Arteries are seldom mentioned these days without the companion words 'hardening' and 'cholesterol.' A lot of misconception has arisen from half-understood reports issued by physicians and medical laboratories on the need to 'limit the diet' to avoid hardening of the arteries (arteriosclerosis), the condition which sometimes leads to a heart seizure or to ruptured blood vessels in the brain. To clear up some of the potentially harmful misconceptions that have sprung up around 'cholesterol and hardening of the arteries,' let me explain what cholesterol really is.
Cholesterol is a fat-like substance evidently vital to human life, since it is found in every living cell. It also abounds in the liver, the adrenal glands (in the cortex, or outer layer, of these glands), in the brain and in the nerves. Biochemists are frank to admit that they are still far from understanding very much of the mystery surrounding this fatty substance. Yet it has been noted that cholesterol does have a close biochemical relationship to vitamin D, to the bile acids produced in the liver for digestion of fats, to the hormones secreted by the cortex of the adrenal glands and to the hormones produced by the sex glands of both sexes. Since cholesterol occurs in such abundance in all living matter, we know that it's essential to the body. We also have established beyond all doubt that the body can manufacture the cholesterol it needs. Further, we know that under normal conditions excess, unwanted amounts of this fatty substance can be destroyed in the body.
But the most important thing for you to remember about cholesterol is this: The consumption of heavy starches causes deposits of cholesterol to form in the body, mainly in the arteries. Laboratory animals-dogs and rabbits-were taken off their natural diets of meats and green, leafy foods. Instead they were fed on the ordinary human diet containing quantities of artificial starches, plus fatty foods. Within an astonishingly short time, the arteries of these starch-and-fat fed animals were found to have become ''hardened,' that is, deposits of cholesterol had piled up in the arteries, overlaid with deposits of calcium sent by the blood in an attempt to 'heal' the damaged artery. For that is exactly what happens to a hardened artery-it becomes brittle and less flexible because of the deposits of cholesterol and calcium that keep piling up on the inner arterial wall. Yet when their natural diets were restored to these laboratory animals, their arteries stopped 'hardening.' Moreover, it was noted that some of the cholesterol and calcium deposits on their arterial walls were being reabsorbed.
Dr. Daniel C. Munro, one of the pioneers in the low-starch, high-protein diet, reports he personally has observed that dogs-meat-eaters by nature-will develop hardening of the arteries and arthritis after starchy foods are given them in considerable quantities. Today, some medical scientists place the blame for too much cholesterol in the blood on foods that actually are valuable sources of nutrition-cheese, egg yolk, liver, gland meats, butter, cream and vegetable oils. Diets are being prescribed that greatly restrict the use of these excellent foods. Also prohibited are pork, pies, rich cakes, cookies and all fried foods-none of which, of course, should be given a place in any diet.
Nothing, however, seems to be said about white bread, devitalized cereals, white rice, macaroni and similar pure-starch items. Now let's check into the practical wisdom of these 'low-fat' diets currently being prescribed indiscriminately for persons suspected of having 'hardened' arteries. Fats, the same as carbohydrates, are used by the body to supply heat and energy. Right at the start, we begin to realize that the average American diet is top-heavy with two food elements-fats and carbohydrates-both with the same nutritional function, that of providing heat and energy. Carbohydrates, when too plentiful in the diet, usurp the natural function of the fat foods, thereby allowing the fats to be deposited instead of being burned for energy. The fats you eat must be used for energy; otherwise they are 'hoarded' in the tissues and in the arteries.
It's wrong to give fats a 'black eye.' Our bodies need fats, and most of this need is supplied by the fats our body derives from meats, eggs and vegetables. But our health also demands a small, though steady, supply of ready-formed fats such as those found in butter, cream and vegetable oils. (We all have read of the pitiful condition of a fat-starved nation as the result of a famine or the holocaust of war.) Food fat is essential for supplying a proper amount of the body fat that protects us from shock, checks our loss of heat by radiation and promotes the mobility of our bodies. It is only when fats are eaten to excess, or when they are combined with high-carbohydrate meals, that they pile up in all those unwanted and dangerous places-around the waist, in the liver, around the heart and on the inner walls of the arteries.
It's not difficult to understand that when you eat a high-starch meal which also includes a quantity of fat, you are overfueling your body. If you've ever flooded the carburetor in your car with too much gasoline, or choked out the fire in your furnace by piling on too much coal, you can readily understand that overfueling is something to be avoided. Unburned gasoline floods out the carburetor in your car, unburned coal clogs up the grate in your furnace and unburned fats pile up on the walls of your arteries. By eliminating all high-starch foods (which incidentally supply very little, if any, of the essential minerals and vitamins), you can force your body to call upon its liberal deposits of fat for needed heat and energy. This is the same principle that underlies a reducing diet-make the body burn its fat deposits instead of keeping it refueled each day with oversupplies of energy-producing carbohydrates.
No comments:
Post a Comment