Can you cut your risk of heart attack without using risky statins?

Can you reduce your risk of heart attack by improving your blood cholesterol, without the use of risky statin drugs?

Avocado and green tea: is there a healthier dressing than this?

Recently while watching the Doctor Oz Show on television, Joan found a unique way to consume green tea.

With no statin drugs, will this diet lower my LDL cholesterol?

Heart and cancer risks: life's a gamble

The treatment for heart-risky cholesterol levels is generally a three-legged stool: exercise, diet, and statins, a pharmaceutical. But there are risks—a risk if I kick out the stool’s statin leg, and a risk if I don’t.

Controversial food

The chaos of nutritional change, contradiction, and confusion.

Don't get fooled by the local eating edict

The sight of saturated fat

Castle meals in the age of Ivanhoe

People must have been healthy in the age of Ivanhoe. Life was not poisoned by polluted air and contaminated water, folks walked everywhere and got lots of exercise. Food must have been simple and wholesome before there were trans fats and hydrogenation, and way to much sugar, salt and starch.

But were meals in those glorious castles of 14th-century "Merrie England," in fact healthy at all?

How to make tomato juice safe and delicious

Tomato juice should be just about the healthiest drink that you can drink. It’s difficult to think of many natural liquid foods that carry a bigger load of healthy vitamins and minerals. It also has more lycopene, the cancer and cardiovascular disease-fighting antioxidant than any other food. But to get all that goodness, the tomato has to be cooked, even better yet, with a little oil.

Unfortunately, tomato juice, sauces and ketchup might not be healthy at all—quite possibly dangerous to your health. That’s because most of them contain a lot of salt, the big health risk that we have been repeatedly warned about.

Labels on different brands of canned tomato juice at a supermarket that I checked said each contained 570 mg of sodium per 250 ml—a small, eight-ounce glass of tomato juice. The labels also say that this is 23 percent of the “daily value.”

That’s misleading. “Daily value” implies that 570 mg of sodium is 23 percent of the amount your body needs for the optimum health benefits of sodium. It is not, in fact, 23 percent of what you need, but 23 percent of the maximum daily amount considered by Health Canada to be safe. It is 38 percent of all that is actually needed for adults under age 50; 44 per cent of the daily amount required by adults aged 50 to 70; and 48 percent of the needs of those over 70, Health Canada says in an online article, “Sodium: It’s Your Health.”

Health Canada states: “The amount of sodium considered adequate to promote good health in adults is 1,500 mg per day,” or 1,300 for those aged 50 to 70, and 1,200 for those past 70.

Both Canada and the United States have adopted a “Tolerable Upper Intake Level” (UL) for sodium, which Health Canada says is “The highest intake level that is likely to pose no adverse health effect.” That UL limit is 2,300 mg of sodium per day. Health Canada recommends that you do not exceed that daily limit of 2,300 mg of sodium.  Yet average Canadian sodium consumption in 2004 was 3,092 mg of sodium per day—77 percent more the stated safe limit. More than 90 percent of men over age 19 and 66 percent of women consumed more than the stated safe limit.

If drinking just one small glass of tomato juice accounts for almost one quarter, then with the sodium consumed in all our other food, it would seem difficult to stay within the recommended daily maximum. A daily glass of tomato juice highly spiked with salt does not sound like a healthy prescription.

Reducing salt would dramatically improve our health, say the health authorities. A study in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology estimates that reducing salt consumption to recommended levels would prevent 11,000 premature deaths each year.

WHEN YOU MIGHT NEED MORE SALT

It might be altogether different if you exercise strenuously in hot weather for a couple of hours or more. In that case, you probably will need extra salt, says Dr. Gabe Mirkin, a former marathon runner and a widely recognized authority on sports medicine and fitness. Reducing salt consumption might save lives “for many people who do not exercise,” Dr. Mirkin writes in his online newsletter (Salt for Warm Weather Exercise, Dr. Mirkin’s eZine.) “But for heavy exercisers and athletes, particularly those who are vegetarians, it can cause cramps, fatigue, injuries, and even death.” He concludes: “If you exercise regularly for more than a couple of hours, particularly in hot weather, you need extra salt. You also need more sugar in hot weather to increase endurance.”

That might be sound advice for heavy exercisers who are as fit as Olympic athletes. But for the rest of us, two or more hours of heavy exercise in hot weather sounds like a good prescription for a heart attack or a sudden life-stopping cardiac arrest—with or without extra salt.

For my part, I hope to avoid this problem by avoiding heavy exercise when it’s hot, as I train for the September marathon and the 90-kilometre October hike. On my walks of 5- to 10-K, four times a week, I’ll start out at 6 am, when the weatherman calls for a hot day. On my weekly longer walk, perhaps I’ll have to start at 5 am. And I’ll try to keep my salt intake within the recommended bounds—in part, by avoiding highly salted tomato juice.

        

LOW SALT TOMATO JUICE RECIPE

Fortunately, it’s very easy to prepare great-tasting tomato juice that has only 10 mg of sodium per cup, rather than the 570 mg of sodium found in food store tomato juice.

This is a trick Joan taught me. We often eat a bowl of canned, diced, no-salt-added tomatoes. It contains only 10 mg of sodium per 250 ml. Joan spices it with a little plain white vinegar. Here’s how to make spiced tomato juice.

Empty a 797-ml (28-ounce) can of diced, no-salt-added tomatoes into a mixing bowl. Add 2 tablesppons of white vinegar; 1 tablespoon canola or olive oil; ½ teaspoon oregano; ¼ teaspoon each freshly ground pepper and cumin. Process in a blender or juicer.

Adding a little oil to the tomato helps your body absorb lycopene, the powerful antioxidant that helps fight cancer, heart disease and macular degeneration. Tomatoes are the richest source of lycopene, and your body absorbs very much more of it when tomatoes are cooked or processed, as in canned tomatoes, and even more with a little oil.

You’ll enjoy this spicy tomato juice that has barely two percent as much salt as the supermarket stuff.
TAGS: Tomato juice. Tomato recipes. Sodium. Lycopene. Cancer. Cardiovascular disease.  

New challenges for an old man

Can a 79-year-old geezer who has endured a cardiac arrest, an incipient colon cancer, and a prostate operation overcome erectile dysfunction (aka ED)?

This is actually the least of three challenges I will tackle this year. More important are the other two. First up, on September 26, is my first marathon, a 42-kilometre event for runners and walkers that I will walk as fast as I can. Two weeks later, I will set out on a three-day, 90-kilometre hike along the Victoria Rail Trail from my home in Lindsay, Ontario to Haliburton. I have been training for these walks since January, but more regularly after March banished obstacles of snow and ice.

On the marathon, I will raise whatever money I can for the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario. When I do the 90-K hike I hope to raise money for the Ross Memorial Hospital in Lindsay, although arrangements for that have not been completed as this is written.

My challenge last year was climbing 1,776 steps up one of the world’s tallest buildings, Toronto’s CN Tower. I was one of a few thousand participants in that annual fundraiser for the Toronto United Way. There are reasons close to my heart why this year I want to raise money for Heart and Stroke and for Ross Memorial. Those wonderful lifesavers at Ross Memorial have saved not only my life, but also Joan’s. And as a cardiac arrest survivor, I’m naturally supportive of the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

But back to the ED thing for a moment. ED is apparently a common consequence of prostate operations. While at my age, sex is far from urgent, it’s at least an interesting topic. It’s not as if sex ability at 79 would set any record. Seniors in Switzerland, where prostitution and brothels are legal, for instance, seem sexually active, judging from a report by syndicated medical newspaper columnist Dr. W. Gifford-Jones (Lindsay Post, March 9). In Lugano, an eager senior who had taken a drug to overcome his ED, visited a brothel, where he died of a heart attack. All 38 brothels and sex clubs in Lugano have now installed medical defibrillators to save the lives of other senior patrons. Defibrillation also saved my life following my cardiac arrest 21 years ago—not, I should add, in a brothel, but in Ross Memorial Hospital. In Denmark, a senior’s home in Copenhagen shows pornographic movies on an internal channel every Saturday night, reportedly because they have a greater calming effect than Prozac. For senior men who are more aroused than calmed, the home will arrange visits by prostitutes.

I’m not about to try prostitutes, pornography or drugs, even in the name of research, to find out how they might affect ED. An exercise called Kegal, however, might be interesting. Women commonly do the Kegel to regain muscle tone after giving birth. A British web site, netdoctor, claims that it is also “Highly effective in helping men who have problems developing and sustaining an erection.” British doctor Grace Dorey says that the Kegel exercise is as effective as Viagra, cheaper, and healthier. There are other similar reports, but also one that claims it doesn’t work. We’ll see.

More important to me is the Scotia Toronto Waterfront Marathon on September 26. The course is flat, and the web site says, “Even power walkers and slow runners love this course because of its 6-hour and 30-minute time line.” The 6.5 hours seem a bigger challenge than the 42 kilometres.

A few decades ago I don’t think that would have been a tremendous challenge. When we lived in Calgary, we were ardent hikers along the 2,000 miles of trails in the four adjacent Rocky Mountain national parks a relatively short distance west. In recent years, the longest walk I’ve made was last October, 30 kilometres along a section of the Victoria Rail Trail that stretches from Lindsay to Halliburton.

I know this. I’m not a fast walker. Before I began my training in January, young folk passed me by as though I was standing still. There is still no way that today I could walk 42 K in 6-1/2 hours. But I have five more months of training left. And if I can’t do it in 6.5 hours, then unless they roll up the sidewalks, I’ll do it in whatever time it takes.

In my next blog, I’ll tell you a bit about my progress in training for power walking and long hikes, and a little about how big my two walking challenges loom.

Search terms: walking, hiking, marathon, fitness, health, exercise, heart disease, colon cancer, prostate cancer, erectile dysfunction, Kegel exercise, Victoria Rail Trail.

Will soy food make you sick for life?

Advocates of soybean foods say they are the healthiest food you can put on the table. Critics say they can make you sick, impose a risk of cancer, and might make men infertile.

Ever since 1999 when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved food labels that claim soy products can help protect the heart, sales of the wonder bean’s food products have been booming. The accolades have been as fulsome and plentiful as a bushel of beans. But songs of praise have not been without a mounting chorus of Doubting Thomases—and some well-qualified Doubting Thomases.

     In addition to reducing the risk of coronary heart disease, soy advocates also suggest other health benefits: reduced blood pressure; reduced risk of colon, breast and prostate cancer; help in managing diabetes (http://soybeanorg/health.html); promoting healthy bones, and alleviating menopausal symptoms. Gloria Tsang, “Powerful Benefits of Soy” in the web site of the Registered Dietitians of Canada. http://www.healthcastle.com/herb_soy.shtml

     Some soy food benefits are not disputed. There is reported agreement that soy foods can provide the protein, vitamins, minerals, and fibre found in meat, eggs and diary products, but without the saturated fat and cholesterol from animal food. And too much cholesterol (especially the bad LDL) and too much saturated fat can lead to heart disease and other health problems. http://www.healthcastle.com/herb_soy.shtml

HEALTHY SOY ACCOLADES

It’s hard to imagine stronger accolades than soy foods have garnered during the past couple of decades for their healthy effects. A few of the many:

     “Soy foods are the best food you can put on the table. Soy foods lower LDL [low density lipoprotein] cholesterol about 5% to 6%, and raise HDL 2% to 3%. These are all meaningful changes reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease in the range of about 25%.” James Anderson, Virginia Medical Centre and University of Kentucky. Findings of a study headed by Anderson were a key factor in the FDA’s approval of a heart-healthy claim. The Medical News, April 11, 2007 http://www.news-medical.net/news/2007/04/11/23421.aspx

     “Ounce for ounce, calorie for calorie, the soybean gets top-billing as a rich source of protein, unsaturated fats, fibre, B vitamins, folic acid, potassium, calcium, zinc and iron—and it’s cholesterol free. There is no other food that supplies so much nutrition in such a tiny package.” William Sears, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatric, University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine http://www.askdrsears.com/

     “After lowering your fat intake, the second most important step in a prostate-friendly diet is adding soy.” Trachtenberg, John, et al. “Challenging Prostate Cancer: Nutrition, Exercise and You,” page 14. Prostate Centre, Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto http://www.prostatecentre.ca/

           

SOY CLAIMS APPROVED

Probably nothing did as much to boost soy food sales as the FDA’s approval of heart-benefit claims.

     An initial step in winning that approval was a 1993 study, which found that “50 grams per day of isolated soy protein is effective in lowering total cholesterol, LDL, and apolipoprotein B while maintaining HDL in mildly hypercholestrolemic men.” Potter, S.M., et al. “Depression of plasma cholesterol in men by consumption of baked products containing soy protein. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 58, no. 4, pp. 501-566. http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/58/4/501

     More explicit was a 1995 study, which concluded: “The consumption of soy protein rather than animal protein significantly decreased serum concentrations of total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and triglycerides. Daily consumption of 47 grams of soy protein reduced total cholesterol 9.3%; LDL 12.9%; and triglycerides 10.5%.” Anderson, James W., et al. Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Soy Protein Intake on  Serum Lipids. New England Journal of Medicine, August 3, 1995. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/333/5/276

     Four years later, after extensive tests, the FDA gave soy food producers approval to include this claim on their product labels: “Diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol that include 25 grams of soy protein a day may reduce the risk of heart disease.”

SOY CLAIMS DISPUTED

Even before it was issued, the claim was disputed—by two of FDA’s own researchers. In an internal letter dated February 18, 1999, researchers Daniel M. Sheen and Daniel R. Doerge wrote that they “oppose this health claim because there is abundant evidence that some of the isoflavones found in soy” pose potential health risks, including breast cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, thyroid abnormalities, and disruption of the endocrine system, the glands that secrete a hormone to regulate the body. http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz./downloads/nctrpti.pdf

     The claim of soy food producers that Chinese have safely eaten soy for 5,000 years is misleading, according to Seth Barrows, a chemical engineer and biochemist and founder of an alternative health firm, The Healing Crow. “The Chinese did not eat unfermented soybeans because the soybeans contain large quantities of natural toxins,” Barrow writes. The soy in soymilk and tofu is unfermented, although in such products as simulated meat it is fermented. The toxins in soybeans, says Barrows, “Can produce serious gastric distress, reduced protein digest and chronic deficiencies in amino acid uptake,” as well as cancer of the pancreas in test animals. Acid washing and other treatment do not completely remove the toxins in unfermented soy products, according to Barrows. Also, “Vegetarians who consume tofu and curd as a substitute for meat and dairy products risk severe mineral deficiencies.” Barrow, Seth. “Soy: For Your Health or Their Wealth?” 2001. http://www.healingcrow.com/incstory/incstory.html

     A powerful blow to the claimed cardiovascular benefits of soy came in 2006 from the American Heart Association, which reversed its earlier support. “Earlier research indicating that soy protein has clinically important favourable effects compared with other proteins has not been confirmed,” AHA researchers wrote in the association’s journal Circulation. “In the majority of 22 randomized trials, isolated protein with isoflavones, as compared with milk or other proteins,” the reported reduction in LDL from consuming an average 50 grams of soy protein—“about half the total daily protein intake”—was only 3%. “No significant effects on HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, lipoprotein(a), or blood pressure were evident.”

     Other suggested benefits were also questioned, including reduced menopause symptoms and postmenopausal bone loss. “The efficacy and safety of soy’s isoflavones for preventing or treating cancer of the breast, endometrium [inner membrane of the uterus], and prostate are not established; evidence from clinical trials is meager and cautionary with regard to possible adverse effect.”

     But the AMA did find some good health effects from soy food, aside from the claims for the controversial isoflavone antioxidants: “Many soy products should be beneficial to cardiovascular and overall health because of their high content of polyunsaturated fats, fibre, vitamins, and minerals and low content of saturated fat.” Sacks, Frank M., et al “Soy Protein, Isoflavones, and Cardiovascular Health.” Circulation. 2006; 113:1034-1044. Abstract. © American Heart Association. http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/113/7/1034

     In December 2007, the FDA announced its intention to re-evaluate two previously authorized health claims—dietary fat and cancer; and soy protein and risk of coronary heart disease. Comments were invited. The AHA was quick to respond. The AHA “strongly recommends that the FDA revoke” the cardiovascular claim, AHA president Daniel W. James wrote in a letter dated February 19, 2008. This, despite the fact that, as noted in the Circulation article, soy food can be helpful in replacing animal protein containing saturated fat and cholesterol.

A RISK OF MALE INFERTILITY?

As the FDA re-evaluates, a study by the Harvard School of Public Health and others raises the possibility of another risk from a high intake of soy foods: male infertility. The study suggests that one cup of soy milk or a soy burger or a serving of tofu every day could reduce the sperm content in male semen to a level of between two-thirds and one-half of normal.

The study, reported in the journal Human Reproduction by lead author Dr. Jorge Chavarro, analyzed the soy consumption of 15 soy foods consumed by 99 men who went to a fertility clinic between 2000 and 2006, looking at the relationship between semen quality and isoflavones. Those who consumed the most soy food had a semen concentration that was 41 million sperm per millimetre less than those who ate no soy food. Normal concentration ranges from 80 million to 120 million per millimetre.

     The study was prompted by findings from earlier studies that noted a relation between high isoflavone intake and decreased fertility in animals. While the study suggested “that higher intake of soy foods and soy isoflavones is associated with lower sperm concentration,” Dr. Chavarro says that much larger studies will be needed to determine whether this poses a risk of human infertility. Reuters news agency, July 23, 2008. Chavarro, Jorge E. “Soy food and isoflavone intake in relation to semen quality parameters among men from an infertility clinic.” Abstract. Human Reproduction, vol. 23, no. 11, pp 2548-2590. Oxford University Press, on behalf of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/search?fulltext=jorge+chavarro&x=12&y=13

FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH

For what it’s worth, here’s my unprofessional take on what these reports appear to suggest.

     Any possible benefits to your blood cholesterol would seem to require substantial daily consumption of soy food. The alleged risks might also require substantial daily consumption. Aside from possible affects on cholesterol—good, bad or nil—there are still good things said about soy food, in moderation.

     “One aspect of soy that is not in dispute is that it is a good source of dietary protein,” Camilla Alexander writes in Food Engineering & Ingredients (Vo. 33 No. 2, pp. 13+). And, as already noted, the American Heart Association continues to see soy foods as healthy “because of their high content of polyunsaturated fats, fibre, vitamins, and minerals and low content of saturated fat.” Says Christine Lewis of the FDA’s Office of Nutrition Products Labelling and Dietary Supplements: “Soy by itself is not a magic food, but rather an example of the different kinds of food that together in a complete diet can have a positive effect on health.”

My research for this article has at least resulted in one decision in our house. We had been thinking about switching from dairy skim milk to soy milk and adding tofu to our diet. We’ve scrapped that idea. But we will continue to eat tempeh, the formented mixture of soybeans and grain used as a meat substitute. We won’t be eating it daily; if nothing else, that would be too boring. But we will continue eating it frequently. It’s even higher in protein that the original soy bean, with no saturated fat or cholesterol but lots of fibre, calcium, iron, zinc, B-12 and foliate.

     Our favourite tempeh dish is sheperd’s pie. In addition to tempeh in the form of simulated ground round beef, my very easy-to-make shepherd’s pie recipe also includes a rainbow of vegetables and cooked, no-added-salt tomatoes with a little oil, possibly the world’s healthiest food.
     TAGS: Soy food. Food and Drug Administration. Protein. Unsaturated fats. Cholesterol. Nutrition. Breast cancer. Alzheimer's disease. Food health risks. Cardiovascular disease. Vitamins. Minerals. Fibre.