A low-fat diet and statins: A recipe for chronic health problems
A low-
fat diet reduces your intake of
healthy fats, which, according to Dr Mercola, you to keep your heart healthy.
He explains that cholesterol-lowering drugs (statins) have become the go-to prevention tool for cardiovascular problems, despite ever-mounting evidence showing that these drugs can do far more harm than good. (To find out why statins are harmful to your health, you can read my article
here.)
But it’s when you take a low-fat diet together with statins that it can causes serious health problems.
Here’s why…
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Refined carbohydrates – not fat – are responsible for cardiovascular disease
In 1963, American scientist Ancel Keys claimed to have found the correlation between cholesterol and heart disease. This particular study involved 467 men aged 40 through 59 years located in seven countries.
Now, Dr Mercola argues that we can’t conclude a link between cholesterol and cardiovascular problems based on the data used in this study…
Why not?
He says that: “When data from 16 excluded countries is added in, the association between saturated fat consumption and mortality vanishes.”
“In fact, this full data suggests that those who eat the most saturated animal fat tend to have a lower incidence of heart disease,” he adds.
While science has long acknowledged that the Western diet is associated with increased rates of
diabetes,
obesity and heart disease, according to Dr Mercola, we’ve been reluctant to accept that the sugar content of this diet is the real culprit.
He explains that when you eat more non-vegetable carbohydrates than your body can use, your liver converts the excess to fat.
While this process helps your body maintain stable
blood sugar levels in the short-term., it also increases your triglyceride concentrations. And this increases your risk of cardiovascular disease.
“Excessive consumption of refined grains and added sugar will also elevate your insulin and leptin levels and raise your risk of insulin/leptin resistance, which is at the heart of many chronic health problems,” he says.
Basically this means that elevated insulin from excess carbohydrates promotes fat accumulation. This then hampers your body’s ability to lose that fat, which results in excess weight or
obesity – both of which can lead to heart disease.
Simple lifestyle changes that can effectively improve your heart health
Dr Mercola sums up the bottom line: Don’t be fooled by whole grain products that claim they’re “heart healthy”, or by low-fat foods you conventionally recognise as healthy for your heart.
He advises you not to replace saturated fats with carbohydrates. Instead, he says you should indulge in grass-fed beef and raw organic butter rather than bagels and pasta.
In doing this, you’ll reduce your risk of heart disease, not increase it.