Many times we discussed different diets with the sport guru Susie Q. We’ve noticed how many business ladies in this country and in Europe, instead of eating healthy breakfast of cereals, cottage cheese or eggs, they end up with cup of coffee and two cigarettes on empty stomach. This is so wrong and so bad for their health. In general, for healthy people coffee is a good drink. It is good energizer and has many valuable antioxidants. Accordingly to the multiple researches when drunk in moderation and not very strong, it is NOT raising your blood pressure unless you are sensitive towards it. But don’t drink it like those business ladies – on empty stomach, coffee is too acidic for that and can cause trouble. Drink it AFTER breakfast and WITH little milk or half-and-half, which neutralizes coffee’s acidity and its negative effect on your stomach.
Another important tip: Don’t drink instant coffee, it is usually of much lesser quality and thus not very tasty. Coffee manufacturers use heavy chemicals to make coffee instant and not get glued into one piece due to moisture. Don’t drink coffee dripping through the white paper filters in the corner store. First – it is of low quality and bad taste, secondary – the paper filters are bleached with highly cancerous chlorine and the coffee becomes unhealthy. If you love yourself, and we know you do, purchase good coffee beans, grind them and make your own coffee in the coffee pot or espresso machine. When not at home, better drink espresso/cappuccino-type coffee. They use safe metallic filters and usually coffee tastes good.
What is the best suggestion for healthy breakfast? Eat a plate of cereals, cottage cheese or plain yogurt with handful of berries or our favorite – 2-3 hard-boiled eggs. Yes, eggs! They are healthy, satisfying, inexpensive and easy to prepare.
One of the longest-living myths is that eggs are not healthy food. Before getting to scientific gibberish let’s apply some logic: whatever is good for a tiny, chicken embryo – should be good for people too. The egg white has better absorbable proteins than any meat. The yolk, which has been long considered by the pseudo-scientists or the employees of the Big Pharma industry as the main culprit for the high and unhealthy cholesterol levels, IS PERFECTLY HEALTHY UNDER ONE CONDITION – eat hard-boiled eggs instead of scrambled.
When the cholesterol in the yolk is oxidized with high temperatures, especially when it is in contact with the frying pan and very hot oils, as in scrambled eggs, such oxidation contributes to chronic inflammation in your body, which is definitely associated with increased risk of plaque formation and heart disease. But in the hard-boiled eggs the cholesterol is NOT oxidized and not dangerous! It is the opposite: accordingly to the latest INDEPENDENT researches, the egg yolk has all, even the rarest groups of natural vitamins your body needs and craves! Also, vitamin E and Lecithin which are generously present in the egg yolk have been long used by dietitians to LOWER CHOLESTEROL level.
Examples? Many thousands of bodybuilders, weight-lifters, wrestlers, track-and-fielders as well as other sportsmen, who need a lot of clean proteins for their bodies to grow, eat sometimes 5-10 hard-boiled eggs a day for many years and have normal cholesterol/ratio levels.
Recently, news headlines were ablaze with startling information that eggs are nearly as bad for your arteries as cigarettes. After surveying more than 1,200 seniors, the researchers concluded that eating egg yolks on a regular basis is approximately two-thirds as bad as smoking with regards to the build-up of arterial plaque.
That’s an incredible claim. The rest of the story is this: the “study” is based on interviews of stroke patients and their recollection of egg intake and admission of smoking history.
The authors do acknowledge that the results are weak because they’re dependent on the patients’ self-reporting, memory, and honesty. They also say the finding that people with heart disease shouldn’t consume eggs is just a hypothesis and should be tested further. That hasn’t stopped the conventional media from running with it though, without any further scrutiny.
Latest Attack on Eggs Fraught with Conflicts of Interest
First of all, the study was funded by the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Ontario, and the Heart & Stroke Foundation of Canada. Although these are two different entities, they use the same donors list in their annual reports, and they are both heavily funded by Big Pharma—to the tune of AT LEAST $7 million a year for heart and stroke recovery, and $4.4 million for the Research Center’s Heart & Stroke Spark Together for Healthy Kids™ project.
Next, let’s look at the study authors. Two of the three researchers in question, have declared interests in statins. David Spence and Jean Davignon have received honoraria and speaker’s fees from several pharmaceutical companies manufacturing lipid-lowering drugs. Now do you think the companies that make statins might have a vested interest in getting you to be afraid of eggs and cholesterol? Of course they do.
The third researcher, David Jenkins, helped create the vegan “Portfolio Diet,” which only allows egg substitutes and then only sparingly which is nonsense and had never been proved.
So what’s the bottom line when you look at who funded the study and who the authors were? They all have heavy involvement with, and funding from, pharmaceutical companies, so how can you expect anything but massive conflict of interest.
There is a major misconception that you must avoid foods like eggs and saturated fat to protect your heart. While it’s true that fats from animal sources contain cholesterol, this is not necessarily something that will harm you. Cholesterol is in every cell in your body, where it helps to produce cell membranes, hormones, vitamin D and bile acids that help you to digest fat. Cholesterol also helps in the formation of memories and is vital for your neurological function.
Study’s data show egg consumption actually promotes health due to the fact that looks like egg consumption above a certain level shifts the size of the LDL particles from small to large, making them harmless. Maybe eggs contain nutrients that promote overall health, leading LDL particles to “behave” and do what they are supposed to do. Maybe it is a combination of these and other effects.
Other research has found no link between eggs and heart disease.
Additionally, while the subjects were reportedly asked about medications, drug use was not evaluated to see if there were any correlations between drugs and increased risk of arterial plaque build-up. After all, the subjects were all stroke patients, and are therefore likely to be on statins. Statins (cholesterol drugs), we now know, are associated with an increased risk of diabetes, and heart disease is the number one killer of diabetics. Accordingly to many Chinese researches anti-cholesterol drugs damage kidneys, pancreas and liver, causing irreversible and dangerous side effects. So is the increased plaque build-up really caused by egg consumption, or is it related to drug-induced diabetes?
Overall, the idea that eggs are unhealthy is a complete myth, one that’s easily debunked if you look at the evidence.
For example, previous studies have found that:
- Consumption of more than 6 eggs per week does not increase the risk of stroke and ischemic stroke.
- Eating two eggs a day does not adversely affect endothelial function (an aggregate measure of cardiac risk) in healthy adults, supporting the view that dietary cholesterol may be less detrimental to cardiovascular health than previously thought...
- Proteins in cooked eggs are converted by gastrointestinal enzymes, producing peptides that act as ACE inhibitors (common prescription medications for lowering blood pressure, thus they are good for your healthy blood pressure).
Heart Disease is one of the easiest diseases to prevent!
Heart disease, just like type 2 diabetes, is one of the easiest diseases to prevent and avoid, BUT you simply must be proactive. One of the most important risk factors to be your cholesterol to HDL ratio.
Contrary to popular belief, your total cholesterol level is just about worthless in determining your risk for heart disease, unless it is close to 300 or higher. And, perhaps more importantly, you need to be aware that cholesterol is not the CAUSE of heart disease. If you become overly concerned with trying to lower your cholesterol level to some set number, you will be completely missing the real problem. In fact, I have seen a number of people with levels over 250 who actually were at low heart disease risk due to their HDL levels. Conversely, people who had cholesterol levels under 200 that were at a very high risk of heart disease based on the following additional tests:
- Your HDL/Cholesterol ratio: This percentage is a very potent heart disease risk factor. Just divide your HDL level by your cholesterol. Ideally, it should be above 24 percent. Below 10 percent, it’s a significant indicator of risk for heart disease.
- Your Triglyceride/HDL ratios. You can also do the same thing with your triglycerides and HDL ratio. This ratio should be below 2.
So rather than taking a statin drug, you really need to focus on your diet to reduce the inflammation in your body, which is aggravated by eating:
- Oxidized cholesterol (cholesterol that has gone rancid, such as that from overcooked, scrambled eggs)
- Sugar and grains
- Foods cooked at high temperatures
- Trans fats
Eat eggs, drink good coffee, stay active and healthy!
About the author: ChineseHerbalAdviser
