Hidden Fats & Cholesterol

Hidden Fats & Cholesterol

In my quick review of how the low-carbohydrate/high- protein diets put you in harm's way, it's well to remem¬ber two medical prefixes, neither of which mean much good: they are hyper and hypo. Hyper means "overac¬tive": hypo means "underactive."
A diet that is very low in carbohydrates and high in protein is usually rich in fat and low in fiber. Many cholesterols and fats are hidden in what we think are high-protein foods, such as beef or cheese. Fat-rich foods, in turn, are linked to high levels of blood choles¬terol and to compounds known as triglycerides, which put free fatty acids in your blood.
Now, for some jawbreakers: hyperlipidemia (lipids are fats), hypercholesterolemia and hypertriglyceridemia are associated with coronary heart disease and atheroscle¬rosis. Hyperuricemia means a significant increase in uric acid in the blood, which can promote gout.
All these "overactive" processes are spurred by the ketone-production of diets with low-carbohydrate and high-protein content.
As for the "underactive" effects of such diets, hypoglycemia means insufficient blood sugar; postural hypotension means the trouble you may experience rais¬ing yourself up from a supine position.
Common among dieters is the idea that if they but switch from fats and oils to the high-protein diet, as rec¬ommended by Scarsdale, Atkins, et al, the cholesterol issue is dealt with. For example, they are apt to go along with a diet that allows an abundance of lean meat (beef, lamb, veal); chicken and turkey (with skin removed); lean fish (perch, flounder, haddock, cod); hard-boiled eggs, and cheese.
However, a diet of this sort is virtually restricted to protein and fat. As such it is a mine field seeded with ketosis.
The BHMD has a different approach. It considers all fats equally bad. It also tells you not to get caught up counting cholesterol, or worrying about polyunsaturated, saturated and unsaturated fats. The average American gets 40 to 50% of his calories from fats. The figure should be down to about 20%, and on the BHMD it is actually lower.
It has already been stated that the BHMD is thumbs down on all unnecessary fats. To be on the safe side allow me to add that the same goes for the unsaturated vegetable oils. They are merely vegetable fat which has been processed out of the vegetable. In the vegetable the oil is part of its natural container and harmless. But once it has been passed into an artificial container like a bottle it's another matter entirely.

An End To Dietary Horror

An End To Dietary Horror

I could go on and on about the dangerous aspects of this fad diet or any other fad diet. The high-protein/high-fat/ low-carbohydrate diet presents to me a horror story of grisly proportions. Fortunately, it has been my pleasure to put an end to its hazardous workings for a number of people.
I have seen many people who were once advocates of the high-protein diet. One of these was BJ, a 40-year-old woman who attended a university-sponsored high- protein diet program for eight months and lost 80 pounds. Her scalp hair thinned out, she was "cold all the time," felt weak, was dizzy, had dry skin, etc. She gained all of her weight back plus 10 pounds. She had more illness during and after the diet than she had before.

How Does Ketosis Work?

How Does Ketosis Work?

The sensible nutrition of the BHMD reflects a way of eating that you can live with day in and day out. It helps
void the disastrous illnesses and potential deaths that may occur with some of the other diets, such as those featuring high-protein/low-carbohydrate.
The "other" diets take different forms. They continually pop up in new guises.
The so-called "protein-sparing modified fast" swept the country about four years ago. It is still around as the protein powder diet.
The protein powder taken by mouth, so goes the theory, prevents the body from breaking down its own protein in the form of muscles; heart, lungs, liver, skin, etc. Consequently, only fat would be burned for fuel for the body in the absence of carbohydrates. So many of the young nurses at the hospitals I attended used these diets and so many of them had multiple symptoms of dizziness, weakness, fainting and shriveling of skin that I was forced to study this ill-fated program in order to help them see the bad side effects.
In 1979, reports of deaths associated with the diet appeared first in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. Autopsy studies of the people on this diet— usually young women—showed breakdown of the very protein tissues (heart, liver and others) this diet was sup¬posed to protect.
It turned out that the theory was wrong. The body cannot utilize protein in this or any other diet without carbohydrates. Actually, it is really the carbohydrates which protect the protein tissues from undergoing degen¬eration.
Then, why did people want to use the high-protein diet? Did it cause a fast weight loss? Yes it did, and still does. But the weight loss is not fat loss. It is fluid, that is, water loss.
The reason is simple. All this excess protein that is taken in must be metabolized, and protein requires seven times as much water for its metabolism as Complex Carbohydrates do. The major mode of excretion of metabolized protein is in the urine, much of it as urea (the substance that imparts the characteristic yellow color to the urine). So it takes lots and lots of water to cause this protein excretion. This weight loss is quickly regained.
After 1Vi to 2 days on the high protein diet the glycogen (carbohydrate stored in muscles) is exhausted and the great weight loss occurs. This is the salt-linked carbohydrate fluid loss—a large loss of fluid and minerals in the urine. The great fatigue which occurs at this point reflects the water and mineral losses which grow worse as the days progress.
The claim is made that at this point the body will start producing ketones and that then the fat will melt away. The ketones, as you have learned, are breakdown pro¬ducts of fats—incompletely metabolized fats. When fat is completely metabolized no ketosis occurs since the fat is broken down completely.
When ketosis occurs in people with diabetes mellitus it heralds a rather severe situation as this represents an abnormal demand upon the body. Large amounts of ketones in diabetes can help cause the so-called diabetic coma.
In the non-diabetic at the very least it can cause dam¬aged body chemistry, as well as mineral and vitamin los¬ses. As ketones are being formed and being excreted the body's defense against illness, the immune system, suf¬fers. Sensitivity to cold occurs. The thyroid hormone de¬creases. Changes-for-the-worse show up in liver tests. The blood uric acid increases and this may precipitate a fullblown gout attack.
Further deteriorations become prominent, such as a decrease in blood volume, which may lead to postural hypotension. This is a drop in blood pressure upon stand¬ing, leading to dizziness and weakness. Changes-for-the- worse occur in the ability of the kidneys to excrete waste material. The large potassium loss has been well documented, and I have seen patients on this diet brought to the hospital because of heart irregularities.
Hyponatremia, which is a sodium loss to a degree which is unhealthy, may occur and often is responsible for nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and apathy.
Magnesium and calcium losses occur in gradually dimi¬nishing amounts and the effect on the body, especially on the heart and nervous system, can be bad.
A drastic weight reduction program such as the highprotein, low-carbohydrate diet can cause a flattening of the lining of the intestine and can interfere with absorption of nutrients, causing what we call a malabsorption syndrome.
Vitamin deficiencies also occur in this type of diet. While ingesting protein liquid or powder, the amount of B vitamins excreted in the urine exceeds that of the healthy individual.

Dangers Of Other Diets

Dangers Of Other Diets

The high-protein/low-carbohydrate diet also causes other problems, one of which is bone loss. Osteoporosis, which is thinning of the bone due to calcium loss, is getting to be fairly common in our society. By the time we turn fifty we can start to see significant bone loss on X-ray. Our bones thin out causing more bone breaks (fractures) as well as actual loss in height due to thinning and collapse of vertebrae.
This comes about because a high-protein diet increases calcium loss in the urine. In addition, the excess nitrogen and sulfur from the proteins in the blood are acid by¬products of protein metabolism. The acidity literally leaches the calcium out of the bone.
What happens is that a state of negative calcium bal¬ance is produced. It means the body is losing more cal¬cium than it is taking in. Adding calcium to our foods or in supplements does not seem to help reverse the nega¬tive calcium balance and protect bones against more osteoporosis. Getting off the high-protein diet does, however, cause the calcium balance to become positive, i.e., more calcium enters than is lost.
The average American is getting too many of his daily calories in protein. This means that he is risking the loss of the important mineral calcium. As a result he is sus¬ceptible to spontaneous bone fractures and loss of height, both due to thinning of bone.
In addition, other valuable minerals are lost, including zinc, iron and magnesium. We pay for this in our middle age.

Stop Killing Yourself

Stop Killing Yourself

Sometimes shock is the only thing that will bring home a point. In my practice and in my mini-clinics in Beverly
Hills I've often judged it necessary to resort to such blunt tactics to make people care. The dietary facts sometimes need to seize people by the throat and give them a good shaking to make them realize what they are doing to themselves by their overweight and destructive eating practices.
I've actually found an element of fatalism in the reck¬lessness with which we Americans eat, smoke, drink and diet.
Perhaps that's because it's now commonplace to spend the last twenty years of our lives under a cardiologist's supervision. Perhaps it's rather ordinary for someone you know to have had by-pass surgery. Perhaps we figure we're all going to get cancer sooner or later anyway. Perhaps there is an unconscious fear that the whole world is going to blow up and that we may as well begin with ourselves.
Whatever the reason may be, I've found that there is a connection between these fatalistic attitudes and the fact that the average American is fat, that he has a cholesterol level of over 230, and that he will spend the remaining two decades of his life being treated for one thing after another.
It is due to nonchalance about the way you eat and about your body that you have a one-in-three chance of dying of a heart attack by age 60. Your condition is criti¬cal enough for the time to have come that no diet can be complete without dealing with the stress factor. Stress, overweight and faulty eating practices almost ensure that you may never reach old age.
The BHMD can preserve you from this fate. It can stop the breakneck pace at which you are wrecking your health and gambling with the chances of longevity. The BHMD provides a fast and simple program to defeat our grim nutritional statistics.
If you are too heavy and do not exercise your body, the BHMD tells you which foods you should be eating to bring down your weight. If you smoke and drink alcohol, you must stop, or at least cut down to the absolute mini¬mum. The BHMD literally urges you to "take your heart for a walk." And it stipulates that you must begin by
replacing fatty and oily foods with others rich in Complex Carbohydrates.
That's because C.C. provides the best, the fastest and safest way to lose weight without the hazards of ketosis.

Hazards Of Ketosis

Hazards Of Ketosis

I would not feel so strongly about the low-carbohydrate/ high-protein diet if it were not for the bodily harm it's known to create. Among the least alarming side effects are calcium depletion, dehydration, sleeplessness, nau¬sea and fatigue.
Quite serious is the damage ketosis may cause for peo¬ple with kidney problems.
And most serious is the linkage between ketone- producing high-protein, high-fat diets and atherosclero¬sis, gout, hypoglycemia, vascular thrombosis, liver and gall bladder diseases, hypertension, cancer of the colon and breast, cardiac arrhythmias, postural hypotension and coronary heart disease.
I've purposely put the risk elements of the low- carbohydrate/high-protein diet in a row. I did mean to scare you.

Let's Act Like Grownups

Let's Act Like Grownups

When we talk about diets there is no point in fooling ourselves. The Beverly Hills Medical Diet is no pacifier to still your anxieties about weight. It is no fairy tale in which a wand waves and fat drops automatically. This is what the BHMD will do:
It tells you how to lose weight rapidly. Why you lose it. And what the diet contains that makes it work.
Certain kinds of diet books get my goat. They are the ones written as if the reader is a child who needs to be coaxed to reduce. This approach is not the least irritating quality of the Scarsdale diet, in which the hazardous ketone-stimulated water loss is justified by the rationale that the dieter needs to see immediate results. This type of "evidence," so goes the claim, will encourage the die¬ter through reinforcement to persist in his regimen.
Such reasoning is hardly the approach to a successful, life-time diet. The BHMD reshapes your eating habits because it is in your pattern of food consumption that weight was gained in the first place. The BHMD adjusts your fat person's body to that of a slender person, who will stay slender permanently. The high-protein dieter who has been turned into a nervous "sprinkler" is essen¬tially still as fat as he was before. As you will learn after sampling the delicious BHMD menus, there is a differ¬ence Ipetween weight loss and fat loss.
During my medical-nutritional seminars at the Amer¬ican Institute of Health, I try to involve my patients more deeply into the question of their health. I explain that being merely the guardian of their medical data, it really doesn't belong to me. It is theirs and they are the ones who should be concerned about it. Thus they are moti¬vated to do what they know they should be doing any¬way. We are partners, I explain, but they are the senior partners in our program of nutrition and stress manage¬ment.
There are hundreds of medical tricks that would enable me to delude their trust. But I believe in treating the dieter as an adult capable of taking responsibility in his own hands.
With the same frankness I confront the apology made for ketosis. An increase of ketone bodies in the blood is said to curb appetite. I consider such panaceas unneces¬sary, especially when they are the result of the real dan¬gers posed by ketones. The BHMD has the best appetite restrainer in the world. That is the feeling of being full. The greater amount of chewing required by the C.C. diet, with the subsequent increase of saliva and gastric juices, gives the stomach a sated and satisfied feeling.
Dieting requires a certain amount of discipline. I recog¬nize that voluntary restraint is not an easy matter. With the BHMD, however, this kind of self-control is made a cinch.

Your Body Is A Temple

Your Body Is A Temple

The Beverly Hills Medical Diet runs counter to the "rev­olutionists." It begins where the high-protein promises leave off. It scorns to use a "faucet" technique in which the well soon runs dry. With its emphasis on Complex Carbohydrates, the BHMD attacks obesity at its soft spot,<if you will. That soft spot is not liquid but fat.

There is just no getting around it. Fat is the most com­pact package of calories the body stores. These "pack­ages" ^.re contained in the outsized bulges you wish to make disappear. Fat is the chief reason why people gain weight. So, if you wish to become lighter and look better, if you wish to achieve optimal health, you must get rid not of water but of fat.

The BHMD helps restore your figure by the philoso­phy that when weight is to be lost rapidly, eating all the more must be made a delight. That's why you have been given menus to please and thrill you day after day, week after week. Picking and choosing from the BHMD culi­nary selections will become an enjoyable part of your daily routine.

The components of the BHMD are those which God has diffused through nature for your well-being. I do not look upon the dieter as a "fat-burning" machine. I regard the human body as a temple whose organs and processes must be treated with respect. Short and deceptive dietary rituals will not help maintain the body. With their invo­cation, the temple will collapse. On the BHMD fat is lost without disturbing the sacred vessels of your organ­ism.

Complex Carbohydrates are the main fare of the BHMD. They help melt fat away in a way that is Simple, Safe, and Speedy. If you stick to C.C., the effects are permanent. And it may add years to your life.

Sleight-Of-Fat

Sleight-Of-Fat

The high-protein/low-carbohydrate diets advocated by Atkins and Scarsdale have perfected a technique for which I have coined a phrase. They use what I call a "sleight-of-fat."

The English Dr. Harvey got the low-carbohydrate ball rolling by cutting out sweet and starchy foods, restricting his Victorian clientele to high-protein and fat intake. But it was up to his modern successors, like the Atkins and Scarsdale diets, to claim that the high-protein/low- carbohydrate fare breaks down the body's fat stores faster than normal.

When that happens, according to our high priests of protein, fragments of carbon are released. In the Atkins diet these fragments are called FMH, Fat Mobilizing Hormone. We shall stick to the scientific name, "ketone , bodies," which are basically nothing more than poorly burned fatty acids. The resulting condition—the metabol­ized or partially burned fat fragments—is the "ketosis" we touched upon earlier.

According to the Scarsdale, Dr. Atkins and similar diets, ketone production means that excess fat is being pulled out of your fat reserves. The ketones, according to Scarsdale, transform your body into a "fat-burning machine." But it would be far more accurate to say that the ketones turn the body into a sprinkling system.

The ketones stimulate urinary losses, and this is what I meant by my somewhat facetious "sleight-of-fat." The "miracle" of fast weight reduction promised by the low- carbohydrate/high-protein diets is nothing more than a change in water balance. Moreover, the water-loss occurs primarily in the diet's initial 8-10 day period. After that the "sprinkling system" sputters to a halt, while the fat largely remains where it has always been.

The Enemies Of Bhmd

The Enemies Of Bhmd

Since the issue is so clouded with misinformation, and especially since carbohydrates have been made the vil­lain in so many popular diets, let us examine the myth and its hazards. Six years ago the U.S. Department of Agriculture interviewed some 2,500 homemakers and found that only three per cent had a general nutritional knowledge. On the BHMD it is as important to know what you eat as why you eat what you eat.

We have already seen that a low-carbohydrate diet is often another word*for a high-protein, high-fat and high cholesterol intake. Just how this type of diet is able to promote a temporary weight loss is shown best in the theory behind the most popular of the contemporary slimming manuals. These are Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution and The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet.

First off, I should say that there is very little "revolu­tionary" about a diet that an English surgeon, William Harvey, prescribed for his patients more than a century ago.

Secondly, I hope to dismiss, once and for all, the chief contention of the "revolutionary" diets.

Thirdly, I shall explain the Three S's of the BHMD. Why it's Simple, Safe, and Speedy.