http://www.thealternativedaily.com/

If you believe modern-day birth control is safer than the pill of yesterday, you’d be wrong. Breast cancer is on the rise in both the developed and developing world, says the World Health Organization. And the reason could be linked to hormonal birth control.  Contraception options such as the pill, injections or IUD have always […]

Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss

So you’re a runner and you want to spend a little bit of time in the gym while the weather is bad getting stronger. You’re hoping that strength will translate into running somehow, and since you’re a runner, you can figure out exactly what you need to do. You devise a periodized plan that involves lots of heavy lifting, a few bodyweight exercises, and some core work, because everyone knows you should work your core.

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No matter what kind of evidence comes out to the contrary, the anti-saturated fat sect won’t relinquish its dogma. Whenever its advance is rebuffed—perhaps by an observational study showing the lack of relations between saturated fat intake and heart disease, or a study showing the beneficial effects of saturated fat on multiple health markers—they regroup and try another route. The latest is a study that several readers sent to me, worried that the attack had finally made it through the defenses. In it, researchers purport to show that saturated fat increases the solidity and rigidity of cellular membranes, reducing membrane fluidity and eventually leading to cell death.

Is it true? Have we finally lost? What was this study all about?

First, there’s this. They weren’t dealing with live humans or even whole animals fed butter or coconut oil. They extracted living cells and bathed them in solutions of different fatty acid concentrations to see how it would affect the lipid concentration of the cell membranes.

This study focused on the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), which takes up about half of the cell membrane and has high metabolic activity. The ER produces lipids and hormones and contains ribosomes that synthesize proteins. It’s an important part of the cell, and it needs the right amount of fluidity to perform its tasks. Not too rigid, not too liquid.

The setup sounds a bit silly—are our cells really “bathed” in fatty acids?

Before you claim certain victory, this wasn’t an entirely convoluted scenario that would never happen in nature. They weren’t just brute forcing saturated fat into the membranes. They actually found that exposing the cells to different fats had different effects on cellular lipid synthesis—the creation of fats—in the membranes. With more saturated fat (palmitic acid, in this case), for example, the cells synthesized more saturated fat and incorporated it into the membranes.

What happened?

The more palmitic acid a cell was exposed to, and the longer the exposure persisted, the more saturated and less fluid the cell membrane became. This wasn’t good. A cell membrane needs to be fluid for it to perform its functions. Solid membranes will eventually kill the cell.

So, saturated fat is bad again?

Not quite. We must keep in mind that more fluidity isn’t always desirable. In some Alzheimer’s patients, for example, platelets and brain cells are excessively fluid.

And finally, this wasn’t a diet study. They weren’t feeding fat sources to animals or humans and studying the effects of cell membrane fluidity. There’s no indication that the cellular environments they created bear any relation to the cellular environments we create by eating different fats. When you do that in actual humans, the fluidity of the dietary fatty acids consumed has no relationship to stroke or heart attack risk. The fluidity of the plasma, which is a more similar scenario to the one examined in this study, does. The next phase of this study would need to look at how the foods we eat affect the fluidity of our membranes.

I don’t think it will show what they expect.

All that said, it’s a good idea to eat a mix of fatty acids. Many studies show that the incorporation of monounsaturated or polyunsaturated fats into saturated fat-rich cellular membranes normalizes their function. We need both. We need them all. Hell, the study featured in this post got the same results by adding a little oleic acid or DHA to the palmitic acid soup. It completely normalized membrane fluidity and, in their words, was able to “rescue the cytotoxicity” of palmitic acid.

We see this pop up in other studies. Isolated palmitic acid has a number of dastardly effects on health, while adding different fats changes the game entirely:

• One example is that pure palmitic acid reduces LDL receptor activity, which can increase the concentration of LDL particles in the blood and increase the chance that they’ll become oxidized and damage the endothelial walls. But if you add a little bit of oleic acid, the LDL receptor activity normalizes.
• Another is that palmitic acid is toxic to muscle cells, impairing glucose uptake and increasing insulin resistance. But if you add a little arachidonic acid (an omega-6 found in most animal foods), the lipotoxicity goes away.
• Pure palmitic acid also triggers an inflammatory cascade that disrupts insulin signaling and looks an awful lot like pre-diabetes. Good thing that adding a little oleic acid blocks the inflammation.

That’s a more realistic situation for our cell membranes. And while it’s easy to get caught up in scary research results, we have to understand that the situations they contrive are not representative of waking, eating, walking reality. We don’t eat pure palmitic acid. We eat food containing dozens of different fatty acids. About the only time we get a huge influx of pure palmitic acid is when we eat too many carbohydrates and our liver converts the excess into palmitic acid. Thus, olive oil isn’t “rescuing” us from the palmitic acid we eat. It’s all just food. The “rescuing” comes built in, as long as you’re eating food.

Unless you’ve got a fatty acid fractionator for isolating your own palmitic acid which you then inject directly into your blood, don’t worry about this one. Not yet, anyway.

Just keep eating your food:

Your avocado oil and olive oil.

Your butter and cheese and yogurt.

Your red palm oil.

Your meat, your eggs, your fish.

All will be well.

Thanks for reading, everyone. What do you think? Still worried? Share your thoughts down below.

The post Will Saturated Fat Kill Your Cells? appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss

Day 258 of 360

”Drag” = forward, and “Pull” = backward. Today, use up to 3 trips to determine heaviest possible drag. If the time to completion exceeds:90 sec., the trip is over.

Then:

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Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss

Day 257 of 360

Rest up to 30 sec. in 5-rep intervals. Mind position and execution, and move with power. Use assistance as needed, and stay aggressive- there is absolutely no value to a casual tire flip.

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Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss

The recent trends for movement culture, natural movement, and functional fitness have the fitness culture obsessing about mobility and alignment more than ever before. While an obsession with movement quality, mobility, and flexibility are steps along the path toward optimal movement, most need to expand their thinking and their practice outside their typical gym routine.

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http://www.thealternativedaily.com/

Meat could be taxed in the future in order to reduce its impact on the climate and on human health, in much the same way there are carbon taxes and taxes on sugar and tobacco. Such a taxation is inevitable, according to investor network Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return (Fairr). The analysts with the network […]

http://www.thealternativedaily.com/

While canola oil has long been hailed by industry advocates as relatively healthy for your body, new research suggests it might not be so great for your brain. In a recent study, researchers from Temple University, Philadelphia looked at the impact of canola on memory, psychopathology and synapse. The results didn’t bode well for the widely-consumed […]

http://chriskresser.com/

I was recently contacted by Mickey Trescott of autoimmunewellness.com, who had some very exciting news to share. The Paleo autoimmune protocol (AIP) has been put to the test in a formal research study, and the results are nothing short of fantastic.

For those of you who are familiar with scientific research, you know that it’s incredibly hard to get a study like this funded. Not only is there no pharmaceutical company to profit, but it also completely overturns current paradigms in clinical research. No agency wants to fund something that is “too out there” or “doesn’t yet have any evidence.”

Sometimes, though, things just work out. In this case, a gastroenterologist at Scripps was introduced to AIP after witnessing one of her patients with ulcerative colitis make an astonishing recovery using the elimination diet. She decided to put together a study to formally investigate the diet in both ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease patients. It was entitled “Efficacy of the Autoimmune Protocol Diet for Inflammatory Bowel Diseases,” and it was published last month in the journal Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.

In today’s article, I’ll break down the methods of the study—and the impressive results they found. First, I’ll review the two types of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and discuss why an elimination diet might be effective.

More evidence that the AIP diet is effective for IBD.

What causes IBD?

Inflammatory bowel disease includes both ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD). Like other autoimmune diseases, conventional therapies for IBD typically focus on suppressing the immune system. This has numerous unwanted side effects, including an increased risk for infection, and the efficacy of the drugs is quite variable.

As of 2015, 231 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within 200 different genes are associated with IBD risk. Still, genetics only account for a small proportion of the variance in disease (8.2 percent for CD and 13.1 percent for UC) (1, 2). This means that environmental factors likely play a significant role. Factors implicated in IBD include gut dysbiosis, environmental toxins, and diet, among others.

The Standard American Diet has been associated with an increased risk of IBD, while anti-inflammatory diets have shown some promise for relief (3). Many patients with IBD have known food sensitivities (65 percent, 4), yet some patients may not know which foods might be harming them. I’ve discussed the limitations of food sensitivity testing previously on my podcast. This is where an elimination diet can be really helpful.

Enter the Paleo autoimmune protocol

The Paleo autoimmune protocol (AIP) is a Paleo-type diet, which removes grains, legumes, dairy, refined seed oils, and refined sugar, but also recommends initial removal of eggs, nightshades, coffee, alcohol, nuts, and seeds. The basic rationale is to avoid foods that might trigger intestinal inflammation or promote gut dysbiosis and immune dysregulation.

Like Paleo, AIP encourages consumption of nutrient-dense, healing foods, including bone broth, organ meats, and fermented foods. The elimination phase is typically followed by a maintenance phase until sufficient improvement in symptoms is achieved. At that point, select food groups can be carefully reintroduced. This allows patients to expand their diets, while identifying any foods that might be contributing to their symptoms.

I’ve mentioned before that the restrictions of AIP really aren’t based on any peer-reviewed evidence. While the study discussed today was not a randomized controlled trial, it certainly adds to the credibility of AIP, beyond just anecdotal support and my clinical experience with patients.

SAD to AIP in 6 weeks

For the study, 15 patients were enrolled that had been living with IBD for an average of 19 years. A team including a nutritional therapist and registered dietitian led the participants through a six-week phased elimination program to transition from their current diet (SAD) to AIP. They remained on the full AIP diet for five weeks. Mayo score (a measure of ulcerative colitis activity) or Harvey-Bradshaw score (a measure of Crohn’s disease activity) was determined at baseline, after the six weeks of phased elimination, and at eleven weeks after a month on full AIP.Seven of the 15 patients were actively taking medications to help manage the symptoms of their disease during the intervention. Patients who were identified as deficient in vitamin D (three patients) or iron (six patients) were also started on nutritional supplements to correct these deficiencies.

Unexpectedly effective

So, the results? The authors write:

Clinical remission was achieved by week 6 by 11/15 (73%) of study participants, and all 11 maintained clinical remission during the maintenance phase of the study.

Wow. Seventy-three percent of participants achieving clinical remission in six weeks rivals most drug therapies for inflammatory bowel disease, without any of the side effects. Let’s look at the breakdown by disease across the three timepoints.

Average Mayo score (disease activity) in ulcerative colitis patients:

• Baseline: 5.8
• Week six: 1.2
• Week eleven: 1.0

Average Harvey-Bradshaw index (disease activity) in Crohn’s disease patients:

• Baseline: 7.0
• Week six: 3.6
• Week eleven: 3.4

Additionally, four participants were able to discontinue some or all of their medications.

What it means

This study suggests that the Paleo autoimmune protocol can be used as an effective treatment in many patients with IBD and that remission occurs quite rapidly. I’ve witnessed it quite often in the clinic, but I’m thrilled to see it documented in the literature as well!

For more information on AIP, be sure to check out these resources:

• What is AIP?
• 5 steps to personalizing your autoimmune protocol
• Pills or paleo: preventing and reversing autoimmune disease

Now I’d love to hear from you. Do you have IBD? Have you ever tried the autoimmune protocol? Share your experience in the comments below.

Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss

Recently, I had the opportunity (I say that loosely) to travel from North Carolina to Nevada. This was not my first cross-country trip. I have driven from Florida to Washington state and then Washington state to North Carolina before. And like many of you, I try to stay fit and eat healthy even when I’m on an adventure.

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