Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) affects 5 to 10 percent of all North American women. Women with PCOS ovulate irregularly or not at all, and their ovaries produce high levels of male hormones such as testosterone. Women with PCOS are prone to obesity, excessive body hair, acne, high blood pressure, and type 2 diabetes. They also have a seven times greater risk of heart disease and heart attack than other women do. Almost 60 percent of all women with PCOS are insulin resistant, and most of these women have elevated levels of IGF-1. Numerous clinical studies have shown that simply changing the diet—eating foods that improve insulin metabolism—can reduce many of the symptoms of PCOS. The Paleo Diet, which normalizes insulin metabolism, can greatly help women with this problem.
Acne
For years, many dermatologists believed that diet had absolutely nothing to do with acne. But very new scientific evidence has linked insulin resistance to acne. Diets loaded with sugar, fructose, and high-glycemic carbohydrates may contribute to this problem, which can be devastating. Between 40 and 50 million American teens and adults have acne.
Some striking information to support the link between acne and diet comes from Dr. Otto Schaefer, who spent his entire professional career in the wilderness of the Canadian Far North, working with Inuit natives who literally were transferred from the Stone Age to the Space Age in a single generation during the 1950s and 1960s. Dr. Schaefer reported that in those Eskimos who ate their traditional foods, acne was absent. Only when they adopted Western foods laced with refined sugars and starches and dairy products did acne appear.
Four things happen when acne develops: First, there’s accelerated growth of the skin surrounding the hair follicle (called “follicular hyperkeratosis”). Second, oil (sebum) production speeds up within the follicle. Third, the cells in the follicle abnormally stick together as they are being shed, thus plugging the follicle. And, finally, the plugged-up follicle gets infected. Until recently, dermatologists didn’t know why the accelerated growth occurred, why these cells became excessively cohesive, or what caused the boost in oil production. But growing evidence suggests that elevated insulin and IGF-1 are directly responsible for the increased follicular skin growth, along with reductions in circulating blood levels of IGFBP-3. Remember that high-glycemic foods raise your blood level of IGF-1 while lowering IGFBP-3. This is why low-glycemic-load, high-protein diets are so effective in eliminating acne. They put the brakes on excessive follicular skin growth.
Besides causing increases in IGF-1 and reductions in IGFBP-3, elevated insulin levels from eating high-glycemic carbohydrates cause a rise in the male hormone testosterone. It is these increases in IGF-1 and testosterone that promote the discharge of oil. This means that insulin resistance caused by high-glycemic diets may be directly responsible for the first three steps in acne development. In the last five years, dietary intervention studies and a series of epidemiological studies from the Harvard School of Public Health have conclusively demonstrated that high-protein, low-glycemic diets like the Paleo Diet improve insulin metabolism and can help prevent acne. It is now safe to say that the Paleo Diet will improve your insulin metabolism—and if you have acne, this lifetime program of healthy eating will help it disappear.
As you can see, the Paleo Diet can be a very effective tool in fighting virtually all the diseases of metabolic syndrome.
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Food as Medicine: How Paleo Diets Improve Health and Well-Being
We never used to be so sick. The white man’s food is not good for us.
—Malaya Kulujuk, a Baffin Island Eskimo
The Diet-Disease Connection
Many of the chronic illnesses that plague the Western world—the “diseases of civilization”—can be attributed to dietary missteps. Diet and disease are obviously linked. And when we stray from the Seven Keys of the Paleo Diet, which stood firm for 2.5 million years, we not only develop metabolic syndrome diseases, but also increase our susceptibility to a host of other diseases.
How can we know whether a particular food, or the lack of it, in our diet is actually the factor responsible for a particular disease—or the absence of it? If you have a milk allergy or lactose intolerance, the cause and effect of your symptoms are probably painfully clear. But it’s much harder—if not impossible—to foresee whether the pat of margarine (containing trans-fatty acids) you put on your toast yesterday morning will have anything to do with causing a heart attack forty years later.
Scientists and physicians use a variety of research procedures to determine whether diet and disease are linked, including dietary interventions, epidemiological studies, animal experiments, and cultured tissue studies. When the results of all four procedures are in agreement, it is quite likely that a certain food may cause a certain disease. However, in most cases the link between diet and disease is usually not this clear-cut; often, genetic susceptibility to disease further clouds the issue. In many of the diseases that we will be examining, the diet-disease connection has only been partially unraveled. Nonetheless, by adhering to the dietary guidelines of your Paleolithic ancestors, you will reduce your risk of developing these illnesses, and if you are currently suffering from one of these illnesses, your symptoms may improve with the Paleo Diet.
Metabolic Syndrome Diseases
I’ve already talked about the metabolic syndrome diseases (type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, dyslipidemia, obesity, PCOS, myopia, acne, and breast, prostate, and colon cancers) and how they are linked to elevated levels of insulin in the bloodstream. But all of these diseases also have other known contributing dietary factors. For example, salt is connected to high blood pressure—but so is a lack of fresh fruits and vegetables. Too much omega 6 fat in your diet at the expense of omega 3 fat can also cause your blood pressure to rise. Even a low protein intake has been linked to rising blood pressure.
Breast, prostate, and colon cancers are known to develop more often in people who don’t eat enough fresh fruits and vegetables. Fruits and veggies hit cancer with a one-two punch: they’re excellent sources of antioxidant vitamins and minerals that may impede the cancer process, and they also contain a variety of special substances called “phytochemicals,” nutrients found in foods that are lethal to cancer cells. The study of most phytochemicals is fairly new; scientists are only beginning to understand how they work. But here are a few examples:• Broccoli contains sulforaphanes, which chase cancer-causing elements out of cells.
• Broccoli is also loaded with cancer-fighting folic acid, vitamin C, beta-carotene, and a substance called “indole-3-carbinol,” which helps improve the body’s estrogens.
• Strawberries, tomatoes, pineapples, and green peppers contain p-coumaric acid and chlorogenic acid, compounds known to be powerful anticancer agents.
• Garlic and onions not only contain substances that will lower your cholesterol but are also rich sources of allylic sulfides, which seem to protect against stomach cancer.
As is the case with high blood pressure, eating too many omega 6 and too few omega 3 fats further increases your risk of developing breast, prostate, and colon cancers.
We may not know precisely how dietary factors cause each and every metabolic syndrome disease, but one thing’s certain: when you adopt the Paleo Diet, you will be putting all known dietary factors on your side to prevent these illnesses.
Cardiovascular Diseases
The number one killer in the United States is cardiovascular disease. A staggering 35 percent of all deaths in this country result from heart attacks, stroke, high blood pressure, and other illnesses of the heart and blood vessels. Cardiovascular disease, like cancer, is a complex illness, and no single dietary element is solely responsible. However, once again, by following the nutritional principles of humanity’s original diet, you will put the odds in your favor of not developing this deadly disease.
Good Fats Help Prevent Cardiovascular Disease
Good fats are what doctors call “cardioprotective.�
� They protect the heart and the blood vessels from disease. With the Paleo Diet—unlike the average American diet—at least half of your fats are healthful monounsaturated fats. The other half is evenly split between saturated and polyunsaturated fats. There are no synthetic trans fats. And the crucial omega 6 to omega 3 fat ratio is about 2 to 1—which greatly reduces your risk of dying from heart disease.
Monounsaturated Fats
Monounsaturated fats reduce your overall risk of heart disease by lowering your level of total cholesterol—but not your beneficial HDL cholesterol—in the blood. These healthful fats—found in abundance in the Paleo Diet—also help prevent LDL cholesterol from oxidizing (breaking down) and contributing to the artery-clogging process. Monounsaturated fats also may reduce your risk of breast cancer.
Omega 3 Fats
I’ve already talked about the beneficial effects of omega 3 fats on insulin metabolism and how they lower blood triglycerides. Omega 3 fats are also exceptionally potent agents in preventing the irregular heartbeats that can make a heart attack fatal. They help prevent blood clotting and ease tension in clogged arteries as well.
In a landmark dietary intervention study, French physicians Serg Renaud and Michel de Lorgeril evaluated the effect of a diet rich in omega 3 fats in 600 patients who had previously survived a heart attack. In this investigation, known as the Lyon Diet Heart Study, half of the patients were assigned to the American Heart Association reduced-fat diet, in which 30 percent of calories come from fat. The rest followed a 35 percent fat traditional Mediterranean diet that was rich in omega 3 and monounsaturated fats and fruits and vegetables.
The results were striking: compared to the patients who followed the American Heart Association Diet, those who were on the Mediterranean diet had a 76 percent lower risk of dying from another heart attack, a stroke, or another cardiovascular disease. This remarkable protection from heart disease can be yours, too. Like the Mediterranean diet, humankind’s original diet is also high in cardioprotective omega 3 fats, fiber, monounsaturated fats, and the beneficial phytochemicals and antioxidant vitamins that are found in fruits and vegetables.
Diseases of Acid-Base Balance and Excessive Sodium
The average cereal-based, salt-laden, cheese-filled American diet—which is nearly devoid of fresh fruits and vegetables—tilts your body’s acid-base balance in favor of acid. As we discussed earlier, grains, cheeses, meats, and salty foods yield a net acid load to the kidneys, while fruits and vegetables always generate an alkaline load. An overload of acid foods—at the expense of alkaline foods—can cause numerous health problems, particularly as you age and your kidneys become less adept at handling dietary acid.
Of the four major acid-producing foods, three—grains, cheeses, and salt—were eaten rarely or never by our Paleolithic ancestors. Instead, they ate huge amounts (by modern standards) of alkaline fruits and vegetables, which buffered the acid from their meat-rich diets.
Many chronic diseases prevalent in Western countries develop because of a dietary acid-base imbalance. These include:• Osteoporosis
• High blood pressure
• Stroke
• Kidney stones
• Asthma
• Exercise-induced asthma
• Ménière’s syndrome
• Stomach cancer
• Insomnia
• Air and motion sickness
The realization that such diverse problems could be linked to acid-base imbalance is fairly recent. Not so long ago, scientists connected many of these illnesses to too much sodium, or salt. But the chemical recipe for salt has two ingredients—sodium and chloride. And as I discussed earlier, it’s the chloride part of salt that makes it acidic—not the sodium. Chloride may also be more to blame than sodium as a dietary cause of high blood pressure.
Osteoporosis
Earlier, I talked about salt’s interplay with calcium in the body: people who eat a lot of salt excrete more calcium in their urine than do people who avoid salt. In turn, this calcium loss contributes to bone loss and osteoporosis, because the acidic chloride in salt must be buffered in the kidneys by alkaline base—and the body’s largest reservoir of alkaline base is the calcium in our bones. When we eat salty potato chips or a pepperoni pizza, we are leaching calcium from our bones. When we do it over the course of a lifetime, we may well develop osteoporosis.
Asthma and Exercise-Induced Asthma
But salt is not just bad for the bones. Although it has not been shown to cause asthma or exercise-induced asthma, it can aggravate both conditions. Studies in humans and animals have shown that salt can constrict the muscles surrounding the small airways in the lung. My research team demonstrated that salt (both the sodium and the chloride components) increases the severity of exercise-induced asthma. We also showed that low-salt diets can reduce many symptoms of exercise-induced asthma.
Other Problems Caused by Salt
Maybe you don’t salt your food. Good for you—but you should be aware that despite your good intentions, there’s probably more salt in your diet than you think. The average American eats 10 to 12 grams of salt every day. Almost 80 percent of this comes from processed foods—even those considered healthful. Two slices of whole-wheat bread, for instance, give you 1.5 grams of salt. So automatically there’s salt in any sandwich you make—even before you add salty meats like ham, salami, or bologna.
A high-salt diet increases your risk of kidney stones, stroke, and stomach cancer.
It also impairs sleep—this is one of the least-recognized benefits of low-salt diets. When you cut the salt out of your diet, you will sleep better almost immediately. Low-salt diets also have been shown to reduce motion and air sickness.
Many other foods are acidic and able to disrupt the body’s acid-base balance. Every time you eat cereals, peanuts, peanut butter, bread, muffins, cheese, sandwiches, pizza, doughnuts, cookies—basically, any processed food—you are overloading your body with dietary acid. Unless you balance these foods with healthful alkaline fruits and vegetables, you will be out of acid-base balance—and at increased risk for many chronic diseases.
Potassium
Another crucial chemical balance in the body is that of potassium and sodium. Paleo diets contained about ten times as much potassium as sodium. The average American eats about five times as much sodium as potassium every day. The beauty of the Paleo Diet is that it swiftly returns your body to humanity’s original high intake of potassium and low intake of sodium.
Digestive Diseases
Fiber is absolutely essential to your health—and at least thirteen illnesses can result when you don’t get enough fiber in your diet. Some of the most common digestive diseases that develop when you eat the standard American diet with its overload of refined grains, sugars, dairy, and processed foods are:• Constipation
• Varicose veins
• Hemorrhoids
• Heartburn
• Indigestion
• Appendicitis
• Diverticular disease of the colon
• Crohn’s disease
• Ulcerative colitis
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Duodenal ulcer
• Hiatal hernia
• Gallstones
The Paleo Diet is naturally high in fiber because of its abundance of fruits and vegetables—about three to five times as much fiber each day as there is in the average American diet.
Some people worry that lean meat-based diets are constipating. This is not true. Meat, fish, and seafood are not constipating at all. The famous Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson spent years mapping and exploring the Far North at the turn of the twentieth century. During his expeditions on dogsleds, he frequently lived off the land for more than a year at a time. He and his men were entirely dependent on the all-animal food diet that could be obtained from hunting and fishing. Amazingly, he reported in his journal that men who had suffered from constipation on their former rations of flour, corn biscuits, rice,
and breads were almost completely cured of their problem within a week of adopting the all-meat (high in protein, but with enough fat to avoid the risk of protein toxicity) menu of the Eskimos.
Years later, when Stefansson returned to civilization, he and another explorer were put on an all-meat diet for an entire year, under controlled hospital conditions, by the most respected scientists and physicians of the day. The clinical evaluations at the end of the year showed bowel function to be normal. Just like Stefansson and the Eskimos, you will not suffer from constipation when lean meat, fish, and seafood dominate your diet. In fact, you will find that most of your digestive problems will disappear.
Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis
As with every other disease of civilization, it is not the soluble fiber from fruits and vegetables that will reduce your digestive problems, but rather the entire diet. Dairy products, cereals, and yeast have been implicated time and again in the development of Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory disease of the gastrointestinal tract. Elemental diets (special liquid formulas without dairy, cereal, or yeast proteins) are the first line of defense physicians use in treating these patients. Amazingly, almost 80 percent of patients achieve complete remission while on elemental diets with absolutely no drug therapy. But there is a big problem here: hardly anyone can stay on a liquid diet forever. What would you rather do, drink a liquid diet or eat humanity’s real foods—fruits, veggies, and lean meats?
The Paleo Diet Page 11