Saturated fat protects the liver!
This blog post is from the Nurse Kim archives of myth busting. I want to share some "alternative" or maybe just lesser known health and wellness viewpoints for you to chew on.
*These posts are not intended as official medical advice.
They ARE meant to be fun, informative, and thought provoking, hopefully sparking an interest for you to do your own research (you can start with the links I provide!) and discover the marvels of the human body, and how it can function at its optimal performance level if we understand how it works and interacts with our environment and our diet.
I have a passion for health and wellness through lifestyle and nutrition and have done thousands of hours of research in addition to being a registered nurse for 24 years. I have done A LOT of self-experimentation in and around diet, lifestyle, body care, and supplementation and have spent a lot of time looking into the science behind it all (or lack thereof!). Check back regularly for the latest post!
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Here we go again on the merry go round of Nurse Kim spewing
the OPPOSITE of mainstream advice. But we really need to start understanding
what is going on inside the body so that we can STOP doing the wrong things and
START doing the right things.
Mainstream doctors, dietitians, and nutritionists will all tell
you (alongside the USDA dietary guidelines) to choose polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs)
over saturated fat in your diet. The reason they site… many a medical study
that show that PUFAs do in fact lower your LDL cholesterol, and conversely, saturated
fat increases it.
Meanwhile, as we have decreased our saturated fat intake and
increased PUFAs like the obedient Americans we are, we have seen epidemic
levels of fatty liver (and many other chronic illnesses) develop in our
country, even in children! So yeah, this is important.
What does LDL do?
Let’s first dive into what LDL’s role is in the body, and
no, it’s not to cause cardiovascular disease as purported by mainstream medical
professionals who are apparently under the impression that the human body likes
to break itself.
LDL carries cholesterol throughout the body delivering it to
tissues for fuel and molecular membrane synthesis. It is also involved in the immune response
to an infectious process. It also supports the thyroid gland in creating
necessary hormones. It additionally supports brain health and if we don’t have
enough, we can experience low
mood and impaired mental health.
There’s more, but does this sound like something we should
be obsessed with getting rid of? I think not.
Based on all the important roles and protective qualities of
cholesterol, studies actually show that cholesterol lowering drugs increase
the risk of cancer
and overall death (insert wow face).
In fact, studies also show that those with higher levels of
cholesterol, especially in their later years, are less likely to die
from heart disease and other causes.
Now I agree 100% that diseased LDL particles are a problem,
but the solution is not to render the body unable to produce enough LDL to
support the system (i.e., what statin drugs do). The solution is to fix the
underlying issue that is causing our LDL to become broken. I have already
blogged about this so instead of repeating it all here, check
out my post on what breaks our LDL cholesterol and how to keep it healthy. You’ll
never guess, but it has to do with PUFAs.
Saturated fat
Now let’s get back to my good friend saturated fat and why
it is so essential, and in fact, can FIX some of the problems that PUFAs cause
in the body, specifically in the liver.
There have been a number of studies showing that when we
induce fatty liver disease and/or the more advanced stages of steatohepatitis
and cirrhosis in rats, PUFAs make things worse and saturated fat ACTUALLY
PROTECTS the liver from damage. One study looked at acetaminophen (Tylenol)
toxicity specifically and showed that higher levels of saturated and monounsaturated
fats AND LOWER LEVELS OF PUFA protect
against hepatotoxicity (toxicity of the liver leading to liver disease and
failure).
Another study showed that hepatotoxicity
cause by ALCOHOL can be protected against, or reversed by increasing
saturated fat intake! And this paper
suggests a novel protocol of increasing dietary saturated fats to TREAT alcohol-induced liver injury. Wow.
What now?
Now what in the world do we do with this info? First off,
why is saturated (no bonds) and monounsaturated (one bond) fat protective
against these liver problems? Simple, these fats are stable and not prone to
oxidation. When our cell and mitochondrial membranes are made of them, they
function like well-oiled machinery. PUFAs on the other hand (poly meaning MANY
bonds) are extremely unstable fats. When they are incorporated into our
cell membranes and other body tissues, they are VERY prone to oxidation, and
oxidation is bad. It creates a toxic environment of reactive
oxygen species (ROS) or free radicals causing cells to become dysfunctional
and many other downstream systemic problems.
The other thing to note that makes this so obvious from
an ancestral perspective is that we would never have been able to ingest
high amounts of PUFAs in a natural environment. PUFAs, or “vegetable oils", are
derived through chemical and machine extraction of seeds and nuts, something we
could not do until recently.
So… should you start guzzling (highly saturated) coconut oil
instead? Maybe 😊
But I would definitely encourage you to consider that saturated fats (found in things like beef, butter, cheese, and coconut oil) and monounsaturated fats (mainly found in olive oil) are found in whole foods, whereas PUFAs are found
in highly processed foods and are themselves highly processed substances.
That might clue us in a bit as to how this fits into the big picture of
wellness through dietary choices.
So… my advice? (Which is not official medical advice 😉)
Protect your liver and enjoy those one ingredient whole foods
with healthy, stable, saturated fat like meat, milk, cream, yogurt, cheese,
butter, chocolate, and coconut products, and DITCH the vegetable oils! Even the American College of Cardiology agrees!
AND… please consider clicking on the links I have provided
and dive into this topic further. Certainly, don’t do anything because “Nurse
Kim said so.” But maybe, just maybe, we have gotten it wrong the last 50
years and need to open our eyes, look around, recognize the epidemic of modern chronic
illness, and change a few things.
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