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Mediterranean diet

Irregular Heartbeat Cures: Forget Meds and Rely on this Instead

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I have covered the topic of irregular heartbeats like atrial fibrillation and what you can do to fix the problem in previous articles.

A visit to your cardiologist will leave you with instructions to cut caffeine intake and stress and likely a prescription for a beta blocker and maybe a blood thinner if there is a higher risk of stroke.  Ironically, the beta blocker will increase your risk of stroke (the very thing we’re trying to prevent) and diabetes (which can make a-fib worse).

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The American Heart Association’s Step 1 Diet Failure

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Along with the USDA’s food guide pyramid’s demonizing of all things fat, for many years the AHA focused on steering the public towards a low fat diet.

This idea seemed to run hand in hand with the idea that cholesterol in foods and in our bloodstream was the major contributor to heart disease.  However, even with the research we had at the time, you really had to squint and look at it cock-eyed to decide that low cholesterol and low fat diets were THE answer to heart disease.

In hindsight, we can see how miserably we have failed at avoiding heart disease with this approach.  And we might as well throw walking around the block in the same category (instead of a more intense, short-burst aerobic approach).

The Mediterranean Diet, on the other hand, has never had a focus on fat.  Rather, it had a focus on actually making monounsaturated and omega-3 fats as part of the diet.  While this was not the only aspect of the diet, it was in direct contrast with the AHA’s and the USDA pyramids’ message of low fat.

This particular article reviews the overall idea that diet plays a substantial role in heart disease, with a special focus on the power of the Mediterranean diet.  The beauty of the Mediterranean diet is that it is not a “developed” diet, but rather the indigenous diet of a population that was known to have a very low risk of heart disease.  Aspects of the Mediterranean diet include:

  1. Lowered animal protein intake, mostly from fish.
  2. Higher intakes of fruits and vegetables.
  3. Grain intake is whole grain, not processed junk.
  4. Focus on the use of olive oil and other monounsaturated fats like nuts and seeds.

There is not a single aspect of the Mediterranean diet that gives it its power.  Rather, it is the combination of food compounds that gives it so much cardioprotection.  As an example, the higher fat intake of the diet actually helps in the absorption of lycopene present in the tomatoes.  This is a good thing because lycopene has a potent ability to protect the heart.

This benefit on the heart of this dietary approach alone speaks to the power of the diet.  Adding in exercise (most notably short-burst aerobic), stress management and avoidance of environmental chemicals known to increase the risk of diabetes and heart disease will lower your risk down to almost nothing.

Veggies–One Meal or Spread Out? How to Get the Best Benefit

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Hopefully no one reading this is going to argue the benefits of increasing fruit and vegetable intake.  But beyond this, is there any way to maximize, or at least make it simpler, to get the most from your diet?  The answer is yes.

8-10 servings per day are the current recommendations, and yet few of you actually are anywhere near that goal.  It’s really not that hard if you make it a part of your lifestyle.  Real peanut butter toast on whole grain bread with bananas on top for breakfast?  Knock off two servings as you enjoy.  Amy’s vegetarian lasagna for lunch?  Chalk up another 2-3.  But that leaves maybe 5 servings to meet at dinner.  You can’t just jam the bulk of your veggies into single meal, can you?

Before we get to the answer to this question, there are a few things that you should know first.  Many protective phytonutrients in foods are fat soluble.  That means that they require our fat-digestion system to be up and running; bile from the gallbladder, pancreatic lipase and, to a lessor extent, digestive lipases in saliva.  When we have a meal that has fat in it, we will better absorb fat soluble phytonutrients as well as fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K).  Anyone who has had his or her gallbladder removed or is on any type of acid-suppressing drug like Nexium or Prilosec may not release sufficient amounts of pancreatic lipase for healthy fat digestion.

This is one of the reasons why we believe that the Mediterranean diet has such strong benefits on health.  The combination of lycopene (the fat soluble red pigment in tomatoes) and olive oil, both common in the Mediterranean diet, will help increase the absorption of the lycopene, thus providing more protection than with either alone.

This also means that those of you who dove head first into the “fat free lifestyle” of the 90’s, using high fructose loaded salad dressings, were not likely getting the full health benefits of the components of the salad like the carotenoids in the bell peppers and the lycopene in the tomatoes.

Back to this particular study.  Researchers looked at how the consumption of vegetables, whether in a single meal or spread out, would affect the absorption of the carotenoids (vividly colored protective compounds).  Here are the details:

  • Participants ate raw salad vegetables and 8 g canola oil over a two meal period in three meal patterns.
  • The first pattern was 100% of vegetables and oil in the first meal and 0% in the second.
  • 75% in the first meal and 25% in the second.
  • 50% in the first meal and 50% in the second.
  • Additional protein-rich “chef’s salad” ingredients were distributed equally between meals.

One would think that spreading out the intake of the vegetables throughout the day would give the best results.  That’s exactly what the researchers thought going in.  But, contrary to this belief, the absorption of the carotenoids from the meal was greatest when >75% of the vegetables were consumed at a single meal.

Wow!  Who would’ve thought this would’ve been the findings?  I know I would not have.  However, if you consider that the digestive “effort” to absorb these fats will be greater with larger intakes, this begins to make sense.

Overall, the take home message is that you can feel good about loading up most of your vegetable intake during a single meal, provided that you take your time to eat the meal in a peaceful setting as well as combining the food with healthy oils (preferably olive oil) to get the best benefits.

Resveratrol Enhances Differentiation Induced by Butyrate – (07-08-02)

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Resveratrol Enhances Differentiation Induced by Butyrate

This study on colon cancer cells shows an additive effect of resveratrol (found in red wine and peanuts) and butyrate (a short chain fatty acid formed by bacteria acting on soluble fiber in the gut). With studies like this, we start to see why certain traditional diets have the health -promoting effects they have. The Mediterranean diet has already show to be beneficial via increased absorption of lycopene (fat soluble carotenoid) with olive oil intake. This research study mechanism would find lower rates of colon cancer in patients combining wine intake with whole grains.

Nutrition.org — Abstracts: Wolter and Stein 132 (7): 2082

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Olive Oil Has Protective Effect on Colorectal Cancer – (10-23-00)

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Olive Oil Has Protective Effect on Colorectal Cancer

The Mediterranean diet, in which olive oil is the principle contributor to dietary fat (about 30%) has been shown to reduce the risks of heart disease, diabetes and certain types of cancer. This further supports this dietary pattern as being one of the healthiest on the planet. What is interesting in this study was that fish increased the risk of colon cancer. It would be interesting to compare types of fish to risks, as many types of fish have become contaminated with heavy metals.

J Epidemiol Community Health 2000;54:756-760 Olive oil, perhaps through its influence on secondary bile acid patterns in the colon, appears to protect against the development of colorectal cancer, according to research from Oxford University, in the UK. Meat and fish consumption, on the other hand, are positively associated with bowel cancer. “The model of meat, fish and olive oil accounted for 76% of the variation in colorectal cancer incidence between countries,” the investigators write. Vegetable consumption lost significance in the model once olive oil was included. The authors suggest that meat increases deoxycholic acid in the colon and rectum, inhibiting diamine oxidase, which is thought to have a role in colonic mucosal proliferation. Olive oil may reduce deoxycholic acid, increasing the availability of diamine oxidase and protecting against “mucosal turnover, polyp formation, and the adenoma/carcinoma sequence.”

Mediterranean diet provides extensive health benefits – (03-14-02)

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Formulation Provides Lycopene with Same Bioavailability as Tomato Paste

Speaking of the carotenoids… This article is trying to find better ways to increase the absorption of the fat soluble lycopene. Without going to great lengths found in this article, one of the ways that researchers believe the Mediterranean diet provides extensive health benefits is the combination of olive oil with tomatoes, thus increasing the bioavailability of the lycopene.

Nutrition.org — Abstracts: Richelle et al. 132 (3): 404

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Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest on the planet – (07-14-03)

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Adherence to a Mediterranean Diet and Survival in a Greek Population

I still strongly believe that a Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest on the planet and research bears this out. It has been shown to be far more effective at lowering risk for as well as managing chronic conditions that the ADA or the AHA diets. Keep in mind that many national organizations such as the American Cancer Society, the American Diabetic Association and the American Heart Association are highly political, and their guidelines/recommendations are formed by a panel. These panels frequently contain members of organizations such as the Dairy Council and reps from some of the major processed food companies (Kellogg, Nabisco…). Thus, any recommendations given are “softened” by the business interests of these member organizations.

NEJM — Adherence to a Mediterranean Diet and Survival in a Greek Population.

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