The case builds against wheat 29. October 2007 William Davis (21) Looking back over the past few posts I've made about the adverse health effects of wheat, I was surprised to see just how many people have posted descriptions of their dramatic experiences following this route. While I've seen it in real life many times, it always helps to have corroboration from others. Here is what a number of Heart Scan Blog readers and commenters have said: Barbara W said:It's true! We've done it. My husband and I stopped eating all grains and sugar in February. At this point, we really don't miss them any more. It was a huge change, but it's worth the effort. I've lost over 20 pounds (10 to go)and my husband has lost 45 pounds (20 to go). On top of it, our body shapes have changed drastically. It is really amazing. I've got my waist back (and a whole wardrobe of clothes) - I'm thrilled.I'm also very happy to be eating foods that I always loved like eggs, avocados, and meats - without feeling guilty that they're not good for me.With the extremely hot weather this week in our area, we thought we'd "treat" ourselves to small ice cream cones. To our surprise, it wasn't that much of a treat. Didn't even taste as good as we'd anticipated. I know I would have been much more satisfied with a snack of smoked salmon with fresh dill, capers, chopped onion and drizzled with lemon juice.Aside from weight changes, we both feel so much better in general - feel much more alert and move around with much greater flexibility, sleep well, never have any indigestion. We're really enjoying this. It's like feeling younger.It's not a diet for us. This will be the way we eat from now on. Actually, we think our food has become more interesting and varied since giving up all the "white stuff". I guess we felt compelled to get a little more creative.Eating out (or at other peoples' places) has probably been the hardest part of this adjustment. But now we're getting pretty comfortable saying what we won't eat. I'm starting to enjoy the reactions it produces.Weight loss, increased energy, less abdominal bloating, better sleep--I've seen it many times, as well. Dotslady said:I was a victim of the '80s lowfat diet craze - doc told me I was obese, gave me the Standard American Diet and said to watch my fat (I'm not a big meat eater, didn't like mayo ... couldn't figure out where my fat was coming from! maybe the fries - I will admit I liked fries). I looked to the USDA food pyramid and to increase my fiber for the constipation I was experiencing. Bread with 3 grams of fiber wasn't good enough; I turned to Kashi cereals for 11 years. My constipation turned to steattorrhea and a celiac disease diagnosis! *No gut pains!* My PCP sent me to the gastroenterologist for a colonscopy because my ferritin was a 5 (20 is low range). Good thing I googled around and asked him to do an endoscopy or I'd be a zombie by now.My symptoms were depression & anxiety, eczema, GERD, hypothyroidism, mild dizziness, tripping, Alzheimer's-like memory problems, insomnia, heart palpitations, fibromyalgia, worsening eyesight, mild cardiomyopathy, to name a few.After six months gluten-free, I asked my gastroenterologist about feeling full early ... he said he didn't know what I was talking about! *shrug*But *I* knew -- it was the gluten/starches! My satiety level has totally changed, and for the first time in my life I feel NORMAL!Feeling satisfied with less is a prominent effect in my experience, too. You need to eat less, you're driven to snack less, less likely to give in to those evil little bedtime or middle-of-the-night impulses that make you feel ashamed and guilty. An anonymous (female) commenter said:My life changed when I cut not only all wheat, but all grains from my diet.For the first time in my life, I was no longer hungry -no hunger pangs between meals; no overwhelming desire to snack. Now I eat at mealtimes without even thinking about food in between.I've dropped 70 pounds, effortlessly, come off high blood pressure meds and control my blood sugar without medication.I don't know whether it was just the elimination of grain, especially wheat, or whether it was a combination of grain elimnation along with a number of other changes, but I do know that mere reduction of grain consumption still left me hungry. It wasn't until I elimnated it that the overwhelming redution in appetite kicked in.As a former wheat-addicted vegetarian, who thought she was eating healthily according to all the expert advice out there at the time, I can only shake my head at how mistaken I was.That may be a record for me: 70 lbs!! Stan said:It's worth it and you won't look back! Many things will improve, not just weight reduction: you will think clearer, your reflexes will improve, your breathing rate will go down, your blood pressure will normalize. You will never or rarely have a fever or viral infections like cold or flu. You will become more resistant to cold temperature and you will rarely feel tired, ever!Ortcloud said:Whenever I go out to breakfast I look around and I am in shock at what people eat for breakfast. Big stack of pancakes, fruit, fruit juice syrup, just like you said. This is not breakfast, this is dessert ! It has the same sugar and nutrition as a birthday cake, would anyone think cake is ok for breakfast ? No, but that is exactly the equivalent of what they are eating. Somehow we have been duped to think this is ok. For me, I typically eat an omelette when I go out, low carb and no sugar. I dont eat wheat but invariably it comes with the meal and I try to tell the waitress no thanks, they are stunned. They try to push some other type of wheat or sugar product on me instead, finally I have to tell them I dont eat wheat and they are doubly stunned. They cant comprehend it. We have a long way to go in terms of re-education.Yes. Don't be surprised at the incomprehension, the rolled eyes, even the anger that can sometimes result. Imagine that told you that the food you've come to rely on and love is killing you! Anne said:I was overweight by only about 15lbs and I was having pitting edema in my legs and shortness of breath. My cardiologist and I were discussing the possible need of an angiogram. I was three years out from heart bypass surgery.Before we could schedule the procedure, I tested positive for gluten sensitivity through www.enterolab.com. I eliminated not only wheat but also barley and rye and oats(very contaminated with wheat) from my diet. Within a few weeks my edema was gone, my energy was up and I was no longer short of breath. I lost about 10 lbs. The main reason I gave up gluten was to see if I could stop the progression of my peripheral neuropathy. Getting off wheat and other gluten grains has given me back my life. I have been gluten free for 4 years and feel younger than I have in many years.There are many gluten free processed foods, but I have found I feel my best when I stick with whole foods.Ann has a different reason (gluten enteropathy, or celiac disease) for wanting to be wheat-free. But I've seen similar improvements that go beyond just relief of the symptoms attributable to the inflammatory intestinal effects of gluten elimination. Wccaguy said:I have relatively successfully cut carbs and grains from my diet thus far.Because I've got some weight to lose, I have tried to keep the carb count low and I've lost 15 pounds since then.I have also been very surprised at the significant reduction in my appetite. I've read about the experience of others with regard to appetite reduction and couldn't really imagine that it could happen for me too. But it has.A few weeks ago, I attended a party catered by one of my favorite italian restaurants and got myself offtrack for two days. Then it took me a couple of days to get back on track because my appetite returned.Check out Jimmy Moore's website for lots of ideas about variations of foods to try. The latest thing I picked up from Jimmy is the good old-fashioned hard boiled egg. Two or three eggs with some spicy hot sauce for breakfast and a handful of almonds mid-morning plus a couple glasses of water and I'm good for the morning no problem.I find myself thinking about lunch not because I'm really hungry but out of habit.The cool thing too now is that the more I do this, the more I'm just not tempted much to do anything but this diet. Going wheat-free, along with a reduction in processed sugary foods like Hawaiian Punch, sodas, and candy, is the straightest, most direct path I know of to lose weight, obtain all the health benefits listed by our commenters, as well as achieve the lipoprotein corrections we seek, like reduction of small LDL particles and rise in HDL, in the Track Your Plaque program.
Cheers to flavonoids 28. October 2007 William Davis (14) The case in favor of healthful flavonoids seems to grow bit by bit. Flavonoids such as procyanadins in wine and chocolate, catechins in tea, and those in walnuts, pomegranates, and pycnogenol (pine bark extract) are suspected to block oxidation of LDL (preventing its entry into plaque), normalize abnormal endothelial constriction, and yield platelet-blocking effects (preventing blood clots). Dr. Roger Corder is a prolific author of many scientific papers detailing his research into the flavonoids of foods, but wine in particular. He summarizes his findings in a recent book, The Red Wine Diet. Contrary to the obvious vying-for-prime-time title, Dr. Corder's compilation is probably the best discussion of flavonoids in foods and wines that I've come across. Although it would have been more entertaining if peppered with more wit and humans interest, given the topic, its straightfoward, semi-academic telling of the story makes his points effectively. Among the important observations Corder makes is that regions of the world with the greatest longevity also correspond to regions with the highest procyanidin flavonoids in their wines. Regading the variable flavonoid content of various wines, he states:Although differences in the amount of procyanidins in red wine clearly occur because of the grape variety and the vineyard environment, the winemaker holds the key to what ends up in the bottle. The most important aspect of the winemaking process for ensuring high procyanidins in red wines is the contact time between the liquid and the grape seeds during fermentation when the alcohol concentration reaches about 6 percent. Depending on the fermentation temperature, it may be two to three days or more before this extraction process starts. Grape skins float and seeds sink, so the number of times they are pushed down and stirred into the fermenting wine also increases extraction of procyanidins. Even so, extraction is a slow process and, after fermentation is complete, many red wines are left to macerate with their seeds and skins for days or even weeks in order to extract all the color, flavor, and tannins. Wines that have a contact time of less than seven days will have a relatively low level of procyanidins. Wines with a contact time of ten to fourteen days have decent levels, and those with contact times of three weeks or more have the highest. He points out that deeply-colored reds are more likely to be richer in procyanidins; mass-produced wines that are usually "house-grade" served at bars and restaurants tend to be low. Some are close to zero. Wines rich in procyanidins provide several-fold more, such that a single glass can provide the same purported health benefit as several glasses of a procyanidin-poor wine. So how do various wines stack up in procyanidin content? Here's an abbreviated list from his book:Australian--tend to be low, except for Australian Cabernet Sauvignon which is moderate. Chile--only Cabernet Sauvignon stands out, then only moderate in content.France--Where to start? The French, of course, are the perennial masters of wine, and prolonged contact with skins and seeds is usually taken for granted in many varieties of wine. Each wine region (French wines are generally designated by region, not by variety of grape) can also vary widely in flavonoid content. Nonetheless, Bordeaux rate moderately; Burgundy low to moderate (except the village of Pommard); Languedoc-Roussillon moderate to high (and many great bargains in my experience, since these producers live in the shadow of its norther Bordeaux neighbors); Rhone (Cote du Rhone) moderate to high, though beware of their powerful "barnyard" character upon opening; decanting is wise. Italy--Much red Italian wine is made from the Sangiovese grape and called variously Chianti, Valpolicella, and "super-Tuscan" when blended with other varietals. Corder rates the southern Italian wines from Sicily, Sardinia, and the mainland as high in procyanidins; most northern varieties are moderate. Spain--Moderate in general. United States--Though his comments are disappointingly scanty on the U.S., he points out that Cabernet Sauvignon is the standout for procyanidin content. He mentions only the Napa/Sonoma regions, unfortunately. (I'd like to know how the San Diego-Temecula and Virginian wines fare, for instance.)The winner in procyanidin content is a variety grown in the Gers region of southwest France, a region with superior longevity of its residents. The wines here are made with the tannat grape within the Madiran appellation; wines labeled "Madiran" must contain 40% or more tannat to be so labeled (such is a quirk of French wine regulation). However, among the producers Dr. Corder lists are Chateau de Sabazan, CHateau Saint-Go, Chateau du Bascou, Domaine Labranche Laffont, and Chateau d'Aydie. (A more complete can be found in his book.)How does this all figure into the Track Your Plaque program? Can you succeed without red wine? Of course you can. I doubt you could do it, however, without some attention to flavonoid-rich food sources, whether they come from spinach, tea, chocolate, beets, pomegranates, or red wine. Though my wife and I love wine, I confess that I've never personally drank or even seen a French Madiran wine. Any wine afficionados with some advice?
Wheat and the hunger factor 28. October 2007 William Davis (20) Low carbohydrate diets are becoming increasingly popular. In my experience, they also work exceptionally well. However, I have observed a specific aspect of low-carb diets that deserves special attention: When wheat products in particular are eliminated, hunger plummets enormously. It seems peculiar to wheat. Other high-glycemic index carbohydrates like a baked potato or white rice, for instance, don't seem to have the capacity to trigger appetite like a handful of pretzels or crackers can. There are exceptions: processed sweet drinks that contain high-fructose corn syrup can stimulate appetite, as do foods made with processed corn and corn starch. Cureality | Real People Seeking Real Cures Toggle navigation Home Blog Home Archive Join Now Log in The Track Your Plaque guide to getting grotesquely overweight 15. August 2006 William Davis (0) If you'd like to gain huge quantities of weight, here's a number of helpful tips:1) Follow the advice of food manufacturers and eat the products they label "healthy", or "heart healthy", or "part of a nutritious breakfast" etc., like Shredded Wheat cereal, pretzels ("a low-fat snack"!), low- or non-fat salad dressings. 2) Cut your morning calorie intake by skipping breakfast.3) Hang around with other heavy people. They will confirm that it's okay to be overweight. 4) Call walking your dog "exercise". 5) Get a sedentary desk job. Use your swivel desk chair to scoot about whenever possible, rather than getting up to do things. 6) Say "I've worked hard all week long. Weekends are for relaxing, not for physical activities. I deserve a rest."7) Eat foods without thinking about it: Eat chips while watching football, eat while on the phone, daydream over the sink.8) Eat to provide comfort when stressed.9) Eat foods that have sentimental value, whether or not they're good for you: Freshly-baked cakes that remind you of Mom, Pop Tarts that you used to carry in your lunchbox when you were a kid, hot dogs just like Dad would buy at the baseball stadium. 10) Cut back on sleep and generate insatiable starch cravings.11) Stack your shelves at home with great variety. That way, you'll always have something to suit your mood. 12) Say to your spouse: "It's none of your damn business what I eat! I'm a grown man/woman!" Prove it by over-indulging in obviously unhealthy foods. 13) Tell yourself that you're just too busy to pay attention to food choices. Just grab whatever you can out of a convenience store or vending machine. See, it's easy! And that just a start.Of course, I don't really want you to do any of these things. But if you see yourself in any of the above, and you're struggling with weight, you should seriously rethink your approach. Your heart scan is just a "false positive" 15. August 2006 not to eat: Processed snack foods, meals delivered in a fast-food setting with the offer to “super-size” your order, make-believe food ingested in your car eaten for the sake of staving off the inevitable hunger pangs. Few would argue that these are certain paths to obesity and poor health. Certainly, if we’ve learned how not to eat, can we extrapolate just how to eat? And not just for weight loss, since most diets focus just on that, but on health, particularly heart health?If Americans have so far failed to learn the lessons of the nutritional world, we certainly have not failed at talking about it. From books to blogs, websites, information gurus to infomercials, we certainly celebrate the capacity to share our experiences, our grief over our nutritional “misfortune,” despite a world of plenty. Yet we swim in a sea of information. Can we sift through the chaff to discover the essential truth? Let me articulate an extreme (extreme meaning closer to the truth, I hope) interpretation of nutritional wisdom:--If it requires a label or nutritional analysis, reject it. The wondrous green pepper, or bottle of olive oil, for instance, require no such qualifications. Some exceptions: milk, yogurt, cottage cheese (unless, of course, you purchase straight from a local producer). I am always impressed with the contortions and frustrations people experience trying to decipher labels. Ironically, the healthiest foods don’t even require labels. --If it is ingested in a rush, it’s likely to add to poor health. True food is meant to be consumed at leisure, not in haste to satisfy some irrational, unthinking impulse. --Search for natural, whole foods. Natural, whole foods require no marketing. You pay a premium for a company to adorn a product with glitz, glamour, and appeal. Repackage Cocoa Puffs as chocolate flavored, round overly-processed wheat flour, sans marketing spin, and what is left? Processed foods are?intentionally?addictive. They are added to, modified, high-fructose corn syruped, etc. to increase desirability, but also create addiction. Eliminate them just as a smoker eliminates cigarettes. --A corollary to the above issue: purchase foods that appear as if you had grown it or raised it yourself. If you were to grow corn in your backyard garden, you would eat it on the cob or some similar way. You would not grind it, pulverize, process it, nor serve it as cornstarch and add to a pile of chemicals to make breakfast cereal. Eat foods in their natural state, not the highly processed food-product that requires a colorful package and advertising to sell. --Don’t keep bags of chips, boxes of breakfast cereal and crackers, frozen dinners, all “just in case.” Don’t allow yourself that opportunity because you will more than likely seize it. An alcoholic who keeps a secret bottle of gin hidden in the cabinet is well aware that it’s there and will eventually give in to impulse.--When you eat meat, try to find free-range, organic products. Even better, purchase from a local producer who you trust. --For anyone with patterns like low HDL, small LDL, high triglycerides, and blood sugar >100 mg/dl, following a diet that is as free of wheat products as possible will yield enormous benefits. Wheat is a part of all breads, virtually all breakfast cereals, pretzels, crackers, bagels, cookies, cupcakes, pancakes, waffles, etc. Going wheat-free is also a surprisingly effective weight loss strategy. That’s just a few thoughts. The approach we use in the Track Your Plaque program helps achieve weight loss, but also helps correct lipoprotein patterns, often dramatically. Many diets have failed to keep pace with the changing nutritional habits of Americans. In 1960, we ingested close to zero high-fructose corn syrup. We’re now approaching 80 lbs per year per American. Breakfast cereal in 1950 consisted of a handful of products, eaten intermittently; today, it is a staple with enough products to fill a modern supermarket’s entire aisle. Meats have changed, thanks to the factory farm phenomenon feeding its animals corn in inhumanely restricted conditions, a dietary shift for livestock that has modified the fat composition to something far different than 50 years ago, not to mention the antibiotics and other chemicals used to accelerate growth and fight off infection from the artificial, overcrowded conditions. The American nutritional shift, along with rampant obesity, have also caused a relatively new cause of coronary heart disease to explode: small LDL particles. The contribution of small LDL has been enormously underestimated, since most physicians don’t know what it is, don’t know how to check for it, and don’t know what to do with it. Yet it has emerged as the number one cause for heart attack and heart disease nationwide.Stay tuned for our rewritten New Track Your Plaque diet to be released as a Special Report on the www.cureality.com website in future. Dr. Jarvik, is niacin as bad as it sounds? 20. October 2007 William Davis (5) A popular health newsletter, Everyday Health, carried this headline:A Cholesterol-Busting Vitamin?Did you know that niacin, one of the B vitamins, is also a potent cholesterol fighter?Find out how niacin can help reduce choleseterol.At doses way above the Recommended Dietary Allowance — say 1,000–2,500 mg a day (1–2.5 grams) — crystalline nicotinic acid acts as a drug instead of a vitamin. It can reduce total cholesterol levels by up to 25%, lowering LDL and raising HDL levels, and can rapidly lower the blood level of triglycerides. It does so by reducing the liver’s production of VLDL, which is ordinarily converted into LDL. I'd agree with that, except that it is rare to require doses higher than 1000-1500 mg per day unless you are treating lipoprotein(a) and using niacin as a tool for dramatic drops in LDL. But for just raising HDL, shifting HDL into the healthy large class, reducing small LDL, and for reduction of heart attack risk, 1000-1500 mg is usually sufficient; taking more yields little or no further effect. But after that positive comment comes this:Niacin is safe — except in people with chronic liver disease or certain other conditions, including diabetes and peptic ulcer. . . However, it has numerous side effects. It can cause rashes and aggravate gout, diabetes, or peptic ulcers. Early in therapy, it can cause facial flushing for several minutes soon after a dose, although this response often stops after about two weeks of therapy and can be reduced by taking aspirin or ibuprofen half an hour before taking the niacin. A sustained-release preparation of niacin (Niaspan) appears to have fewer side effects, but may cause more liver function abnormalities, especially when combined with a statin. Strange. After a headline clearly designed to pull readers in, clearly stating niacin's benefits, the article then proceeds to scare the pants off you with side-effects. But look to the side and above the text: Ah . . . two prominent advertisements for Lipitor, complete with Dr. Robert Jarvik's photo. "I've studied the human heart for a lifetime. I trust Lipitor to keep my heart healthy." Niacin bad. Lipitor good. Even celebrity doc says so. Sounds like bait and switch to me. "You could try niacin--if you dare. But you could also try Lipitor." Who is Dr. Jarvik, anyway, that he serves as spokesman (or at least figurehead) for this $13 billion dollar a year drug? Of course, he is the 1982 inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart, surely an admirable accomplishment. But does that qualify him to speak about heart disease prevention and cholesterol drugs? Jarvik has never--never--actually prescribed Lipitor, since he never completed any formal medical training beyond obtaining his Medical Doctor degree, nor has he ever had a license to practice medicine. He does, however, continue in his effort to provide artificial heart devices, principally for implantation as a "bridge" to transplantation, i.e., to sustain a patient temporarily who is dying of end-stage heart failure. So where does his expertise in heart disease prevention come from? It's beyond me. Perhaps it was the thousands of dollars likely paid to him. That will make an "expert" out of just about anybody. Robert Bazell, science reporter, for CNBC, made this report on the Jarvik-Lipitor connection in his March, 2007 report, Is this celebrity doctor's TV ad right for you?Mr. Bazell writes:On May 16, 1988, an editorial in the New York Times dubbed the artificial heart experiments, “The Dracula of Medical Technology.”“The crude machines,” it continued, “with their noisy pumps, simply wore out the human body and spirit.”Since then, in a series of start-up companies, Jarvik has continued his quest to make an artificial heart — as have several other firms. One competitor recently won FDA approval to sell its device for implantation in extreme emergencies.Perhaps Jarvik’s chances of success with another artificial heart account for his willingness to serve as pitchman for Pfizer. I inquired, without success, to find the going rate for a semi- celebrity like Jarvik to appear in such ads. Thomaselli of Advertising Age said whatever it is, it is “infinitesimal” compared to Pfizer’s expenditures of $11 billion a year on advertising, much of it for Lipitor.Why spend so much marketing Lipitor? Because Lipitor is only one of six drugs in the class called statins that lower cholesterol. Many cardiologists say that for the vast majority of people any one of these drugs works just as well as the other. Two of them, Mevacor and Zocor, have already lost their patent protection so they cost pennies a day compared to $3 or more a day for Lipitor.In 2010, when Lipitor loses its patent protection, it, too, will cost pennies a day, and Pfizer will no longer need Dr. Robert Jarvik. So, is niacin so bad after all? Or is this Everyday Health report just another clever piece of advertising for Pfizer? Is niacin as bad as it sounds? 20. October 2007 William Davis (0) A popular health newsletter, Everyday Health, carried this headline:A Cholesterol-Busting Vitamin?Did you know that niacin, one of the B vitamins, is also a potent cholesterol fighter?Find out how niacin can help reduce choleseterol.At doses way above the Recommended Dietary Allowance — say 1,000–2,500 mg a day (1–2.5 grams) — crystalline nicotinic acid acts as a drug instead of a vitamin. It can reduce total cholesterol levels by up to 25%, lowering LDL and raising HDL levels, and can rapidly lower the blood level of triglycerides. It does so by reducing the liver’s production of VLDL, which is ordinarily converted into LDL. I'd agree with that, except that it is rare to require doses higher than 1000-1500 mg per day unless you are treating lipoprotein(a) and using niacin as a tool for dramatic drops in LDL. But for just raising HDL, shifting HDL into the healthy large class, reducing small LDL, and for reduction of heart attack risk, 1000-1500 mg is usually sufficient; taking more yields little or no further effect. But after that positive comment comes this:Niacin is safe — except in people with chronic liver disease or certain other conditions, including diabetes and peptic ulcer. . . However, it has numerous side effects. It can cause rashes and aggravate gout, diabetes, or peptic ulcers. Early in therapy, it can cause facial flushing for several minutes soon after a dose, although this response often stops after about two weeks of therapy and can be reduced by taking aspirin or ibuprofen half an hour before taking the niacin. A sustained-release preparation of niacin (Niaspan) appears to have fewer side effects, but may cause more liver function abnormalities, especially when combined with a statin. Strange. After a headline clearly designed to pull readers in, clearly stating niacin's benefits, the article then proceeds to share the pants off you with side-effects. But look to the side and above the text: Ah . . . two prominent advertisements for Lipitor, complete with Dr. Robert Jarvik's photo. "I've studied the human heart for a lifetime. I trust Lipitor to keep my heart healthy." Sounds like bait and switch to me. "You could try niacin--if you dare. But you could also try Lipitor."Who is Dr. Jarvik, anyway, that he stands as the spokesman (or at least figurehead) for this $13 billion dollar a year drug. Of course, he is the 1982 inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart, surely an admirable accomplishment. But does that qualify him to speak about heart disease prevention and cholesterol drugs? Jarvik has, never actually prescribed Lipitor, since he never completed any formal medical training beyond obtaining his Medical Doctor degree, nor has he ever had a license to practice medicine. He does, however, continue in his effort to provide artificial heart devices, principally for implantation as a "bridge" to transplantation, i.e., to sustain a patient temporarily who is dying of end-stage heart failure. So where does his expertise in heart disease prevention come from? Omega-3 fatty acids: Frequency vs. quantity 20. October 2007 William Davis (8) I believe I have been observing an unexpected phenomenon: When it comes to fish oil and omega-3 fatty acids, the frequency of dosing may be as important, perhaps more important, than the actual dose.First of all, why advocate omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil? There’s a list of lipid/lipoprotein reasons, including reduction of triglycerides and triglyceride-containing particles (VLDL, intermediate-density lipoproteins), reduction of small LDL, and increase in HDL. There’s also solid benefit in reduction of heart attack risk, reduction in death from heart attack, and reduction in stroke. There are also anti-inflammatory benefits and improvements in mood, reduction in depression.Fish oil is a crucial ingredient in the Track Your Plaque program. I am honestly uncertain of just how much success we would give up if fish oil were NOT a part of the program, but I am unwilling to find out. The data are simply too compelling to not include omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil. Of course, supplementation of omega-3 fatty acids assumes greater importance in a modern world in which your food has become terribly depleted of the omega-3 fraction of oils. (Cultures that rely heavily on fish or wild game probably would not benefit to the same extent, since these foods contain omega-3 fatty acids.) But I believe I have observed a curious effect over the past year or two. With the proliferation of many different preparations of fish oil that provide seemingly endless choices—low-potency fish oil, high-potency fish oil, paste forms of fish oil like Coromega, liquids such as Carlson’s, etc.¾I’ve observed that frequency of dosing may exert as much of an effect as the dose. For example, someone might take the basic, low-potency preparation like Sam’s Club that contains 180 mg EPA and 120 mg DHA per capsule, four capsules per day. That yields a total of 1200 mg EPA and DHA per day. This is our minimum dose that provides the basic heart attack-reducing effect, though with modest effect on triglycerides and associated patterns. Say someone switches to a high-potency preparation of 360 mg EPA and 240 mg DHA, providing a total of 600 mg omega-3 fatty acids per capsule, or twice the dose of the low-potency preparation. Would you expect double the effect? Curiously, no. What I have observed, however, is that more frequent dosing may provide a larger effect. The least effective dosing is once per day; twice per day is far more effective. Three times per day¾though cumbersome¾provides even greater effect. So, which is more important: dose or frequency? I can’t say for certain, since my observations are informal and have not been obtained by a formal statistical analysis of our data. That will come with time. For the present, suffice it to say that, if you are struggling with suppression of patterns like increased triglycerides, IDL, or low HDL, then at least twice- or three-times-per-day dosing might be worth considering, even before you increase the dose further. Best: Greater dose, or higher-potency preparation, combined with higher frequency. << Older posts Newer posts >> Newer posts12...737475767778798081...123124Older posts
The Track Your Plaque guide to getting grotesquely overweight 15. August 2006 William Davis (0) If you'd like to gain huge quantities of weight, here's a number of helpful tips:1) Follow the advice of food manufacturers and eat the products they label "healthy", or "heart healthy", or "part of a nutritious breakfast" etc., like Shredded Wheat cereal, pretzels ("a low-fat snack"!), low- or non-fat salad dressings. 2) Cut your morning calorie intake by skipping breakfast.3) Hang around with other heavy people. They will confirm that it's okay to be overweight. 4) Call walking your dog "exercise". 5) Get a sedentary desk job. Use your swivel desk chair to scoot about whenever possible, rather than getting up to do things. 6) Say "I've worked hard all week long. Weekends are for relaxing, not for physical activities. I deserve a rest."7) Eat foods without thinking about it: Eat chips while watching football, eat while on the phone, daydream over the sink.8) Eat to provide comfort when stressed.9) Eat foods that have sentimental value, whether or not they're good for you: Freshly-baked cakes that remind you of Mom, Pop Tarts that you used to carry in your lunchbox when you were a kid, hot dogs just like Dad would buy at the baseball stadium. 10) Cut back on sleep and generate insatiable starch cravings.11) Stack your shelves at home with great variety. That way, you'll always have something to suit your mood. 12) Say to your spouse: "It's none of your damn business what I eat! I'm a grown man/woman!" Prove it by over-indulging in obviously unhealthy foods. 13) Tell yourself that you're just too busy to pay attention to food choices. Just grab whatever you can out of a convenience store or vending machine. See, it's easy! And that just a start.Of course, I don't really want you to do any of these things. But if you see yourself in any of the above, and you're struggling with weight, you should seriously rethink your approach.
Your heart scan is just a "false positive" 15. August 2006 not to eat: Processed snack foods, meals delivered in a fast-food setting with the offer to “super-size” your order, make-believe food ingested in your car eaten for the sake of staving off the inevitable hunger pangs. Few would argue that these are certain paths to obesity and poor health. Certainly, if we’ve learned how not to eat, can we extrapolate just how to eat? And not just for weight loss, since most diets focus just on that, but on health, particularly heart health?If Americans have so far failed to learn the lessons of the nutritional world, we certainly have not failed at talking about it. From books to blogs, websites, information gurus to infomercials, we certainly celebrate the capacity to share our experiences, our grief over our nutritional “misfortune,” despite a world of plenty. Yet we swim in a sea of information. Can we sift through the chaff to discover the essential truth? Let me articulate an extreme (extreme meaning closer to the truth, I hope) interpretation of nutritional wisdom:--If it requires a label or nutritional analysis, reject it. The wondrous green pepper, or bottle of olive oil, for instance, require no such qualifications. Some exceptions: milk, yogurt, cottage cheese (unless, of course, you purchase straight from a local producer). I am always impressed with the contortions and frustrations people experience trying to decipher labels. Ironically, the healthiest foods don’t even require labels. --If it is ingested in a rush, it’s likely to add to poor health. True food is meant to be consumed at leisure, not in haste to satisfy some irrational, unthinking impulse. --Search for natural, whole foods. Natural, whole foods require no marketing. You pay a premium for a company to adorn a product with glitz, glamour, and appeal. Repackage Cocoa Puffs as chocolate flavored, round overly-processed wheat flour, sans marketing spin, and what is left? Processed foods are?intentionally?addictive. They are added to, modified, high-fructose corn syruped, etc. to increase desirability, but also create addiction. Eliminate them just as a smoker eliminates cigarettes. --A corollary to the above issue: purchase foods that appear as if you had grown it or raised it yourself. If you were to grow corn in your backyard garden, you would eat it on the cob or some similar way. You would not grind it, pulverize, process it, nor serve it as cornstarch and add to a pile of chemicals to make breakfast cereal. Eat foods in their natural state, not the highly processed food-product that requires a colorful package and advertising to sell. --Don’t keep bags of chips, boxes of breakfast cereal and crackers, frozen dinners, all “just in case.” Don’t allow yourself that opportunity because you will more than likely seize it. An alcoholic who keeps a secret bottle of gin hidden in the cabinet is well aware that it’s there and will eventually give in to impulse.--When you eat meat, try to find free-range, organic products. Even better, purchase from a local producer who you trust. --For anyone with patterns like low HDL, small LDL, high triglycerides, and blood sugar >100 mg/dl, following a diet that is as free of wheat products as possible will yield enormous benefits. Wheat is a part of all breads, virtually all breakfast cereals, pretzels, crackers, bagels, cookies, cupcakes, pancakes, waffles, etc. Going wheat-free is also a surprisingly effective weight loss strategy. That’s just a few thoughts. The approach we use in the Track Your Plaque program helps achieve weight loss, but also helps correct lipoprotein patterns, often dramatically. Many diets have failed to keep pace with the changing nutritional habits of Americans. In 1960, we ingested close to zero high-fructose corn syrup. We’re now approaching 80 lbs per year per American. Breakfast cereal in 1950 consisted of a handful of products, eaten intermittently; today, it is a staple with enough products to fill a modern supermarket’s entire aisle. Meats have changed, thanks to the factory farm phenomenon feeding its animals corn in inhumanely restricted conditions, a dietary shift for livestock that has modified the fat composition to something far different than 50 years ago, not to mention the antibiotics and other chemicals used to accelerate growth and fight off infection from the artificial, overcrowded conditions. The American nutritional shift, along with rampant obesity, have also caused a relatively new cause of coronary heart disease to explode: small LDL particles. The contribution of small LDL has been enormously underestimated, since most physicians don’t know what it is, don’t know how to check for it, and don’t know what to do with it. Yet it has emerged as the number one cause for heart attack and heart disease nationwide.Stay tuned for our rewritten New Track Your Plaque diet to be released as a Special Report on the www.cureality.com website in future. Dr. Jarvik, is niacin as bad as it sounds? 20. October 2007 William Davis (5) A popular health newsletter, Everyday Health, carried this headline:A Cholesterol-Busting Vitamin?Did you know that niacin, one of the B vitamins, is also a potent cholesterol fighter?Find out how niacin can help reduce choleseterol.At doses way above the Recommended Dietary Allowance — say 1,000–2,500 mg a day (1–2.5 grams) — crystalline nicotinic acid acts as a drug instead of a vitamin. It can reduce total cholesterol levels by up to 25%, lowering LDL and raising HDL levels, and can rapidly lower the blood level of triglycerides. It does so by reducing the liver’s production of VLDL, which is ordinarily converted into LDL. I'd agree with that, except that it is rare to require doses higher than 1000-1500 mg per day unless you are treating lipoprotein(a) and using niacin as a tool for dramatic drops in LDL. But for just raising HDL, shifting HDL into the healthy large class, reducing small LDL, and for reduction of heart attack risk, 1000-1500 mg is usually sufficient; taking more yields little or no further effect. But after that positive comment comes this:Niacin is safe — except in people with chronic liver disease or certain other conditions, including diabetes and peptic ulcer. . . However, it has numerous side effects. It can cause rashes and aggravate gout, diabetes, or peptic ulcers. Early in therapy, it can cause facial flushing for several minutes soon after a dose, although this response often stops after about two weeks of therapy and can be reduced by taking aspirin or ibuprofen half an hour before taking the niacin. A sustained-release preparation of niacin (Niaspan) appears to have fewer side effects, but may cause more liver function abnormalities, especially when combined with a statin. Strange. After a headline clearly designed to pull readers in, clearly stating niacin's benefits, the article then proceeds to scare the pants off you with side-effects. But look to the side and above the text: Ah . . . two prominent advertisements for Lipitor, complete with Dr. Robert Jarvik's photo. "I've studied the human heart for a lifetime. I trust Lipitor to keep my heart healthy." Niacin bad. Lipitor good. Even celebrity doc says so. Sounds like bait and switch to me. "You could try niacin--if you dare. But you could also try Lipitor." Who is Dr. Jarvik, anyway, that he serves as spokesman (or at least figurehead) for this $13 billion dollar a year drug? Of course, he is the 1982 inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart, surely an admirable accomplishment. But does that qualify him to speak about heart disease prevention and cholesterol drugs? Jarvik has never--never--actually prescribed Lipitor, since he never completed any formal medical training beyond obtaining his Medical Doctor degree, nor has he ever had a license to practice medicine. He does, however, continue in his effort to provide artificial heart devices, principally for implantation as a "bridge" to transplantation, i.e., to sustain a patient temporarily who is dying of end-stage heart failure. So where does his expertise in heart disease prevention come from? It's beyond me. Perhaps it was the thousands of dollars likely paid to him. That will make an "expert" out of just about anybody. Robert Bazell, science reporter, for CNBC, made this report on the Jarvik-Lipitor connection in his March, 2007 report, Is this celebrity doctor's TV ad right for you?Mr. Bazell writes:On May 16, 1988, an editorial in the New York Times dubbed the artificial heart experiments, “The Dracula of Medical Technology.”“The crude machines,” it continued, “with their noisy pumps, simply wore out the human body and spirit.”Since then, in a series of start-up companies, Jarvik has continued his quest to make an artificial heart — as have several other firms. One competitor recently won FDA approval to sell its device for implantation in extreme emergencies.Perhaps Jarvik’s chances of success with another artificial heart account for his willingness to serve as pitchman for Pfizer. I inquired, without success, to find the going rate for a semi- celebrity like Jarvik to appear in such ads. Thomaselli of Advertising Age said whatever it is, it is “infinitesimal” compared to Pfizer’s expenditures of $11 billion a year on advertising, much of it for Lipitor.Why spend so much marketing Lipitor? Because Lipitor is only one of six drugs in the class called statins that lower cholesterol. Many cardiologists say that for the vast majority of people any one of these drugs works just as well as the other. Two of them, Mevacor and Zocor, have already lost their patent protection so they cost pennies a day compared to $3 or more a day for Lipitor.In 2010, when Lipitor loses its patent protection, it, too, will cost pennies a day, and Pfizer will no longer need Dr. Robert Jarvik. So, is niacin so bad after all? Or is this Everyday Health report just another clever piece of advertising for Pfizer? Is niacin as bad as it sounds? 20. October 2007 William Davis (0) A popular health newsletter, Everyday Health, carried this headline:A Cholesterol-Busting Vitamin?Did you know that niacin, one of the B vitamins, is also a potent cholesterol fighter?Find out how niacin can help reduce choleseterol.At doses way above the Recommended Dietary Allowance — say 1,000–2,500 mg a day (1–2.5 grams) — crystalline nicotinic acid acts as a drug instead of a vitamin. It can reduce total cholesterol levels by up to 25%, lowering LDL and raising HDL levels, and can rapidly lower the blood level of triglycerides. It does so by reducing the liver’s production of VLDL, which is ordinarily converted into LDL. I'd agree with that, except that it is rare to require doses higher than 1000-1500 mg per day unless you are treating lipoprotein(a) and using niacin as a tool for dramatic drops in LDL. But for just raising HDL, shifting HDL into the healthy large class, reducing small LDL, and for reduction of heart attack risk, 1000-1500 mg is usually sufficient; taking more yields little or no further effect. But after that positive comment comes this:Niacin is safe — except in people with chronic liver disease or certain other conditions, including diabetes and peptic ulcer. . . However, it has numerous side effects. It can cause rashes and aggravate gout, diabetes, or peptic ulcers. Early in therapy, it can cause facial flushing for several minutes soon after a dose, although this response often stops after about two weeks of therapy and can be reduced by taking aspirin or ibuprofen half an hour before taking the niacin. A sustained-release preparation of niacin (Niaspan) appears to have fewer side effects, but may cause more liver function abnormalities, especially when combined with a statin. Strange. After a headline clearly designed to pull readers in, clearly stating niacin's benefits, the article then proceeds to share the pants off you with side-effects. But look to the side and above the text: Ah . . . two prominent advertisements for Lipitor, complete with Dr. Robert Jarvik's photo. "I've studied the human heart for a lifetime. I trust Lipitor to keep my heart healthy." Sounds like bait and switch to me. "You could try niacin--if you dare. But you could also try Lipitor."Who is Dr. Jarvik, anyway, that he stands as the spokesman (or at least figurehead) for this $13 billion dollar a year drug. Of course, he is the 1982 inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart, surely an admirable accomplishment. But does that qualify him to speak about heart disease prevention and cholesterol drugs? Jarvik has, never actually prescribed Lipitor, since he never completed any formal medical training beyond obtaining his Medical Doctor degree, nor has he ever had a license to practice medicine. He does, however, continue in his effort to provide artificial heart devices, principally for implantation as a "bridge" to transplantation, i.e., to sustain a patient temporarily who is dying of end-stage heart failure. So where does his expertise in heart disease prevention come from? Omega-3 fatty acids: Frequency vs. quantity 20. October 2007 William Davis (8) I believe I have been observing an unexpected phenomenon: When it comes to fish oil and omega-3 fatty acids, the frequency of dosing may be as important, perhaps more important, than the actual dose.First of all, why advocate omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil? There’s a list of lipid/lipoprotein reasons, including reduction of triglycerides and triglyceride-containing particles (VLDL, intermediate-density lipoproteins), reduction of small LDL, and increase in HDL. There’s also solid benefit in reduction of heart attack risk, reduction in death from heart attack, and reduction in stroke. There are also anti-inflammatory benefits and improvements in mood, reduction in depression.Fish oil is a crucial ingredient in the Track Your Plaque program. I am honestly uncertain of just how much success we would give up if fish oil were NOT a part of the program, but I am unwilling to find out. The data are simply too compelling to not include omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil. Of course, supplementation of omega-3 fatty acids assumes greater importance in a modern world in which your food has become terribly depleted of the omega-3 fraction of oils. (Cultures that rely heavily on fish or wild game probably would not benefit to the same extent, since these foods contain omega-3 fatty acids.) But I believe I have observed a curious effect over the past year or two. With the proliferation of many different preparations of fish oil that provide seemingly endless choices—low-potency fish oil, high-potency fish oil, paste forms of fish oil like Coromega, liquids such as Carlson’s, etc.¾I’ve observed that frequency of dosing may exert as much of an effect as the dose. For example, someone might take the basic, low-potency preparation like Sam’s Club that contains 180 mg EPA and 120 mg DHA per capsule, four capsules per day. That yields a total of 1200 mg EPA and DHA per day. This is our minimum dose that provides the basic heart attack-reducing effect, though with modest effect on triglycerides and associated patterns. Say someone switches to a high-potency preparation of 360 mg EPA and 240 mg DHA, providing a total of 600 mg omega-3 fatty acids per capsule, or twice the dose of the low-potency preparation. Would you expect double the effect? Curiously, no. What I have observed, however, is that more frequent dosing may provide a larger effect. The least effective dosing is once per day; twice per day is far more effective. Three times per day¾though cumbersome¾provides even greater effect. So, which is more important: dose or frequency? I can’t say for certain, since my observations are informal and have not been obtained by a formal statistical analysis of our data. That will come with time. For the present, suffice it to say that, if you are struggling with suppression of patterns like increased triglycerides, IDL, or low HDL, then at least twice- or three-times-per-day dosing might be worth considering, even before you increase the dose further. Best: Greater dose, or higher-potency preparation, combined with higher frequency. << Older posts Newer posts >> Newer posts12...737475767778798081...123124Older posts
Dr. Jarvik, is niacin as bad as it sounds? 20. October 2007 William Davis (5) A popular health newsletter, Everyday Health, carried this headline:A Cholesterol-Busting Vitamin?Did you know that niacin, one of the B vitamins, is also a potent cholesterol fighter?Find out how niacin can help reduce choleseterol.At doses way above the Recommended Dietary Allowance — say 1,000–2,500 mg a day (1–2.5 grams) — crystalline nicotinic acid acts as a drug instead of a vitamin. It can reduce total cholesterol levels by up to 25%, lowering LDL and raising HDL levels, and can rapidly lower the blood level of triglycerides. It does so by reducing the liver’s production of VLDL, which is ordinarily converted into LDL. I'd agree with that, except that it is rare to require doses higher than 1000-1500 mg per day unless you are treating lipoprotein(a) and using niacin as a tool for dramatic drops in LDL. But for just raising HDL, shifting HDL into the healthy large class, reducing small LDL, and for reduction of heart attack risk, 1000-1500 mg is usually sufficient; taking more yields little or no further effect. But after that positive comment comes this:Niacin is safe — except in people with chronic liver disease or certain other conditions, including diabetes and peptic ulcer. . . However, it has numerous side effects. It can cause rashes and aggravate gout, diabetes, or peptic ulcers. Early in therapy, it can cause facial flushing for several minutes soon after a dose, although this response often stops after about two weeks of therapy and can be reduced by taking aspirin or ibuprofen half an hour before taking the niacin. A sustained-release preparation of niacin (Niaspan) appears to have fewer side effects, but may cause more liver function abnormalities, especially when combined with a statin. Strange. After a headline clearly designed to pull readers in, clearly stating niacin's benefits, the article then proceeds to scare the pants off you with side-effects. But look to the side and above the text: Ah . . . two prominent advertisements for Lipitor, complete with Dr. Robert Jarvik's photo. "I've studied the human heart for a lifetime. I trust Lipitor to keep my heart healthy." Niacin bad. Lipitor good. Even celebrity doc says so. Sounds like bait and switch to me. "You could try niacin--if you dare. But you could also try Lipitor." Who is Dr. Jarvik, anyway, that he serves as spokesman (or at least figurehead) for this $13 billion dollar a year drug? Of course, he is the 1982 inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart, surely an admirable accomplishment. But does that qualify him to speak about heart disease prevention and cholesterol drugs? Jarvik has never--never--actually prescribed Lipitor, since he never completed any formal medical training beyond obtaining his Medical Doctor degree, nor has he ever had a license to practice medicine. He does, however, continue in his effort to provide artificial heart devices, principally for implantation as a "bridge" to transplantation, i.e., to sustain a patient temporarily who is dying of end-stage heart failure. So where does his expertise in heart disease prevention come from? It's beyond me. Perhaps it was the thousands of dollars likely paid to him. That will make an "expert" out of just about anybody. Robert Bazell, science reporter, for CNBC, made this report on the Jarvik-Lipitor connection in his March, 2007 report, Is this celebrity doctor's TV ad right for you?Mr. Bazell writes:On May 16, 1988, an editorial in the New York Times dubbed the artificial heart experiments, “The Dracula of Medical Technology.”“The crude machines,” it continued, “with their noisy pumps, simply wore out the human body and spirit.”Since then, in a series of start-up companies, Jarvik has continued his quest to make an artificial heart — as have several other firms. One competitor recently won FDA approval to sell its device for implantation in extreme emergencies.Perhaps Jarvik’s chances of success with another artificial heart account for his willingness to serve as pitchman for Pfizer. I inquired, without success, to find the going rate for a semi- celebrity like Jarvik to appear in such ads. Thomaselli of Advertising Age said whatever it is, it is “infinitesimal” compared to Pfizer’s expenditures of $11 billion a year on advertising, much of it for Lipitor.Why spend so much marketing Lipitor? Because Lipitor is only one of six drugs in the class called statins that lower cholesterol. Many cardiologists say that for the vast majority of people any one of these drugs works just as well as the other. Two of them, Mevacor and Zocor, have already lost their patent protection so they cost pennies a day compared to $3 or more a day for Lipitor.In 2010, when Lipitor loses its patent protection, it, too, will cost pennies a day, and Pfizer will no longer need Dr. Robert Jarvik. So, is niacin so bad after all? Or is this Everyday Health report just another clever piece of advertising for Pfizer?
Is niacin as bad as it sounds? 20. October 2007 William Davis (0) A popular health newsletter, Everyday Health, carried this headline:A Cholesterol-Busting Vitamin?Did you know that niacin, one of the B vitamins, is also a potent cholesterol fighter?Find out how niacin can help reduce choleseterol.At doses way above the Recommended Dietary Allowance — say 1,000–2,500 mg a day (1–2.5 grams) — crystalline nicotinic acid acts as a drug instead of a vitamin. It can reduce total cholesterol levels by up to 25%, lowering LDL and raising HDL levels, and can rapidly lower the blood level of triglycerides. It does so by reducing the liver’s production of VLDL, which is ordinarily converted into LDL. I'd agree with that, except that it is rare to require doses higher than 1000-1500 mg per day unless you are treating lipoprotein(a) and using niacin as a tool for dramatic drops in LDL. But for just raising HDL, shifting HDL into the healthy large class, reducing small LDL, and for reduction of heart attack risk, 1000-1500 mg is usually sufficient; taking more yields little or no further effect. But after that positive comment comes this:Niacin is safe — except in people with chronic liver disease or certain other conditions, including diabetes and peptic ulcer. . . However, it has numerous side effects. It can cause rashes and aggravate gout, diabetes, or peptic ulcers. Early in therapy, it can cause facial flushing for several minutes soon after a dose, although this response often stops after about two weeks of therapy and can be reduced by taking aspirin or ibuprofen half an hour before taking the niacin. A sustained-release preparation of niacin (Niaspan) appears to have fewer side effects, but may cause more liver function abnormalities, especially when combined with a statin. Strange. After a headline clearly designed to pull readers in, clearly stating niacin's benefits, the article then proceeds to share the pants off you with side-effects. But look to the side and above the text: Ah . . . two prominent advertisements for Lipitor, complete with Dr. Robert Jarvik's photo. "I've studied the human heart for a lifetime. I trust Lipitor to keep my heart healthy." Sounds like bait and switch to me. "You could try niacin--if you dare. But you could also try Lipitor."Who is Dr. Jarvik, anyway, that he stands as the spokesman (or at least figurehead) for this $13 billion dollar a year drug. Of course, he is the 1982 inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart, surely an admirable accomplishment. But does that qualify him to speak about heart disease prevention and cholesterol drugs? Jarvik has, never actually prescribed Lipitor, since he never completed any formal medical training beyond obtaining his Medical Doctor degree, nor has he ever had a license to practice medicine. He does, however, continue in his effort to provide artificial heart devices, principally for implantation as a "bridge" to transplantation, i.e., to sustain a patient temporarily who is dying of end-stage heart failure. So where does his expertise in heart disease prevention come from?
Omega-3 fatty acids: Frequency vs. quantity 20. October 2007 William Davis (8) I believe I have been observing an unexpected phenomenon: When it comes to fish oil and omega-3 fatty acids, the frequency of dosing may be as important, perhaps more important, than the actual dose.First of all, why advocate omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil? There’s a list of lipid/lipoprotein reasons, including reduction of triglycerides and triglyceride-containing particles (VLDL, intermediate-density lipoproteins), reduction of small LDL, and increase in HDL. There’s also solid benefit in reduction of heart attack risk, reduction in death from heart attack, and reduction in stroke. There are also anti-inflammatory benefits and improvements in mood, reduction in depression.Fish oil is a crucial ingredient in the Track Your Plaque program. I am honestly uncertain of just how much success we would give up if fish oil were NOT a part of the program, but I am unwilling to find out. The data are simply too compelling to not include omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil. Of course, supplementation of omega-3 fatty acids assumes greater importance in a modern world in which your food has become terribly depleted of the omega-3 fraction of oils. (Cultures that rely heavily on fish or wild game probably would not benefit to the same extent, since these foods contain omega-3 fatty acids.) But I believe I have observed a curious effect over the past year or two. With the proliferation of many different preparations of fish oil that provide seemingly endless choices—low-potency fish oil, high-potency fish oil, paste forms of fish oil like Coromega, liquids such as Carlson’s, etc.¾I’ve observed that frequency of dosing may exert as much of an effect as the dose. For example, someone might take the basic, low-potency preparation like Sam’s Club that contains 180 mg EPA and 120 mg DHA per capsule, four capsules per day. That yields a total of 1200 mg EPA and DHA per day. This is our minimum dose that provides the basic heart attack-reducing effect, though with modest effect on triglycerides and associated patterns. Say someone switches to a high-potency preparation of 360 mg EPA and 240 mg DHA, providing a total of 600 mg omega-3 fatty acids per capsule, or twice the dose of the low-potency preparation. Would you expect double the effect? Curiously, no. What I have observed, however, is that more frequent dosing may provide a larger effect. The least effective dosing is once per day; twice per day is far more effective. Three times per day¾though cumbersome¾provides even greater effect. So, which is more important: dose or frequency? I can’t say for certain, since my observations are informal and have not been obtained by a formal statistical analysis of our data. That will come with time. For the present, suffice it to say that, if you are struggling with suppression of patterns like increased triglycerides, IDL, or low HDL, then at least twice- or three-times-per-day dosing might be worth considering, even before you increase the dose further. Best: Greater dose, or higher-potency preparation, combined with higher frequency.