Cureality App Review: Breathe Sync

7. March 2015 William Davis (0)


Biofeedback is a wonderful, natural way to gain control over multiple physiological phenomena, a means of tapping into your body’s internal resources. You can, for instance, use biofeedback to reduce anxiety, heart rate, and blood pressure, and achieve a sense of well-being that does not involve drugs, side-effects, or even much cost.

Biofeedback simply means that you are tracking some observable physiologic phenomenon—heart rate, skin temperature, blood pressure—and trying to consciously access control over it. One very successful method is that of bringing the beat-to-beat variation in heart rate into synchrony with the respiratory cycle. In day-to-day life, the heart beat is usually completely out of sync with respiration. Bring it into synchrony and interesting things happen: you experience a feeling of peace and calm, while many healthy phenomena develop.

A company called HeartMath has applied this principle through their personal computer-driven device that plugs into the USB port of your computer and monitors your heart rate with a device clipped on your earlobe. You then regulate breathing and follow the instructions provided and feedback is obtained on whether you are achieving synchrony, or what they call “coherence.” As the user becomes more effective in achieving coherence over time, positive physiological and emotional effects develop. HeartMath has been shown, for instance, to reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure, morning cortisol levels (a stress hormone), and helps people deal with chronic pain. Downside of the HeartMath process: a $249 price tag for the earlobe-USB device.

But this is the age of emerging smartphone apps, including those applied to health. Smartphone apps are perfect for health monitoring. They are especially changing how we engage in biofeedback. An app called Breathe Sync is available that tracks heart rate using the camera’s flash on the phone. By tracking heart rate and providing visual instruction on breathing pattern, the program generates a Wellness Quotient, WQ, similar to HeartMath’s coherence scoring system. Difference: Breathe Sync is portable and a heck of a lot less costly. I paid $9.99, more than I’ve paid for any other mainstream smartphone application, but a bargain compared to the HeartMath device cost.

One glitch is that you need to not be running any other programs in the background, such as your GPS, else you will have pauses in the Breathe Sync program, negating the value of your WQ. Beyond this, the app functions reliably and can help you achieve the health goals of biofeedback with so much less hassle and greater effectiveness than the older methods.

If you are looking for a biofeedback system that provides advantage in gaining control over metabolic health, while also providing a wonderful method of relaxation, Breathe Sync, I believe, is the go-to app right now.
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Low-fat diets raise triglycerides

Low-fat diets raise triglycerides

19. May 2007 William Davis (4)
Martin, a hospital employee, knowing that I fuss a great deal with lipids and lipoproteins, showed me his lipid panel because the result triggered a "panic value" for triglycerides at 267 mg/dl. He asked if he should go on a serious low-fat diet.

I asked Martin what he had for breakfast: a whole wheat bagel with no-added-sugar jam. Lunch: a turkey sub on whole grain bread, no mayonnaise. Snacks: baked chips, pretzels ("a low-fat snack!").

In years past, if person developed high triglycerides levels, a very low-fat diet was prescribed. Someone would come to the hospital, for instance, with abdominal pain from pancreatitis (an inflamed pancreas)due to the damaging effects of triglyceride levels >1000 mg/dl. For this reason, many people still believe that all instances of elevated triglycerides should be treated with a reduction in fat intake.

This is absolutely wrong. While a fat restriction may reduce triglycerides in genetically-programmed responses when triglycerides are >1000 mg/dl, lesser levels of high triglycerides of, say 250 or 300 mg/dl, do not respond to dietary fat restrictions as a sole strategy.

Yes, a reduction in unhealthy fats (saturated, trans, polyunsaturated) helps. But a reduction in fats of all sorts is not necessary and can, in fact, worsen the problem. We learned this lesson years ago with the Ornish diet and similar ultra low-fat approaches. When you reduce fat intake significantly to <10% of calories, triglycerides go way up. In those days, it wasn't uncommon to see triglycerides skyrocket past 200 or 300 mg/dl on these diets.

Why are triglycerides important? Triglycerides are an ingredient in creating the lipoproteins VLDL, IDL, small LDL. Elevated triglycerides trigger a drop in HDL, a shift towards small, ineffective HDL, and contribute to heightened inflammation. Higher triglycerides also tend to go hand in hand with lipoproteins that persist for extended periods (12-24 hours or longer) in the blood after a meal.

Triglycerides respond very nicely to a dramatic reduction in processed carbohydrates, especially wheat and corn. Of course, wheat is the bulk of the problem, since it has grown to occupy an enormous role in many people's diet, not uncommonly eaten 3,4, or 5 times per day in various forms, as it has in Martin's diet. Eliminating all sources of high-fructose corn syrup is also helpful, since high-fructose corn syrup shoots triglycerides way up. (Recall that high-fructose corn syrup is everywhere: ketchup, beer, low-fat or non-fat salad dressings, breads, fruit drinks, sports drinks, breakfast cereals, etc.)

Curiously, it is a fat that also powerfully reduces triglycerides in the form of fish oil. In the Track Your Plaque program, fish oil, taken at truly effective doses of 4000 mg per day or more (to provide at least 1200 mg EPA+DHA), is our number one choice after reduction of processed carbohydrates for reduction of high triglycerides.
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Comments (4) -

  • Bruce K

    6/10/2008 7:42:00 PM |

    _I asked Martin what he had for breakfast: a whole wheat bagel with no-added-sugar jam. Lunch: a turkey sub on whole grain bread, no mayonnaise. Snacks: baked chips, pretzels ("a low-fat snack!")._

    What do you think of Joel Fuhrman's approach? He would not allow people to eat bagels, jam, bread, chips, and pretzels. The base of his diet is veggies (half raw, half-cooked), then fruits, beans, potatoes, raw nuts, and raw seeds. Grains are at the top of Fuhrman's food pyramid.

    http://www.nutritionforwellness.org/img/food_pyramid.gif

    Also, when he says "whole grains", he means unbroken grains like brown rice, oatmeal, etc. Not flours, or pastas, or breads made with flour. The only breads he would allow are things like sprouted grain breads, made without any flour.

    Most people who eat a low-fat diet eat bad foods. They don't eat high quality foods. Dr. Fuhrman claims to lower triglycerides and improve all other health markers, because he stricly limits foods like flour, fruit juice, vegetable oils, sugar, etc. Maybe a low-fat diet based on grains (esp flours) will raise the triglycerides, but a low-fat diet based on vegetables, fruits, beans, nuts, and seeds (Fuhrman's) wont.

    Fuhrman emphasizes nutrient-density far more than people like Dr. Dean Ornish. Whole grain flours are very perishable and quickly turn rancid. Weston Price pointed this out, but most people didn't bother to listen and still don't. Here's an article about how whole grain flours cause sterility if they are stored for as little as 15 days, while flour and bread that is fresh-ground doesn't. How many are eating fresh flour? I would say <1%, maybe zero.

    http://eap.mcgill.ca/Publications/EAP35.htm

  • Anonymous

    7/1/2009 11:14:32 AM |

    Just a small correction - Dr Fuhrman's diet is not really low fat like Ornish/McDougall, the only similarity to those diets is the predominance of plant based foods.

    It eliminates/restricts saturated fat and plant oils but he is VERY pro 'good' fat in it's natural packaging i.e. nuts, seeds, avocado and fish oil in some cases (he prefers DHA from algae due to mercury in fish for most people and esp pregnant/lactating/babies but for high doses still recommends high quality fish oil especially for autoimmune patients). Re the nuts/seeds/avocado - in his weight loss strategy he does limit them but a minimum level is compulsory on a daily basis and he actively encourages people to have them while maintaining ideal weight i.e. can go very high if very skinny, lower if overweight but cannot eliminate them.

  • buy jeans

    11/3/2010 6:41:31 PM |

    Yes, a reduction in unhealthy fats (saturated, trans, polyunsaturated) helps. But a reduction in fats of all sorts is not necessary and can, in fact, worsen the problem. We learned this lesson years ago with the Ornish diet and similar ultra low-fat approaches. When you reduce fat intake significantly to <10% of calories, triglycerides go way up. In those days, it wasn't uncommon to see triglycerides skyrocket past 200 or 300 mg/dl on these diets.

  • jim

    8/26/2011 4:23:10 PM |

    Do saturated fats elevate triglyceride levels in the body?  Jim

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