Good Hearted Nurses
Good Hearted Nurses
What sound does a sacred cow make when it bites the dust?
Just cup your ear toward the Northeast and you’ll hear it. It’s coming from the New England Journal of Medicine.
Moothump!
One of my local TV stations has some stock footage they use whenever they report the latest controversy or study about low carb diets. They slip in a quick shot of a frying pan that’s loaded with meat sizzling in puddle of grease. Apparently that’s a widely accepted notion of what constitutes a low carb diet: a pile of bacon, a couple of pork chops, a t-bone steakand you’re good!
If mainstream dieticians and doctors really believe that a low carb diet consists of nothing but bacon, chops and steak for every meal, it’s no wonder they warn that the diet courts heart disease. Eat like that for a couple of years and heart disease will be the least of your health worries.
What’s missing from the equation is balance. Yep, that simple, age-old advice: Eat a balanced diet. And add to that: No need to avoid all carbohydrates. Avoid the junky carbs and the high glycemic carbs.
And what will be the results of following those two dietary maxims? For the answer, just pick up the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
Lighten the load
As reported in NEJM last week, a team of researchers from Harvard and UCLA evaluated twenty years of dietary and medical data collected from more than 82,000 women who participated in the Nurses’ Health Study. Their goal was to determine the safety of low carbohydrate intake, especially in relation to heart disease. Researchers calculated caloric intake from different food sources for each subject, and then divided the women into 10 groups, according to their level of carb consumption.
The primary result came as a surprise. The authors of the study wrote: “Our findings suggest that diets lower in carbohydrate and higher in protein and fat are not associated with increased risk of coronary heart disease in women.”
Goodbye, sacred cow. Hello, lean cuts of sacred sirloin!
Two other important results stood out:
- When fat and protein come from vegetables sources primarily, heart disease risk is moderately reduced
- Diets with a higher glycemic load were strongly associated with a higher risk of heart disease
Glycemic load? For those who haven’t read about GL in previous e-Alerts, here’s a quick review. The glycemic index (GI) rates foods according to how quickly they increase blood sugar levels. Low GI foods (such as meat and most fruits and vegetables) prompt a slow increase in blood sugar levels, while high GI foods (such as foods with added sugar, processed baked goods and starchy foods) produce a quick spike in blood sugar levels.
A steady intake of high GI foods increases glycemic load and promotes a gradual insensitivity to insulin, the precursor of type 2 diabetes and – as this study neatly illustrates – heart disease.
You can find more information about the glycemic index in the e-Alert “Go Slow” (5/25/05) at this link:
