Re: Re: New saturated fat study- What do you think?

[Guest guest]

-------------- Original message ----------------------

From: " downwardog7 " <illneverbecool@...>

>

> >

> > Would love to hears thoughts about this...Is there something about

> > the interaction of fats with the sugar and refined flour?

> >

> ,

> Someone who cares enough needs to look up the details of the study and

> see if they used hydrogenated or fractionated coconut oil. But that's

> not me.

> B.

>

Don't most commercial products that use coconut oil use the hydrogenated or

fractionated variety? Somehow I doubt that the guinea pigs in this experiment

were given milk shakes made with raw milk from grass fed cows, etc. From what

I've glanced at so far, this seems to bolster the fact that junk food will kill

you.

[Guest guest]

On 8/8/06, downwardog7 <illneverbecool@...> wrote:

> Someone who cares enough needs to look up the details of the study and

> see if they used hydrogenated or fractionated coconut oil. But that's

> not me.

Hydrogenation is one factor -- I would guess a small one considering

how saturated coconut oil is, but I might be wrong since trans fats

can be harmful in pretty small amounts -- but virgin is also another

factor.

In any case, I haven't looked at the study yet but from the abstract

what it appears they did was they took a blood sample after the meal,

isolated the HDL from this blood sample, and then took isolated cells

and incubated them with HDL, and either measured their expression of

certain inflammatory compounds directly, or gave them something that

induced the expression of inflammatory compounds and then measured

them, and compared the effects of incubating them with the two

different HDLs (those isolated after coconut oil or those isolated

after safflower oil).

It sounds like an in vivo study in the article, where they actually

measured how their arteries were functioning, but it's really more of

an in vitro study whose relevance might be questionable. I'll look at

it later.

Chris

--

The Truth About Cholesterol

Find Out What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You:

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com

[Guest guest]

-------------- Original message ----------------------

From: " downwardog7 " <illneverbecool@...>

>

>

> > Don't most commercial products that use coconut oil use the

> hydrogenated or fractionated variety? Somehow I doubt that the guinea

> pigs in this experiment were given milk shakes made with raw milk from

> grass fed cows, etc. From what I've glanced at so far, this seems to

> bolster the fact that junk food will kill you.

>

> I don't know about most commercial products, there are many

> reasonable--if too sweet--commercial (like from WFN or The Raw Bakery)

> products out there with good coconut oil, but, according to Bruce

> Fife's latest newsletter, any scientific study concluding coconut oil

> promotes heart disease has used hydrogenated or fractionated coconut

> oil or oxidized cholesterol administered via coconut oil.

> TeResa B

>

>

right - I was imprecise...by 'commercial' I meant the sort of junk that most

people would just pick up in a supermarket without paying attention to the

ingredients.

[Guest guest]

On 8/8/06, downwardog7 <illneverbecool@...> wrote:

> I don't know about most commercial products, there are many

> reasonable--if too sweet--commercial (like from WFN or The Raw Bakery)

> products out there with good coconut oil, but, according to Bruce

> Fife's latest newsletter, any scientific study concluding coconut oil

> promotes heart disease has used hydrogenated or fractionated coconut

> oil or oxidized cholesterol administered via coconut oil.

I'm sure Bruce Fife has done much more thorough research on this than

I have but I have never seen a study that showed any kind of coconut

oil to promote heart disease. It's important to keep in mind the

endpoints, and not just skepticism about the source of coconut oil.

This study, for example, did not show that their snack led to heart

disease.

Chris

--

The Truth About Cholesterol

Find Out What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You:

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com

[Guest guest]

On 8/8/06, kristinmoke <kmoke@...> wrote:

> Yeah, you have to pay for the full journal text and it's not that

> important to me. Until recently, I would just roll my eyes and move

> on, but I just started teaching childbirth classes and I've been

> including some WAP advice and resources, so now I feel more compelled

> to find the holes in these mainstream studies that pop up in our local

> paper almost daily...yesterday it was another AP article on the danger

> of salt

I think I will probably look at this tonight and put a response in my

newsletter. I will probably just post it to the list too, but you can

subscribe to my newsletter at

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/Newsletter.html

Chris

--

The Truth About Cholesterol

Find Out What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You:

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com

[Guest guest]

On 8/8/06, downwardog7 <illneverbecool@...> wrote:

> Someone who cares enough needs to look up the details of the study and

> see if they used hydrogenated or fractionated coconut oil. But that's

> not me.

This just in from the author: the coconut oil was virgin and organic,

obtained from a health food store in Austrailia.

Chris

--

The Truth About Cholesterol

Find Out What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You:

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com

[Guest guest]

,

> Yeah, but...you've since read this, right?

>

> http://www.theomnivore.com/One_High-Saturated_Fat_Meal%20.html

Yes I did. He is essentially saying what I wrote in my first response

to this, which is that their primary finding did not concern what

happened in the people's blood vessels, but what happened when they

isolated the HDL and incubated isolated cells with it, which has

limited in vivo relevance. I was posting the information on the

coconut oil in part to reinforce the point that it is probably not the

quality of the coconut oil but rather the quality of the weak

inductive reasoning that laid behind the pseudo-factual statements in

the article.

Of course, the main purpose was because you were wondering. And also,

I think it's a good point to not assume that something we like is

hydrogenated or otherwise manipulated nefariously when a study comes

out with a conclusion we don't like.

I'm sure it was quite common to use hydrogenated coconut oil in

studies 20 or 30 years ago, but really -- how commonplace is it to

find hydrogenated coconut oil? In this country, it's far easier to

come across organic virgin coconut oil than hydrogenated coconut oil,

because coconut oil was eliminated from the non-health-food market a

long time ago. If you went to the nearest store you could find

coconut oil at, or ordered it online, chances are you'd wind up with a

relatively unrefined or virgin coconut oil unless you went out of your

way.

Chris

--

The Truth About Cholesterol

Find Out What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You:

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com

[Guest guest]

Connie,

> Dr. Mike Eades (Protein Power) has his commentary up on this.

> http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/

I think his strong point is noting the lack of conclusive relevance of

the in vitro portion of the test.

The point that this is in the context of junk food is mediocre, I

think. Certainly, I would like to see this in the context of meat and

vegetables or something instead of carrot cake and a milkshake, but

the sugar was controlled for. The finding on the adhesion molecules

is both statistically significant and I can't imagine it isn't

practically and theoretically significant. The expression of adhesion

molecules was reduced by HDL isolated from blood after the safflower

oil meal and substantially increased by HDL isolated from blood after

the coconut oil meal. The only difference between the meals was the

type of fat -- so at a minimum you have a finding attributable to the

fat. If the context modifies that, that is important, but the mere

possibility can't dismiss the finding.

But, because of the first, stronger point, there is nothing conclusive

about the finding.

The weak point he makes is on statistical significance:

> >A nonsignificant trend toward impairment of endothelium-dependent

> >vascular reactivity in conduit arteries was also demonstrated after the

> >saturated fat meal.

>Hey, guys, there ain't no such animal. Just like a woman can't be

>trending toward pregnancy, there is no nonsignificant trend toward

>anything. It's either significant or it isn't. Period. Unless, of

course, you're

>trying to pull the wool over someone's eyes.

First of all, this is silly. If something is 4.9% likely due to

chance it is a finding, but somehow if it is 5.1% due to chance it is

somehow magically not a finding? This type of reasoning is

ridiculous. The 5% standard is an arbitrary convention. Obviously

there is negligible difference in the importance of or confidence with

which we can accept a finding if it is 4.9% due to chance or 5.1% due

to chance, but yet we would arbitrarily *completely* dismiss the

latter by his standard and accept the former.

Second, if he believes this, he should apply it consistently.

Although the LDL was lower in the coconut oil group than the safflower

oil group, it was also lower in the coconut oil group at baseline.

The actual change in the percentage that LDL increased after the meal

in both groups is very small -- just under 7% in both groups at 3

hours, and about 10% in the safflower group and 7% in the coconut oil

group at six hours. The differences between the groups in the amounts

of cholesterol was statistically significant, but meaningless, since

they differed at baseline. The effect of time (that is, the

difference between baseline, 3 hours and 6 hours) in both groups was

not statistically significant (p=0.17), which by his reasoning means

that there was effectively NO percentage increase in LDL in EITHER

group, meaning there couldn't possibly be a difference between the

two.

By contrast, the difference in flow-mediated dilation between time

points was considerably closer to statistical significance (p=0.7),

which means that the difference between meals which has similar

statistical significance (p=0.08) could actually be important.

The much more important point about the flow-mediated dilation

experiment is the one Colpo makes (and which the authors also make in

the discussion), which the doctor above does not: there was a

substantial (25% higher in coconut oil group) difference between the

baseline flow-mediated dilation before the coconut oil and safflower

meals. Thus, we don't know to what effect the reduction in

flow-mediated dilation was affected by type of fat or by the apparent

coincidence of the basline values.

In fact, the flow-mediated dilation was substantially HIGHER in the

coconut oil group at all time points. It simply declined twice as

much at the 3 hour mark (17% reduction in safflower group versus 32%

reduction in coconut oil group). But it was still higher in the

coconut oil group even at this point (9%).

This is a seriously important point. The fact that the correlations

were 7% liklihood of being due to chance rather than a 5% lilihood of

being due to chance, by contrast, is an incredibly unimportant and

probably counterproductive point.

> Also Regina Wilshire (scroll way down to " step away from the burger " ):

> http://weightoftheevidence.blogspot.com/

This commentary is comparatively weak on the whole.

>both types of fat had acute effects that could be called " damaging " but

>with no real statistically significant differences. As the researchers put

>it, " a non-significant trend toward impairment... " Not only was it a " trend " -

> it was a NON-SIGNIFICANT trend, basically nothing to get your panties

>in a wad about;

Same comments as abive on the extreme weakness of this argument.

>the high-polyunsaturated fat " meal " resulted in a statistically significant

>rise in LDL (remember that pesky " bad " cholesterol) compared to the

>saturated fat " meal " ;

This is simply false; the safflower meal did not result in any

statistically significant change in the LDL concentration, nor did the

coconut oil meal.

>the researchers failed consider or measure the effect of a major

>confounding variable - the effect of sugar on blood glucose levels and

>thus insulin levels when combined with either type of fat;

They " considered " it by controlling for it!

>the researchers failed to completely isolate the effects of either fat type

>because they fed a high-fat, high-sugar mixed meal concoction that

>would not be replicated in a real world experience!

I don't know what " real world " she is living in, but I'm pretty sure

that high-fat, high-sugar meals are pretty common. Anyone who eats

carrot cake or milkshakes for example...

>saturated fatty acids do not activate endothelial expression, they simply

>do not inhibit it;

That's not very comforting. If my food should be inhibiting

endothelial expression but I'm eating food that does not inhibit it

instead of food that does, how is that any better than eating food

that stimulates such expression instead of food that does not? If one

accepts the unproven assumption that the coconut oil actually results

in a failure to inhibit the expression of adhesion molecules, than

coconut oil would act by displacing foods with important functions,

just like refined foods do.

Chris

--

The Truth About Cholesterol

Find Out What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You:

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com

[Guest guest]

Now that I've just completed the final exam for the summer course I'm

taking, I have some time to breathe. I'll be writing my article

tonight on this study, its representation in the press, the criticisms

of it, and what I think the real implications are. Hopefully I'll

publish it on my web site tonight, though it may take me into

tomorrow. I will be discussing a heretofore undiscussed point of view

on this study, as far as I know, so stay tuned.

Chris

--

The Truth About Cholesterol

Find Out What Your Doctor Isn't Telling You:

http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com