Snippet:



http://www.stephanguyenet.com/two-t...-part-i-butter/

Food heuristics, huh? Let's see, I got my own set of food heuristics. But I'll just go straight to the crux with ghee.

I posit that ghee is even better than butter because it's only fat, no possibility of adverse effects from indigestible (or hard to digest) protein such as casein for example. No lactose, so no problem from lactose intolerance. No milk protein, so no adverse effects from high-heat cooking, therefore no adverse effects from eating glycated protein. Then a priori, we're not particularly adapted to eat cow milk - we're not cows, we're certainly not calves either. But we are well-adapted to eat animal fat, and ghee is pure animal fat although it's not strictly animal fat like lard or suet for example, but there's a likely a very small difference between those with regard to our ability to digest and absorb and benefit from their content. In effect, ghee is a great example where more processing is better than less processing. However, since the primary heuristic is that we're better adapted to foods closer to their natural state (which is basically the only thing in Stephan's post I agree with), this one about ghee is an exception to the first, and should not be used as primary heuristic to define any other food.

Pemmican is another exception though not for being better than fresh meat, rather for being processed yet being almost if not exactly as good as fresh meat. Then we get into the whole lipid stuff and there's likely no adverse effect from any of that. Then there's nutrition, well, there's fat-solubles in that fat, so butter is likely to be nutritious in that respect. Then there's calories, I won't even go there, it's just nonsense.

For the lipid stuff, Stephan cites an experiment about something called milk fat globule membrane. Well, we can find something about insulin in there. It so happens the MFGM group saw a drop in insulin. They were basically doing a very weak version of low-carb, therefore a very weak version of high-fat. This seems to contradict every single thing Stephan said about lipid stuff, and indeed his entire post in all respects.

Just saying, Stephan could have written the above, but he didn't. I think he was just trying to make a point about stuff or something, but failed.

While I have not changed my mind about Stephen Guyenet...

His whole "food reward" theory is still CICO under another name...

Milk fat globule membrane possibly beneficial, interesting idea. Perhaps cream might be better for people prone to increased LDL and particle number from dairy fats (APOE4 gene possibly involved for those who do??) but testing this on a personal individual basis would be the only way I know of to tell. I don't think butter is tasty and desirable just because it's a concentrated source of fat/calories. There are other fats contain even more calories per tablespoon than butter that lack butter's appealing taste.

All this is based on the presumption that LDL-C is a valid health marker. There are those who are questioning this today and are attempting to better understand the role of LDL. Yes, more testing needs to be done, but isn't it ironic that many of our beliefs and most of our dietary myths today are based on assumptions borne by correlation of factors not representing a root cause?

LDL particle number seems to be getting a lot of scrutiny lately. Small particle size especially. What the final conclusion health-wise will be IDK, but when someone does low-carb and sees a lot of these little guys show up that weren't there before, it can appear worrisome. Going back to high carb low fat doesn't seem good because that raises LDL due to metabolic disorder which sounds even worse, but some people react to certain fats such as dairy with lots of LDL particles. I personally will probably at some point pursue testing this new idea of the fat globule membranes in cream versus not present in butter at some point to see if it makes any difference LDL-wise. Sam's Club in my area offers free health screenings second Saturday of most months which don't by any means test everything but offer clues to whether something's changed.

It sort of makes sense that cream is structured to aid digestion in mammals. And eating a very high fat diet--on higher calorie days, I find that foods that are already high in fat sit better than rendered fats. If I cook a pound of bacon soft, without rendering out much fat, I can eat it no problem. If I fry it crispy, and then try to eat the crispy bacon and the lard that came out of it--that's a real slog. So I think I do have a bit of a problem with refined fat in that it decreases the palatability of fatty foods somewhat.

Ldl cholesterol? I'm putting my health chips down on low insulin and letting it ride. I hope I'm right. I've never had a lipid panel, but I've had high blood pressure and central obesity (just barely obese by BMI, but almost all upper-body), gone now, and can sleep on my side in my late 40's, where I couldn't do that without pain when I was in my late 20's. Don't do as I do though, it's social anxiety that's kept me out of the medical system, rather than distrust of doctors. Although maybe that's just a general distrust of humanity instead of a specific one.

The thing about lipoproteins is that it's still all based on a flawed premise - saturated fat, cholesterol, heart disease. So even if we get very precise measurements from experiments, it's still meaningless. There are far more meaningful things to measure such as insulin for example.

Here's a hypothesis derived from another. Insulin resistance is a risk factor for heart disease. Insulin resistance is in fact not what it appears to be just from the name, but the point is that insulin remains higher than normal. For insulin resistance, there's all kinds of wild ideas thrown around to explain the correlation, but it's all BS. Instead, it's simple - insulin itself causes heart disease directly.

There's an obscure experiment done by some obscure scientist on dogs decades ago. Barely anybody knows about it. So, he dripped insulin in the dog's leg, observed atherosclerosis. Clear-cut conclusion, right?

Hehe, I just found that paper. Full name: " Effect of intra-arterial insulin on tissue cholesterol and fatty acids in alloxan-diabetic dogs. "

Well then, don't need to fool around with hypotheses, just draw a straightforward conclusion from experiment - insulin causes heart disease. There's an interesting twist. Cholesterol shifts much less than fatty acids, so why are we looking at cholesterol as if it was the bad guy? Never mind, cholesterol isn't a bad anything, he's being pushed around by insulin, so are fatty acids. This means insulin has a much greater effect on fatty acids than it does on cholesterol, and neither cholesterol nor fatty acids are responsible for heart disease.

But it gets better. The normal dogs didn't show such a big effect. The difference is likely due to a functional pancreas which means the liver is involved. If the liver gets insulin from the pancreas as it should, there's a bunch of stuff happening there that somehow mitigates what happens everywhere else with insulin, cholesterol and fatty acids. What this means for insulin resistance, it confirms what I've been thinking about for a while (confirms my paradigm as well). It's not insulin resistance in the sense that all cells become resistant, instead it's just the liver, which is the same as if the liver was not receiving insulin from the pancreas, just like the alloxan-diabetic dogs in that experiment.

Anyways, basically this means that if we still only look at lipoproteins in the blood, we're missing a very large part of the big picture, can't conclude anything anyhow. We gotta look at insulin, arterial plaque content, liver function, etc. Now maybe it's not feasible to do all that, but there's an easy alternative, based on my paradigm. Look at 3 things - insulin, ketones, blood glucose - as a relationship to each other, as indicators of liver function, and ultimately as indicators of heart disease risk (well, it's not risk, it's actual on-going creation of it).

OK, so here's how it works. Two simple graphs to illustrate.

Insulin = +++
Ketones = -
BG = +++
= Impaired liver function, specifically impaired insulin-degrading enzyme, and/or impaired glycogenolysis, and or impaired ketogenesis, typical effect of high-carb diet, typical situation with diabetes type 2 as well but moreso, some on-going creation of heart disease

Insulin = +
Ketones = ++
BG = +
= Normal liver function, specifically normal insulin-degrading enzyme, and normal glycogenolysis, and normal ketogenesism typical effect of low-carb diet, typical effect of fasting, no on-going creation of heart disease or only a tiny amount

A third graph as bonus.

Insulin = 0
Ketones = +++
BG = +++
= Diabetes type 1, impaired liver function, specifically no insulin to regulate its various functions, hence hyperketonemia and hyperglycemia, no on-going creation of heart disease at all noway nohow never - no insulin

In this last graph, today we use exogenous insulin, which means we're basically causing heart disease unless we do it in a way that simulates normal insulin, i.e. an insulin pump hooked up to the same arteries that connect the pancreas to the liver. I'm sure there's a specific name for that vein, so that's the one.

For the rest of us, excess insulin still causes heart disease, but much less than if we were diabetic type 1 and injecting insulin, and much less than if our livers were pretty much broken. This is why it takes decades for the disease to kill us with arterial blockage and things like that. Another thing is that insulin is a growth agent, it causes growth of arteries (in a process I would describe as caused by long-term chronic hyperinsulinemia, similar to insulin-induced lipohypertrophy), they get thicker independently of the atherosclerotic plaques that form, yet it's a common cause anyways.

Huh, right, big text.

Me too.
The text books teach that LDL and HDL are the primary transporters of cholesterol in the blood and that:
- LDL carries cholesterol to cells in the body
- HDL carries cholesterol in the reverse direction back to the liver.

Then we are told LDL is bad and HDL is good!

Hang on now, how many people stop to think about why LDL is carrying cholesterol to cells around the body in the first place. It’s because our cells need the stuff all the time. It is an essential structural and functional element in the human body and there is a constant turnover of it just as there is a constant turnover of triglycerides and free fatty acids.

HDL is said to be good because it carries cholesterol back to the liver where it can be expelled from the body.

But hang on again, not all the cholesterol can be expelled. Some does get expelled but the rest gets recycled. So both LDL and HDL are performing essential functions since together they maintain the cycle of cholesterol turnover.

Question: How can LDL be bad?
Answer: It isn't.

It's been at least 15 years since I've had my lipid levels tested. I just don't see the point of testing since I don't believe the information I would get would be useful to me. I told my doctor that I won't take a statin and I'm not changing my diet so there's no reason to test.

Jean

I, too, am in those camps that believe that LDL and cholesterol in general are good and that it is now pointless to have my blood lipids tested.

Me three. The Lipid Hypothesis is essentially debunked. What is the point?

Sigh, I agree with you all; however, I am a victim of the public health fascists, as are many of the folks on this forum. In order to maintain my medical clearace to continue my life's work I need one thing. In order to maintian my life, I think I need another. Which way do I go...which way do I go....

What are you forced to do? Are you forced to not only have your lipids checked but maintain your numbers as certain level? Are you penalized if you don't? Is this part of a so-called employee wellness program?

Jean

Yes, the so called Standards of Care. If they can tax sugar, they can tax fat and red meat and so on . . . . . Requiring employees in a wellness program to adhere to questionable health markers is a form of a tax threat. Adhere and risk health. Don't adhere and risk the cost of higher insurance premiums.