There Are Good Fats And Bad Fats

It doesn't take a leap of imagination to assume that if you eat fat it will make you fat. After all fat has more than twice the number of calories per gram than carbohydrates or protein. As the old saying goes "you are what you eat." Furthermore it is an easy step to assume that the fats that float through your blood stream and clog your blood vessels come from the fats that you eat.

However when the numbers are crunched by statisticians it is not possible to verify a connection between eating saturated fat and cardiovascular disease. It is true that saturated fat raises the level of LDL cholesterol levels that are associated with higher rates of heart disease, but they also raise the level of HDL, the good cholesterol. HDL flows through your body and removes LDL from the walls of your blood vessels. Since saturated fat raises the levels of both LDL and HDL it's influence is probably a dietary wash.

In addition it seems as though there are two different LDL particles. Some are small and dense while others are larger and fluffy. The large ones are mostly harmless. Ingesting saturated fat raises the levels of these larger particles. What most people do not realize is that eating Carbs will raise the level of the small sticky particles that are linked to heart disease.

This new information does mean that you should go out and eat more double cheeseburgers or other foods high in saturated fat. It does mean that you should explore the options of eating foods that are high in other fats that are heart healthy. That topic is the subject of our next blog.

Get more information in our book Live Longer Live Healthier

or visit our website at trienergetics.net

More About Being A Couch Potato

We did not intend to write another blog about being a couch potato, but the popular media is jumping on this subject in a big way, and we could not resist jumping in. Our Sunday paper had an article on the subject that Americans engage in precious little exercise. There is a quote attributed to Edward Archer a nutrition and obesity researcher at the University of Alabama. It is noteworthy.

"How you spend your day determines whether you store your food as fat or store your food in your muscle, healthfully."

We love this quote. It is the triple distilled essence of the obesity epidemic. The other prongs of course are what and how much we eat and why we eat the way that we do.

The essence of this study published in The Mayo Clinic Proceedings was that obese women averaged about 11 seconds a day of vigorous exercise, while men and women of normal weight did better but still logged only about 2.5 to 4 hours of moderate exercise a week.

In summary the data sketch a nearly supine population with days marked by long hours of sedentary behavior, particularly for those who are overweight or obese. "We have engineered physical activity out of our daily lives and that's causing the health disparity that we have in this country"

Our experience in running wellness programs has been that participants take to meditation like a duck takes to water. In general they are good about changing their eating habits, but so often we hear excuses about why they have been too busy to exercise.

It is an uphill battle to get people to change their attitude about being a couch potato, but for the good of their health change it they must.

Get more information in our book Live Longer Live Healthier

or visit our website at trienergetics.net

How Much Fish Oil Do You Need?

Fish oil is rich in the omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA. They are essential fatty acids and belong to a family of nutrients that can also be obtained from other marine sources such as algae, krill and calamari.  EPA and DHA are polyunsaturated fats (good fats) as contrasted to saturated fats that increase the risk of heart disease.  The body can manufacture only limited amounts of EPA and DHA therefore it is necessary to supplement your body's production with nutrients from your diet..

Omega-3 fatty acids have a number of potentially healthy effects such as reducing triglyceride levels, raising levels of HDL (good cholesterol), Possibly "thinning the blood", slowing the progression of atherosclerosis and decreasing inflammation in the body.

Omega-3 fatty acids need to be differentiated from omega-6 fatty acids. Omega-6 fatty acids are also essential fatty acids. They are found in almost all of the processed foods that we eat especially foods that have have had oils from sunflowers, corn, soybean and cottonseed.  Omega-6 fatty acids are also essential for healthy body functioning, but the problem with the typical western diet is that the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids is unhealthy.

Why is this a problem? The reason is that omega-3 fatty acids are anti-inflammatory. Omega-6 fatty acids are inflammatory. Historically  before the onset of mass produced processed foods the omega-6 to omega-3 ratio that our ancestors lived with was about 4:1. Going back even further in time our ancestors who were hunter gatherers had a ratio of about 1:1. Even today the Inuits who eat a diet high in seafood have a ratio of 1:4 and the healthy mediterranean diet has a ratio of about 3:1.

Many of us who eat a typical American diet have a ratio of 16:1 or even higher. This imbalance between inflammatory and anti-inflammatory essential fatty acids is one of the reasons for the high incidence of heart disease, auto-immune disease and cancer in our western civilization. In subsequent blogs we will discuss the health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids and give our recommendations.

Get more information in our book Live Longer Live Healthier

or visit our website at trienergetics.net