Cordain on Saturated Fat

I recently signed up for Dr. Loren Cordain's Paleo Diet newsletter, and I just received my first update. For those of you who aren't familiar with him, Dr. Cordain is a researcher at Colorado State University who studies the effects of hunter-gatherer and modern diets on health. He's made a number of important contributions to our understanding of nutrition and health. He's in my "Nutrition Hall of Fame" on the right sidebar.

His update was about saturated fat. In the past, I've disagreed with Dr. Cordain on this issue, because I thought he felt that saturated fat contributes to the risk of heart attack (although he never described it as a dominant factor). He has recommended trimming the fat off meats and using canola oil rather than just eating the fat. I don't know if I had misunderstood his stance, or if he's had a change of heart, but his current position seems quite reasonable to me. Here are a few brief quotes:

By examining the amounts of saturated fats in pre-agricultural hominin diets, an evolutionary baseline can be established for the normal range and limits of saturated fats that would have conditioned the human genome. While these diets varied due to geography, climate, etc., there is evidence that all hominin species were omnivorous. Thus, dietary saturated fats would have always been present in hominin diets.

There is also evidence that the hominin species that eventually led to Homo began to include more animal food in their diet approximately 2.6 million years ago. Clear evidence shows tool usage to butcher and disarticulate carcasses...

This data suggests that the normal dietary intake of saturated fatty acids that conditioned our species genome likely fell between 10 to 15% of total energy, and that values lower than 10% or higher than 15% would have been the exception.

And the conclusion:

Consequently, population-wide recommendations to lower dietary saturated fats below 10% to reduce the risk of CAD have little or no evolutionary foundation in pre-agricultural Homo sapiens... So we do not need to restrict ourselves to only tuna and turkey breast, avoiding every last gram of saturated fat.

AMEN, brother. I'd like to point out that the average American eats about 11% of his calories as saturated fat (down from 13% in the 1970s), on the low side of what Cordain considers normal for Homo sapiens. This is from the NHANES nutrition surveys.

The effect of a food on an animal's health has everything to do with what that animal is adapted to eating. Feeding a rabbit cholesterol gives it high blood cholesterol and atherosclerosis, but you can't give a dog high cholesterol or atherosclerosis by feeding it cholesterol, unless you kill its thyroid first. Feeding studies in Masai men showed that replacing their fatty, cholesterol-rich milk and blood diet with a cholesterol-free refined diet low in saturated fat caused their total cholesterol and body weight to increase rapidly. Adding purified cholesterol to the cholesterol-free diet did not affect their blood cholesterol concentration. Feeding cholesterol-rich eggs also has a negligible effect on blood cholesterol in most people.

I do still have a slight difference of opinion with Cordain on the saturated fat issue. While I think his numbers for pre-agricultural saturated fat intake are reasonable, his range is probably too narrow. Non-agricultural diets are so variable, I would expect the range to be more like 5 to 30% saturated fat. 5% would represent diets low in fat such as certain Australian Aboriginal diets, and 30% would represent the intake of Northern hunter-gatherers relying heavily on ruminants in fall and winter. During this time, ruminants store most of their fat subcutaneously, and their subcutaneous fat is roughly half saturated. Given that such a wide range of saturated fat intakes are part of our species' ecological niche, it follows that saturated fat is unlikely to be an important determinant of health in the context of an otherwise healthy lifestyle.

Woody Allen says American Apparel is harassing him (AP)

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer Larry Neumeister, Associated Press Writer – Wed Apr 15, 7:44 pm ET NEW YORK – Actor-director Woody Allen has fired back against American Apparel's effort to drag his personal life into a civil court case, saying the clothing company is harassing him. Lawyers for the 73-year-old Allen filed new legal papers in federal court in Manhattan on Wednesday. The papers say American Apparel isn't playing fair by trying to expose his family life, personal finances and career. They say it's a "scorched earth" approach. Los Angeles-based American Apparel was put on the defensive after Allen sued the company last year for putting his image on its billboards in Hollywood and New York and on a Web site. A trial is scheduled to begin next month. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. NEW YORK (AP) — A clothing company known for its racy ads is fighting a $10 million lawsuit brought by Woody Allen, arguing that it can't have damaged his reputation by using his image because the film director has already ruined it himself. The 73-year-old Allen started the fight against American Apparel Inc. when he sued the company last year for using his image on the company's billboards in Hollywood and New York and on a Web site. Allen, who does not endorse products in the United States, said he had not authorized the displays, which the Los Angeles-based company said were up for only a week. Now the company plans to make Allen's relationships to actress Mia Farrow and her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn the focus of a trial scheduled to begin in federal court in Manhattan on May 18, according to the company's lawyer, Stuart Slotnick. "Woody Allen expects $10 million for use of his image on billboards that were up and down in less than one week. I think Woody Allen overestimates the value of his image," Slotnick said. "Certainly, our belief is that after the various sex scandals that Woody Allen has been associated with, corporate America's desire to have Woody Allen endorse their product is not what he may believe it is." One billboard featured a frame from "Annie Hall," a film that won Allen a best-director Oscar. The image showed Allen dressed as a Hasidic Jew with a long beard and black hat and Yiddish text. The words "American Apparel" also were on the billboard. Allen's lawsuit said the billboard falsely implied that Allen sponsored, endorsed or was associated with American Apparel. Slotnick said it was not a cheap shot to bring up Allen's sex life in a lawsuit over the billboard and Internet ads. "It's certainly relevant in assessing the value of an endorsement," he said, noting that Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps lost endorsement power after a photograph surfaced of him using marijuana. Farrow starred in several of Allen's movies during a relationship with the director that ended in 1992, when she discovered he was having an affair with her oldest adopted daughter, then 22. Allen married Soon-Yi Previn in 1997. During a bitter custody fight, Farrow accused Allen of sexually abusing their adopted daughter Dylan, 7. Allen was exonerated of the abuse charges, but Farrow won sole custody of the children. Leslee Dart, a spokeswoman for Allen, said Friday that she does not believe Allen wants to comment on the litigation at this point. American Apparel is known for its provocative ads of scantily dressed young models in tight-fitting and sometimes see-through garments. Allen testified at a December deposition that he considered the company's advertising to be "sleazy" and "infantile." Lawyers for American Apparel have complained that Allen has refused to turn over much of the information they have demanded to prepare for trial. Among their demands were documents concerning any endorsement requests that were withdrawn after the sex scandal with Farrow and Previn became public. The documents defined sex scandal as "your relationship with Soon-Yi Previn including the discovery ... (of) nude pictures you took of Soon-Yi Previn." The lawyers also requested documents concerning Allen's public image and reputation, including his contention during his deposition that he was a "special kind of entity" or a "special taste." Allen's attorneys said the request for documents related to the sex scandal and custody battle were "vexatious, oppressive, harassing" and not relevant. Slotnick said he could not discuss whether there were any settlement talks under way but he hinted that the company may be open to avoiding a trial. "All I can say is that the company has apologized for the use of Mr. Allen's image, however brief. And the company apologized if they offended Mr. Allen's sensibilities," he said.
[Via]

A Testament to the Flexibility of the Human Mind

I'm sure you've heard that humans have five senses: sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. But we actually have far more senses than that. The canonical list doesn't include equilibrioception-- our sense of balance-- the result of fluid sloshing around in the inner ear. It also doesn't include proprioception, the ability to detect the position of our limbs using nerve endings in our tendons and muscles.

Furthermore, the sense of touch is actually several different senses, each detected and transmitted by its own special type of neuron. The sense of touch includes vibration sense, pressure sense, heat sense, cold sense and pain sense. The sense of smell can be divided into roughly 400 senses in humans, each one tuned in to a different class of airborne molecules. Vision can be divided into cells maximally responsive to four different wavelengths of light. I could go on but the rest are less exciting.

This brings me to what I really want to write about, the development (or perhaps refinement) of a new human sense: echolocation. Echolocation is the ability to gather sensory information about your surroundings by bouncing sounds off of objects and listening to the echo that returns. It's what bats use to hunt in the dark, and dolphins use to navigate muddy water and find food under the sand. There are a number of blind people who have developed the ability to use clicking sounds to "see" their surroundings, and it's remarkably effective. This represents a new use of the human mind, or at least a refinement of a rudimentary sense. Here are a few links if you'd like to watch/read more about it:

Human echolocation- Wikipedia
Daniel Kish- You Tube
The boy who sees without eyes- You Tube

Health advocates tout new model of female condom (AP)

By DAVID CRARY, AP National Writer David Crary, Ap National Writer – 28 mins ago NEW YORK – Advocates of the female condom are promoting a less costly, more user-friendly version that they hope will vastly expand its role in the global fight against AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. An early version of the female condom was introduced in 1993, and it remains the only available woman-initiated form of protection against both STDs and unintended pregnancy. Yet despite global promotion by the United Nations and other organizations, its usage is still minuscule, even as women bear an ever-growing share of the AIDS epidemic. Advocates hope the dynamics will change following last month's approval by the Food and Drug Administration of the FC2, a new version of the female condom produced by the Chicago-based Female Health Co. About 35 million female condoms were distributed worldwide last year, but that compares to more than 10 billion male condoms, which are far cheaper and, at least initially, easier to use. However, in some nations with high HIV rates, many men refuse to wear condoms, putting women at risk. Though it looks similar to its predecessor — a soft, transparent sheath with flexible inner and outer rings — the FC2 is made from synthetic rubber rather than polyurethane, making it cheaper to produce. Mary Ann Leeper, former president of Female Health Co. and now its strategic adviser, said the FC2 also is less noisy during use. Complaints about squeaky noises were among the factors that slowed acceptance of the original version. The cost of the FC2 is one-third less than its predecessor, and may go lower, enabling health organizations to distribute many millions more than at present. For now, the price is about 60 cents compared to less than 4 cents for mass-distributed male condoms — a difference that's an issue in the developing world. The FC2 had been accepted previously by some international organizations, and the Female Health Co. distributed 14 million of them abroad last year along with 21 million of the older version. Advocates of the female condom praised the FDA announcement because it opens the door for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), one of the largest global providers of condoms, to distribute the FC2 overseas. "This is a tremendous victory," said Susie Hoffman, an assistant professor of clinical epidemiology at Columbia University who contends the female condom has suffered from misconceptions. "In the United States, there has been strong bias against it," Hoffman said. "Some people involved in AIDS and family planning would say, 'Why do we need these? ... It's so weird that women are not going to pick it up.'" "But if presented in the right way, many women do like it," Hoffman said. "To find these people and help them and train them, you need systematic programming, which costs money." Resistance is less of a problem in some developing nations. The U.N. Population Fund, government agencies and nonprofits are aggressively promoting female condoms in places such as Brazil, Ghana, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Women's groups in Zimbabwe collected more than 30,000 signatures demanding access to the female condom. In Ghana, nonprofits say more than 10,000 people have attended training programs that teach women how to insert female condoms — they require careful instruction to be used properly — and how to negotiate with their male partners. "The mindset is changing, but there are still a lot of challenges," said Bidia Deperthes, the Population Fund's HIV technical adviser for condoms. "Accessibility is still minimal. There's a huge demand, and we're not meeting it." Deperthes hopes that with FDA approval of the FC2, the number of female condoms distributed globally could climb to 50 million this year. If the numbers keep rising, she said, the cost to public-sector distributors for each FC2 could drop as low as 25 cents. Jeff Spieler, a science adviser with USAID's Office of Population and Reproductive Health, said the female condom's future may depend on whether its promoters can develop a private-sector market. Its commercial price in the United States generally has been more than $2. Another challenge is a stigma associated with the female condom in some places because prostitutes are among those deemed to benefit most from using it. On the other hand, advocates of the female condom say it has invaluable safe-sex potential for married women whose husbands are unfaithful and shun male condoms. Serra Sippel, executive director of the Center for Health and Gender Equity in Washington, said FDA approval of the FC2 is a key step toward "putting the power of prevention in women's hands." But she bemoaned the product's limited over-the-counter availability. "We'd love to see the profile raised, to have commercials about it and normalize it so people aren't embarrassed," she said. Mary Ann Leeper said the Female Health Co. is seeking a corporate partner to help market the FC2. She suggested that concern about HIV/AIDS may generate interest among women in communities with high infection rates. The female condom's advocates stress that it will never be the "magic bullet" that by itself turns the tide in fighting AIDS. But, they say, it should be a bigger part of the arsenal. "It's not going to be the one answer," Hoffman said. "But it's got a lot more to contribute than it has to date." ___ U.N. Population Fund: http://www.unfpa.org/hiv/female.htm Female Health Co. http://www.femalehealth.com/
[Via]

Images of Tooth Decay Healing due to an Improved Diet

This one's for the skeptics out there. As I mentioned in my previous post, Drs. Edward and May Mellanby and Dr. Weston Price reported that under the right circumstances, tooth decay can be reversed by proper nutrition. Here are images taken from the book Nutrition and Disease, by Dr. Mellanby, showing the re-calcification of decayed human teeth due to the growth of tertiary dentin (formerly known as secondary dentin). These are sections (slices) of teeth that have been treated with a chemical that darkens decayed areas. They represent four different teeth at different stages of decay reversal. Click on the image for a larger view:


Here's the text that accompanies the figure:

The hardening of carious areas that takes place in the teeth of children fed on diets of high calcifying value indicates the arrest of the active process and may result in “healing” of the infected area. As might be surmised, this phenomenon is accompanied by a laying down of a thick barrier of well-formed secondary denture. Illustrations of this healing process can be seen in Figs. 21 (b), (c) and (d). Summing up these results it will be clear that the clinical deductions made on the basis of the animal experiments have been justified, and that it is now known how to diminish the spread of caries and even to stop the active carious process in many affected teeth.

The following reference contains a summary of Dr. May Mellanby's experiments on healing tooth decay in children using diet: Mellanby, M. et al. British Medical Journal. Issue 1, page 507. 1932. The diet they used was typically a combination of some source of vitamin D (cod liver oil or irradiated ergosterol), plus liberal full-fat dairy, meats, eggs, vegetables, potatoes and grains low in phytic acid such as white bread. The most effective version of his diet, however, did not include grains.

In the book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Dr. Price provides X-rays showing the re-calcification of a mouth full of cavities using a similar diet.

American Apparel slams Woody Allen's sex life (AP)

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer Larry Neumeister, Associated Press Writer – Wed Apr 15, 10:34 am ET NEW YORK – A clothing company known for its racy ads is fighting a $10 million lawsuit brought by Woody Allen, arguing that it can't have damaged his reputation by using his image because the film director has already ruined it himself. The 73-year-old Allen started the fight against American Apparel Inc. when he sued the company last year for using his image on the company's billboards in Hollywood and New York and on a Web site. Allen, who does not endorse products in the United States, said he had not authorized the displays, which the Los Angeles-based company said were up for only a week. Now the company plans to make Allen's relationships to actress Mia Farrow and her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn the focus of a trial scheduled to begin in federal court in Manhattan on May 18, according to the company's lawyer, Stuart Slotnick. "Woody Allen expects $10 million for use of his image on billboards that were up and down in less than one week. I think Woody Allen overestimates the value of his image," Slotnick said. "Certainly, our belief is that after the various sex scandals that Woody Allen has been associated with, corporate America's desire to have Woody Allen endorse their product is not what he may believe it is." One billboard featured a frame from "Annie Hall," a film that won Allen a best-director Oscar. The image showed Allen dressed as a Hasidic Jew with a long beard and black hat and Yiddish text. The words "American Apparel" also were on the billboard. Allen's lawsuit said the billboard falsely implied that Allen sponsored, endorsed or was associated with American Apparel. Slotnick said it was not a cheap shot to bring up Allen's sex life in a lawsuit over the billboard and Internet ads. "It's certainly relevant in assessing the value of an endorsement," he said, noting that Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps lost endorsement power after a photograph surfaced of him using marijuana. Farrow starred in several of Allen's movies during a relationship with the director that ended in 1992, when she discovered he was having an affair with her oldest adopted daughter, then 22. Allen married Soon-Yi Previn in 1997. During a bitter custody fight, Farrow accused Allen of sexually abusing their adopted daughter Dylan, 7. Allen was exonerated of the abuse charges, but Farrow won sole custody of the children. Leslee Dart, a spokeswoman for Allen, said Friday that she does not believe Allen wants to comment on the litigation at this point. American Apparel is known for its provocative ads of scantily dressed young models in tight-fitting and sometimes see-through garments. Allen testified at a December deposition that he considered the company's advertising to be "sleazy" and "infantile." Lawyers for American Apparel have complained that Allen has refused to turn over much of the information they have demanded to prepare for trial. Among their demands were documents concerning any endorsement requests that were withdrawn after the sex scandal with Farrow and Previn became public. The documents defined sex scandal as "your relationship with Soon-Yi Previn including the discovery ... (of) nude pictures you took of Soon-Yi Previn." The lawyers also requested documents concerning Allen's public image and reputation, including his contention during his deposition that he was a "special kind of entity" or a "special taste." Allen's attorneys said the request for documents related to the sex scandal and custody battle were "vexatious, oppressive, harassing" and not relevant. Slotnick said he could not discuss whether there were any settlement talks under way but he hinted that the company may be open to avoiding a trial. "All I can say is that the company has apologized for the use of Mr. Allen's image, however brief. And the company apologized if they offended Mr. Allen's sensibilities," he said.
[Via]

Viagra not harmful to vision: study (AFP)

Tue Apr 14, 11:38 am ET WASHINGTON (AFP) – Treatments for erectile dysfunction such as the hugely popular drug Viagra do not appear to pose long-term damage to men's sight, a new study has shown. Doctors had been concerned that Viagra, and its competitor drug sold in the United States as Cialis, might prove harmful after some men reported blurred and blue-tinged vision. The two drugs accounted for a billion dollars in sales in 2008. But the six-month study published Monday and funded by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, the makers of Cialis, showed no side effects on sight, according to the results published in the April issue of Archives of Ophthalmology. The drugs treat erectile dysfunction by blocking an enzyme in the blood flowing to the penis, and there had been fears they could also act on similar compounds in the retina in the eye that receives and transmits images. A total of 244 healthy men, some with mild erectile dysfunction, aged 30 to 65 took part in the study. Some 85 took five milligrams of Cialis daily, 77 took 50 milligrams of Viagra manufactured by Pfizer and 82 were given a placebo. Among the 194 men who completed the study and eye examinations no significant differences were found in vision between those taking the drugs and the placebo groups. "Our results indicate that there is no cumulative damage or effect of clinical significance for either 5 milligrams of tadalafil (Cialis) or 50 milligrams of sildenafil (Viagra) taken daily for six months," the report noted.
[Via]