...eating... butter!  Then about 7 years ago I learned that the vegetable oils that were low in cholesterol are too high in Omega 6 which are dangerous to the heart and they were heavily processed to boot.  I was a faithful canola oil user!  Well, I knocked that off and bought some olive oil.  Later I started using coconut oil (a super food with healing properties) and now I mainly use avocado oil--lots of it. Yes I hear you. That is SATURATED FAT!  Yes'm it is.

      So what has saturated fat done for me?  My cholesterol is normal--really it is.  All the time. I stopped gaining weight and started very slowly losing.  I eat healthy, yummy food. I actually cook avoiding fast or processed food. I have good moods and energy. I AM NOT HUNGRY!  I repeat! I am not hungry!  So I eat less.  I don't get up starving so I can skip breakfast.  I never liked to eat in the morning and I no longer listen to the misinformed push the idea that breakfast is the best meal of the day.  

      So that is my spiel. I am only one woman who's not a scientist or doctor, so I don't want to push this on anyone.  I just hope this makes you think or check out the links below or open up discussions with your doctor and love ones.  

      Then again, feel free to dismiss all this and just enjoy the picture.

      And yes, it's true. I put butter in my coffee.

It happened in Mexico Pencil 3 x 4

https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(14)00354-4/fulltext
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancel_Keys
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/saturated-fat-good-or-bad#section2
https://www.makelifenatural.net/superfood-coconut-oil-30-uses-benefits/

                                   

Health Nut My story Part 3 Exercise

Too many people confine their exercise to jumping to conclusions, running up bills, stretching the truth, bending over backwards, lying down on the job, sidestepping responsibility and pushing their luck. Unknown
If it weren't for the fact that the TV set and the refrigerator are so far apart, some of us wouldn't get any exercise at all. Joey Adams
Physical activity is an excellent stress-buster and provides other health benefits as well. It also can improve your mood and self image. Jon Wickham

Note:  This post is not meant to be medical advice.  It is only my experience about diet and exercise.  Before you try anything new or stop what you are doing, check with your doctor first.                                                                  

This is post # 3 in my "Health Nut" series and tonight I want to talk about exercise and what a part it had in my life--what I expected from it, benefits I did and didn't get and even harm I may have done to myself.

I have exercised since I was young. I don't remember exactly when I got the idea that if you want to lose weight you need to exercise, but I believed it wholeheartedly. Every time I tried to lose weight I developed an exercise program to go along with the low calorie, low fat eating program I was on. For 30 years I was a chronic dieter--and exerciser. I would starve myself, following an eating plan given to me by the doctor or that I found in a magazine. (In the early days it was believed that one should reduced their calorie intake to 800 a day.)

When I was young and healthy I would take the weight off fairly easily. Little did I know that I was slowing down my metabolism a little during every diet. The body is designed to do that to preserve one's life in a famine. So when I would resume eating normally the weight would come back with reinforcements along with the guilt and insurmountable self loathing. I eventually reached a point I couldn't continue with the diets but I continued exercising hoping that it would magically do the trick.

I have learned something very important. Exercise will not make a girl skinny. Certainly a person can see an initial weight drop of 10 to 20 pounds when they start an exercise program but it rarely goes beyond that. The body puts a halt on the weight loss to protect itself. It's like.. if slightly pudgy office clerk takes a job bucking hay, even though he ate well, he might tone up and lose some flab right away but he won't continue with that because if the hard work made him lose weight continuously then he would waste away, so his body adjusts the metabolism to to stop the fat burn. In that light I realize that my excessive exercising also contributed to the demise of my metabolism.

I believed in the simple formula of calories in and calories out. Many diet gurus and even doctors still believe in that today. Fitbit shows how many calories you burn in a day like that is important information. All I had to do is to line up how many calories I eat with how many I expend in exercise and like magic I will get skinny, right?. It's is not that simple. If the calories are a chocolate bar it will spike the insulin level; to get rid of the high glucose the body turns it into fat, but if the calories are a handful of almonds the body treats the calories differently. Our complicated bodies are always adjusting hormones and metabolism to protect itself and keep us as healthy as possible. It's like the body fights weight loss on every corner.

Over the years I did calisthenics, isometrics, jazzercise, biking, swimming and walking as well as exercise machines and exercise classes and gym memberships, And aerobic dance-- I loved that but hated walking--I hated walking so much I forced myself to walk more! After all the doctors and Oprah said it's the best form of exercise for us, right? I had two total knee and one hip replacements because this heavy girl forced herself to walk; (I believe today that my body was telling me that the walking was harming me, that's why I hated it.). Before the surgeries, I was unable to stand so I exercised on the floor or in bed or in a chair. To not exercise was unthinkable and to do any less than an hour 5 times a week was cheating.

I am not anti-exercise. I still do it today but some days it's just a few stretches, and other days it's working in the garden. Or I may go after the punching bag or stair stepper. Heck heavy house work counts as exercise! I no longer believe that a 90 minute routine benefits me in any way. Exercise is very good for your whole body--brain, heart, lungs, skin, muscle, mood and bones. I believe the life time of exercise I practiced is one of the reasons for my good health with low blood pressure and resting heart rate. In fact, not exercising can send a person down the road of ill health. Perhaps exercise can aid weight loss by supporting a healthy and strong body, but IT WILL NOT MAKE US LOSE MEANINGFUL WEIGHT over the long haul! Anyway it didn't for me. So Exercise because it's good for you and because it makes you feel good. But be kind to yourself and don't expect it to do what it wasn't designed to do..

Petunia Oil 8 x 10

Sorry. To console you I am going to share my baby pig! Stay tuned for more installments in Health Nut.

Health Nut My Story Part 2--The Herbs

And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food."  Gen. 1:29

Everyone has a doctor in him or her; we just have to help it in its work. The natural healing force within each one of us is the greatest force in getting well. Our food should be our medicine. Our medicine should be our food. Hippocrates.

You don't have to do something exotic to enjoy the benefits of natural healing agents. So many things in your kitchen - common spices, common herbs and foods - have powerful healing agents as well. Chris Kilham

Note:  This post is not meant to be medical advice.  It is only my experience--in all cases I sought medical treatment first and the nutritional information I received was secondary. Before you try anything natural check with your doctor first. 

My previous "Health Nut" post was about the circumstances that led me to start taking vitamin supplements and the benefits they brought me.  Over the years I have been so healthy my doctor accused me of being boring. However, as I grew older, I experienced more health challenges. Research revealed to me that God has provide us healing in nature--mainly herbs.

I'd like to make clear at this point that I am not opposed to medicine and doctors. I have a wonderful doctor I respect and who has been a great help to me. I also believe main person responsible for my health is me.  

The first critical health issue that came my way after I passed age 40 was arthritis in my knees and hip, leading to chronic pain and poor mobility.  That's when I started taking more than just a multi-vitamin.  I took MSM and glucosamine.  While it wasn't a magic cure, it did help.  If I didn't think it wasn't helping all I had to do was stop taking it to find out that it really had been.  I eventually had two knees and a hip replaced which transformed my life, so I no longer needed to take these supplements.  However they were useful when I needed them. So was exercise.

About the time arthritis came along, I started having serious acid reflux and found out I had a haital hernia and a damaged esophagus, which led me to taking prescribed drugs--Proton Pump Inhibitors such as Previcid.  I took them for 17 years and they worked great but I wondered if they might cause long term problems or hamper my ability to lose weight. After a time, not even this drug worked--I'd take a pill for a few years and suddenly it was like I had gotten a bad batch and I would need to switch prescriptions. The last time it happened there were no new drugs on the market, and the doctors were unable to present a solution, with exception of one ER doctor who told me that melatonin could help close the sphincter to the esophagus.  This sent me back to prayer and research.  

There are a lot of herbal remedies for digestive issues that I tried but didn't work for me. Ginger is good for the digestion but the capsules didn't give me the results I was looking for until I started eating a slice of raw ginger with every meal.  Caraway seed crackers really helped too.  I also took the melatonin and it helped--not only at night but all day.  I am no longer taking any over the counter or prescription drugs for acid reflux and I rarely have any trouble with it, especially after I changed my diet.  I think that I needed time to get the drugs out of my system before I could get better, because I am beginning to believe that some medicines create a need for itself in the body--kind of like an addiction.  There are always side effects to consider taking long term prescriptions.  I have had anxiety and severe depression because of stomach drugs.  I am grateful that I no longer have to take them.

On that note, not every doctor is open minded to alternate methods to healing.  When I told my gastrologist, about the ginger and melatonin he said they haven't been proven but if it works keep on doing it.  He probably thought it was all in my head, but if enough people tell him that he might be willing to research himself.  Doctors are not taught about nutrition and herbs in medical school.

When I started having surgeries, I came home from the hospital with a souvenir--staff infections.  These were powerful germs that required powerful antibiotics,  which I had to take every few months; I was told by a doctor that I would always have trouble with them.  Not wanting to go down the path of antibiotic resistance, I prayed for answers.  While my primary doctor told me focus on general health practices like water, exercise, sleep, taking extra vitamin C and good nutrition--I wanted the magic pill.  In this case I actually found one! One lovely day, I was on Facebook and saw a post about curative powers of black cumin seed and I knew intuitively that was the answer.  I found it for sale online and started taking it twice a day and infection episodes dropped off dramatically.  I found that there are many anti-bacterial and anti-viral inexpensive herbs on the market if I need them such as cloves, Oregon grape root, cat claw, echinacea, golden seal and oil of oregano.   Daily I take cumin, garlic, cayenne and turmeric --a microbiol (fights infections) and anti-inflammatory.   It's been a couple of years since I have taken an antibiotic.   Like Chris Kilham said above --our simple cooking herbs are powerful medicine.

I was spending more than I wanted to on supplements and herbs, so when I saw a two pound bag of organic turmeric on sale I bought it on impulse and then wondered...What am I going to do with this?  Fill capsules of course! I bought a gizmo for filling the capsules on Amazon for $20 and 1000 empty gel caps are about $8 (links below) and I have enough turmeric for a long time. I also fill cumin and cayenne capsules and some other herbs I found on sale I thought I'd try.  I spend an hour or two every few months filling capsules and have saved a lot of money. I think this truly makes me a health nut. lol

I am not finished with the natural healing discussion, I still want to talk about health problems that were fixed by changing my diet and about

Poppy Stepping Store 12 inches Acrylic on Concrete

 exercise, however this is enough for now. I hope you enjoy the art.

Capsule Filling Gizmo https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078V7YNYT/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_image_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

Capsules https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ACUJRW/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

Black Cumin Seed https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0048DO0JM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

Heath Nuts... My story-- The Vitamins

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.  Redd Foxx

If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself. Mickey Mantle

We have been taught to "just eat a balanced diet." We have been taught wrong. The truth is natural healing works. Andrew Saul

Note:  This post is not meant to be medical advice.  It is only my experience--in all cases I sought medical treatment first and the nutritional information I received was secondary.  I wouldn't dream of telling anyone they need to try a vitamin instead of going to the doctor.  Before you try anything natural check with your doctor first. 

Recently in a chat with a friend I approached the subject of natural healing for cancer.  He didn't believe in it, while I think it has some value.  I initially sat down to this blog post to write about my research on natural healing and the failings of the FDA, the government and drug companies to pursue research on alternate, and less barbaric, treatments for disease.  Of course I'd be taking a risk of being dismissed as a nut. Which I  am.  However, in the end all I have that might make a difference is my own personal story; it's the only thing I know for certain.  The medical community might dismiss my experience as anecdotal, but it is real and not just opinion.  

When I was a young mom, I remember seeing an episode of the Today Show where the guest doctor said that if we eat a well balanced diet we didn't need to take vitamin supplements.  I was relieved to hear that because I was worried whether my family needed supplements or not.  But I didn't ask: what is a balanced diet? The kids were growing up strong and healthy, so I seemed to be doing the right thing with them but what about...me?  I lived a high stress life, worried a lot, burned the candle at both ends and smoked--all of which destroy nutrients in the body. I didn't always practice good prenatal care either.  I had serious bouts of tonsillitis every few months requiring antibiotics and even hospitalization.  Every winter I caught a cold which left me with a cough that hung on for months, yet I didn't slow down my insane over-achiever schedule to rest and heal. I was often emotionally overwrought. 

I started having trouble with my gums. Though I practiced good dental hygiene, I also practiced poor nutrition; I suffered regular bouts of pyorrhea, requiring antibiotics--which never completely healed the gums.  One day while we were visiting my sister-in-law, I was suffering with painful gums again; she took charge and got  me into see her dentist.  While I waited in his expensive waiting room watching the giant salt water fish tank, I grumbled how much it was going to cost.  I left there with three prescriptions.  When I presented them to the pharmacist, he told me that two of them were only vitamins, did I want them?  I was a little disappointed, I thought I was going to get real medicine, but I told him to only fill one of them. I think I told him to fill the best one, though.  

I took the vitamins along with the antibiotics and was absolutely amazed.  The gums completely healed and were normal for the first time in years.  And I noticed a definite boost in energy, mood and well-being and I lost weight.  I was down-right euphoric! That started my supplement journey.  I still continued to smoke and live in high stress but the tonsillitis episodes dropped off to maybe once a year and they weren't as severe.  I became convinced that I was missing some nutrition in my diet and that I needed to take a supplement every day.  There were a few times in the beginning because we were short of money, I didn't buy them and I'd experience immediate flare-up with the gums.  I have taken supplements faithfully for over 40 years.  (By the way, when I quit smoking 22 years ago the tonsillitis went a way and the occasional colds were less severe.)

Being a natural researcher, I checked out every book in the library on the subject and became a little unbalanced about vitamins. I went through a "mega dose phase" and a "Euwell Gibbon's phase" where I ate weird things that were touted to be good for you; among other things, I took plankton for weight loss and large doses of chromium because it might reverse gray hair which started showing up by age 30.  

Eventually I settled down into a more reasonable routine, however I learned many things in the process which have been useful to me -- One A Day Vitamins containing 100% of the MINIMUM daily requirement provide only enough of a supplement to prevent one from contracting the horrid diseases of old, such as scurvy and rickets.  While they were better than nothing, they didn't provide a person with OPTIMUM health-- only minimum wellness.  I never did well on them; my supplements today contain more than the 100%.  I also learned that the body needs the trace minerals which are removed from foods in processing.  One of these, selenium, joined with Vitamins C and E, fight the free radicals that cause cancer.

I  have gotten along pretty well over the years-- learning and trying new things and have settled with a multi vitamin and mineral that works for me.  Then entered the new health challenges in my life ...and The Herbs needed to deal with them, which I will write about in another post--this one is getting a little long.  

Yellow Poppy Stepping stone 12" Acrylic on concrete.

I hope this post is helpful to someone.  On that note I'd like to emphasize what I have included in other posts on health and diet-- God didn't use a cookie cutter when he created us, so what guidelines work for me may not be your solution but I encourage everyone to search until they find the right answers--starting with your doctor.  I am grateful to the Lord that I no longer blindly follow health notions that sound good without checking the facts and I am super grateful for that dentist. I hope you enjoy the art.  Thank you for your support.