Transcription
Hi Jeff Nelson, this is part two of a two-part series on olive oil and higher fat diets. In my first video, I reviewed some of the research being used by a small number of plant-based doctors to promote higher fat plant foods like olive oil, nuts, and avocados. I showed how the research they point to in support of these foods is very weak, biased, and you can safely ignore it. I'm putting a link to that video below.
Now, in this video, I'm going to talk about some of the extensive research on plant-based diets from the past 90 years. Research that, when it was published in the 1950s and '60s, most doctors dismissed it as a fluke because it was too good to be true. The doctors of those days couldn't believe that someone could just change their diet and make heart disease disappear. But we know today that it was true, and it's been repeated many times. I'm gonna show that when it comes to heart disease, as well as to cancer, the lower fat diet is the one that protects against both. And that this also applies to plant fats, not just animal fats, as you're gonna see.
At the end of this video, I'm going to review some research from Dr. Joel Fuhrman that suggests that the higher fat plant-based diet is not optimal for heart disease. I'm gonna use the data Dr. Fuhrman himself published about some of his most successful patients to see how they did in terms of heart disease biomarkers. Finally, I'm going to present a case study of a man with significant heart disease who followed a higher fat plant-based diet over years, and he ended up in the ER room and nearly died from heart disease. He tells his story of switching to Dr. Esselstyn's diet after experimenting with nuts and higher fat, and he finally reversed his heart disease by lowering his plant fat intake.
So now, I'm gonna talk about some of the history of plant-based diets low in all fat, not just animal fat, as being the diet proven repeatedly to promote health and prevent heart disease. Going all the way back to 1927, a physician named Jay Shirley Sweeney recruited healthy students to do a study on how diet affects blood sugar control. Sweeney's study showed that you could make healthy young men look diabetic by feeding them too much fat or protein. He tested four diets over two days: one focused on carbs, one focused on protein, one focused on fat, and he had one group water fast. On the morning of the third day, he gave a glucose tolerance test to the participants. Over several hours, the men eating the carbohydrate diet had remarkably stable blood sugar levels, but the other men's blood sugar levels shot up abnormally high. The men who had been eating lots of fat had the worst results, and in fact, got results that suggested they had severe diabetes. From these results, Sweeney concluded that a high carbohydrate diet helps to improve the body's ability to tolerate carbohydrates, and in contrast, high-fat diets undermine the body's ability to control blood sugar.
Sweeney's research was borne out in the 1930s by another researcher, an Englishman named Sir Harold Percival Hemsworth, who did similar studies and got similar results. Here's one from 1934 called "High Carbohydrate Diets and Insulin Efficiency." You can read and see that the low-fat starch-based diet was very successful in reversing type 2 diabetes.
Also, starting in the late 1930s, a German American physician named Walter Kempner began applying these lessons to the treatment of patients at Duke University. Kempner wanted a cure for severely high blood pressure. He noted that heart disease and kidney disease were very rare in societies who ate a rice-based diet. So Kempner designed a diet to be as low as possible in protein and fat. It was maybe 100 calories of protein, 50 calories from fat, and the rest was comprised of carbohydrates in the form of cooked rice, whole fruit, and canned fruit in any kind of sugar syrup and fruit juice. Kempner's diet worked to reverse cardiomyopathy, heart failure, and stage kidney disease, type 2 diabetes, including clearing of retinal hemorrhages, including papilledema, a medical condition where the optic nerve at the back of the eye becomes swollen, which can cause visual disturbances, headaches, and nausea. Diabetes is a major cause of blindness. Kempner's diet resulted in restoration of clear vision in people who had deteriorated to the point of being clinically blind. Patients with type 1 diabetes had much better control of blood levels and could get by on much smaller insulin doses. Afib, atrial fibrillation, also treated successfully with patients becoming symptom-free in a number of cases. All of these results occurred in thousands of patients and represented in research published in reputable medical journals over a period of 30 years.
In 1946, a doctor in Los Angeles, a cardiologist named Lester Morrison, began a study to see if he could reverse heart disease through diet. In 1951, he published an article documenting reversal of cardiovascular disease using a low-fat plant-centered diet. Under "foods to be avoided," you can see he's said to avoid concentrated fats, the use of fats in any form, as salad dressings, olive oil, vegetable oils, rich gravies, olives, nuts, and avocados. So he eliminated overt high-fat plant foods, as well as limiting animal products. His diet derived 10% of calories from fat and was successful at reversing heart disease in his patients.
Morrison did another number of studies, including a 12-year study published in 1960. He took patients who had had heart attacks and closely matched groups of 50 people in each of two different diets. The controls stayed on the normal Western diet, and the intervention group was told to restrict fat intake to 15% of total calories and cholesterol to 100 milligrams daily. By the end of the 12-year period, 38% of the low-fat diet group were still alive, whereas the entire control group had died.
In 1958, Morrison had a patient, a man named Nathan Pritikin, whom he diagnosed with coronary insufficiency. Pritikin was only 39, so he sought a second opinion. When a second cardiologist confirmed his heart disease, Pritikin devised his own high complex carbohydrate, low-fat, low-cholesterol diet. It reduced his cholesterol from 280 to 112 and completely reversed his heart disease. Pritikin founded the Pritikin Longevity Program, he wrote best-selling books, appeared on TV, and helped many thousands of people reverse their heart disease with a low-fat plant-based diet. He funded research, he studied the Tarahumara Indians in northern Mexico, heart disease doesn't exist, and he observed that they ate an 80/10/10 diet, meaning 80% carbs and 10% fat, 10% protein. The Pritikin Center has published over 100 peer-reviewed studies on the efficacy of the low-fat plant-based diet to prevent and reverse many diseases.
Pritikin wrote about the damaging impact of excessive fat in the diet, not just animal fat, but plant fats too. Here's what he wrote: "Excessive fats, whether animal or vegetable, create damage in three ways: one, interference with carbohydrate metabolism, which is a prime factor in diabetes; two, elevation of cholesterol and uric acid plasma levels, resulting in shifting of these substances into tissues and extra vascular spaces; and three, the production of tissue anoxia." Anoxia is an extreme form of hypoxia, which is when a part of your body, such as your brain, can only obtain a reduced amount of oxygen. Anoxia is when your body doesn't get any oxygen, and this can result in a variety of problems.
Pritikin cites many studies showing that fat promoted cardiac problems. In one study that took 14 angina patients, fasted them overnight, and then fed them a high-fat drink, within 5 hours, all 14 suffered angina attacks, and their blood showed sludging from the fat. When they gave the same patients a fat-free drink with the same calories in bulk, there was no increased blood turbidity, no angina, and no abnormal ECG tracings, as were found after they had consumed the fat drink.
In 1988, the Pritikin Trust published a 537-page document by Pritikin called "A Review of Medical Literature on Relationships of Various Degenerative Diseases to Diet and Activity." Now, I could spend an hour on this. I will put a link in the description, but it has several studies showing that healthy plant fats are not all that healthy because they cause heart disease as much or more than saturated fats.
Here's one that's pretty impressive, published in 1969. 846 veterans living in an institution split into two groups. Half ate the standard American diet with 40% of calories from fat, and the second group was fed unsaturated plant fats and about the same level, 39%. The cholesterol intake was lowered in the intervention group, of course, since they were eating plant fats, but the heart attack and sudden death rates were statistically the same in both groups. The fact that one group was consuming plant fats rather than animal fats, this appeared to make no difference in terms of heart disease.
Pritikin wrote about this study: "Results of the long experiment were quite disappointing for the principal investigator, but certain conclusions weren't apparent to him. It may not be desirable, necessary, or safe," he said, "to augment the diet with polyunsaturated fats. Total fats in the diet should not be 40%, as in the average diet, but should be reduced to less than 20%, and ideally, it should be 10%." This 8-year study was the longest trial in the U.S. of a diet high in polyunsaturated fats.
Here's another. They took 200 men aged 30 to 50, put them on three diets. One was the standard American diet of 40% fat. Then two other diets consisted of 28% fat, where the components of one had 9.6% saturated fat, 13.2% monounsaturated fat, and 3.3% polyunsaturated fat, and the other diet had 5.5% saturated fat, 9.3% monounsaturated, and 14.1% polyunsaturated fat. At the end of 5 years, this table summarized the results, and Pritikin wrote to us: "The end results after the five-year period show that a polyunsaturated diet of 28% fat and 1/3 less cholesterol is no better and could be worse than a highly saturated 28% fat diet. Total fat intake made the greatest difference rather than the type of fat. Saturated fats in quantities normally consumed and unsaturated fats in quantities recommended by the American Heart Association and in the National Diet Heart Study proposals are equally capable of great harm to the body."
Remember, these studies were done in the day before commercial research. These weren't agenda-driven research like the olive oil, nut, and other one-food-only research being done today. They actually were seeking the truth, and it's not attempting to get a preconceived or desired result that they were being paid to get, like we see today.
Now, when you hear people saying that they don't think that promotes heart disease, that olive oil, nuts, and avocados can't promote heart disease, ask them why do they ignore evidence. Maybe that they don't know about all this research, or maybe they've been trained to blindly accept food corporation-funded research as if it's real research.
Here's another: three diets. One, SAD; the other is the high olive oil diet; and one is the high corn oil diet. Eighty people followed for two years. Bottom line is that the highest fat intake caused the highest heart attack or death rate. You can see the control was 33% fat, had 25% major cardiac events. Olive oil was next with 48% fat, 43% major cardiac events. The highest fat intake was 52% with corn oil and 48% major cardiac events. Pritikin wrote: "Twice as many subjects in the Cornell group which consumed the largest amount of fat either suffered an infarct and survived or else died. The number of major cardiac events is proportional to the total fat intake, but is not related to either the cholesterol level or the saturation of the fat. The amount of fat intake, no matter if it's animal fat, olive oil, corn oil, no matter the source, that was the key to causing and promoting heart disease."
As I mentioned, Pritikin himself had severe heart disease at age 39. And after he died in 1985 from complications from therapy for malignant lymphoma, they performed an autopsy. The doctors who performed the autopsy published a letter in the New England Journal of Medicine: "Several systemic arteries show some yellow flat streaks. No elevated plaques were present, and no reduction of the lumen was found. No infarcts of any size or other findings referral to vascular disease were present in any organ. In a man 69 years old, the near absence of atherosclerosis and the complete absence of its effects are remarkable."
After Pritikin, we have people like Dr. Dean Ornish, who used a 10% fat diet to reverse heart disease. And of course, Dr. Dean Ornish, who had Gould work with Dr. Ornish, published very impressive research showing a low-fat plant-based diet without cholesterol-lowering drugs, along with some lifestyle factors, can reverse heart disease and probably even prostate cancer. Dr. Esselstyn, he showed you could reverse heart disease just using the low-fat plant-based diet alone, without any added lifestyle factors. Esselstyn, and Ornish, and Pritikin have very impressive records showing that their diet programs eliminating or dramatically restricting oils and high-fat foods, including plant foods, work incredibly effectively at halting and even reversing heart disease. The programs of Ornish and Pritikin are covered by Medicare and major insurance carriers because their success is well-established.
Dr. Esselstyn took a small group of individuals whose cardiologists had essentially sent them home to die. But today, around 30 years later, nearly all are still alive, and not just alive, but thriving into their 80s and 90s. Sudden cardiac death syndrome is defined as someone who has a heart attack and dies within 1 to 60 minutes. Here on the Cleveland Clinic website, it says: "Sudden cardiac death is the largest cause of natural death in the United States, causing about 325,000 adult deaths in the U.S. each year. Sudden cardiac death is responsible for half of all heart disease deaths." The person suffering from a fatal heart attack may have been a healthy weight, or exercised a lot, or considered themselves to be healthy. They could be vegan, but they had undetected cardiovascular disease, and only found out by the very first symptom, which for them was death. Because of this, more people are starting to follow the diet programs of Esselstyn and Ornish, so they know they won't have to get any surprise heart problems. This is why the popularity of the low-fat vegan diet has really taken off.
Now, we're adding nuts or olive oil or other high-fat plant foods to a diet like Dr. Esselstyn's, would the diet still work to prevent heart disease? No one knows. No one has tested it. It's pure speculation. We know that Dr. Joel Fuhrman published an article purporting to show that his own higher fat plant-based diet was effective against heart disease. Now, I've discussed this particular article before, and it's unfortunately very poor quality data. The data wasn't taken from real people, but the data was collected using an anonymous online survey, meaning it's not really scientific. It was anonymous people on the internet clicking boxes, so no one was actually tested or weighed, no blood was taken or measured, nothing was confirmed. It's super low-quality data.
But we do have data on a group of Dr. Fuhrman's patients. He did a weight loss study that included actual real patient data. It was a review of what's known as a "convenient sample," that is, Dr. Fuhrman got to handpick the patients that he had seen to be in this review that showed some of his best results. So it wasn't randomized, it doesn't represent a cross-section, but it's looking at just what Dr. Fuhrman considered some of the top nutrients he wanted to feature. It was based on his own medical records of real people and actual numbers from blood tests Dr. Fuhrman had given.
Now, looking at the results in his study, in regards to cholesterol, there was an average drop from 196 to 185 in the first six months for patients following his Nutritarian diet, but no further change in the next 18 months. Same with LDL. It dropped from 122 to 108 and 107 and never went any lower. Under 100 is what you want to see for LDL, and under 70 is considered ideal. So Dr. Fuhrman's higher fat Nutritarian diet didn't lower LDL to a desirable level. And the overall total change in cholesterol from 196 to 183, which is a drop of only 13 points over two years, that's a 6.6% change. That's not very impressive compared to the low-fat programs where patients experience about a 25% drop in cholesterol within a month or so. You want to get total cholesterol below 150, which Dr. Fuhrman's patients failed to do. So this higher fat plant-based Nutritarian diet is, at best, a modest improvement, but much less improvement for heart disease markers than the low-fat plant-based diet.
We know anecdotally some people trying to fight heart disease using Dr. Fuhrman's higher fat approach have had serious problems. We know this because some patients talk about it. For example, here's a comment from a real person known personally to both Dr. Fuhrman and Dr. Esselstyn: "I was a huge fan and promoter of Dr. Fuhrman seven years ago until my husband ended up in the cath lab while following his plan. We had put too much faith into the plan and not enough strict adherence to what we now know prevents and reverses heart disease, which is a low-fat plant-based eating. Long story short, we were adding way too many nuts to our diet and giving ourselves license to eat ground almond flours, oils, and other healthy fats. The low-fat plant-based diet is solidly researched and proven to prevent and reverse heart disease, and now my husband's disease has reversed following the low-fat plant-based diet. Moderation kills."
Heart disease is not the only medical condition impacted by fat intake. I've been reading a great new book by Neal Barnard that I want to recommend again. It's called "Your Body and Balance," and it's about various health issues and food. He's got a lot of studies on fat intake and cancer in the book. For example, this study of 324 women in Japan: the more fat they ate, the higher their estrogen levels. And this was seen among thinner women, and for all fats, not just saturated fat found in milk and meat, but the fat found in vegetable oils and like olive oil. Higher estrogen translated to a higher risk of developing breast cancer.
Here's another: "Dietary Fat Consumption and Survival Among Women With Breast Cancer." Fatty foods were shown to cause problems even after cancer had been diagnosed. This was a study of women who had been diagnosed with advanced cancer, and the researchers found that those who ate more fat had a much higher risk of succumbing to the disease. An extra 30 grams of fat a day increased the risk of dying by about 40%. How much is an extra 30 grams of fat? That could raise a woman's cancer risk. Well, Dr. Bilardo recommends 2 tablespoons of olive oil a day, and that's 28 extra grams of fat. So following that advice, if you have breast cancer or trying to avoid cancer, you would best not to add that extra fat, according to the research Dr. Bernard is spotlighting here.
Here's another study Dr. Bernard writes about. Researchers looked at about 2,500 women with breast cancer. At baseline, the intervention and control groups both consumed about 30% of their calories from fat. At 12 months, the intake was successfully reduced in the intervention group to an average of 20% of calories from fat, while the control group made only a slight reduction in fat intake to 29.2% of calories from fat. After five years, the low-fat intervention group had a 24% higher survival rate than the higher fat group. By reducing fat from 30% to 20% of calories, this translated to a significant increase in survival.
Hey, that's it for today. The take-home message of these two videos: reduce your fat intake to 10% or 15% of calories, or 20% at most. This doesn't mean no fat, it just means not getting carried away. Protect yourself and don't fall for industry-funded commercial research from food companies. Watch my first video in this series if you haven't seen it. Thanks for tuning in. I'd love to hear your thoughts and comments below. I'll see you on the next one.
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