Why High Protein Low Carb Diets Don’t Always Work

Many people who come to the Pinewood Natural Health Centre in Toronto to ask about a weight loss solution have actually lost weight through trying other diets. The only problem is that once they have lost the weight, they often gain it all back plus a few pounds moree  nThere are other options, including a largely successful low calorie diet accompanied by hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin)

The problem with High Protein Low Carbohydrate diets is that it is very hard on the urinary system and liver because it pushes your system into a state where it begins to eliminate ketones. These are acids that are produced when the body burns fat for energy.

Ketones  are also produced when the body is not producing insulin properly.  It is ketones that help you process sugar for your cells to use as energy. When is occurs, ketones form in the blood and if they are not excreted or if the body is overwhelmed by them you can get very sick, especially if you have been diagnosed with insulin resistance or diabetes.  A lot of people gaining weight in our society today are very insulin resistant which make a high protein low carb diet an unwise  choice for them.

How High Protein Low Carb Diets Became So Popular

This type of diet is not a new one. It was first developed in the sixties by Dr. Irwin Maxwell, M.D. in 1967. The idea of forcing the body into a state of ketosis by feeding it only protein  so that pounds became the basis for The Doctor’s Quick Weight Loss Diet, known more casually as the Stillman diet. The body would be tricked into releasing fat through the urine.

The Atkins diet, officially called the  Atkins Nutritional Approach is exactly the same thing. His book called Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution in 1972 was revamped as Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution (2002).  The New Atkins for a New You (2010) is the most recent edition of the same diet.

Today the concept of losing fat by eating protein and no carbs is a big business and the basis of many supplement products and newer spinoff fad diets.

The Drawbacks of High Protein Low Carb Diets

These diets produce ketosis and this is just simply not the greatest state for the body to be in. It can cause fatigue, nausea and constipation, none of which fit into the definition of living a healthy and active lifestyle. Long term side effects are bone loss, heart problems and kidney damage.

To top it off, ketosis is not the greatest state for your body to be in. Ketosis is an abnormal body process that occurs during starvation due to lack of carbohydrate. Ketosis causes fatigue, constipation, nausea, and vomiting, none of which are part of a healthy lifestyle. Long-term side effects of include heart disease, bone loss, and kidney damage.

A nutritional analysis of the Atkins diet by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (http://www.pcrm.org/) concluded that this diet was much too high in saturated fat and cholesterol and too low in fiber to be healthy.  This is because there is a lot of cholesterol in all of the meat and butter approved of in the diet. Eating so much animal product also stresses out the liver, intestines and kidneys.

 It is also a very acidic diet that was analyzed as being deficient in   seven key vitamins and minerals including calcium, iron, vitamin C, vitamin A, folate, vitamin B12, and thiamine.  Alkaline diets are more healthy for you.

As to be expected they also found that this diet that is very heavy on butter and meat was very high in cholesterol and saturated fat and very low in fiber.  In fact if you stick religiously to an Atkins diet you are likely to only have two to seven grams of fiber a day when at least 35 grams is what is recommended.

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The problem is that eating this much meat it means including more toxic, artery clogging fat in your body.  The excess protein also stresses every organ in your body including the kidneys, intestines and liver. 

The Not So Great Results

The typical Atkins dieter loses a great deal of weight but only for a short while. The spin-off diets, like the South Beach diet are just as bad and include liberal use of toxic sugar substitutes like Splenda that also make the blood very acidic.

 It also does not help that the low level of carbs ingested while they do these diets makes people feel tired so they do not feel like exercising.

If you want to lose weight there are healthier options at your disposal. This includes hCG plus injections.

For more information or to book a consultation about anti-aging, diet and weight loss programs or any health issue you may be experiencing, visit the Pinewood Natural Health Centre website that has a list of full services and products at www.pinewood.ca or call our Toronto Office at  (416)-656- 8100.  We also have an office in Pickering, Ontario at (905)-427-0057. You can also email us at info@pinewoodhealth.ca and we would be happy to answer any question that you have about our holistic health services.

Are Transfatty Acids Making You Fat?

You are cultivating a future where you are destined to be obese, that is, if you continue to consume  trans fatty acids.  Many people born in the last century did not know they were eating so many trans fatty acids because they were not listed on food labels until 2007. It took over five years for the U.S.  Food and Drug administration to require manufacturers to include the trans fat content on the labels of their packaging with only some foods being listed in 2003. Many of us have eaten foods containing this harmful fat almost all of our lives and naturopaths and other health professionals are definitely seeing the fall-out from this in the form of many patients with diabetes, obesity and cancer.

What are Trans Fats?

Trans fats were created in the 1950s as a way of appealing to our natural preference for fatty foods that have what what is called a “good mouth feel.” These are foods that taste creamy and have a pleasing texture.  Although foods with these transfatty acids in them taste good there are few substances on this earth worse for your health and they are especially detrimental to people trying to lose weight. Trans fat can cause belly bloat, diabetes, a rise in cholesterol, a rise in blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. These are all diseases that were not really a statistical cause of death until the middle of the last century and many natural help proponents and dieticians believe this is because these trans fatty acids did not exist in our foods until then.

To give you an idea of just how lethal they are, researchers at Harvard found that getting just three percent of your daily calories from transfats, which is the equivalent of one small order of French Fries can increase your risk of heart disease by fifty percent.

Trans Fats Don’t Exist in Nature

To put it bluntly, trans fats are not good for you because they don’t exist in nature. They are made from oils that heated to very high temperatures and then infused with hydrogen. The hydrogen bonds with the fatty oil to form an entirely new form of fat that stays solid at room temperature.  That is how vegetable oil becomes margarine.

The fatty substances created by this process are added to a great many foods. You usually see them on food labels identified as partially hydrogenated oil. If you went to your cupboards or freezer right now and looked at the labels of foods such as fish sticks, cheese, spreads, popcorn, cookies, stuffing, candy bars, waffles, bran muffins, cereals and non-dairy creamers you are going to find that they are riddled with transfats.  In fact, many foods that are marketed as healthy for you, like wheat thins or blue corn chips actually contain a lot of trans fatty acids.

As these foods containing these fatty acids are not natural your body has a very hard time processing them. Transfat raise the number of fatty particles in your bloodstream and lower the good cholesterol that keeps your arterial walls free of plaque.  They also raise the number of lipoproteins in your bloodstream and therefore increase your risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer. .

To avoid consuming them avoid eating margarine, fried food and commercially manufactured baked goods. Make sure that you read food labels and avoid foods containing partially hydrogenated oil at all costs if you want to avoid being exposed to this known nutritional health hazard.

For more information or to book a consultation about our restorative diet and weight loss programs  visit the Pinewood Natural Health Clinic website that has a list of full services and products at www.pinewood.ca or call our Toronto Office at  (416)-656- 8100.  We also have an office in Pickering, Ontario at (905)-427-0057. You can also email us at info@pinewoodhealth.ca and we would be happy to answer any question that you have about our holistic health services.

Good and Bad Cholesterol Demystified!

Cholesterol is a soft substance, almost like wax found among the lipids (fats) in the bloodstream and in all the cells of your body. Although the word cholesterol has come to have negative connotations, the fact is that is essential to health. Despite all of the bad publicity it gets, the fact is that you need cholesterol, because your body uses it to form cell membranes, manufacture hormones, and maintain health in general.  However, a high cholesterol in the blood—hypercholesterolemia— is a major risk factor for coronary heart disease, which leads to heart attack. At Pinewood, we have strategies for helping you deal with this problem, which can become an escalating risk to your health.

The Sources of Cholesterol

Your body has two ways of getting cholesterol. The liver produces about 1,000 milligrams a day when it is healthy. But when you eat too many foods high in saturated fats, your body starts overproducing this waxy substance.  Foods that are high in cholesterol are egg yolks, meat, poultry, seafood and dairy products. 

Cholesterol is removed from your body through the liver, but if your liver is working overtime, then it loses the capacity to process all of the cholesterol that you consume every day. The cholesterol combines with other substances in your body and forms plaque that hardens on your artery walls. This narrows the arteries and makes it harder for your heart to pump blood through the circulatory system and the result is that your blood pressure goes ups. This makes you heart work a lot harder than it should have to. Plaque can also break off into the bloodstream and cause a heart attack or stroke.

That is why a naturopath prescribed detox plus program of weight loss can help lower your cholesterol. The intention of naturopathy can be to clean out your liver so that it works more efficiently and so that any fatty deposits that are in your liver can be eliminated. This in turn, helps your body process the cholesterol that you take in every day.

Good and Bad Cholesterol

Inside your body there is both good and bad cholesterol and like most things to do with health, it is all about balancing one off against the other.

Good cholesterol, also known as HDL cholesterol, the ability to pick mop up cholesterol deposits and carry it back to the liver so that it can pass out of the body.  This slows the growth of plaque on your arteries and prevents against stroke or heart attack.

It is the bad cholesterol also known as LDL cholesterol that sticks to your artery walls and causes atherosclerosis, a condition where the plaque build up on your walls.

At the Pinewood Health Institute we can help you cleanse and restore your liver as well as give you a great diet that helps you choose just the right foods to lower the levels of bad LDL cholesterol in your body.

For more information or to book a consultation about our restorative diet and weight loss programs  visit the Pinewood Natural Health Clinic website that has a list of full services and products at www.pinewood.ca or call our Toronto Office at  (416)-656- 8100.  We also have an office in Pickering, Ontario at (905)-427-0057. You can also email us at info@pinewoodhealth.ca and we would be happy to answer any question that you have about our holistic health services.