I’m confused about 4/4s and how much saturated fat is ok

[Puredesign100]

What about foods that are great for you, but have some saturated fat? For example, goat’s milk kefir has 4.5 g. of saturated fat. Do the pros of taking it outweigh the negative of adding saturated fat? I was told that 2c. Per day would be great for my gut issues, but that is 9g. SF. Also, I was gulping down (well, not literally) the coconut oil ( 14g. SF Per T.) after hearing how great it was for dementia and Alzheimer’s until I read that it’s great for everybody except APOE 4s ( or maybe it was just 4/4 s ) because we need to keep saturated fats as low as possible. Do I need to limit my almond butters? Should we aim for zero saturated fat or is under 6 or 10 g. just fine? Thanks for any guidance.

[Bhinebaugh]

You read my mind. This is so confusing to me. I’m trying to go high fat low carb but am worried about saturated fat. My cholesterol has gone through the roof - from ldl of 120 to ldl of 175. I have not had my particle size checked yet which I know is important. My hdl is 88. Thanks for asking the question.


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[Russ]

It's understandable that you're confused. I wish there was a simple answer, but uncertainty around saturated fat is the current state of the reality. Unquestionably, the most common wisdom is to avoid it, but count me in the minority who still does not buy the argument.

I went through a phase of reducing it, too, until I came back around to where I am presently: SF is fine and often associated with wonderful nutrition in context of pastured animal fats with their natural balance and associated micronutrients. Note that I would agree SF is NOT fine in context of inflammatory high carb and processed food diet.

Personally, I would think your goat's milk kefir to be an awesomely nutritious food. But do realize, there are more views out there to the contrary, so don't take my word as gospel - just my own best effort on how to synthesize apparently conflicting information.

Russ

[swampf0etus]

I'm not a dietitian, but my advice is to limit saturated fat as much as possible and keep away from low-carb diets in general. All the current media hype stating things like 'butter is back' and 'saturated fat not related to heart disease' is coming from junk, biased science paid for by the beef, dairy and egg industries, along with the Atkins Foundation. It is a campaign to mislead and confuse the public, using the same tactics that the tobacco industry used during their campaign of confusion.

Cultures that have higher numbers or ApoE4 carriers, but little Alzheimer's disease tend to follow blue zone style diets, i.e. eat low amounts of animal products, fat and refined carbohydrate. Fat comprises around 10%-15% of calories. The healthiest known blue zone culture, the Okinawa's (eating there traditional diet of mostly potatoes), were less than 10% of energy from animal products.

Do not fear carbohydrates, including starchy ones, as long as they are unrefined. If you base your diet on unrefined carbs, with plenty for fibre and keep your animal protein and fat low (i.e. don't use added fats or oils), I guarantee you will see fast health benefits.

[slacker]

Pure and Bhine -

As you can see, there is no consensus with our members on saturated fat. Both Drs Bredesen and Gundry recommend minimizing saturated fats, including coconut oil, with ApoE4. My sense is that hey are comfortable with MCT oil as a bridge to ketosis, but not necessarily for long term use. Bredesen is comfortable with small amounts of grass fed free range animal meat; Gundry prefers limiting to seafood, mostly shellfish. Just like most nutrition advice, the evidence is limited and contradictory, so eventually each of us has to make our own decisions based on our own values and priorities.

Stavia is doing some interesting N=1 experiments with different diet plans. Apod is also very meticulous about monitoring blood work before and after dietary changes. However, what works for them as individuals won't necessary work for everyone. It's an iterative process. No easy fixes for many.

[Russ]

Cultures that have higher numbers or ApoE4 carriers, but little Alzheimer's disease tend to follow blue zone style diets, i.e. eat low amounts of animal products, fat and refined carbohydrate. Fat comprises around 10%-15% of calories.

I would welcome your provision of a reference or analysis to support the above statement. One comprehensive resource you might tap for geographic distribution of E4 rates is the following 2006 paper from Singh et. al. ...

Annals of Human Biology, May–June 2006; 33(3): 279–308
APOE distribution in world populations with new data from India and the UK
P. P. SINGH1, M. SINGH1, & S. S. MASTANA2
1Department of Human Biology, Punjabi University, Patiala, India, and 2Department of Human
Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK

Abstract
Background: The APOE gene and its protein product is associated with a number of plasma proteins like very-low density lipoprotein (VLDL), high density lipoprotein (HDL) chylomicrons, chylomicron remnants, and plays a crucial role in lipid metabolism. The APOE gene is polymorphic and common alleles ( E2, E3 and E4) have been associated with a number of common and complex diseases in different populations. Due to their crucial role in metabolism and clinical significance, it is imperative that allelic variation in different populations is analysed to evaluate the usage of APOE in an evolutionary and clinical context.
Aim: We report allelic variation at the APOE locus in three European and four Indian populations and evaluate global patterns of genetic variation at this locus. The large, intricate and unexpected heterogeneity of this locus in its global perspective may have insightful consequences, which we have explored in this paper.
Subject and methods: Apolipoprotein E genotypes were determined in four population groups (Punjabi Sikhs, Punjabi Hindus, Maria Gonds and Koch, total individuals 1⁄4 497) of India and three regionally sub-divided British populations (Nottinghamshire, East Midlands and West Midlands, total individuals1⁄4621). The extent and distribution of APOE allele frequencies were compared with 292 populations of the world using a variety of multivariate methods.
Results: Three alleles, APOE E2, APOE E3 and APOE E4, were observed with contrasting variation, although E4 was absent in the tribal population of Koch. Higher heterozygosities (>43%) in British populations reflected their greater genetic diversity at this locus. The overall pattern of allelic diversity among these populations is comparable to many European and Indian populations.
At a global level, higher frequencies of the E2 allele were observed in Africa and Oceania (0.099 0.083 and 0.111 0.052, respectively). Similarly, E4 allele averages were higher in Oceania (0.221 0.149) and Africa (0.209 0.090), while Indian and Asian populations showed the highest frequencies of E3 allele. The coefficient of gene differentiation was found to be highest in South America (9.6%), although the highest genetic diversity was observed in Oceania (48.7%) and Africa (46.3%). APOE E2 revealed a statistically significant decreasing cline towards the north in Asia (r 1⁄4 0.407, d.f. 1⁄4 70, p < 0.05), which is not compatible with the coronary heart disease statistics in this continent. APOE E4 showed a significant increasing cline in North European populations. Spatial autocorrelation analysis shows that the variation at this locus is influenced by ‘isolation by distance’ with a strong positive correlation for lower distances up to 1313 km.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dr ... 000000.pdf

Although I do not have access to the full paper, the new link I put up in another thread [ viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3747 ] looks like it may update this information with further analysis and insight. If I take the map that is in that paper (which is available at the link as part of the "graphical abstract"), and place at least the published "Blue Zones" on it, the potential correlation from that data set alone is not immediately obvious....

Correlation of Blue Zones w APOE4.png

Now, it may also be true that healthful success in other countries with high E4 incident rates are also eating according to 'blue zone' rules, even though not a part that base data, so still welcome your reference or analysis.

Meanwhile, I would note that one of the places butter has come back most strongly is Sweden, one of the more darkly shaded countries on the above map... and where heart disease has been falling in during this period...
https://www.dietdoctor.com/real-associa ... ase-sweden

Russ

[swampf0etus]

I used to be a staunch low-carb advocate and followed it for over three years. However, for the last 18-24 months, I've been checking out the science around it and find it all to be just terrible pseudoscience. I have a particular interest in ApoE4, Alzheimer's and T2D because of family history. My understanding of blue zone type diets on health come from reading a lot of journal articles on it, but if you want me to pull together some evidence of this then it might take me a while as I'm extremely busy and only have a few minutes a day to dip in and out of these forums. I'll try my best.

I was impressed with the ApoE scholarly articles you cited, but I was not impressed with your link to the DietDoctor site. I feel for this graph in the middle of low-carb days and shared the article to all friends and colleagues. The article is a prime example of the misleading, pseudoscientific nonsense that pervades the low-carb ideology and I’m ashamed that I ever fell for it. Low-carb gurus tell us that epidemiology is a pseudoscience, but a simple graph, knocked-up in five minutes with Excel, proves that butter and saturated fat is safe. No mention of any confounders, such as; other dietary components, smoking habits, statin use, improvements in healthcare, etc, etc. It’s also completely ignorant to the time lag effect of heart disease, i.e. it is a multi-decade process; radically and consistently increase your daily saturated fat consumption today and it’ll take over a decade for the effects to be seen, as the plaques slowly build in your artery walls. Why would increasing consumption of any food show an immediate reduction of heart disease? If anything, his graph actually supports the lipid hypothesis. Seriously, take another look at it. Look at the declining butter line from 1988 through 2000, then look at the declining male heart disease line from 2000 through 2012. It seems more likely that the decrease in butter consumption inferred better health 12 years later. Why doesn’t Andreas notice this and point it out? He’s a doctor, so he should know better. But he’s just trying to push his diet ideology and get people to sign-up to his website at 9 euros/month. There are many more examples of graphs and infographics like this throughout the low-carb community. It’s the same tactics used by anti-vaxers, climate change deniers, the tobacco industry, and virtually every conspiracy theorist.

Andreas used to have a ‘low-carb science’ page on his site listing all of the scholarly articles proving low-carb to be safe and the most effective at weight-loss. However, I don’t seem to be able to find this anymore. Has it been taken down? If so, is it because every study on that page has been debunked as being biased junk? Examples of debunking here: Cherry-Picked Research (by Andreas Eenfeldt) 1, Cherry-Picked Research (by Andreas Eenfeldt) 2, Cherry-Picked Research (by Andreas Eenfeldt) 3 and Cherry-Picked Research (by Andreas Eenfeldt) 4

If you really want to understand saturated fat’s effects on health, I suggest you go to Google Scholar or PubMed and search for it. It’s not a pretty picture. You’ll soon see that the evidence against it is enormous. Of course, low-carb promoters, with books and diets to sell, will tell you that ALL of this research, from thousands of research and public health establishments across the world, over more than sixty years, is biased and can simply be ignored. Seriously, how is that plausible?

[Russ]

My understanding of blue zone type diets on health come from reading a lot of journal articles on it, but if you want me to pull together some evidence of this then it might take me a while as I'm extremely busy and only have a few minutes a day to dip in and out of these forums. I'll try my best.

Just noting that my question and interest is on the intersection of blue zones and APOE4, not blue zones itself. Having never applied the 'blue zones' lens to the APOE data sets, to me the most obvious pattern is a diet of whole, real foods that follow availability and seasons. Feels more consistent with a "Weston Price" model than a blue zone one, but always happy to see data to the contrary. This also reconciles very well with the aggregate science of today in my view.

Re Eenfeldt, I think the point of the chart is NOT that butter *caused* a decline in heart disease, but it would be hard to call it a cause of it with such a trend (not withstanding your hypothesis of a 12-yr shift). If your 12-yr shift hypothesis is correct, then they ought to start seeing a large uptick in heart disease right about now...

Russ

[Julie G]

You ask a great question, Puredesign. To which, we humbly, have no definitive or broadly applicable answers as you can tell from the various posts.

Dr. Bredesen thinks coconut oil and preferably MCT oil can be very helpful for E4 carriers who are exhibiting symptoms of cognitive decline as it can address a reduction in cerebral glucose utilization, inherent to our gene, that is exacerbated with insulin resistance, menopause, and age. As cognition and glycemic markers improve, he suggests maintaining mild levels of ketosis, but moving away from SFA and using traditional Mediterranean fats instead- high polyphenol EVOO, olives, nuts, seeds, avocados. Many of us combine this dietary approach with fasting and exercise to address our neuronal fuel shortfall while yielding desirable lipids to prevent and even reverse symptoms of cognitive decline.

You need to decide for yourself, whether or not your cognition benefits with ketosis and how that impacts your biomarkers. Many of us regularly track and tweak our diet/lipid interactions to minimize CAD risk. Unfortunately, we have no easy answers. This is unsettled science. N=1 rules.

[manny.burgess]

Greetings. I'm new here.
I see mixed opinions about the effect of saturated fat on 4/4's. My question is whether there has been some research to look at the idea that it might be grain fed animal protein that contributes to AD and MCI in 4/4, and if grass fed meat is just as dangerous. Wahls certainly supports animal fat intake.