Nutrition Confusion!

by Nina and Brad

Still Life with Apples, Meat and a Roll by Vincent van Gogh

One of the most important decisions we make each day to foster healthy aging is deciding what to eat. But what if our ideas about which foods are healthy (and which are not) are misguided? What if some of the advice we’ve been receiving from our doctors for the last 50 years is actually wrong?

I’ve already written a post for this blog Healthy Diets for Healthy Aging, in which I discussed why the field of nutrition is so confusing. But a few days ago Brad read me an article from the Wall Street Journal The Questionable Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease that kind of blew my mind. In this article, Nina Teicholz, who has been researching dietary fat and disease for nearly a decade (and whose book The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet will be published by Simon & Schuster on May 13) claimed that the "very cornerstone of dietary advice for generations has been that the saturated fats in butter, cheese and red meat should be avoided because they clog our arteries" was based on theory that has never actually been proven. She wrote:

“The fact is, there has never been solid evidence for the idea that these fats cause disease. We only believe this to be the case because nutrition policy has been derailed over the past half-century by a mixture of personal ambition, bad science, politics and bias.”

She says that our distrust of saturated fat can be traced back to the 1950s to the work of  scientist named Ancel Benjamin Keys, whose research was flawed but who relentlessly (and successfully) championed the idea that saturated fats raise cholesterol and, as a result, cause heart attacks. She concludes by saying,  “More than a billion dollars have been spent trying to prove Ancel Keys's hypothesis, but evidence of its benefits has never been produced. It is time to put the saturated-fat hypothesis to bed and to move on to test other possible culprits for our nation's health woes.”

She goes on to speculate that our increased intake of carbohydrates (even fruit!) as well as food fried in vegetable oil could be the real villains, leading to increased obesity rates and other health problems. While I’ve spent some time explaining why we’re not going to be giving dietary advice on this blog (see Healthy Diets for Healthy Aging), I decided to ask Brad to comment on this article in case some of you out there had read it (or related articles) and were feeling as confused as I am.

NINA: You read this article to me, so what do you make of it? 

BRAD: Of course, we couldn’t help but notice that the author of the article has a forthcoming book. So, as with most authors on these topics, some bias is almost certain to exist to make the story more sensational, so one always has to keep that in mind. That said, the article was fascinating in its take on saturated fats and heart disease.  It made me consider why I generally push to the side of the plate some of the fat on a side of pork belly—the very few times I even eat it at all anymore. Or the guilty pleasure at eating bacon, knowing it’s “bad for me” but that it tastes so good. Or looking for the low-fat milk for on cereal (I won’t go near non-fat milk as it simply tastes awful).  However, I have pretty much forgone eating muffins, scones and donuts—which still appear to be villains in this new take on healthy and unhealthy foods.  As a scientist, I, of course, love to see doctrine upturned, especially when it's based on a lot of poorly constructed experiments with too many underlying assumptions, which both appear to have been in full play in the nutritional epidemiology studies such as the ones described in this article.

NINA: What do you think we should make of this analysis?  And how should we incorporate it into our thinking about a healthy diet?

BRAD: The question is: is this analysis to be believed, or somehow put in the space with all those other studies that seem to pop up with greater regularity—such as too much protein in your diet can cause cancer? That also reminds me that the author did not really consider cancer, neurodegeneration,  gastrointestinal diseases, and other things that are associated with aging in her analysis. I guess it confirms what I suspected all along, that we know surprisingly little about how diet really effects our health, particularly when our basic nutritional needs are being met. So, when I next confront a hamburger on my plate, do I take off the bun, eat the patty only, leave off the cheese, or add extra raw (or grilled) onions? Or do I just eat it with all the trimmings (and medium rare—the way I like it), and remind myself that I probably shouldn’t be eating mammals all that often (you know, for all the obvious and very real ethical and environmental concerns), and make sure my next meal is mostly vegetables (and not deep fried)...

NINA: Ack!

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Healthy Diets for Healthy Aging

by Nina

Kale by Melina Meza

“One lesson of science, though, is that if the best you can do isn’t good enough to establish reliable knowledge, first acknowledge it — relentless honesty about what can and cannot be extrapolated from data is another core principle of science — and then do more, or do something else. As it is, we have a field of sort-of-science in which hypotheses are treated as facts because they’re too hard or expensive to test, and there are so many hypotheses that what journalists like to call “leading authorities” disagree with one another daily.” —Gary Taubes, New York Times

If you’ve been reading our blog for a while, you may have noticed that something is missing: even though we discuss yoga for healthy eating, we never really define what healthy eating is, and we certainly never provide any specific dietary guidance (and never, ever mention dietary supplements!). But this is no accident. In fact, from the very beginning, we made a policy decision not to discuss diets for healthy aging on the blog. In an early Friday Q&A Brad addressed the issue by saying:

As a scientist who also studies aging, I am especially intrigued about how diet can influence lifespan and health. However, that is not something I want to discuss here, as I am not a nutritionist or trained in this area. It is also something that is hugely complicated, and some of the better scientific controlled studies are not done in humans, but rather in mice or other animal models. For example, I recently attended a symposium in Cape Cod in March on Metabolism and Aging sponsored by Cell Symposia and Elsevier. Data is clearly emerging about how diets high in fat and/or cholesterol are contributing to metabolic dysregulation. But defining the precise molecular pathways that regulate and control our basic metabolism and how diet can contribute to age-related diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension, is still in its infancy. At this point I would recommend only common sense. You know, the stuff your grandma was supposed to teach you: eat in moderation and eat your vegetables.

Unfortunately, although it is commonly acknowledged that a “healthy” diet is an important aspect of healthy aging, there is so much controversy about what that healthy diet entails (dairy, for example, is recommended in some diets and not in others) that we decided not to publicly support one theory over another. (I say publicly because obviously all of us make our own dietary decisions in our day-to-day lives.) You see, even with scientists and MDs on board to study the research, we had no real proof that any one theory made more sense than the others. And a recent opinion piece in The New York times confirmed this decision for me. The article Why Nutrition is So Confusing describes the “dysfunctional” research on nutrition as follows:

"The 600,000 articles — along with several tens of thousands of diet books — are the noise generated by a dysfunctional research establishment. Because the nutrition research community has failed to establish reliable, unambiguous knowledge about the environmental triggers of obesity and diabetes, it has opened the door to a diversity of opinions on the subject, of hypotheses about cause, cure and prevention, many of which cannot be refuted by the existing evidence. Everyone has a theory. The evidence doesn’t exist to say unequivocally who’s wrong."

The problem has to do with the particular nature of research on nutrition. The challenges of actually testing out the different theories of what foods and/or diets foster good health and long life are great:

"In nutrition, the hypotheses are speculations about what foods or dietary patterns help or hinder our pursuit of a long and healthy life. The ingenious and severe attempts to refute the hypotheses are the experimental tests — the clinical trials and, to be specific, randomized controlled trials. Because the hypotheses are ultimately about what happens to us over decades, meaningful trials are prohibitively expensive and exceedingly difficult.  It means convincing thousands of people to change what they eat for years to decades. Eventually enough heart attacks, cancers and deaths have to happen among the subjects so it can be established whether the dietary intervention was beneficial or detrimental."

Unfortunately this hasn’t stopped various “experts” from making claims about particular diets and even individual supplements based on less than reliable science. As Taubes says:

Nutritionists have adjusted to this reality by accepting a lower standard of evidence on what they’ll believe to be true. They do experiments with laboratory animals, for instance, following them for the better part of the animal’s lifetime — a year or two in rodents, say — and assume or at least hope that the results apply to humans. And maybe they do, but we can’t know for sure without doing the human experiments.

They do experiments on humans — the species of interest — for days or weeks or even a year or two and then assume that the results apply to decades. And maybe they do, but we can’t know for sure. That’s a hypothesis, and it must be tested.

For now, all we can recommend is, as Brad said, a common sense approach to a healthy diet. So eat moderately, load up on fruits and vegetables, limit the processed foods and try to maintain a balanced diet—we’re leaving it up to you to judge exactly what a balanced diet means to you. But once you make your own decisions about how you want to eat, yoga can help support you. Conscious relaxation practices help foster healthier eating habits by reducing stress eating and building will power. And mindfulness practices help you discover which foods are right for you (some of us have particular allergies, food intolerances or sensitivities), and replace old habits with new, healthier ones.

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Understanding the Relationship Between Yoga and Ayurveda

Reflections by Melina Meza

by Ram

A lot of questions/comments are being raised in this blog regarding Ayurveda and yoga, so Nina asked me to address these issues. While I think that the science of Ayurveda and yoga is better addressed and understood in a verbal format—akin to a didactic exchange of information—through this article I will try to lay out the main principles that govern both these sciences.

Thanks to Swami Vivekananda, yoga came to the West in 1893 and was welcomed by a very receptive audience. While people embraced yoga, its counterpart Ayurveda, was left behind in India. This despite the fact that both yoga and Ayurveda are two very similar paths sharing a close relationship, so closely related that they are often described as two sides of the same coin. Both these sciences, which have their origin in the Vedic texts, address health and health practices. If Ayurveda is the healing aspect, yoga is the spiritual/practical side of the Vedic teachings. Together they emphasize a complete approach to the wellbeing of the body, the mind, and the spirit. In fact, their close relationship has even led to some scholars arguing that Patanjali, considered by many to be the father of yoga, and Charaka, often considered as the father of Ayurveda, may have in fact been one and the same person known in Vedic India by different names during his travels to spread the teachings of these ancient sciences.

Both sciences have common underlying principles: the well being of an individual at the level of body and mind and the aim of helping an individual re-connect to their true nature through direct and personal experience (pratyeksha in Sanskrit). While yoga prepares the body and mind of the individual for eventual liberation and enlightenment, Ayurveda describes the various ways to keep the body and mind healthy. Both sciences emphasize our close relationship with the environment and how to alter our environment in such a way that it is harmonious with our deepest nature.

In today’s world, yoga is often thought of as “asanas only,” something like a stretching tool to keep the body limber and agile. People are drawn to yoga as a way to keep fit even though the idea behind the physical practice of yoga is to help the mind to become clear or pure and develop deeper mind-body awareness. A clear mind is not affected by stress and a clear mind produces a healthy body thus creating a greater connection with one's own pure, essential nature. Similarly, Ayurveda brings with it the knowledge of how to keep the physical body healthy and how this relates to one's spiritual journey. It addresses our entire lifestyle, including exercise and yoga. However, Ayurveda is highly individualistic and sees each individual as unique and an individual's path toward perfect health as a unique path. Hence, what is right for each individual is unique to that individual alone. This could be described as person’s unique genetic background or constitution or dosha in Sanskrit. An individual’s constitution describes who the person is at the most fundamental level.

The above concept is remarkable because as a result of this understanding, Ayurveda prescribes a unique, “tailor-made” program to each individual based upon his/her constitution and the nature of the imbalance, and avoids the “one size-fits all” concept that is followed in many systems of healing. As Dr Marc Halpern, director of the California College of Ayurveda, points out:

While Ayurveda does not agree with the "Fits all" concept, it subscribes to the philosophy that “nothing is right for everyone and everything is right for someone.”

Thus, Ayurveda is based upon understanding individualized needs and what is right only for the individual - not the masses - and fulfilling those needs to bring complete harmony.

As with diet, herbs, colors, aromas, etc, Ayurveda sheds light on which specific yoga asanas are best for each individual based on his/her constitution. With the knowledge of Ayurveda, a practitioner of hatha yoga can refine his/her practice so that it is in harmony with their internal balance of energy. Some yoga postures are best for one person while others can cause greater imbalance. By knowing one's constitutional balance, an individual can use constitution-specific asanas to reverse their imbalances and improve their health and wellbeing. Indeed, if we can understand our constitution, we can control our choices and choose only those that will lead us toward optimal health.

How does one get to know their inherent constitution? There are several alternative health journals or web sites that analyze your constitution based on your answers to a specific set of questions. Chances are that your alternative health practitioner (who does not hold a proper certification in Ayurveda studies) may have made a passing remark about your constitution. Do not rely solely on this analysis, instead take it all with a grain of salt. Before jumping to any conclusion about your constitution and changing your diet, asanas or lifestyle, it is always best to consult with an Ayurvedic health professional who will help to determine your constitution, help you to understand the nature of any imbalance, and establish a plan to bring you to balance thus providing guidance toward success in establishing a disease-free lifestyle.

Despite my opposition to separating these two sciences, let me emphasize that when it comes to the Yoga for Healthy Aging blog, we have a general policy against writing about anything except yoga and the science of aging. Not all the staff of Yoga for Healthy Aging are trained in the area of Ayurevdic sciences and we would like to keep this subject off limits. So we’re going to have to decline to address questions on specific diet, herbs, or general Ayurvedic medical advice as it is a highly individualized system. Besides we cannot provide Ayurvedic advice without examining you in person in a private setting and this, after all, is a yoga blog! So, we hope you understand.

Namaste.

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Mission Statement

by Nina

Above the Fog by Brad Gibson

Recently I received a question from a reader asking two questions; the first question was yoga related. The second, which was not yoga related, asked which supplements we recommended for a certain condition. After letting our reader know we would be happy to address the first question (and in fact, an answer to her question will be coming this very week), I wrote:

But regarding the second question, we don't address nutrition and supplements on the blog. None of us are trained in that area, and recommending supplements is a very tricky issue for a number of reasons. So, from the beginning, we established a general policy against writing about anything except yoga and the science of aging. So we're going to have to decline to address that one. I hope you understand!

The reader graciously—we love our readers!—wrote back saying that she did understand. But as we have a number of new readers since we published our original mission statement (see In the Kitchen), I thought I’d take a moment to let you all know a little bit more about our mission. Of course, we’re blessed here at Yoga for Healthy Aging to have an extraordinary staff, including two MDs (Dr. Baxter Bell and Dr. Timothy McCall), two scientists who study aging (Dr. Bradford Gibson and Dr. Rammohan Rao) and a practicing physical therapist (Shari Ser, P.T.). Naturally with so much available expertise, you might assume that we’d be able and willing to address subjects other than yoga that know quite a bit about, especially if they are related to the aging. But even we were first discussing the blog, we understood that for differing reasons, some subjects needed to be off limits. So without further ado....

What we will take on: 

1. Yoga asana, meditation, pranayama, and other practices, especially as they relate to healthy aging.
2. Yoga philosophy and yoga history.
3. The science of aging and various theories of aging.
4. Scientific studies regarding yoga.
5. Medical conditions in general and how you can use yoga to address them.

What we won't take on:

1. Diet
2. Supplements.
3. Medical advice. (Yes, we have doctors here, but as with any doctor, our doctors cannot dispense medical advice without examining you in person. Besides, this is a yoga blog!)

Even after declaring those three topics off limits, we can assure you, we've still got an enormous wealth of useful and inspiring information to share with you. Plus, we've added three new regular contributors (Timothy, Ram, and Shari) since we first started the blog, who have even more ideas and new points of view. During the very first discussion Baxter, Brad and I had about the idea of the blog (we were in the kitchen, preparing a meal together), Baxter was initially concerned that we might not have enough material, but Brad said, "No way. We'll never run out of topics!"  

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Got Mindfulness?

by Nina

Yesterday I read an Op-Ed piece by Mark Bittman in the NY Times Got Milk? You Don't Need It and I was very surprised to read the following:

“This in a country where as many as 50 million people are lactose intolerant, including 90 percent of all Asian-Americans and 75 percent of all African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and Jews.

Seventy five percent of all Jews are lactose intolerant? Wow! I’m Jewish and I never even heard this before! When I was a kid, I hated drinking milk. But my mother was so convinced that it was imperative for my health that I was not allowed to leave the table until I forced down my entire (totally yucky) serving. When I was old enough to stop drinking milk as a beverage, I did, although I continued to eat dairy products in their many tempting forms (cheese, butter, ice cream, yoghurt, in lattes and on cereal, etc.). Meanwhile, I always had a rather delicate digestive system, but I tended to blame it on other things (soy, garlic, etc.) Then several years ago my digestive problems got worse, and I finally consulted my doctor about it. She suggested that perhaps it was just the aging process and added there was little I could do about that (to her credit, she did ask me if I was lactose intolerant, but I said that I wasn’t).  Hope I’m not boring you with all this, but there’s a point, I promise.

Anyway, I had noticed that when I spent a week or two eating a vegan diet (because my two kids took turns being vegan during different periods) I felt great. But I still wasn’t connecting the dots. It wasn’t until a few years ago when my husband and I decided to experiment by giving up diary products entirely for other reasons (the environment, global warming, a new theory of inflammation, consideration of dairy cows) that I noticed, hey, my digestive problems are gone! And all the plant foods I thought I couldn’t digest well now made me happy and healthy. Because I felt so much better, it became easy for me to pass up the tempting treats I used to indulge in, even to give them up for life (though with the occasional splurge—hey, my daughter is a pastry chef).

Above the Fog Again by Brad Gibson

You see, last week’s interview with Dayna Macy Yoga for Healthy Eating about mindfulness and healthy eating really made me think, especially the following: 

"Most people don't just sit in Lotus, they work to open their hips and one day, maybe, they get there. It's the same with food. You are discovering who you are in your relationship with eating. You don't just wake up one day and say, "ah ha! This is the perfect way to eat! Now I will do this perfectly from now on!" Knowledge is earned and learned, one day at a time. The truth must resonate and live in your body to become real change."

I just realized this morning that I had been practicing exactly what she described, and that mindfulness about my eating led me to healthier eating habits for my particular body, even though I never heard that fact about Jews being lactose intolerant. My long-time yoga practice no doubt helped me tune into how my body was reacting to different foods, and that ultimately brought me to a decision about my diet that is not only going to have the short-term benefit of making me feel better on a daily basis but will also help my health in the long run.

Have any of you used mindfulness about your eating to move yourself toward a healthier diet? We’d love to hear from you.

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