My husband had a heart attack this month and the invasive cardiologist (the ones who do angioplasty) told him to avoid eggs.
Regarding dietary cholesterol, doesn’t the research indicate that most people’s blood cholesterol levels vary little in response to dietary cholesterol, but some people are affected significantly? If so, the conflicting messages with respect to eggs and other sources of dietary cholesterol may come from the fact that there is no good “one size fits all” recommendation on the subject.
Other dietary recommendations may not fit all either.
Missy pie, you can buy no salt added canned tomatoes. Just have to look hard in the canned tomato section.
I know I’ve said it before but Whole Foods is the best place to find no salt added canned foods.
I buy no salt canned diced tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato sauce, black beans and kidney beans all at Walmart. They also have their own organic line “Wild Oats” . I use their organic garbanzo beans to make hummus, only 20 gms. of sodium. Also couldn’t live w/out Herb Ox Sodium Free Chicken Bouillion.
Here’s one of my easy all time favorite low sodium soups:
Sweet and Sour Cabbage Soup.
2 carrots sliced
2 stalks celery diced
1 onion diced
1 tsp. garlic
1 tbsp. olive oil
1/4 (or more depending on size) head of cabbage
1 can sodium free diced tomatoes
1/2 cup honey
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1.5 quarts of water
1 packet(equals one cup) sodium free chicken broth
Heat oil.
Add carrots,celery,garlic and onion
Cook over med. heat til soft
Add remaining ingredients
Simmer for 1 1/2 hours.
Dietary cholesterol consumption is not what increases blood cholesterol levels. And blood cholesterol levels on their face is not what causes heart disease for the general population. Take out of this conversation anyone with familial hypercholesteremia, whose cholesterol levels can go up to unbelieveably high levels (those folks are a different category unto themselves). It is inflammation which is the culprit, and there are very specific markers which indicate whether or not this is occurring. You can no longer just look at the total cholesterol number, or even the LDL/HDL. You need to get more specific. The latest research shows that it’s not eating eggs and shrimp (high cholesterol containing foods) which are causing heart disease.
After working for years with world renown cardiologists and interventional cardiologists, I can say that a lot of them continue to spout the old school nutrition spiel, and continue to prescribe statins for people in spite of the fact that for many of these patients, they are unnecessary. Most MDs received very little nutrition education to begin with.
That said, I would never argue against a specific dietary restriction which a particular individual has received from their MD as I wouldn’t have all the facts. But I would encourage everyone to do their own research any time a med is prescribed or a specific diet is recommended. Doctors are not all knowing and they admit this themselves. Most are very open to looking at specific research or adjusting recommendations in the face of patient concerns.
If I were the OP, I’d ask to see the diet recommendations her neighbor was given, and I’d absolutely stay within the guidelines, regardless of what my own opinions of them are. I believe that is a given as far as she is concerned anyway.
I ended up buying fresh tomatoes. They actually cost less than the unsalted canned.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats-full-story/#cholesterol has the following:
The reference “37” is to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16340654?dopt=Citation . The abstract of that paper says:
I.e. most people’s blood cholesterol is not affect but only minimally affected, while some people do experience increases (although the risk of raised LDL may be countered by raised HDL as well). It does not look like a “one size fits all” type of situation.
The assumptions about heart disease and cholesterol and diet has thrown out all what passed for nutrition advice. Dietary cholesterol, for most people, has little to no relationship to the amount of cholesterol in the bloodstream, and even the whole HDL/LDL ration has turned out to be questionable (for example, they used to tell people to take Niacin, because it raised the ‘good’ cholesterol and lowered the ‘bad’ cholesterol which made the ratio better, the only problem is that when they did long term studies, getting the HDL/LDL ratio that way didn’t affect incidence of heart disease, they were treating the symptom, not the cause. It turns out the real measurement is the so called LDL particle count, and more importantly, what kind of particles they are, which the HDL/LDL ration doesn’t measure, it simply measures LDL particles as if they are all the same, when it is the 'big, fluffy" ldl particles stick to the artery walls, which in turn happens because of inflammation.
Likewise, doctors have been preaching the ‘low fat’ diet as being heart healthy, when studies have shown that not only doesn’t a low fat diet improve heart health. The last time I saw my doctor, he was telling me eat a low fat diet, avoid all fats, including oils and nuts, and even had the misguided advice that if time preparing meals was a problem, there were good low fat frozen entries out there, many of which are full of salt and sugar and other things, to make them taste better…
Even salt as causing heart disease and hypertension has come under serious question. One of the problems is that many processed foods are loaded with salt, but using salt in cooking your own food is not harmful. Worse, the salt substitutes they promoted, potassium chloride and such, were not healthy…
As someone else pointed, the medical profession is often like the Vatican, takes them a long time to change. My cardiologist was trying to get me to go on Lipitor, which I refused to do (I take red rice yeast, which is a statin, but is lower levels and more gentle), and I mentioned that I also take CoQ10, because the statin drugs wipe out CoQ10 which the heart needs, and he gave me this whole spiel that that wasn’t standard protocol, despite the fact that major studies indicated that statins could cause heart damage because of the lack of CoQ10 and many doctors in fact were recommending taking it. The researcher who said that fat attaches to the artery wall because the wall was scarred because of homocysteine (now fully accepted it is why we are supposed to take folic acid) was ridiculed and such.
As far as cooking for someone with heart problems, best bet is to prepare food naturally, things like lean protein (chicken, fish, grass fed beef), vegetables, and to a certain extent grains like rice and whole wheat, are fine, and to be honest modest use of salt in cooking is not going to hurt the person. I wish I knew back then what I know now when my dad had his problems, he I am almost certain would have lived a lot longer had he not taken statins and would have enjoyed eating, he took what doctors said back then to heart (no pun intended), and I think hurt himself.
Bold is mine.
Agree with all of the above except have a question about the bolded section above. It was my understanding that it is the big fluffy particles which are harmless and that the harmful particles are the small, dense ones.
Okay, but does this translate to anything meaningful? In other words, do these rare individuals whose serum cholesterol levels rise with dietary cholesterol intake experience more adverse cardiac events? If not, why would this difference impact diet recommendations?
It appears that the small dense particles are actually the “bad guys.”
Beyond Routine Cholesterol Testing:
The Role of LDL Particle Size Assessment
http://www.centerforpreventivemedicine.com/04114med_messenger.pdf