How Your Breakfast - and Insulin Blood Levels - Affects Your Day

Which of these two scenarios sounds more familiar to you?

It’s morning again. You wake up and go for breakfast choice A, maybe with a tea or coffee. At work, your mind is clear and focused. You quickly put away task after task, solve problems creatively and efficiently, and communicate your ideas with confidence. Your energy doesn't flag as you gradually work up an appetite for a good healthy lunch.

Alternatively, you wake up and choose breakfast option B. But things go very differently this time. One hour into the day and you're already dragging.

Is this the way you feel in the mornings?

You do your best to ignore the feeling and push on with your work or chores – but you realize you simply cannot continue to function without a pick-me-up and eventually reach for a snack or cup of coffee.

This gives you a much needed short-term boost which soon gives way (as you knew it would) to brain fog. You struggle to keep on top of your work, but you feel as though you're investing most of your energy just in chasing your cravings to keep from crashing.
So you count the minutes until lunch time. When it arrives, you try to make healthy choices as you know you should. However, you’re not satisfied, so you end up going back for the foods you were craving all along.

If this second scenario is all too familiar while the first seems more and more like a far-off dream, don't blame yourself.
You may simply need to change one thing to set you on the right track for productivity, one that is crucial in setting the stage for the rest of your day: your breakfast.
Overnight, your body and brain have rested and re-set themselves, while your insulin blood levels are low and steady.
The first meal of your day is like the first stone dropped into a still pool. The waves it makes are the ones with the most long-lasting effects. Your choice of breakfast will remain with you and impact the quality of your day, until you go to sleep again.

To understand these two scenarios better, let’s look at them in terms of your insulin levels.
Why insulin?
Insulin is the major hormone involved in controlling blood sugar in your body. When glucose and protein from the food you eat enter your bloodstream, insulin is released from the pancreas to make sure they can be taken up into the cells in your body that need them.
As your blood sugar returns to normal, insulin release from the pancreas tapers off. There is a lag time between these 2 events. So your insulin blood levels are still high for a while after your sugar levels have normalized.
This lag time – which is more pronounced the more sugar enters your blood and the faster it gets in – is the reason for the endless cycles of snacking and craving you can’t seem to shake off.

So, going back to the first scenario when you were focused and alert - most likely your breakfast choice led to a gentle increase in your blood sugar and steady insulin blood levels.
This usually means healthy, optimal brain activity. 
In the second scenario, your choice of breakfast causes you to experience cyclic food cravings. Your insulin levels fluctuate wildly after the initial sugar spike of your meal, followed by several more spikes with every sugary snack you take.
End result - you have trouble focusing on the task at hand, because high circulating insulin levels favor a state of “rest and digest” in your body and brain and not the driven and focused state you want to be in.

So as you can see, your blood insulin level is a key player in determining the quality of your entire day.
And since breakfast sets the stage for the day's insulin activity and the cascade that follows it, your choices at breakfast are crucial for how your day goes - for better or worse!
There is no one ideal breakfast – nor is eating breakfast at all the best choice for everyone. Like any lifestyle tweak, you will need to find a setup that matches your own very personal physiology, lifestyle, and preferences.
In other words, you need to figure out what works to help YOU to be at your best.

Editor's Note: Breakfast really is the most important meal of the day!
A nutritious, well-balanced breakfast not only sustains your energy levels better than endless cups of coffee, but it has other benefits as well:
Maintains ideal body weight - breakfast eaters are more successful at losing weight and maintaining an ideal body weight compared to those who skimp on it or skip it entirely.
Sharpens your mind - a high-fiber breakfast will help you stay more alert for the rest of the day.
Protects your heart - whole-grain cereals (rather than refined cereals) lower your risk of heart disease.
Strengthens your immune system - making the right breakfast choices can help you start the day in the best possible way, with immune-boosting vitamins and minerals.

This superb post was conceived and written by Gittit Szwarc, with a little rewriting and editing for style.

On Cholesterol, Part II - Cholesterol and Heart Disease

Cardiovascular diseases - including coronary artery disease or heart disease, heart attacks and stroke - are by far the #1 killer across the world.
Far from being limited to developed nations, up to 80% of cases occur in developing countries. In fact, a staggering 60% of the world's cardiovascular disease is estimated to occur in India alone.
Smoking, high blood pressure, and cholesterol are the usual suspects. In fact, the association between cholesterol and heart disease is firmly fixed in most people's minds.

Heart disease is known to be triggered by atherosclerosis, a hidden chronic condition that affects the walls of arteries and can be present for decades before any clinical symptoms appear.
Atherosclerosis can damage or kill heart cells and lead to sudden death by heart failure. Understanding what triggers this invisible danger and how it develops is critical step to prevent it from happening.
Interestingly, studies have shown that with the right dietary and lifestyle interventions, atherosclerosis can in fact be reversed in most people!
So - do blood cholesterol levels cause atherosclerosis and heart disease?

Let's briefly consider the human heart - a muscular, 4-chambered organ the size of a fist, weighing some 250-350 grams and located behind the breast bone. It pumps blood throughout the body by contracting rhythmically in a specific sequence - check out this cool animation of how the heart works.
Our hearts function in this complex manner 60 to 70 times every minute, roughly 36 million times every year of our lives! Now that is a true miracle, and not an insignificant one at that...
Arteries are blood vessels that carry oxygenated blood from the heart to all parts of the body. When healthy, they are strong and flexible and can easily cope with the constant changes in blood pressure that happen when your level of physical activity changes, or you change position such as getting up from being seated or lying down.
Arteries that supply the heart muscle are called coronary arteries.



Atherosclerosis is the buildup of a fatty material called plaque on the inside walls of arteries, a slow and insidious process that takes place over many years. These plaques or lesions are made up of fat, cholesterol, calcium, white blood cells, muscle cells and scar tissue.
Plaques make arteries stiffer and less elastic, which means they are more likely to get damaged with constant changes in blood pressure. The lumen - the inner space through which blood flows - becomes narrower, restricting blood and nutrient flow to tissues.
Narrower arteries also means that more blood pressure is needed to pump blood and the heart has to work harder.

If these dangerous plaques form in coronary arteries, blood flow to the heart itself is affected. The heart needs a steady supply of oxygen to work properly. When blood flow to an area of the heart decreases, that part functions less efficiently, affecting overall heart function.
Atherosclerotic plaque formation in coronary arteries is a critical first step necessary for life-threatening heart attacks to happen. 
In adults, high levels of the "bad" cholesterol known as low-density lipoprotein or LDL cholesterol, low levels of the "good" cholesterol known as high-density lipoprotein or HDL cholesterol, hypertension, smoking, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and obesity are all associated with a high risk for atherosclerosis.

According to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), high levels of cholesterol are responsible for plaque formation, and by implication cause heart disease.
This view is propagated as gospel by much of the medical establishment, regulatory agencies and drug companies.

There are 2 major flaws in this argument.
FIRST - there is plenty of evidence to show that atherosclerosis is not triggered by cholesterol, although it contributes to plaque buildup.
In fact, several studies have shown that there is zero correlation between cholesterol levels and atherosclerosis! (More on this in a future post).
In other words, the popular association between heart disease and cholesterol is a mythical one. So why do the medical establishment and drug companies still propagate this imaginary association?
Good question.

Let's consider the evidence.
Dr. Dwight Lundell is a leading cardiovascular surgeon who has performed over 5,000 heart surgeries. He states bluntly, "Dropping your cholesterol levels will not lower your risk of heart disease, heart attacks, or strokes".
That's pretty straightforward, isn't it?

Dr. Michael Ozner, MD, is the author of The Great American Heart Hoax, a fascinating book about what actually works to prevent heart disease.
 
Based on his extensive personal experiences with heart disease patients, he's firmly convinced that chemical oxidation of LDL cholesterol is one of the first steps in atherosclerosis.
Oxidized LDL cholesterol is very reactive and attacks the muscle cells that make up artery walls. Over time, our body’s inflammatory response to such repeated attacks and the injury that follows triggers atherosclerotic plaque formation in arteries.
In other words, he believes there is no association between heart disease and cholesterol levels.

SECOND - heart attacks are not caused by the plaques themselves.
According to Dr. Lundell and other experts, the real culprits are clots created by our body's own protective mechanisms when unstable plaques occasionally rupture.
Over time, these clots detach and flow freely in the blood. They may move downstream into smaller blood vessels and obstruct blood flow, causing angina or heart attacks.
Angina is the pain or discomfort that occurs when not enough oxygen-rich blood is available to heart muscle. Heart attacks happen when the blood flow is completely blocked. Lack of oxygen can cause heart cells to die within 5 minutes.

The take-home message is this - blood levels of cholesterol are not the trigger for atherosclerosis, which causes angina, heart attacks and strokes.

Yet the pharmaceutical industry makes millions of dollars every year by prescribing cholesterol-lowering medications such as statins and other drugs to people in so-called "high-risk" groups. Nowadays these drugs are even being prescribed to ordinary people whose cholesterol levels are judged to be "too high". 
Since blood cholesterol levels are not the trigger for heart disease, these medications are not very effective against heart attacks and - as evidence shows - possibly even downright harmful to human health.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that high cholesterol levels are good for your heart, they aren't. But in an average human being with a physiological range of cholesterol levels, they are not the trigger for heart attacks.
The real cause, as we shall explore in another post, is something else - inflammation, which underlies many aspects of human disease including oxidation of LDL cholesterol, the first step in atherosclerosis.
And unless inflammation and its causes are specifically addressed, nothing - no medication available on the market today, or expensive invasive procedures such as angioplasty and coronary bypass surgery - will reduce your risk of a first or recurrent heart attack.

The actual amount of carbohydrates required by humans for health? ZERO.

You may find this hard to believe - but it is documented fact that the Yupik, Inuit and Aleut (formerly known as Eskimos) consume very low levels (close to zero) of carbohydrates during winter.
For 6-9 months every year they subsist entirely on caribou, reindeer and whale meat. That's a lot of animal-based protein and an enormous amount of fat.
Surprisingly, they don't succumb to heart disease, diabetes, obesity, high BP, or any of the other ills of the modern age we're so familiar with.
Instead, they happily live to a ripe old age. In fact they have an extremely low mortality rate from heart disease.
And they have the same exact biochemistry and physiology we do!

The Canadian Arctic explorer and ethnologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson was among the first to document in his book "The Friendly Arctic" that the Inuit would often go 6-9 months every year living on nothing but meat and fish.

Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson

Stefansson himself spent 11 years exploring the Arctic. He lived almost exclusively on meat for 9 years, consuming very low levels of carbohydrates as the Inuit do, while remaining perfectly healthy.
Interestingly, in 1927 William A. Thomas reported that he found no incidence of scurvy (a disease resulting from vitamin C deficiency) or rickets (softening of bones in children because of deficiency or impaired metabolism of vitamin D, phosphorus, or calcium) among the Inuit who "lived off the land". However, he reported a high incidence of these diseases among those Inuit who subsisted on canned food, flour, dried potatoes and cereals.

A similar finding has been described in a blog post by Dr. Michael R. Eades, MD, author of Protein Power and The Protein Power Lifeplan.
Claire Cassidy, Ph.D., the author of the study* described in Dr. Eades' post compared hunter-gatherers with agriculturists who likely shared the same genetic heritage, but lived in different times. She found that the former had better bones, no signs of iron-deficiency anemia or infection, few (if any) dental cavities, fewer signs of arthritis and were generally larger and more robust than their agricultural contemporaries.
Clearly, human health took a nosedive when we switched from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture; and grains and other forms of carbohydrates became a large part of our diet.

In 1929-30, Stefansson and Danish explorer Karsten Anderson undertook a study under the auspices of the Journal of the American Medical Association to show they could eat a 100% meat diet - with no carbohydrates - in a closely-observed laboratory setting for an entire year.
Their diet included muscle, liver, kidney, brain, bone marrow, bacon and fat from beef, veal, pork, lamb, and chicken. Carbohydrates were limited solely to glycogen from these meat sources.
This came out to 100-140 grams of protein, 2-300 grams of fat and 7-12 grams of carbohydrates, making up a total of 2-3000 calories per day, mostly derived from fat.
A typical day's diet might look like this:
Breakfast - lean beef, 190 grams; fat, 100 grams.
Dinner -  liver, 200 grams; fat, 75 grams.
Supper - lean beef, 200 grams; marrow, 70 grams.
(Not a very varied or appetizing menu, I must admit).

At the end of an entire year on this diet without carbohydrates, vitamin supplementation or any other additives, both men were perfectly healthy and reported to be "in good physical condition, mentally alert and physically active".
They'd lost a little weight, but they had normal cholesterol and blood chemistry values; and their physiological functions were normal.

It is relevant to point out here that the meat and fish consumed by the Inuit and by these explorers came from wild game that lived freely and ate their own natural foods. They were not farmed or force-fed things they normally wouldn't - and shouldn't - eat.
Also, the Inuit and the explorers also led a physically demanding life, not least because living in those conditions requires a lot of energy expenditure.
I would definitely NOT recommend eating the meat of today's farmed animals that are force-fed a diet of hormones, antibiotics and ground-up animal parts for even a single day, much less every day for a year to the tune of 2-3,000 calories/day!

I only wish to use this very real example of an entire ethnic group of people - although old traditions are dying fast, even among them - and the experiment with Stefansson and Anderson to convey the concept of the relative unimportance of carbohydrates in our diet.

*Cassidy CM. Nutrition and health in agriculturalists and hunter-gatherers: a case study of two prehistoric populations. in Nutritional Anthropology. Eds Jerome NW et al. 1980 Redgrave Publishing Company, Pleasantville, NY pg 117-145.

You can read about these revolutionary nutritional ideas and the very real health benefits of a diet that is rich in protein, contains moderate amounts of healthy fat and low carbohydrates in these groundbreaking, must-read books by Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades:

   

On Cholesterol, Part I

Cholesterol is a bad word, a "bogey that terrifies people beyond reason." (More on the quote later).
Doctors, scientists, the government and independent regulatory agencies, drug companies and most of all the media - it seems like everyone is taking turns to blame this biological entity for everything bad that happens to us, health-wise.
Obesity. Diabetes. Metabolic syndrome. Heart attacks.
If you believe most of what you see and hear, our cholesterol levels are at the root of these and every other major health problem.

Structure of the cholesterol molecule

Consider the US government.
It has spent many millions of dollars on informing Americans about cholesterol through its National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP).
In its pamphlet entitled "High blood cholesterol: what you need to know", the first question you encounter is "Why is cholesterol important?"
A fair question.
The answer, however, is truly staggering. "Your blood cholesterol level has a lot to do with your chances of getting heart disease."
Staggering because there's plenty of evidence out there that this is simply not true. And not on the fringes or in blog posts expressing anti-establishmentarianism, neither.
The evidence is right there in black and white in peer-reviewed articles based on controlled studies and published in standard scientific and medical journals.

So why do most people believe the worst about cholesterol, to the extent they are even willing to take drugs that force down their body's production of this innocuous little molecule?
Good question.
Whatever the reason, health authorities everywhere are united in assigning cholesterol the bad-guy role. Its as if there is nothing good or normal about it - and the best thing we can do is lower our blood cholesterol levels as quickly as we can and make sure they stay low.
But guess what?
The truth is very different, and much more complex. And that is what this blog post is about.

First of all, cholesterol is not a fat at all but a waxy, solid alcohol. Up to 7% of our body's cholesterol is found in our blood; the remaining 93% is stored in our cells.
In fact, it is first and foremost an essential structural molecule that makes up one-fifth of the outer protective cover - called the "plasma membrane" - of each and every one of the 50 or so trillion (a trillion is 1 followed by 14 zeros!) cells in our body.
Plasma membranes separate cells from the rest of the body and from each other, and keep the identity and integrity of each cell intact.
Essential means that we cannot survive without cholesterol.

Unlike carbohydrates. Did you know that the actual amount of carbohydrates we need for health is ZERO? I kid you not.


Cholesterol keeps cell membranes stable and strengthens them against mechanical rupture, while also keeping them fluid and accessible. This allows them to function properly, allowing nutrients and waste matter to move in and out as needed.

Cholesterol has many other critically important functions:
It serves as a building block for hormones, including testosterone and estrogen.
It is chemically modified to make vitamin D, necessary for normal development and function of our bones, immune system and nervous system.
It is the main component of bile acids, without which we cannot absorb vitamins A, D, E, and K from our diet - all essential for life.
It plays a major role in the transport of triglycerides, the real fats in our blood.
It contributes to the normal development of our brain and nervous system.
It is hugely important for the creation and repair of all our body's cells - without cholesterol, our body cannot repair cells or make new ones.
For instance, did you know that the entire lining of our intestine is replaced every 4 to 5 days? We grow new hair, skin, nails, bone, muscle and blood cells constantly. 
Cholesterol is essential for these processes of our bodily renewal.
All in all, it's no lie to say - no cholesterol, no life.
So in reality, cholesterol the biological molecule is very different from the bogey governments and drug companies would have you believe.

Did you know - up to 3/4ths of the cholesterol we need is made in our liver, intestines and skin?
Dietary sources account for a mere 20-25%.
Now follows a statement which has profound implications for many things, not least your understanding of dietary cholesterol's role in disease.
The statement is this:  
A regulatory feedback loop in your body monitors and controls your blood cholesterol levels, so that when your dietary intake of cholesterol decreases, your body adjusts and makes more; and when you consume more cholesterol, your body makes less.

Why is this so important?
While it is relatively easy to understand, the implications of this statement are profound.
It means that if your body is functioning normally, reducing dietary intake of fats and cholesterol can be counteracted by your organs which compensate to keep your blood cholesterol levels constant.
In other words, a diet low in cholesterol and fats will not affect blood cholesterol levels significantly. 

But what about the well-known association between hypercholesterolemia, the medical term for high blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides - and heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure?
Hypercholesterolemia is usually caused by genetic abnormalities passed down through families - although it may also be a result of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and alcoholism.
Elevated blood cholesterol levels in people afflicted by this disease are caused by a failure of their body's ability to regulate their blood cholesterol levels for various reasons.

If nothing else, I'd want you to take these 2 messages away from this post: 
1. Cholesterol is an essential biological molecule, absolutely necessary for life. 
2. Trying to lower blood cholesterol levels by restricting dietary consumption of cholesterol or fat simply does not work in the average person.