I get really annoyed sometimes when grocery shopping by all the food manufacturers trying to manipulate us into buying their product by trumpeting whatever health angle they can get away with. "Only 100 calories!" "Good source of fiber!" "Low-fat!" Only 1g carb per serving!" "25% less sugar!" They sniff the air for whatever the latest health trend is and see how they can get their product modified a little while still remaining junk to cash in on the trend. They don't care about our health, they just want our money.

There is one thing I am unsure about regarding all of the 'omega-3' products -- is it even healthy for men to use omega-3 products derived from non-fish (flax)? ALA has been shown to raise the risk of prostate cancer, although some studies also show other aspects of flax decreases the risk (making it all nice and confusing). I've also read, that for some people, who can't convert ALA to omega very well in their bodies,  flax can also raise inflammation levels.

Should men even bother taking flax or products with  flax omega, at all? My own cardiologist pushes flax on me, oddly enough, even though I guzzle down plenty of fish oil. When I mention possible problems from flax, she basically drops the subject, leaving me in the dark as to why she suggested it in the first place.

I saw a commercial for baby food with added DHA being marketed at helping your baby's brain development.

I found this little article to contain very useful advice.  

How to Eat - in Seven Words

"Eat food," said Michael Pollan. "Not too much. Mostly plants."

Seven words - short ones, no less, totaling eight syllables. Easy to spell, translate, or jot on a sticky note. But really, is that all that needs to be said?

Pollan - a journalism professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of the bestselling book The Omnivore's Dilemma - admits that boiling down advice on how human beings should eat to a mere seven words is dicey. A great deal, for example, depends on how one defines "food."

But in a rousing presentation to a packed room of health professionals at the Fourth Annual Nutrition and Science Conference in San Diego, Calif., on May 2, 2007, Pollan argued that Americans have gone astray when it comes to thinking about food. While other cultures define food in terms of pleasure, sociability, religion or history, Americans are uniquely mesmerized by its scientific aspect.

We are followers, Pollan said, of "nutritionism."

"It is an ideology, a way of organizing experience," he said. "Like other 'isms' it rests on a simple set of assumptions, though we don't realize it." The connection between food, science, and health is "a real linkage," he said, "but it has overwhelmed all of the other linkages in our culture."

Only in America, Pollan said, do people care more about food components - cholesterol, saturated fat, omega 3 oils, fiber and so on - than the foods themselves. And only in America can a low-fat craze grip the country, as it did from 1977 until 2002, to be displaced within a few months by a low-carb craze.

The problem with nutritionism, Pollan said, is that it gives processed foods a huge advantage over whole foods. "A banana or potato cannot significantly change its structure. But any processed food can be changed overnight to correspond with food fads. You can even rejigger bread along Atkins lines." So the "loudest foods in the market" he said, are processed foods, touting their nutritional virtues via a $42 billion marketing industry, while "these poor whole foods just sit there silently."

Thus, the irony: Americans are "a people obsessed with eating healthily, yet they are nonetheless very unhealthy."

Nutrition science has value, Pollan said, but unbridled "nutritionism," pushed by processed food marketers has simply left people confused. In an attempt to simplify food, he came up with his seven-word, three-sentence manifesto, though he concedes that each sentence needs amplification:

Eat food. The key term here, of course, is "food." We need to make hard distinctions between real food and "food-like products," Pollan said. Some guidelines:

Don't eat food with more than five ingredients, or with ingredients you can't pronounce, or that contain high-fructose corn syrup (which serves as a 'marker' indicating that the food is highly processed).

Eat only food that you have cooked, or could cook.

Eat only food that your great, great grandmother would recognize as food.

Not too much. The chief harm of nutritionism, Pollan said, is that processed food companies seize on "good nutrients" and "push us to eat more of them." The result is a tendency for Americans to eat more generally, which is one reason why we are consuming 300 calories more daily than in 1985. In the mass of verbiage surrounding food in America, plain overeating is "the elephant in the room." Pollan's advice to reverse the trend:

Don't eat alone.

Don't eat in front of the TV.

Don't eat seconds.

Perhaps most importantly, pay more and eat less. "I believe that the better quality food you eat, the less you need to feel satisfied."

Mostly plants. "It's not that meat will kill you," he said. "I eat meat. Small amounts of meat have much to recommend them in terms of vitamins, minerals and taste. Most traditional diets - whether Mediterranean, Asian, Indian or Mexican, use meat sparingly, as a flavoring. I think that's an important lesson."

By Brad Lemley
DrWeil.com News

http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/ART02840

For anyone who has not read Michael Pollen's book, I would strongly urge you to read this logical and entertaining discussion that attempts to re-introduce rational thinking back into diet.

"He also had a dangerous combination of other risk factors: high triglycerides, a type of fat in the blood, and a low level of HDL, the “good cholesterol” that can help the body get rid of the bad cholesterol that can damage arteries."

I wonder if he was taking fish oil supplements to try to drive down his triglycerides and niacin to prop up his HDL?

I had a 234 score in 2005 and a 419 score in 2007 - if it wasn't for resources like TYP - I wouldn't have pushed my Dr with questions about Vit D and CQ 10 and Fish Oil...  sit waiting for the next scan to see if things are under control (now - small LDL-P 123 nmol/L).

Just think if Tim R had the time to do a bit of research himself and found TYP - but that is what your physicans should be doing for you.... growing... learning... but as an engineer, I know the spectrum of people calling themselves engineers is a large spectrum... so it is with MDs.

Thanks for what you do Dr D.

Dave

Yes. Fish oil alone could have cut his risk of sudden cardiac death by 45%. It would have cost him all of $3 per month.

I have been wondering if the trans-Atlantic flight several days before his death could have had something to do with it...

Dr Davis I just wonder what you think of this Dr. Mehmet(?) Oz who keeps popoing up on television and writing books talking about the same old stuff, low fat, high carbs blah blah blah . . . I think since Mr. Russerts death I've seen him on tv 3 times and NOT ONCE has he mentioned calcium scoring, vitamin D, fish oil . . .

What a tragedy.  All week long I have been asking myself how such a smart man could be so uninformed about his own health?

With all the resources at Mr. Russert's disposal, I would think he could have easily learned more about his condition, and the measures he might have taken to save himself.  [Then too, he might have also come across the Track Your Plaque website... or the book.]  Instead, he was apparently greatly trusting of his internist and cardiologist, and perhaps thought he was receiving optimal medical management... and nothing more could be done?

Beyond that, I wonder about his Vitamin D status, and whether he was dehydrated from the long flight back from Europe?  I also wonder if the emotional stresses (good and bad) of a quick trip to Europe, his son's graduation from college, and having recently placed his beloved father into a care home, on top of what could only be termed a stressful and grueling work life (no matter how much he may have loved it) might have lead his body to the tipping point on that day.   I suppose we are unlikely to have these answers under the circumstances.

R.I.P. Mr. Russert, but shame, shame, shame on your physicians, IMO they really let you down.

Thanks for this truthful blog, an antidote to all the media nonsense and C.Y.A. I have seen in the past few days.

Terri
madcook

My wife has been to Dr. Michael Newman the internist for Tim Russert.  I don't think she is going back.  I had Angioplasty about 10 years ago with stents put in my right and left artery.  Since then I have the thallium stress test every year, take 1500 mg's of niaspan a day, Lipitor, a blood pressure lowering drug, and aspirin.  Both my cardiologist, and my internist state that a heart scan would not do me any good, and my cardiologist stated that the heart scan would simply confuse the issues.  Are they right? Would the heart scan harm me?  If so, how?

In response to the comment by sschein, I'm not sure it's such a great idea to have a thallium stress test every year.  You should probably investigate the possibility of a CT-angiogram.  

I am not a doctor so I don't want you to think I'm defending them, but there's only so much that a doctor can do in the office visit environment.  It's really up to the patient to do the research and decide on what he believes is the best course of treatment for him or herself and then try to bring the doctor around to his point.  In my own case I refuse to have a thallium stress test and have finally decided to have a 320 slice CT-angiogram when I go to Boston next month.  My cardiologist may not agree that it's the choice he'd choose, but he's going along with it.  Quite simply they don't have the time to convince the patient one way or the other.  We really don't know all the details about Tim Russert's care.  If he had his own private physician who tended only to him or who was consulted extensively I'd probably expect better.  As just one patient (admittedly a famous one) I'm not sure how much you can expect from a doctor.  If he suggests a stress test or an angiogram and you think better of the idea, it's up to the patient to chart his own course.

Andy (the164club) TYP member

Tim Russert and George Carlin

Two beloved American celebrities have succumbed to heart disease before their time.  The national response has been disappointment in a medical system that could allow this to happen.  What could have been done differently to save the lives of both Tim and George, to avoid this fatal outcome?

To read more...Saving Tim Russert and George Carlin by Jeffrey Dach MD


Jeffrey Dach MD
4700 Sheridan Suite T
Hollywood FL 33021
my web site

A simple calculation from known information in 1998 clearly, obviously, and inarguably predicted his death. Recall that heart scan scores of 1000 or greater are associated with annual--ANNUAL--risk for heart attack and death of 20-25% if no preventive action is taken. The meager prevention efforts taken by Mr. Russert's doctors did indeed reduce risk modestly, but it did not eliminate risk.