Why Are Docs OK with Being So Wrong About Saturated Fat?

(Tracy) #1

This topic has to have been discussed many times here. If we know for a fact that saturated fat doesn’t cause CVD and it’s carbs and diabetes doing it, why are doctors not telling us? Why are we STILL being told to load up on fruit and whole grain? I’m noticing companies are starting to get on board with offering low sugar options, but it’s so slow. As soon as there’s new findings about the coronavirus, it’s all over the news. So why the big secret about HF diets? I don’t believe my doctor has an incentive to keep people on statins and keep them diabetic. Are they afraid most people can’t stick to HFLC and they are just going to create more problems because they know how strong carb addiction really is?

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #2

Because the official recommendations cannot be changed, and the standard of care is based on the official recommendations. Doctors can be sued for malpractice for not following the standard of care, so it takes some courage to go against the grain.

The low-fat guidelines are motivated by a number of factors: first there is the opposition of the Seventh-Day Adventists and their vegetarian and vegan allies to the idea of eating meat, so anything that makes meat look bad fits their agenda. Second, Ancel Keys hated fat people, and he was in a position to get a large number of his friends appointed to positions of influence in the U.S. government. Some of them are still alive. Third, the sugar and seed oil industries have a vested interest in keeping us eating their products. Fourth, it was Crisco oil that put the American Heart Association on the map with a very large donation in 1948, and the organisation is to this day promoting vegetable oil and shortening as “heart-healthy” out of gratitude. Fifth, there are the legal liability issues that arise from changing dietary advice after all these years. Need we go on?

(Joey) #3

Love it.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #4

Opposing momentum and inertia requires great effort, extraordinary thinking and bravery. So it doesn’t happen often. Most folks will just go along to get along, especially if to do otherwise puts their pay cheque at risk. Usually, the current paradigm changes only when it meets disaster.

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(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #5

Or as Upton Sinclair once put it: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” :grin:

#6

Because they can’t give nutritional advise when it’ll only apply to less than the 1% of people that eat LCHF. The problem is your thinking of this from a keto’rs prospective, For all the “normal” eaters out there that saturated fat IS causing all those issues, the fact it’s because of other things in the diet really doesn’t matter, because that’s how the mainstream eats.

That’s exactly why! Most people can’t hang, most people would RATHER take their chances and eat all the food they love rather than give it up. We were all there at one point.

(Tracy) #7

I can honestly say I don’t know of a single person besides my husband who is keto and has stuck with it properly. He will even tell you he doesn’t think he would do it if it weren’t for me doing all the cooking and informing him of all the keto info I read about. All my fellow ketonians are virtual. Of the people I know who attempt low carb, none of them can stick to it. I have a relative with fatty liver disease and diabetes and he said he’d rather eat what he wants and be happy. There must be a misconception that keto eaters are struggling. I’ve never eaten better in my whole life and I feel liberated that I’m no longer a prisoner to the blood sugar roller coaster.

(Allie) #8

Maybe because they’re not brave enough to admit they’ve been wrong all these years and have caused masses of illness / deaths with their bad advice? :pensive:

(Tracy) #9

Paul, has any of Ancel Keys’s colleagues blown the whistle on him? Just curious. I would be interested in reading about it.

(Vic) #10

Doc’s ok with being so wrong because they don’t know they are wrong.
Are they wrong? Are we wrong? Or both partly?

We have no science showing we are right except anecdotal or associative stuff.

Same for the docs, there is no science telling them they are right or wrong, its all associations and very tricky to read.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a 100% with all of you, but I don’t know if the doc’s are wrong? We could be wrong also.

I’m ok with my ignorance, the little knowledge i found on health and food led me to become a carnivore. Untill now we seem to be closer to the truth than Vegans or SADers.

Saturated fat is healthy, it kind of has to be or I would be dead by now. But is it still healthy when you also eat lots of carbs?

What do you do as a doctor, telling someone they have been eating wrong their whole life, go Keto sub 20gr. Not many will listen, the addiction will win the mindset.
When a MD diagnoses a problem, the only tool he has to help is chemicals by the book.

(Vic) #11

Apparently not allways, if the current rate of cvd, cancer, t2d and all other metabolic illnesses are not a disaster than i dont know what a disaster is?

Its very interesting thou where this all goes, when will we wake up? How many more need to die?
Guess that will be an impressive number.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #12

Few if any doctors have studied nutrition so I guess it’s not surprising that many/most don’t know they’re giving wrong/bad dietary advice. They just think “I’m following the guidelines” and assume the guidelines must be right simply because they’re the guidelines.

Yes and many know it. They are trained to diagnose and document the progression of illness. They are not dumb and can see that dietary intervention works well in many cases. But they also work in a scientific paradigm that maximizes pharmaceutical intervention. For most that precludes consideration of alternative, ie dietary, approaches overall. Then their fallback is to the ‘guidelines’ because they’re the guidelines after all.

Even a quick search of this forum will show you how wrong this statement is. Do your homework and you will find lots of scientific studies and/or RCTs that illustrate the benefits of ketogenic diet, ketosis and/or just eating low carb.

As I said above, doctors are not dumb. They can plainly see that we are deep into a world-wide catastrophe that is essentially a trifecta of metabolic diseases: obesity, diabetes, CVD. They can see plainly a whole second order of diseases that follow the big 3. There are lots of scientific studies and RCTs that identify glucose and insulin management as the underlying cause. There are lots of scientific studies and RCTs that identify carb consumption as the source. The major problem is that most doctors don’t bother to avail themselves of all the data available and adjust their thinking and treatments. But again they work in a scientific paradigm that maximizes pharmaceutical intervention, not telling people to cut back on carb consumption. At the base level, doctors make their living treating patients not curing them.

Fortunately, there are many doctors who have discovered low carb and ketogenic eating and the many health benefits derived. Some are actively engaged in the keto community in one or another aspect and trying in their own ways to spread the knowledge and facts. Still a small voice crying out in the wilderness, yes. But there.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #13

It’s a matter of degree. Minds convinced of their correctness can sustain quite a lot of contrary evidence before giving up. Things can get very very bad before the ultimate collapse. Take Constantinople, for example. By 1453 the Byzantine Empire consisted of the city of Constantinople and maybe some of the pastureland on its landward side. But for many it took the event of May 29, 1453, to admit the Byzantine Empire had long ceased to exist in any meaningful form.

(Doug) #14

Many good answers in this thread already; great topic. “When you also eat lots of carbs” - this is the rub. I remember Richard talking about a ‘metabolic landing zone’ (a narrow and small one) where people, at least some people, can be quite healthy eating a LOT of carbs. There are plenty of examples of this around the world. But it’s extremely low fat.

(Joey) #15

We can safely handle glycerine. We can also safely handle nitric acid if done prudently. Putting the two together produces nitroglycerine - dynamite. :boom:

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #16

Nitroglycerin was written about as early as 1846[5][6] and came into medical use in 1878.[7][8][9] It is on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines.[10] The drug nitroglycerin (GTN) is a dilute form of the same chemical used as the explosive, nitroglycerin.[9] Dilution makes it non-explosive.[9] In 2017, it was the 143rd most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than four million prescriptions.[11][12]

… The medical establishment used the name “glyceryl trinitrate” or “trinitrin” to avoid alarming patients, because of a general awareness that nitroglycerin was explosive.[31].

Because inquiring minds want to know. No matter how trivial. :roll_eyes:

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #17

I suppose that happiness takes different forms for different people.

I am happy having my Type II diabetes reversed, having my arthritis in remission, having my pulse and blood pressure back to normal, being able to wipe myself, being able to tie my shoes without holding my breath, being able to get back up off the floor without having to plan how I’m going to do it before getting down in the first place, keeping all my fingers and toes, and a bunch of other such things.

While I crave sugar and refined grains, I certainly don’t miss them.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #18

No, because those who are still alive are still in positions of authority that require them to back the current nutritional guidelines. People like John Yudkin who opposed Keys’s notions saw their professions destroyed.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #19

Happy until not. While we can laugh/cry at the disconnect of some folks to their actions and consequences, it’s a very common thing. Even on this forum folks try to get approval for eating stuff they know does them no good but ‘makes me happy’.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #20

Oh, there is now plenty of scientific evidence to show that a ketogenic diet works, and what its benefits are. We are also beginning to learn how the three ketone bodies act in the body and how they affect the expression of our genes.

There was one study I read, in which people were given radiolabelled foods, and which concluded that when we eat fat and glucose (carbohydrate) together, the excess glucose is what gets turned into fat and stored in adipose tissue, whereas the fat in the food is metabolised for energy. It was an interesting study, as I recall, and unfortunately I have since lost the link, so can’t go back to see how it has held up and how correctly I remember it.

The hypothesis that saturated fat might somehow cause cardiovascular disease was never based on solid science, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that fat in fact does not cause cardiovascular disease. A reanalysis of the data from Keys’s Seven-Country Study shows that when all 22 countries studied are included in the analysis, the correlation between dietary fat and coronary heart disease vanishes. From this, it would appear that Keys deliberately chose the seven countries he reported on in order to support his point.

Interestingly, the correlation between sugar consumption and cardiovascular disease, which Keys noticed in the data from the seven countries he picked to report on, and which he dismissed out of hand, is still just as strong when all 22 countries are included in the analysis. Zoë Harcombe did her Ph.D. thesis on the Seven-Country Study, showing that that Keys was pretty much committing scientific fraud by selecting those 7 countries to report and failing to mention the other 15.

Keys later did a study with Ivan Franz, called the Minnesota Coronary Study, that failed to show any correlation between fat intake and coronary heart disease. It also showed a negative correlation between cholesterol levels and cardiovascular risk, which is pretty conclusive proof that cholesterol cannot be the cause of cardiovascular disease. When it became clear that these data contradicted Keys’s diet-heart hypothesis, he insisted on removing his name from the study.

Franz withheld the study from publication for 17 years, finally publishing it in an obscure journal that few people read. When asked by Gary Taubes why he didn’t publish the study right away, Franz told him it was because “it was just so disappointing.” Franz’s son found the Minnesota Coronary Study data tapes in his father’s basement after Franz’s death, and the reanalysis of the data was striking (the son was interviewed about the whole experience by Ira Glass on “This American Life”).