In this country, if you’ve ever experienced heart problems, you’ve likely been put on a ” heart-healthy diet.”  The problem is, that ” heart-healthy”  diet is hogwash.  It’s based on old information that was faulty in the first place, but doctors are still giving the same outdated instructions.  (Never mind that most doctors have little to no nutritional training!)

Faulty Information

Let’s start with the faulty information.  The primary mark of a ” heart-healthy” diet, according to what we’re all told, is that it’s low in fat – especially saturated fat – and cholesterol.  This notion began with the published findings of one study in particular, and has been perpetuated ever since.  The published findings look something like this:

Seems pretty straightforward, right?  Clearly those who eat more fat are likely to die of heart disease.  Except it’s not so straightforward.  Those doing the survey conveniently reported only a selection of the available information – the selection that supported their hypothesis.  If we look at all of the data, it looks more like this:

Quite a different story that tells, is it not?!

The truth is, the body needs fat.  And it needs cholesterol.  In fact, if you’re not eating cholesterol, the body makes it.  You eat more, the body makes less.  You eat less, the body makes more.  Because there is an ideal amount the body needs to do its job.  It would appear that cholesterol probably protects against heart disease, by some mechanism we don’t yet understand fully.  So something else (not cholesterol) begins to harden the arteries.  As a result, the body sends out cholesterol to protect them as best it can.  The researchers see that heart disease correlates with high cholesterol, and assume the cholesterol is the cause.

One significant reason this is a more plausible hypothesis is that those who take cholesterol-lowering drugs actually increase their chances of death.  Why?  Well, it seems that they are removing the protective cholesterol without eliminating the underlying problem.  As Ravnskov points out, this is kind of like blaming the firefighters for causing fires because when there’s a fire, they’re always around.  (And, in the case of these cholesterol-lowering drugs, it’s like killing the firemen!)

Bad Advice

So now that we know we can’t trust the medical professionals to be giving us sound nutritional advice based on solid research, let’s take a look at some of that advice.

Lower Your Intake of Dietary Cholesterol

We’ve already seen that this one is debatable.  Because the body is designed to modulate its cholesterol level, whether reducing your dietary cholesterol will even be effective at changing your overall cholesterol level is debatable.  Then whether it’s helpful to do so is questionable, too.

Lower Your Intake of Saturated Fat

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been any evidence that naturally saturated fat is detrimental to health.  (Just that study we looked at above, with the perverted results.)  What is damaging is hydrogenated fats.  (Which, ironically, are what the government began to recommend people eat instead of the “dangerous” saturated fats.  That butter you’re not “supposed” to eat?  Sooo much healthier than the margarine you were told to replace it with!)

One trait of saturated fats is that they’re solid at room temperature.  Without getting too technical, hydrogenization is the process by which naturally liquid oils are artificially made solid.  This process alters the molecules so they’re “backward” from the natural kind.  (Like being left-handed instead of right-handed or vice versa.)  So then they no longer fit together properly with the cells in the body.

The body definitely needs plenty of fat, for a number of purposes.  Not the least of these is ensuring that you can absorb adequate amounts of calcium, vitamin A, and vitamin D.  And guess what’s one potential result of too-low vitamin D?  That’s right – heart disease!

Quit Eating Salt

Okay, so there’s a little truth to this one.  Sort of.  Excessive sodium intake is not a good thing.  But most excess sodium does not come from table salt; it comes from sodium that’s added to processed foods.  (It’s kind of a no-brainer that it’s a healthier option to reduce our intake of processed foods and eat more real, natural foods!)  But there are two points I would make in addition to that.

One, the table salt we typically consume today is not natural.  Natural salt contains numerous trace minerals, and it clumps.  (It absorbs water from the environment; that’s why.)  All the other minerals are removed from the salt (and sold by the supplement industry) and we’re left with “pure” sodium chloride as a byproduct.  We add a few other chemicals so that “when it rains, it pours,” and voila, we have table salt.  Natural, unrefined sea salt is a much healthier choice, because it contains all those trace minerals in balance, and doesn’t contain the icky chemicals to keep it free-flowing.  (If you buy it in the supermarket aisle and it’s snowy white, it’s not what you want, even if the box says “sea salt.”)

Two, salt does not cause high blood pressure – or lack of salt lower blood pressure – as a general rule.  There is one particular type of high blood pressure that is related to and responds to salt intake, but most high blood pressure is not related and sodium intake is irrelevant.  If you don’t see a clear change after cutting your salt, it’s probably not helpful or necessary for you to cut your salt.

And again, sodium is something that we need.  If you reduce your sodium intake too far, it’s out of balance with your potassium and that causes it’s own set of problems.

So What Does Help?

If none of this advice is any good, what is?  In a nutshell, it comes down to two things:

1) Eat real, whole foods with as little processing as possible as much of the time as possible.  (i.e. Reduce your intake of processed foods.  Most of them don’t really deserve to be called “food.”  And by the way, “processed foods” include margarine and similar fake butter products.)

2) When you eat, eat in balance.  Your carbs should always be accompanied by fat and protein.  That helps the body to process everything in balance rather than getting on a sort of “see-saw.”

For Further Reading

A few really excellent books can help shed light on some of these things.  I especially like:

The Cholesterol Myths, by Uffe Ravnskov, M.D., Ph.D.
The Schwarzbein Principle,  by Diana Schwarzbein, M.D.
Fats that Heal, Fats that Kill, by Udo Erasmus  (This one is much more scientific reading, but good if you’re up for it.)

DISCLAIMER: You know the drill: none of these statements have been evaluated by the FDA; it’s for educational purposes only; I’m not diagnosing, treating, or preventing illness; don’t sue me, just do your own due diligence…at least now you know where to start! 🙂