Archives for August 2010

About to jump on a plane for a weekend trip. Destination, pool side near Palm Springs. I’d wanted to write more about the video that follows, but it pretty much speaks for itself. Watch.

Think the Mafia metaphor is a bit much? I don’t. Quite the contrary. The Mafia would actually be marginally easier to work with, you’d stay in business, wouldn’t have to spend oodles on attorneys, solicit the help of friends and family. Most of all, there would be no pretense of righteousness.

…Every time I stumble on Sean Hannity and his pathetic "Let Freedom Ring" schtick on the radio, I wanna put my fist through it. That train left the station decades ago.

Very impressive research and analysis but, at the end of the day, we all only believe what we WANT to believe. For example, one person may read the bible and think it’s the greatest story ever told and also believe that it’s the truth. Another person may read the bible and conclude that it’s really just the greatest story ever told. So, whilst Debra’s work is impressive for the amount of time and effort she’s put in, as a vegan I am, not surprisingly, very firmly sat in Dr Colin Campbell’s camp. I just believe Dr Campbell.

Commenter "Neil" (8/24/10 21:00:07). Emphasis added.

My mom went to the doc yesterday. As a Type 2 diabetic who controls it pretty well, she nonetheless still does regular visits. She’s very low-carb Paleo-ish, and while she was able to be off insulin for a time completely, still finds she needs very small doses now and then.

To the endocrinologist’s credit (a new doc), she did acknowledge being impressed with my mom’s diet and supplement regime. But there was one little problem: mom’s total cholesterol is 217. The doc asked her if she wanted cholesterol lowering meds. But my mom reads this blog and was thus prepared, indicating that for women, higher cholesterol is associated with increased longevity (lowest all-cause mortality and not just an overly reductionist tunnel vision, zeroed in on cardiovascular mortality).

But the doc retorted with something I can’t recall reading or hearing about, specifically. She asked my mom if the studies and information she’s relying on concerned women with diabetes and not just a general cross-section, as diabetes is associated with twice the heart disease and stroke as for non-diabetics (according to the doc).

Hmm…. So I did some initial digging around. I ended up writing this in a reply email.

The problem is: what level of diabetes? You control yours pretty well, so there is no comparison between you and someone who doesn’t.

There is ZERO benefit to lowering cholesterol, especially in women (indeed, the greater chance is it’s harmful). Cholesterol doesn’t cause heart disease; inflammation does and this is how statins, when they work, work. But keeping grains, legumes, sugar, and vegetable/seed oils out of your diet has an even more anti-inflammatory influence I suspect. Actually, it simply allows your body to go back to its natural, non-inflammatory state.

I added links to an article by Dr. Duane Graveline at Spacedoc, as well as Chris Kresser’s 2-part video series on statins at The Healthy Skeptic. The problem is, neither of those seemed to address the issue specifically, and moreover, there’s this quote from the first link.

The fact that there is no statistically proven cardiovascular benefit from the use of statins for cholesterol reduction in women was first publicly disclosed by Uffe Ravnskov in his book, Cholesterol Myths and has been corroborated repeatedly by numerous longitudinal clinical studies.

The ASCOT study, the largest randomized clinical study of statin effectiveness in women, found that the women who took Lipitor, developed more heart attacks than women in the group given placebo.

While not statistically significant this finding hardly supports cardiovascular benefit. In this ASCOT study, 2,000 women were included among 10,000 patients having elevated blood pressure and at least three other cardiovascular risk factors.

Again and again, clinical studies have failed to show that the use of statins lowers cardiovascular risk in women who do not already have coronary heart disease or diabetes.

So just when you think it’s all settled, there’s that D word, right at the end. This is off the top of my head but as I recall, statins have only been shown statistically beneficial to men who have had a previous coronary event (statins reduce the rate of subsequent events). But is there another category of benefit out there I don’t know about?

So I did more digging and came up with this:

Is diabetes a coronary risk equivalent? Systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Aims To determine whether patients with diabetes without prior myocardial infarction (MI) have the same risk of total coronary heart disease (CHD) events as non-diabetic patients with previous myocardial infarction.

Methods Using MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane and MeSH in this systematic review and meta-analysis, extensive searching was carried out by cross-referencing from original articles and reviews. The study consisted of cohort or observational studies with hard clinical endpoints, including total CHD events (fatal or non-fatal myocardial infarction), stratified for patients with diabetes but no previous myocardial infarction, and patients without diabetes but with previous myocardial infarction. Studies with less than 100 subjects, follow-up of less than 4 years and/or without provisions for calculating CHD event rates were excluded. The review of articles and data extraction was performed by two independent authors, with any disagreements resolved by consensus.

Results Thirteen studies were included involving 45 108 patients. The duration of follow-up was 5–25 years (mean 13.4 years) and the age range was 25–84 years. Patients with diabetes without prior myocardial infarction have a 43% lower risk of developing total CHD events compared with patients without diabetes with previous myocardial infarction (summary odds ratio 0.56, 95% confidence interval 0.53–0.60).

Conclusion This meta-analysis did not support the hypothesis that diabetes is a ‘coronary heart disease equivalent’. Public health decisions to initiate cardio-protective drugs in patients with diabetes for primary CHD prevention should therefore be based on appropriate patients’ CHD risk estimates rather than a ‘blanket’ approach of treatment.

So on the one hand, statins are of no benefit to women, even those who have had a previous coronary event (unlike for men), and on the other, even men & women with diabetes who have never had a coronary event are far less likely to have one than non-diabetics who’ve had one.

While that’s not a direct study of the question (do statins lower coronary events in women with diabetes?), putting 2 and 2 together seems to imply to me that given the rate of serious side-effects experienced by those on stains, combined with what seems like a very dubious benefit to a woman with well controlled diabetes, equals not much reason to take them and lots of reasons not to.

Anyone have anything contrary, or better. Either way.

Before I get to the pictures of naked food caught in compromising positions, I’m going to relate a short story.

As I’ve written about many times, I lived in France for a couple of years in the early 90’s. A couple of years after I left, I went back to visit some friends, ending up staying with some of them for a few days at a mutual friend’s house in the country — an old house, built in a classic way — and an important feature was the fireplace. It was designed to be able to cook in it.

I’ll never forget this because it goes to the elegant simplicity of what food can be. And so one late afternoon we got a bunch of lamb chops. I can’t recall what cut but they were maybe 1/2" thick, but large cuts otherwise. And I can’t recall whether we seasoned them with any salt & pepper either. But what I recall vividly is how we prepped them after the cooking. We simply took cloves of fresh garlic, sliced them in half, and as as the hot lamb steaks came off the fire (direct flame), we rubbed them down with the fresh garlic.

I’ll never forget it.

This is a bit more involved, but the process reminded me of that, so I thought I’d share. As always, click for quality images.

All Ready for the Fire

So these are grassfed lamb chops from the shoulder. I got them at Whole Foods (yea, I go there sometimes, now). To the side is a simple deal with olive oil, 2 cloves of garlic crushed & chopped, fresh rosemary chopped & crushed and some dried thyme. I almost never do marinades in the sense of letting the meat sit in one for hours. Other than a few select dishes, I like my meat to be meat, and sauce to be sauce. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me to try and change the core flavor of the meat.

So, the lamb went on the hottest grill I could come up with and after the first turn, cooked side was dealt some of the oil & herbs. Repeat. In the end, top side gets another treatment.

But first, how about the side dish? Some time back I was intrigued by a recipe from Darya Pino at SummerTomato.

I’ve resisted publishing this recipe for months because I was worried it was too simple for an entire blog post. But every time I cook it for someone (which I do all the time because it is so easy and delicious) they ask me for the recipe so they can try it themselves. Now I can just send them a link.

Well, I’m adding this to my list of fine cauliflower dishes. Here’s a couple I’ve done before: Au Gratin and Burnt Almond Meal (used to be bread crumbs).

So the recipe is on Darya’s blog. Super simple. Here’s how it looks before heading into the oven.

Cook Me

And so I did. Here’s the final deal, lamb and veggie together, finally.

Eat Me

And so I did.