Eat butter, not margarine!

On May 31^st of this year, Fred A. Kummerow, a professor at the University of Illinois, died at the age of 102. For 50 years, he had spoken out about the dangers of trans fats, publishing his research as early as 1957. Not only was his work criticized, it was dismissed. In those days, the prevailing view was that saturated fats, such as butter, were responsible for heart disease (which we now know is not true). People were encouraged to switch to margarine—advice that turned out to be a big fat mistake.

Trans fats are a man-made unnatural fat produced by hydrogenating vegetable oil. Think Crisco and margarine. Until recently, most baked goods were made with trans fat products. The problem with trans fats is in their molecular structure, which compromise many bodily functions, including hormone synthesis, immune function, insulin metabolism, and tissue repair. They also dramatically increase a subclass of LDL cholesterol which is composed of small dense particles and is associated with an increased risk of heart disease. Some studies show that they may also cause diminished mental performance. And that’s only part of their damaging effects!

Walter Willis, an influential scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health, was among those who dismissed Kummerow’s work. Later, he saw the error of his ways and conducted studies that supported Kummerow’s views. Now, he says, that by advising people to eat margarine instead of butter, as he did in the 1980s, “…we were often sending them to their graves prematurely.”  

In 1911 the average American ate about 19 pounds of butter a year and one pound of margarine. By 1976, they were eating 12 pounds of margarine a year, with a concurrent rise in heart disease. Now the Harvard School of Public Health is saying that eliminating trans fats from the American diet would prevent 250,000 heart attacks and related deaths every year. (Denmark restricted trans fats in 2004; by 2010 the incidence of heart disease and related deaths dropped 60 percent.) The US ban on trans fats goes into effect in 2018—a long time in coming.

Before he died, Dr. Kummerow reported that his own diet included red meat, whole milk and eggs scrambled in butter. We eat like that at our house. Maybe we'll live to 102!

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Beware of new drugs

New prescription drugs have a one in five chance of causing serious reactions after they have been approved. For this reason, expert physicians recommend not taking new drugs unless they have been on the market for at least five years. It takes that long to determine whether they are safe.

What’s more, most of the new drugs offer few advantages over old ones. Independent reviews by expert teams in France, Canada, and the Netherlands have concluded that of the 946 new products released between 2002 and 2010, only two were breakthroughs and 13 represented a real therapeutic advance. The remaining 85 to 89 percent of the new drugs offered little or no clinical advantage. And yet these new drugs continue to flood the market.

The reason that new drugs offer few advantages over old ones is that companies just tinker a bit with their existing drugs, then begin pushing these “new drugs.” (I read about one man who pried the coating off a “new” drug to find the old drug underneath. The “improvement” was merely the coating.) Nevertheless, their sales and profits are soaring, largely as a result of raising prices and getting more physicians to prescribe more drugs. Naturally, the new drugs are far more costly than the drugs they replace.

To make sure that the new drugs show some benefit, the companies design their clinical trials with the marketing departments. Scholarly studies have shown that they design the trials in a way that skew the results and distort the evidence by selective reporting or biased interpretation. The FDA accepts these biased trials and uses them to approve drugs. By the way, the FDA receives fees from the drug companies. In 2010, these fees amounted to $529,276, 543. I guess it makes sense for them to charge a fee; but it makes you wonder. 

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Salt and pee

I have long wondered why my husband pees so much more than I do. We both drink about the same amount of liquid a day, yet he pees a lot and I don’t.  At the same time, he craves and eats more salt than I do, but doesn’t drink more to compensate for the added salt. New research may shed some light on this conundrum.

Remember that your body knocks itself out to maintain a constant sodium level. Sodium is an important nutrient: it maintains normal blood pressure, supports the work of nerves and muscles, and regulates your body's fluid balance. If you eat too much, your body excretes it.

The new research was performed over a number of years on cosmonauts in captivity. Scientists kept track of their salt and liquid intake as well as their urine output. As would be expected, when the crew ate more salt, the amount of sodium in their blood remained constant because they excreted more salt and their urine volume increased. But the scientists were surprised to discover that, when they ate more salt, instead of drinking more, the crew members were drinking less! So where was all this excreted water coming from? It turns out that the water was coming from a breakdown of fat and muscle in their bodies, a result of in increased production of glucocorticoid hormones, which influence both metabolism and immune function. Because this breakdown process requires energy, the crew members were not only hungrier the more salt they ate, but they also lost weight! (Don’t eat excess salt to lose weight, because glucocorticoid hormones don’t do you any good under these circumstances.)

 As to the relationship between salt and thirst, it turns out that we get thirsty because salt-detecting neurons in the mouth stimulate an urge to drink. This kind of “thirst” may have nothing to do with the body’s actual need for water.

As one of the scientists said, “The work suggests that we really do not understand the effect of sodium chloride on the body.” I appreciate the candor.

I must confess that I’m not sure how this new research solves the mystery of why my husband pees more than I do. He probably just has better-functioning kidneys.

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Gain weight—live longer

In the last six months I have gained five pounds for no reason that I can think of. Nothing has changed: I eat the same and exercise the same as I have for years. It’s common to gain weight in our middle years. For most people, body fat peaks at middle age. After that, weight usually stabilizes until about age 70, at which time weight begins to decrease. I am 80. What the heck!?

At least I can console myself with the fact that overweight people live longer than people of “normal” weight as measured by the body mass index (BMI). This has been documented time and again. (Which of course makes you wonder about the value of these numbers.) A reminder of BMI numbers:

Underweight = 18.5 or less
Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
Overweight = 25-29.9
Obesity = 30 or greater

To see where you stand, use this online calculator (ignore the tedious verbiage). Mine is in the neighborhood of 26 (I’m not sure about my height).

The largest and most carefully done study of nearly three million people found that those in the overweight category had less risk of dying than people of normal weight. Even people considered obese (BMI of 30 to 34.9) were not more likely to die than normal-weight people.

Then there’s this: a 16-year study that followed more than 45 thousand male health professionals revealed that the lower the BMI, the higher the rates of suicide, and vice versa. Compared with the men in the lowest 20 percent BMI, those in the highest one-fifth were almost 60 percent less likely to kill themselves.

While this is comforting, I’d still like to drop those five pounds (without dieting, of course).

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.