In search of wheat: We bake einkorn bread

12. June 2010 William Davis (6)

With the assistance of dietitian and health educator, Margaret Pfeiffer,MS RD CD, author of Smart 4 Your Heart and very capable chef and breadmaker (previously, before she gave up wheat), we made a loaf of bread using Eli Rogosa's einkorn wheat. Recall that einkorn wheat is the primordial 14-chromosome wheat similar to the wild wheat harvested by Neolithic humans and eaten as porridge.

The essential question: Has wheat always been bad for humans or have the thousands of hybridization experiments of the last 50 years changed the structure of gluten and other proteins in Triticum aestivum and turned the "staff of life" into poison? I turn to einkorn wheat, the "original" wheat unaltered by human manipulations, to figure this out. While einkorn wheat is still a source of carbohydrates, is it something we might indulge in once in a while without triggering the adverse phenomena associated with modern wheat?

Here's what we did:

This is the einkorn grain as we received it from Eli's farm. This was enough to make one loaf (approximately 3 cups).

The einkorn grain is a dark golden color. I tried chewing them. They taste slightly nutty. They soften as they sit in your mouth.

Here's Margaret putting the einkorn grain into the electric grinder.

We tried to grind the grain by hand with mortar and pestle, but this proved far more laborious than I anticipated. After about 15 minutes of grinding, this is what I got:

Barely 2 tablespoons. That's when Margaret fired up the electric grinder. (I can't imagine having to grind up enough flour by hand for an entire family. Perhaps that's why ancient cultures were thin despite eating wheat. They were just exhausted!)

We added water, salt, and yeast, then put the mix into an electric breadmaker to knead the dough and keep it warm.

We let the dough rise for 90 minutes, much longer than conventional dough. The einkorn dough "rose" very little. Margaret tells me that most dough made with conventional flour rises to double its size. The einkorn dough increased no more than 20-30%.

The einkorn dough also distinctly smelled like peanut butter.

After rising, we baked the dough at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes. This is the final product.

Because I want to gauge health effects, not taste, the bread we made had no added sugar or anything else to modify taste or physiologic effect.

On first tasting, the einkorn bread is mildly nutty and heavy. It had an unusual sour or astringent taste at the end, but overall tasted quite good.

Next: What happens when we eat it? I'm going to give the einkorn bread (I've got to make some more) to people who experience acute reactions to conventional wheat and see if the einkorn does the same. I will also assess blood sugar effects since, after all, hybridizations or no, it is still a carbohydrate.

Margaret Pfeiffer's book is available on Amazon:

Ezekiel said what?

10. June 2010 William Davis (24)

Some people are reluctant to give up wheat because it is talked about in the Bible. But the wheat of the Bible is not the same as the wheat of today. (See In search of wheat and Emmer, einkorn and agribusiness.) Comparing einkorn to modern wheat, for example, means a difference of chromosome number (14 chromosomes in einkorn vs. 42 chromosomes in modern strains of Triticum aestivum), thousands of genes, and differing gluten content and structure.

How about Ezekiel bread, the sprouted wheat bread that is purported to be based on a "recipe" articulated in the Bible?

Despite the claims of lower glycemic index, we've had bad experiences with this product, with triggering of high blood sugars, small LDL, and triglycerides not much different from conventional bread.

David Rostollan of Health for Life sent me this interesting perspective on Ezekiel bread from an article he wrote about wheat and the Bible. David argues that the entire concept of Ezekiel bread is based on a flawed interpretation.

"I Want to Eat the Food in the Bible."

Are you sure about that?

Some people, still wanting to be faithful to the Bible, will discard the "no grain/wheat" message on the basis of biblical example. After all, God told Ezekiel to make bread, he gave the Israelites "bread from heaven," and then Jesus (who is called the "Bread of Life"!) multiplied bread, and even instituted the New Covenant with what? Bread and wine! If you're going to live the Bible, it seems that bread and/or wheat is going to play a part.

But this is unnecessary. Sure, the Bible can and does tell us how to live, but this doesn't mean that everything in the Bible is meant to be copied verbatim. Applying the Bible to our lives requires wisdom, not a Xerox machine.

The Bible was written in a historical context, and the setting happened to be an agricultural one. Because of this, the language used to describe blessing spoke of things like fields full of grain, or barns overflowing with wheat. Had the Bible been written in the context of a hunter-gatherer culture, the language describing blessing probably would have been about the abundance of wild game, or baskets full of vegetables. Whatever is most valuable in your time and in your culture is a blessing. God accommodated His message to the culture as it existed at the time. This is done throughout Scripture.

There is a danger, then, in merely copying what the Bible says, instead of extracting the principles by which to live. Take the above example of Ezekiel, for instance. There's a whole product line in health food stores called "Ezekiel Bread" that supposedly copies the recipe given in Ezekiel 4:9. This is from the website:

"Inspired by the Holy Scripture verse Ezekiel 4:9., 'Take also unto thee Wheat, and Barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and Spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make bread of it...'"

Believing that this "recipe" has some kind of special power just because it's in the Bible is ridiculous. How ridiculous is it? I'll tell you in a moment, but first let me say that this is why it's so important not to confuse descriptives with prescriptives. Is the Bible telling a story, or is it telling us to do something? We would be well-advised not to confuse the two.

In the case of the Ezekiel Bread, what is going on in the passage? There's a siege going on, with impending famine, and Ezekiel is consigned to eating what was considered back then to be some of the worst possible food. It was basically animal chow. But that's not the worst thing going on in this passage. Apparently, when the makers of Ezekiel Bread were gleaning their inspiration for the perfect recipe, they stopped short
of verse 12:

"And thou shalt eat it as barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight."

Um...what? Well, there was a good reason for this. God was judging His people, and by polluting this really bad bread with dung (which was a violation of Mosaic law; Lev. 5:3), He was saying that they were no different from the unclean Gentiles.

So why would we take this story and extrapolate a bread recipe from it? Beats me. If you were going to be consistent, though, here's what you'd have to end up with:

Let that be a lesson to you. We don't just go and do everything that we see in the Bible.

Low-carb gynecologist

6. June 2010 William Davis (36)

I met infertility specialist, Dr. Michael Fox, on Jimmy Moore's low-carb cruise just this past March.

Dr. Fox is quiet and unassuming, but had incredible things to say about his experience with carbohydrate restriction in female infertility and pregnancy. While readers of The Heart Scan Blog already know that I advocate a diet free of wheat, cornstarch, and sugar for heart health and correction of multiple lipoprotein abnormalities, it was fascinating to hear how a similar approach seems to yield extraordinary benefits in this entirely unrelated area of female health. Obviously, female infertility and pregnancy are unrelated to heart health, but the extraordinary benefits witnessed by Dr. Fox in this area suggest that some fundamental lessons in human physiology can be learned. The results are so incredible that we are all sure to hear more about this approach as experience grows.

So I tracked Dr. Fox down in his busy Jacksonville, Florida practice to fill us in on some details.

WD: Dr. Fox, could you tell us something about yourself and what led you to use carbohydrate restriction in your female patients?

MF: I have been in practice as a reproductive endocrinologist for 15 years. During that time, I have seen our specialty move from a broad based practice of reproductive endocrinology to a narrow IVF [in vitro fertilization] focus, with patients being pushed through IVF in a cookie-cutter fashion without any emphasis on non-medical therapy.

Our focus has been to remain as a broad practice where we individualize care and attempt in every case to achieve pregnancy short of IVF. Five years ago, this continued quest for better care led us into the insulin resistance, low-carbohydrate metabolic world that has transformed our practice, although our practice offers all aspects of reproductive endocrinology including sub-specialized minimally invasive surgery, and all available infertility options.

WD: I have been intrigued by your comments about improved fertility with the low-carb diet. Could you elaborate on this?

MF: Yes, five years ago, as more information regarding Polycystic Ovarian Disease or Syndrome (PCOD/S) and its relationship to insulin resistance (high insulin levels) was emerging, we had a simple realization. As we've known for some time, insulin stimulates excess male hormone levels in the ovary, which disrupts ovulation and fertility. Then our job was to lower or virtually eliminate high insulin levels. Again, in simple fashion, we looked at physiology and realized that insulin is released only in response to dietary carbohydrates. Thus, elimination of carbohydrates should resolve the problem. This, in fact, is the effect that we have seen.

In our previous approaches to PCOD, we utilized oral ovulation medicines generating pregnancy rates in the 40% range overall. Now, with the nutritional approach, for those patients that follow our recommendations, our pregnancy rates are over 90%! This has dramatically reduced the need for in vitro fertilization in these patients.

To extend this idea further, we first started with relative low-carbohydrate diets, such as the South Beach diet, but quickly realized this didn't produce a metabolic effect. Over time, it has borne out that only the very low-carbohydrate diet (VLCD) approach produces significant metabolic change. Our impression then was that the current U.S. nutritional exposure probably increases insulin levels and that this has a detrimental effect on fertility.

To counter this effect, we now recommend the VLCD to all fertility patients and their spouses. The pregnancy rates do seem much better overall, as well as seeing a reduction in miscarriage rates. For the first time at our national meeting last year, there were three articles that showed improved pregnancy rates in patients without PCOD or insulin resistance in IVF when Glucophage was used. This drug decreases insulin. This supports the idea that our entire population is subjected to fertility-reducing high-carbohydrate diet.

WD: Do you see any other changes in these patients on the diet?

MF: Yes. All metabolic parameters, as well as many common complaints, improve. Cholesterol and triglyceride levels improve, while "good" HDL cholesterol levels increase. Weight drops at a pace of 12 lbs per month very steadily and we have many many patients who have experienced 50lb wt loss. Blood pressure decreases steadily in these patients and we are often able to get them off of cholesterol and blood pressure medicines. Common symptoms such as anxiety, sleep disturbances, decreased energy, migraine headaches and depression all dramatically improve. Again we can often get patients off depression and migraine suppression medications. So this approach helps in a multitude of areas.

WD: I was also interested in hearing more about your experience with morning sickness and the effects of a low-carb diet. Could you tell us more about this? Also, any thoughts on why this happens?

MF: As we continued to expand our thoughts about VLCD and fertility/pregnancy, we began to extend the nutritional approach into pregnancy. We know that pregnancy hormones dramatically worsen insulin resistance that is responsible for the condition, gestational diabetes. If insulin resistance is worsened, then reactive hypoglycemia is worsened. One of the biggest symptoms of hypoglycemia is nausea. So, in response to this, we have counseled our patients on the diet in pregnancy and have found a dramatic reduction in nausea. We recommend snacking every two hours in pregnancy.

The other "traditional" issue in pregnancy are cravings. These also likely stem from hypoglycemia. I have had many husbands tell us later that their wives, in contrast to friends etc, were calm and not moody or anxious during their pregnancies. Hypoglycemia probably is a serious issue for the fetus as well and may be the "signal" that turns on the insulin-resistant gene. Many theorists feel this might be an activated gene during the pregnancy.

WD: Do you use any unique approaches to the low-carbohydrate approach, e.g., inclusion of dairy, meal frequency, "induction" strategies (i.e., induction to the diet, not of labor!), etc.?

MF: Yes. As I'm sure everyone who works in the VLCD world does, we also have some tricks to make this work better. My biggest push, although hard to get patients to agree, is to see a counselor along with our follow-up in order to deal with "addictive behaviors" and "stress eating" that so many of our patients relate to us. Good stress management and cognitive behavioral therapy go a long way in helping this become a permanent change.

We also really push frequent calorie intake or "snacking." I think again that hypoglycemia produces an inborn drive to "cure" or "fix" starvation and leads to dramatic overeating. We have a short list of snacks that we recommend. The concept of hunger is offered as a failure of the program. We aim to eliminate hunger, as it represents hypoglycemia. The analogy I use is, if you drove your car until you ran out of gas before you ever sought to find gas, your life would be miserable. So it is the same with your metabolic engine: If you let it run out, the measures your system takes to fix it are very detrimental to life and certainly to nutritional health.

Our other big push is fat. People can wrap themselves around protein and vegetables, but they totally miss the high-fat (animal fat) part of the conversation. We have to really push that aspect. In regards to dairy, we allow for non-processed cheeses and minimal milk. An alternative is to mix about 4 oz whole milk with 4 oz of heavy whipping and 4 oz of water to create a "milk" with less sugar. Similarly, shakes and smoothies can be made with heavy whipping cream with pure whey protein powder added to create a liquid meal for those who "don't have time" to cook.

WD: Thanks, Dr. Fox. We look forward to hearing more about your approach in future.

Contact information:

Michael D. Fox, MD
Jacksonville Center
Reproductive Medicine
www.JCRM.org
Phone 904-493-2229

Track Your Plaque reduces healthcare costs 35%

29. May 2010 William Davis (12)

Allow me to wear my Track Your Plaque hat for this post.

Mr. Richard Rawle is CEO of Utah company, Tosh, Inc. Mr. Rawle has been an avid follower of the Track Your Plaque program and has introduced the program to company employees. Here's what he has to say about the experience:

“Our company has been utilizing the principles of TYP [Track Your Plaque] for over a year and has experienced great results that have positively impacted the lives of our employees and our health care costs.

Since we began our wellness program, we have presented the TYP diet and lifestyle guidelines to all of our employees and their families. Although the overwhelming majority of our employees do not have cardiovascular issues, the preventative nature of TYP is too important not to be utilized. The TYP principles along with our increased focus on healthy living have already changed our group’s blood chemistry. HDL levels in particular have increased significantly and resulted in a large percentage of our employees having HDL levels of 60 or higher. Vitamin D levels have substantially increased and LDL levels have significantly decreased in the majority of our employees. Subsequently, in the 12 months just ended, our health care costs are some 35% less than other groups of comparable size and age.

I believe the TYP program has been an integral part of the success of our company's vast improvement in employee health/wellness, resulting in significant health care cost reductions."

Richard Rawle
CEO Tosh Inc.

Track Your Plaque saves lives. Track Your Plaque also saves money . . . lots of it. Despite the upfront costs of some additional blood testing and a heart scan, the dramatic reduction in need for medications, reduced heart attack, diabetes, and many other chronic conditions add up to a huge cost savings, much as Tosh, Inc. employees have enjoyed.

The Federal government has been looking towards large hospital systems to lead the way in healthcare delivery, systems that employ their physicians and possess economies of scale. But I say the answer to reducing healthcare costs will NEVER be found in hospital systems. Healthcare cost savings will be realized by delivering truly effective health solutions directly to people themselves, much as we do in Track Your Plaque.

In search of wheat

26. May 2010 William Davis (43)

Many people ask: "How can wheat be bad if it's in the Bible?"

Wheat is indeed mentioned many times in the Bible, sometimes literally as bread, sometimes metaphorically for times of plenty or freedom from starvation. Moses declared the Promised Land "a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey" (Deuteronomy 8:8).

Wheat is a fixture of religious ceremony: sacramental bread in the Eucharist of the Christian church, the host of the Holy Communion in the Catholic church, matzoh for Jewish Passover, barbari and sangak are often part of Muslim ritual. Wheat products have played such roles for millenia.

So how can wheat be bad?

What we call wheat today is quite different from the wheat of Biblical times. Emmer and einkorn wheat were the original grains harvested from wild growths, then cultivated. Triticum aestivum, the natural hybrid of emmer and goatgrass, also entered the picture, gradually replacing emmer and einkorn.

The 25,000+ wheat strains now populating the farmlands of the world are considerably different from the bread wheat of Egyptians, different in gluten content, different in gluten structure, different in dozens of other non-gluten proteins, different in carbohydrate content. Modern wheat has been hybridized, introgressed, and back-bred to increase yield, make a shorter stalk in order to hold up to greater seed yield, along with many other characteristics. Much of the genetic work to create modern wheat strains are well-intended to feed the world, as well as to provide patent-protected seeds for agribusiness.

What is not clear to me is whether original emmer, einkorn, and Triticum aestivum share the adverse health effects of modern wheat.

Make no mistake about it: Modern wheat underlies an incredible range of modern illnesses. But do these primitive wheats, especially the granddaddy of them all, einkorn, also share these effects or is it a safe alternative--if you can get it?

I've ordered 2 lb of einkorn grain, unground, from Massachusetts organic farmer, Eli Rogosa, who obtained einkorn seed from the Golan Heights in the Middle East. We will be hand-grinding the wheat and making einkorn bread. We will eat it and see what happens.

Super-carbohydrate

22. May 2010 William Davis (18)

Wheat starches are composed of polymers (repeating chains) of the sugar, glucose. 75% of wheat carbohydrate is the chain of branching glucose units, amylopectin, and 25% is the linear chain of glucose units, amylose.

Both amylopectin and amylose are digested by the salivary and stomach enzyme, amylase, in the human gastrointestinal tract. Amylopectin is more efficiently digested to glucose, while amylose is less efficiently digested, some of it making its way to the colon undigested.

Amylopectin is therefore the “complex carbohydrate” in wheat that is most closely linked to its blood sugar-increasing effect. But not all amylopectin is created equal. The structure of amylopectin varies depending on its source, differing in its branching structure and thereby efficiency of amylase accessibility.

Legumes like kidney beans contain amylopectin C, the least digestible—hence the gas characteristic of beans, since undigested amylopectin fragments make their way to the colon, whereupon colonic bacteria feast on the undigested starches and generate gas, making the sugars unavailable for you to absorb.

Amylopectin B is the form found in bananas and potatoes and, while more digestible than bean amylopectin C, still resists digestion to some degree.

The most digestible is amylopectin A, the form found in wheat. Because it is the most readily digested by amylase, it is the form that most enthusiastically increases blood sugar. This explains why, gram for gram, wheat increases blood sugar to a much greater degree than, say, chickpeas.

The amylopectin A of wheat products, “complex” or no, might be regarded as a super-carbohydrate, a form of highly digestible carbohydrate that is more efficiently converted to blood sugar than nearly all other carbohydrate foods.

Emmer, einkorn, and agribusiness

21. May 2010 William Davis (32)

10,000 years ago, Neolithic humans did not obtain wheat products from the bagel shop, grocery store, or Krispy Kreme. They obtained wheat by locating a nearby wild-growing field of wild emmer or einkorn wheat grass, then harvesting it with their stone sickles.

Neolithic humans, such as the Natufians of the Fertile Crescent, carried their freshly-cut wheat home, then ground it by hand using homemade mortar and pestle. As yeast-raised bread was still some 5000 years in the future, emmer and einkorn wheat was not used to bake bread, but was consumed as a porridge in bowls. Einkorn has the simplest genetic code of 14 chromosomes, while emmer has 28 chromosomes.

A third variety of wheat appeared on the scene around 9000 years ago, a natural hybridization between emmer and goat grass, yielding the 42-chromosome Triticum aestivum species. Egyptians learned how to cause wheat to rise around 3000 BC, yielding bread, rather than the unleavened flatbreads of their predecessors.

From the original three basic varieties of wheat available to Neolithic man, over the past 30 years wheat has exploded to over 25,000 varieties. Where did the other 24,997+ strains come from?

In the 1980s, thousands of new wheat strains arose from hybridization experiments, many of them conducted in Mexico. Then, in the late 1980s, genetic engineering quietly got underway in which geneticists inserted or deleted single genes, mostly designed to generate specific characteristics, such as height, yield per acre, drought resistance, but especially resistance to various pesticides and weed killers. The fruits of these efforts were introduced into the market in 1994. Most of the genetically modified foods were thought to be only minor modifications of the unmodified original and thus no safety testing in animals or humans was conducted.

We now have many thousands of wheat strains that are different in important ways from original emmer, einkorn, and Triticum aestivum wheat. Interestingly, it has been suggested that einkorn wheat fails to provoke the same immune response characte

Beware the "false positive" stress test

4. March 2007 William Davis (11)

There's a widely-known (among cardiologists) problem with nuclear stress tests. It's called the "false positive." (Nuclear stress tests are known as stress Cardiolites, stress thalliums, stress Myoviews, persantine stress tests, adenosine stress tests)

Stress tests, nuclear and otherwise, are helpful for identifying areas of poor blood flow. If an area of poor blood flow is detected and the area is substantial, then there may be greater risk of heart attack and other undesirable events in the relatively near future.

What "false positive" means is a stress test that shows an abnormality but it's not true--it is falsely abnormal. There are a number of reasons why this can happen. The problem is that this phenomenon is very common. Up to 20% of nuclear stress tests are false positives.

There are indeed situations where there may an abnormality and it is not clear whether it is true or false. This may lead to a justifiable heart catheterization or CT coronary angiogram. But, given the extraordinary number of false positives, there's a lot of gray in interpreting these tests. Hospital staff, in fact, call nuclear medicine "unclear" medicine. It's common knowledge that you can often see just about anything you want to see on a nuclear image of the heart. Abnormalities in the bottom of the heart, the "inferior" wall, are especially common due to the overlap of the diaphragm with the heart muscle, yielding the appearance of reduced blood flow. Defects in the front of the heart heart are common in females with large breasts for the same reasons.

The problem: The uncertainty inherent in nuclear stress tests opens the door to the unscrupulous or lazy practitioner. Any blip, tick, or imperfection on the nuclear images serve as carte blanche to drag you into the hospital for procedures.

This abusive practice is, in my experience, shockingly common for two reasons: 1) It pays better to do heart catheterizations, and 2) Defensive medicine.

What's the disincentive? Only doing the right thing and maintaining a clear conscience. Slim reasons for many of my colleagues--and a lot less money.

If you are without symptoms and feel fine, and a nuclear stress test is advised by your doctor, followed by a discussion of an abnormality, insist on a discussion of exactly what is abnormal, just how abnormal, and what the alternatives might be. If you receive unsatisfactory or incomplete answers despite your best effort, it's time for another opinion.

Don't neglect your magnesium

3. March 2007 William Davis (3)

Magnesium is kind of boring. So most people don't pay too much attention to it.

Magnesium can be important, however. I saw an interesting phenomenon recently. A type I diabetic patient of mine (that is, an adult who developed diabetes as a child), Mitch, was experiencing wide swings in blood sugar: low low's and very high high's (300-400 mg/dl). Mitch's magnesium was only marginally low at 2.0 mEq/L. (Ranges for normal magnesium blood levels are usually 1.3–2.1 mEq/L or 0.65–1.05 mmol/L.) Note that Mitch's blood levels fall within "normal." I do not agree with these "normal" ranges. I shoot for 2.1 to 2.4 mEq/L, which I think is the truly normal range.

In addition to eating plenty of raw nuts and green vegetables, Mitch began supplementing magnesium with magnesium citrate, 200 mg twice a day (our preferred supplement form). He reported that the wide swings in blood sugar were nearly eliminated.

Mitch's dramatic benefit is just a great illustration of how magnesium can help control blood sugar metabolism. A type I diabetic is more sensitive to the effects, but anyone with type II (adult) diabetes, metabolic syndrome, or just a slightly high blood sugar could benefit from magnesium supplementation.

There's a number of ways to accomplish getting sufficient magnesium in your daily regimen. Track Your Plaque members, Be sure to read:

Your water may be killing you at
http://www.cureality.com/library/fl_03-002magnesium.asp

Magnesium: Water to the rescue! at http://www.cureality.com/library/fl_03-010magnesium2.asp

Third heart scan a charm

1. March 2007 William Davis (0)

It struck me recently that, for many people, it's not the second but the third heart scan that more commonly shows a reduction in score.

I think this is because many people's reaction to their first heart scan is "This can't be. There's no way my arteries have that much plaque." They then follow a half-hearted program to correct their patterns.

When the second heart scan shows a significantly higher score, that really catches their attention. This is when they finally buckle down and give it their all.

Only the occasional person will, after the first heart scan, seize full control and take their program very seriously. These tend to be highly motivated people.

Don't feel too bad if your second heart scan score shows an increase. Look at it for what it represents: feedback on the adequacy of your program.

Metabolic syndrome--cured

27. February 2007 William Davis (0)

Peter started out at age 59 at 248 lbs, standing 6 ft tall (BMI = 33.6!).

Along with his weight, Peter had the entire panel of phenemena of the so-called "metabolic syndrome", or pre-diabetes:

--Triglycerides 238 mg/dl and associated with extremes of excess VLDL and IDL
--High blood pressure
--Blood sugar 115 mg/dl
--High c-reactive protein
--Small LDL particles 99% of total LDL

Interestingly, Peter's HDL was a surprisingly favorable 58 mg/dl (HDL is usually low in this syndrome). However, when broken down by size, he had nearly zero large, healthy HDL (sometimes called HDL2b). Though total HDL was favorable, most of it was simply ineffective.

Peter eliminated snacks and processed foods, particularly bread; increased his reliance on healthy oils and lean proteins; incorporated soy protein; increased vegetables. He added 30 minutes of a rapid walk on a treadmill every day. He added vitamin D to achieve a blood level of 50 ng/dml. He added a magnesium supplement.

Peter has lost 31 lbs. in the last year. Weight 207 lbs., BMI 28.1 (desirable <25). Blood sugar: 96 mg/dl; triglycerides: 56 mg/dl; HDL 71 mg/dl with 35% in the large fraction; small LDL 45% of total. Not perfect, but a damn site better.

Control of metabolic syndrome is an achievable goal for over 90% of people, just with these simple efforts. We haven't yet had a chance to assess the effect on the progression or regression of Peter's heart scan score, but he has, at the very least, spared himself a future of diabetes and all its complications.

Heart Scan Curiosities #6

27. February 2007 William Davis (0)

This is a "slice" from a normal heart scan in a 58 year old woman. Heart scan score zero. Look at the lungs, the dark areas left and right of the heart in the center. The lungs are also normal. Black represents normal density, healthy lung tissue. The white streaking is just normal lung blood vessels. This person doesn't smoke.

This woman smokes a pack of cigarettes a day and has done so for 45 years ("45 pack-years"). She had a surprisingly low heart scan score (at age 64) of only 71, despite the smoking. However, look at this woman's lungs. It's a little tough to make out, since the computer graphics loses some of the resolution. But you can see the near absence of lung tissue on both sides. This is an advanced phase of the destructive lung disease, emphysema, from smoking. Even if she quit smoking today, the destroyed lung tissue never grows back. She literally has huge gaps or holes in her lungs where lung tissue used to be.

Smoking is among the most destructive, terrible things you can do to your body, short of swallowing strychnine or jumping off a building. Stay as far the heck away from cigarettes as you possibly can. If you are exposed to "secondary" smoke, insist that the person never smoke in your presence. It's not the smell that destroys your lungs or causes coronary plaque (though it is indeed foul), it's the actual smoke.

Should you become a vegetarian?

24. February 2007 William Davis (0)

Do you need to become a vegetarian in order to reduce your heart scan score?

No. Plain and simple. We’ve had many non-vegetarians drop their scores.

That said, are there still advantages to following a vegetarian diet, or some variation on the vegetarian theme?

Yes, there are. Let’s put aside the moral or religious arguments in favor of not eating animals—the need to eliminate killing animals for food, elimination of suffering common in modern livestock practices, Kosher considerations, etc. (Not that there aren’t real arguments here. Our focus for this conversation is not, however, the moral dilemma, but the health argument.)

Some of the most unhealthy people I’ve ever met, mostly males, are proud carnivores who boast of their prodigious capacities to eat meat. Unfortunately, it’s hard to tease out the ill-effects of excessive meat eating, since these same men also tend to be substantially overweight, smoke, drink excessively, and fail to get exercise unless their job is physically demanding. You know the type.

What advantages does a vegetarian obtain? A number of studies have suggested that the reduced saturated fat, reduced exposure to parasites, as well as reduced exposure to the antibiotics and hormones now used routinely in livestock-raising practices, do indeed provide benefits to the vegetarian. Thus, vegetarians tend to be substantially thinner, experience less bowel cancer, have less diabetes and heart disease, and live longer.

(If you are interested in reading or seeing more about just how inhumane modern livestock practices are, take a look at the video, "Meet Your Meat" at meat.org. Be sure not to view this after dinner.)

Of course, some of the disadvantages of eating animal products diminish when free-range livestock are eaten, i.e., livestock not raised in the inhumane cramped, filthy conditions of livestock factories, but in the open, grazing or rooting freely. These animals tend to have different fat compositions and taste different.

The advantages of vegetarianism, however, have blurred in recent years, since many so-called vegetarians have failed to maintain the distinction between naturally-occurring foods and processed foods. So, Ritz Crackers, Oreo cookies, whole wheat bread, and Raisin Bran fit into a vegetarian program, but they’re awful for your health. I’ll occasionally meet a self-proclaimed vegetarian who looks every bit as unhealthy as a conventionally eating American, that is, overweight, pre-diabetic person with a developing heart scan score.

So it is not necessary to be vegetarian to reduce your score. You might consider vegetarianism for other reasons, such as moral considerations, or to reduce your risk for cancer. But it is not necessary to drop your heart scan score. A non-processed food diet? Now that's is worth giving serious consideration.

Let's make it a lot easier

24. February 2007 William Davis (0)

The American Heart Association just released a new set of consensus guidelines on heart disease prevention in women: Evidence-Based Guidelines for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention in Women: 2007 Update

For those of you following the Heart Scan Blog and the Track Your Plaque program, there will be little new in the guidelines. In fact, you'll wonder if the date on the front of the report should be 1987, rather than 2007. Did you know that you should exercise and eat healthy?

Take a look at the list of risk factors for coronary vascular disease (CVD) listed in the report:

Major risk factors for CVD, including:
Cigarette smoking
Poor diet
Physical inactivity
Obesity, especially central adiposity
Family history of premature CVD (CVD at <55>

Progress: You'll notice that buried inside the list is "Evidence of subclinical vascular disease (e.g., coronary calcification)". Just a few short years ago that wouldn't have even been included.

The Track Your Plaque contention is that, for the great majority of women, this list could be shortened to one item: coronary calcification. As time goes on, the people who argue and draft these guidelines will come to the realization that coronary calcification is the disease--it's not a risk for the disease, a predictor of the disease. Coronary calcification is the disease itself. The other items on the list recede way into the backgr