Surprising advice from cardiologist

[romina]

Just posting this as it really surprised me and thought I'd share in case anyone else is interested.

I've recently been seeing a cardiologist, who is on Tatler's top doctors list. I am overweight, with high blood pressure and basically said "I know I should eat less and lower fat, but I do find it really tough to stick to".

She told me that the 2 diets with the best clinically-reviewed, robust evidence of effectiveness and health benefits are firstly the Mediterranean diet and secondly, surprise surprise, low carb. I almost fell of my chair.

I've done low carb in the past, got disheartened by being told that is unhealthy, over and over again, by my GP, stopped and piled the weight back on.

Apparently the whole "a calorie is a calorie" thing is rubbish - some foods (nuts I think were one of them) don't appear to have any impact on weight even if 500 cals or so are simple added to the same person's diet daily, but sugar is usually the biggest problem for most people - and can have an effect on the brain similar (as seen in a functional MRI scan) to hard drugs.

I'm sure lots of people will disagree - but I thought it was really interesting...

I have either eggs/bacon for breakfast or yoghurt and berries - obv berries aren't no carb but they're lower than most fruit.

Sorry for being really thick here but was is the difference between the med diet and low carb?

Also is the med diet that I see in various magazines not the med diet that we are talking about here?

Basically, most of the natural toxins are in the husk of the grain seed. Whole grain versions are giving your liver more toxins to get rid of and that process uses a lot of vital minerals

Rawcoconutmacaroon are you saying that for my one mid-morning slice of toast I would be better eating white bread (home made), I usually make wholemeal as it's said to be healthier?

Ilove- I agree with you (I'm completely grain free, the only baking I do is with coconut and almond flour), but, a lot of people are just not going to hop on the ancestral eating bandwagon.

Home baking and reducing carb (and by default, grain intake), can I think give real Health benefits, and it's well worth someone doing that.

Pete- I'm taking about the paleo/primal/lchf movement (you might say ancestral eating), others may be talking about just carb reduction.

The med diet is neither, tho shares some common themes (eat better fat, eat fresh food, eat seafood, eat lots of veg), but it is I think still quite anti-animal fats.

Venus - "it is said to be healthy" (with respect to wholegrain), yes is is said, but that doesn't mean it's true!

You would be better off not eating the bread at all, but actually, the white bread has fewer (natural) toxins. The white bread will raise your blood sugar higher than the brown, but the brown will probably keep it high for longer (which is not a good thing). And that's before I even mention gluten which is whole other reason not to eat wheat in particular.

Google wheatbelly or Marks Daily Apple if you want to know more...

What's the difference between primal diet and low carb? Is it mainly fruit?

Primal- meat, eggs,fish, veg, leaves, some nuts and seed, some raw cheese, cream and raw milk if the person can take dairy with no ill effects. Some fruit. Plenty of animal fat.

No grains, no potato (usually) no sugar (maybe a little raw honey.

No processed food, cook it yourself, no additives. Paleo is similar but no milk (usually).

It can be medium carb, can be low carb.

"Low carb" could range from the above, to a standard processed diet, without the carbs iykwim.

Ok thanks Raw.

I do low carb, but cook everything as you say. No fruit, milk or honey etc

I'm afraid I'm in a minority here, no-one will stop me baking I'm afraid. I may give my coconut palm sugar another go instead of the agave.

I think that I'll eat my carbs and die years earlier when they poison me and I'll be happy with that. Because, to be honest, if I lived until I was 90 knowing I could never bake a cake, eat a bowl of cereal or have a lovely plate of pesto pasta ever again, I'd probably wish I was dead anyway!

I shall now go and burn in MN hell.

I do bake! I also often make things like pancakes for the DC (coconut milk, almond flour and egg). The chocolate cake I made last week was fabulous and rich (almond flour, coconut oil, egg, real vanilla, raw cocoa and a small amount of raw honey). It was a real treat .

A rich cake like that, I might make every week or two, its low carb despite the honey, and the coconut oil is great brain food.

Food should be pleasurable, I'm not disagreeing with you there!

I think it's important to distinguish between carbs.

In Australia, where the research in thus field is top notch, no one does low carb anymore - it's all about Low GI.

That's much more sensible than lumping all carbs as "work of the devil"

RawCoconut - recipe, please? (drool!)

I have very little desire to bake, or even eat it, so that helps quite a bit. I much prefer cooking to baking.

I do help the dc make cakes sometimes because they like it.

Poppy what does a low GI diet look like, usually. What can you have that you don't on low carb?

Although didn't know you could put together a low carb cake. Will look into that Raw.

For recipes - no need to shell out for a cook book (although there are plenty), most paleo or primal blogs have recipes. All are low-med carb. All are grain free.

The one I used for my most recent choc cake was from "grass fed girl", or "marks daily apple", PaleoHacks has lots of good recipes too. Just google paleo desert or similar...

Thanks. Just did a quick google of almond flour (had no idea!) and coconut flours seems to be a good way to go too. I won't bake often, stil, maybe once month but good to know.

Marsha GI ranks carbs according to their effect on blood glucose levels.

The lower the GI, the slower the rise in blood glucose levels will be when the food is consumed.

The ranking can be fairly surprising - for instance, honey and most cereals (including some "healthy" ones like Weetabix) are killers in terms of GI whilst spaghetti and milk chocolate are low GI.

Here's a very brief list but you can find loads online.

And here's a list of books from some of the most respected researching teams in the field.

In Australia, you actually get GI Stickers on foods at the supermarket and they developed tasty low gi breads too.

When we came back to the UK a couple of years ago, we were really surprised to see people were still doing low cal / low fat diets.

Thanks will check it out. Might be going back to Aus at Christmas so will check it out there too.

Completely agree on low fat / low cal. At least all these ways of eating get away from high sugar/low fat diet food, the worst kind of dieting.

I am a bit worried about using almond flour because my son has just been diagnosed with a peanut allergy. As a precaution I am keeping him away from all nuts at the moment.

Almond flour is nice though, but I cannot abide honey (the smell makes me queasy let alone the taste) and I am not a great coconut lover either, I don't like the texture. So I am a difficult customer.

I like the idea but thinking about it might be a tad too rich for me.

Thanks!

I love cake, and I love baking, but I'm trying not to find substitutes because I need to get my mindset and my tastes away from carbs and sweetness. (Last night I dreamed that I was eating the contents of a piñata! God, but it was vivid - I could feel the Dairy Milk melting in my mouth.)

OTOH, I love cake, and I love baking.

Glycemic index and glycemic load - one big problem is the listed values don't correspond well to actual blood sugar readings in real people (recent studies show).

Fructose has a very low glycemic index, and as such, a lot of manufactured junk food (chocolate milk for example), might have "low fat, low gi" on the bottle, any yet it's stuffed with a killer dose of fructose syrups and sugars...

There might be some use to gi if you understand the limitations, but I think the food manufacturers are (as usual!) counting on the fact that most people won't understand, and won't look any further than the "buy me I'm healthy!" Stickers

Low carb, grain free, low sugars, otoh IS low gi of course!

Obviously there are many factors such as the individual insulin response, but that's the case when you ingest any carbohydrate.

"Fructose has a very low glycemic index, and as such, a lot of manufactured junk food (chocolate milk for example), might have "low fat, low gi" on the bottle, any yet it's stuffed with a killer dose of fructose syrups and sugars..."

I believe the GI Foundation in Australia is required to lab test both the GI and GL of each product before issuing a sticker as it's highly regulated.

It's also important to understand that products change GI/GL values depending on how they're cooked/processed (usually, the less process the better), i.e. a potato can have a very High GI or a Medium to Low.

I think it's such an important breakthrough on how we look at nutrition and diets and it's definitely the chosen weapon against conditions such as Diabetes and PCOS if you need to lose weight and control your blood sugar.

Peanuts are a legume : related to peas and broad beans
not a tree nut.

Almonds are to peanuts as apricots are to beetroot

Yes talkingpeace, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. Also I have read some pretty worrying things that happened to people whilst doing a low carb/high fat woe.

You need to have very regular cholesterol checks as although low carbing reduces cholesterol initially, but it raises again especially if you are doing this woe long term.

Also the liver has to work extremely hard to process
the high amounts of protein consumed and many people have had problems with this. I have read alot of pro and con articles and experiences about low carbing, it doesn't work for everyone unfortunately and I'm still not entirely convinced about it's health benefits.