Chocolate Bomb Bars

10. July 2012 William Davis (4)
These healthy bars will blast you with chocolate from several directions!

Look for cacao nibs in health food stores, Whole Foods Market, or at nuts.com. If unavailable, the bars are still delicious without them.



These bars contain around 4-5 grams "net" carbs per bar, well within the tolerance for most people.

Yields approximately 10 bars

1 cup ground almonds
2 tablespoons coconut flour
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup cacao nibs
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
2 ounces 85-90% cocoa chocolate, finely chopped
3/4 cup raw pumpkin or sunflower seeds
Sweetener equivalent to 3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons almond butter
1/4 cup coconut milk
2 tablespoons coconut oil or cocoa butter (food grade)

Preheat oven to 200 degrees F. Lay sheet of parchment paper on large baking pan.

In large bowl, combine ground almonds, coconut flour, cocoa powder, cacao nibs, coconut, chocolate bits, pumpkin seeds, and sweetener (if dry) and mix.

In microwave-safe bowl or in small sauce pan, add almond butter, coconut milk, and coconut oil and sweetener (if liquid) and heat for 15 second increments in microwave until liquid, but not hot. If using stove, heat at low-heat enough to make liquid easily mixed, but not hot.

Pour liquid into dry almond mixture and mix together thoroughly. If too stiff, add water one tablespoon at at time until the consistency of thick dough.

Spoon out approximately 1 1/2-inch balls, shaping with the spoon and/or your hands into bar shapes.

Bake for 35 minutes. Remove and cool.
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Comments (4) -

  • Stevie

    7/21/2012 6:24:37 PM |

    I make these often. I do not bother with the shaping of little balls. I put them on parchment paper, flat like pizza dough. Then after baking, cooling, I slice into small bar sizes.

    Smile

  • Low Carb Master

    8/6/2012 6:57:42 AM |

    Wow, this is a simple low carb recipe. My girlfriend likes to bake and I like to cook low carb. I think this will be a great edition to our recipe book. Thanks!

  • steve Kreloff

    11/10/2012 7:55:42 PM |

    Could you recommend any energy bars that I can purchase in a store? I am a distance runner and like to eat an energy bar before a long run. Any suggestions? Thanks.

    Steve Kreloff

  • sweetmack

    12/7/2012 7:32:11 PM |

    I should have read the comments above before I made these. Mine look like short fat hot dogs. Really tasty if you like chocolate. I like the pumpkin seeds as they make it kind of chunchy. I refrigerated them and they seem to store well that way.

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Are we done here?

Are we done here?

27. July 2007 William Davis (4)
Les' doctor consulted me because his CT heart scan score had increased 40% from 893 to 1259 over 18 months.

Judging by his appearance, Les was a 59-year old guy trapped somewhere in the 1980s. The only reason he'd undergone two heart scans was from the prompting of his wife, who was quite savvy.

Among the steps we took was to have Les undergo a stress test. I explained to Les and his wife that stress tests are effective tests of coronary blood flow, but not of plaque. Therefore, there was somewhere around a 25-35% likelihood of an abnormality that suggested poor flow in one or more portions of the heart.

Les passed his stress test easily. A bricklayer, Les was accustomed to heavy physical effort. "Are we done here, doc?" Les asked. Les' wife raised her eyebrows but, to her credit, kept quiet. She'd obviously been here before.

I explained to Les that having normal coronary blood flow was just one aspect of the issue.

"But I don't need a stent, right? I don't need a bypass. I already take Vytorin. So I need a cheeseburger once in a while. So what! Who doesn't? What else is there?"

I continued. "Les, with a normal stress test, there's no denying you still have lots of plaque in your heart's arteries. The risk to you is that one of these plaques will 'rupture,' sort of like a little volcano erupting. Of course, it's not lava that flies out, but the internal contents of plaque. When that happens and the contents of plaque get exposed to blood flowing by, a blood clot forms. That's a heart attack.

"With a 40% increase in your score over 18 months, you are, in fact, at substantial risk for such a plaque rupture. Unless you're fond of hospitals and the thought of heart procedures, then we need to address that part of the issue."

So it went. Step by step, with the quiet, strong support of Les' wife, we uncovered 7 additional causes of his heart disease. It wasn't the easiest process for us, but we did manage to educate Les on the simple steps he needed to take to 1) correct the causes of his coronary plaque, 2) how to use foods and stop fanning the flames of his plaque, and 3) how to live with this nasty specter hanging over him.

Now, if we could only transform Les into an optimist . . .
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Comments (4) -

  • Anonymous

    7/28/2007 12:15:00 AM |

    I'm curious what those "7 additional causes of his heart disease" were.

  • Dr. Davis

    7/28/2007 1:32:00 PM |

    These refer to the lipoprotein sorts of abnormalities we commonly uncover, e.g., small LDL, IDL, VLDL, deficient vit D, etc.

  • Anonymous

    8/25/2007 2:40:00 AM |

    I am interested in learning what you prescribe for lessening plaque rupture. My score was 1229 and I also easily passed an echocaridogram. I am doing all
    I can to correct the deficiencies from my lippo testing
    but what I fear most is plaque rupture. Currently I am
    taking 2000 mg omega3s and 10mg Mevacor as prevention. I was taking an ACE inhibitor but discontinued 2 weeks ago as my blood pressure has stabilized for the first time in 14 years.
    Any thoughts you may add would be appreciated.
    Regards
    Gene Mc

  • Dr. Davis

    8/25/2007 2:52:00 AM |

    Hi, Gene--

    I'm afraid that our approach is too lengthy to cover in this blog.

    I would invite you to participate in the conversation on the www.trackyourplaque.com website. The entire website is, in fact, devoted to answering your question.

    I will stress to you that, given your current regimen, an increase in heart scan score is virtually guaranteed unless you take appropriate action.

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Lipitor and memory

Lipitor and memory

17. April 2007 William Davis (2)
At first, I was skeptical. A book from a nutty author and physician named Duane Graveline kept on coming up in conversations with patients. His book, Lipitor: Thief of Memory , details his personal experience with dramatic changes in memory and thought while taking Lipitor.



Now this is a drug that I've seen used thousands of times. But I've now seen about a dozen people who have had distinct struggles with memory and clarity of thinking while taking Lipitor. Most took doses of 40 mg per day or more, though an occasional person takes as little as 10 mg. The association seems to be undeniable, since it improves after two weeks off the drug, recurs when resumed. Just today, I saw two people where this effect may be an issue.

Curiously, I've not seen it with any other statin agent. Unfortunately, uncovering any scientific data on the issue is a hopeless quest. Either it's very uncommon or, worse, the data has been suppressed.

Any way, I believe that Dr. Graveline was right: Lipitor, in a small number of people, does indeed seem to exert real detrimental effects on the mind.

If you take Lipitor, should you stop it in fear of long-term effects on your mental capacity? I think it's premature to toss the drug out based on this relatively uncommon relationship. This particular effect is likely to be idiosyncratic, i.e., peculiar to an occasional person but does not seem to apply to the majority, probably by some quirk of metabolism or penetrability of the barrier between the blood and nervous system tissue.

If, however, you feel that your thinking and memory have deteriorated on the drug, please speak to your doctor.
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Comments (2) -

  • Jeffrey Dach MD

    6/18/2007 10:13:00 PM |

    Perhaps you have seen the Direct-to-Consumer TV and print advertisements with Robert Jarvik, the inventor of the Jarvik Heart, speaking on behalf of the Pfizer’s anti-cholesterol drug, Lipitor.

    Perhaps Jarvik is not the best choice for the Lipitor campaign which has had mixed reviews. Instead of Jarvik, a more convincing yet unlikely spokesman would be the popular Duane Graveline MD MPH, a former NASA astronaut, and author who was started on Lipitor during an annual astronaut physical at the Johnson Space Center, and 6 weeks later had an episode of transient global amnesia, a sudden form of total memory loss described in his book, Lipitor Thief of Memory.    

    Two more unlikely spokesmen for the Lipitor ad campaign include Mary Enig and Uffe Ravnskov.  

    Should either one be selected as Lipitor spokesman, I myself would run down to the corner drug store to buy up the drug.  It seems unlikey that even Pfizer’s deep pockets could ever induce them to recant their opposing position on the cholesterol theory of heart disease.  

    Mary G. Enig writes, ”hypercholesterolemia is the health issue of the 21st century. It is actually an invented disease, a problem that emerged when health professionals learned how to measure cholesterol levels in the blood.  

    Uffe Ravnskov MD PhD is spokesman for Thincs, The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics, and author of “The Cholesterol Myths, Exposing the Fallacy That Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease”.  His controversial ideas have angered loyal cholesterol theory supporters in Finland who demonstrated by burning his book on live television.

    For more discussion on this, see my newsletter: Lipitor and The Dracula of Modern Technology

    Jeffrey Dach MD

  • Anonymous

    11/10/2008 7:50:00 PM |

    My mom went on lipitor for "high cholesterol".  I don't think it's all that high, but whatever.

    She ended up in the hospital with "transient global amnesia".  Cause: completely unknown.  It's just one of those things that happens.

    I've begged her to stop, and try something else.  Her doctor has been very relunctant, but at least he agreed to significantly reduce her dosage, and there has been no further problem.

    A book I read about this suggested that the problem came from the drug industry, and their competitive markets.  They want a drug that is as powerful as possible, to impress doctors.  They also want a drug that is simple to prescribe, without complicated tables.  So they create pills that are the maximum dose.  My 70 year old mom who is fairly small is taking the same dose a 300 pound linebacker would take.

    Lipitor is particularly bad about this, and is nearly 4 times as strong as the other statins.

    What really pisses me off is how the manufacturers ignore these reports, by showing that there are no known adverse side effects on memory.  Well, yeah.  That's because my mom's TGA was "unknown cause".  And my mom's doctor didn't file an FDA report on lipitor.  So how could it ever be linked?

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