Turns Out Everyone Was Wrong About Saturated Fats

Want to lose weight and improve your health? More healthy fat may help. While fat, specifically saturated fat, has been blamed for increasing your risk of diabetes and heart disease, research shows that carbs may actually be the culprit.

A controlled-diet study published in the journal PLOS challenges the theory that dietary saturated fat is bad or a contributor to heart disease. With that being said, there is an association between saturated fat in the blood and heart disease.

During the study, participants were put on six three-week diets that progressively increased carbs while simultaneously reducing total fat and saturated fat. Calories and protein remained the same. As carbohydrate levels increased, blood levels of a fatty acid (palmitoleic acid) known to increase the risk of heart disease and diabetes also rose steadily.

When palmitoleic acid increases, it's a signal that an increasing proportion of carbs are being converted to fat instead of being burned as fuel. In other words, the amount of carbohydrates you consume may determine how you process saturated fat -- whether it is burned for fuel or stored as fat.

How Much Fat Should You Eat?

A recent study in the journal Open Heart indicates that research does not support the original dietary-fat-consumption guidelines created in 1977 and 1983. These guidelines recommended that we cut fat to about 30 percent of our total daily calories and reduce saturated fat -- from red meat and dairy products like milk, eggs and cheese -- down to no more than 10 percent of total calories.

Suddenly people were avoiding fat and replacing it with sugars and refined carbohydrates -- often in the form of fat-free and low-fat packaged foods.

But these guidelines, intended to make Americans healthier, have done anything but. Adult obesity rates have doubled since 1980, and they're projected to increase by another 50 percent by 2030. Meanwhile, childhood obesity and diabetes diagnoses have tripled.

It's time to stop thinking of dietary fat as the enemy. In fact, fat is a key source of energy and essential nutrients. You can't live without it, and it might help you lose weight.

Fat, like protein, helps keep you full longer. And since it carries flavor, it makes food more satisfying. In other words, you could probably consume fewer calories of fat and feel more full and satisfied than twice the calories of refined carbs. Even better, when you eat fat, it slows the entry of glucose into the bloodstream, helping to moderate your blood sugar. So instead of that "crash and burn" after eating carbs, along with feelings of hunger soon after, fat helps control your appetite and your cravings. When more than half of Americans show some type of carb intolerance, it may make more sense to choose a diet that controls carbohydrates instead of restricts fat.

Here are the types of fat you should consume and one you should avoid:

Monounsaturated fats (MUFAs) are found in olive oil, canola oil, walnuts and most other nuts as well as avocados. MUFAs are usually liquid at room temperature.

Polyunsaturated fats (PUFAs) are always liquid both at room temperature and in the refrigerator. They're found mostly in oils from vegetables, seeds and some nuts. Sunflower, safflower, flaxseed, soybean, corn, cottonseed, grape-seed and sesame oils are high in PUFAs. So are the oils in fatty fish, such as sardines, herring and salmon.

Essential fatty acids (EFAs) are dietary fats that your body can't produce. Both omega-3 and omega-6 EFAs are PUFAs essential to your health and well-being. Omega-3s are found in the fat of shellfish and cold-water fish. Omega-6s are found primarily in seeds and grains, as well as in chickens and pigs. Unless you're eating a very low-fat diet, you are most likely getting more than the recommended amount of omega-6s.

Eat foods or take supplements rich in omega-3 fatty acids, such as shellfish, cold-water ocean fish and fish oil (salmon, tuna, sardines, herring and anchovies, along with non-fish sources like flaxseed, almonds, walnuts and canola oil). Avoid corn, soybean, cottonseed and peanut oils, which are all high in omega-6s.

Saturated fatty acids (SFAs) tend to remain solid at room temperature. Butter, lard, suet and palm and coconut oils are relatively rich in saturated fats. This type of fat is fine to consume on a low-carb diet, because when carbs are restricted, your body burns primarily fat for fuel.

Trans fats should be avoided at all costs. Trans fats have been associated with an increased heart-attack risk, and they have been shown to increase the body's level of inflammation. They are typically found in foods you should be avoiding already, including fried foods, baked goods, cookies, crackers, candies, snack foods, icings and vegetable shortenings.

--Colette

Readers -- Have you ever followed a low-fat or low-carb diet? Which method worked best for you and why? Do you try to avoid any fats or just specific types of fats? Leave a comment below and let us know.

Colette Heimowitz, M.Sc., works directly with medical professionals, health influencers and consumers to educate them about the Atkins sustainable lifestyle. Colette brings a wealth of nutritional knowledge and experience as the vice president of Nutrition and Education at Atkins Nutritionals, Inc. She has more than 20 years of experience as a nutritionist, which includes the time she spent with Dr. Atkins as director of nutrition at the Atkins Center for Complementary Medicine.

References

Volk, B. et al. (2014) Effects of step-wise increases in dietary carbohydrate on circulating saturated fatty Acids and palmitoleic acid in adults with metabolic syndrome. PLOS DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0113605

Harcombe, Z. et al. (2015) Evidence from randomised controlled trials did not support the introduction of dietary fat guidelines in 1977 and 1983: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Open Heart DOI: 10.1136/openhrt-2014-000196

Source: https://www.livestrong.com/blog/wrong-saturated-fat/

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Leptin: The Satiety Hormone

Leptin, also called satiety hormone, is made by adipose (fat) cells that helps to regulate energy balance by controlling hunger. Leptin is opposed to the actions of ghrelin, called hunger hormone. Both hormones act on receptors in the arcuate nucleus of the hypothalamus to regulate appetite to achieve energy balance. The regulation of fat stores is deemed to be the primary function of leptin but it also plays in other physiological processes. Besides adipose cells, it is also produced by placenta, ovaries, skeletal muscles, stomach, mammary epithelial cells, and bone marrow.

It circulates in blood in free form and bound to proteins. Leptin levels in blood are higher between midnight and early morning, perhaps suppressing appetite during the night. The diurnal rhythm of blood leptin levels may be modified by meal-timing.

Functions of leptin -

The following are important functions of leptin:

• Primarily, leptin regulates food intake and body weight. It acts on the specific receptors in the hypothalamus to inhibit appetite. When fat mass decreases, the level of plasma leptin falls so that appetite is stimulated until the fat mass is recovered. There is also a decrease in body temperature and energy expenditure is suppressed. Conversely, when fat mass increases, so do leptin levels, thereby suppressing appetite until weight loss occurs. Thus leptin regulates energy intake and fat stores so that weight is maintained within a relatively narrow range.

• Leptin also seems to play an important role in modulating the onset of puberty. For example, undernourished and thin girls take longer to reach puberty than normal girls. Thin girls often fail to ovulate or release an egg from an ovary during menstruation cycles. Reproductive growth and fat stores are, therefore, vital in the regulation of reproduction.

Leptin resistance -

Besides many factors involved in the causation of obesity, an important factors is leptin resistance. Many believe that leptin resistance is the leading driver of fat gain in humans.

The main function of leptin is sending a signal to the brain, "telling" it how much fat is stored in the body's fat cells. Since leptin is primarily produced by fat cells, obese people have very high levels of leptin. Given the way leptin is supposed to work, these people shouldn't be eating because their brain should know that they have plenty of energy stored. But the problem is that the leptin signal is not working. As a result, there's a whole lot of leptin floating around that the brain doesn't "see" that it is there. This condition is known as leptin resistance. It is now believed to be the main biological abnormality in human obesity.

Therefore, leptin resistance makes the brain change our behavior in order to regain fat that the brain thinks is missing. The brain thinks that we must eat so that we don't starve to death. Simultaneously, the brain also thinks we need to conserve energy, so it makes us feel lazier and thus makes us burn fewer calories at rest.

Losing weight reduces fat mass, which leads to a significant reduction in leptin levels. When leptin goes down, this leads to hunger, increased appetite, reduced motivation to exercise and decreased amount of calories burned at rest. Basically, the reduced leptin makes the brain think it is starving and so it initiates all sorts of powerful mechanisms to regain that lost body fat.

In other words, the brain actively defends the higher amount of fat mass by compelling us to eat back the lost weight. That is the main reason why yo-yo diets fail to yield the results as the dieters lose a significant amount of fat, only to gain it back.

How to regulate leptin hormone? -

Though leptin resistance is a complex problem, it is not an irreversible one. The following factors will help improve leptin response:

• Reduce sugar and fructose consumption - Minimize using simple starches, refined foods, sugar and fructose. Fructose is a major contributor to insulin and leptin resistance. Fructose disrupts the signals of insulin and leptin, generally by over-taxing the liver because fructose is primarily shuttled to the liver for processing, whereas glucose is primarily shuttled to muscle and fat cells. By reducing the consumption of white sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, we allow liver to do other things like burning fat

• Don't skip breakfast- Your breakfast should include largely protein and healthy fats. This promotes satiety and gives the body the building blocks to build the hormone.

• Optimize sleep - Try to be in bed by ten o'clock in the night. Take steps to optimize your sleep.

• Avoid frequent eating- When you are constantly eating, even small amounts during the day, it keeps your liver working and doesn't give hormones a break. Try to space meals at least 3-4 hours apart and don't eat for at least 3-4 hours before bed. This includes drinks with calories but herbal teas, water, coffee or tea without cream or sugar is fine.

• Exercise regularly- Your workout should include both aerobic exercise and strength training.

• Take more Omegs-3s - Take more Omega-3s by consuming fish, grass fed meats, chia seeds and minimize your Omega-6 consumption by consuming less of vegetable oils, conventional meats, grains, etc. to get lower inflammation and help support healthy leptin levels.

The bottom line -

It is evidently clear that leptin - the satiety hormone - plays an equally important role in regulating hunger as is done by ghrelin. Recently, lot of importance has been attached to leptin resistance in humans, which is now considered to be the driving factor in causing overweight and obesity. There are many factors responsible for causing leptin resistance in humans. The majority of these factors are related to our lifestyle. Initiating positive changes in our lifestyle will help regulate the release of leptin hormone, thereby striking a balance between food intake and body weight.

The article is about leptin hormone, which is supposed to regulate our appetite and thus help in maintaining a healthy weight in a person. Any dysfunction in the normal secretion of leptin hormone can cause overweight and obesity in an individual, resulting in an array of diseases.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Dr._Pran_Rangan/2322082

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