Why the Atkins/Paleo crowd is wrong about Ancel Keys.

Connor WE, Connor SL. The key role of nutritional factors in the prevention of coronary heart disease. Prev Med. 1972 Mar;1(1):49-83.

Using data from 29 countries this study found the following correlations between the mortality rate from coronary heart disease and certain nutrients in the diet:

positive correlations (risk factors)
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animal protein 0.782
cholesterol 0.762
meat 0.697
total fat 0.676
eggs 0.666
sugar 0.638
total calories 0.633
animal fat 0.632

no correlation
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plant sterols 0.144
fish 0.013
vegetable fat 0.011
vegetables 0.009

negative correlations (protective)
--------------------
starch -0.463
vegetable protein -0.403

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The Mediterranean diet is considered to have to most evidence of being a healthy diet, and it is near vegetarian, low in saturated fat, low in animal protein and higher in starch than the SAD. And in clinical trials by Dr. Ornish and Dr. Esselstyn ---- high starch, high fiber, low saturated fat diets consistently reduce cardiac events and all-cause mortality in severely ill heart patients. All of this is consistent with this study that included 29 countries, not just six.

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Furthermore Ancel Keys is accused of making us fat, however the American public never adopted the Mediterranean diet the Dr. Keys recommended. At that time Italy with it's Mediterranean diet had one of the lowest obesity rates in the world. And in general populations with the lowest obesity rates eat the most starch and fiber and the least meat.


COUNTRY/% OBESITY/YEAR/REGION

United States/34/2006/US
Thailand/8/2003/SE Asia
Singapore/7/2004/SE Asia
Philippines/4/2003/SE Asia
Eritrea/3/2004/Africa
Korea, South/3/2001/SE Asia
Japan/3/2000/SE Asia
China/3/2002/SE Asia
Indonesia/2/2001/SE Asia
Madagascar/2/2005/Africa
Laos/1/2000/SE Asia
Vietnam/1/2000/SE Asia

http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2013nl/mar/med.htm

New study reveals mechanism of how LDL cholesterol damages the brain to promote Alzheimer's and the blood vessels to promote atherosclerosis

"Cholesterol increases risk of Alzheimer's and heart disease

High levels of blood cholesterol increase the risk of both Alzheimer's disease and heart disease, but it has been unclear exactly how cholesterol damages the brain to promote Alzheimer's disease and blood vessels to promote atherosclerosis.

Using insights gained from studying two much rarer disorders, Down Syndrome and Niemann Pick-C disease, researchers at the Linda Crnic Institute for Down Syndrome and the Department of Neurology of the University of Colorado School of Medicine found that cholesterol wreaks havoc on the orderly process of cell division, leading to defective daughter cells throughout the body.

In the new study published this week in the on-line journal PLOS ONE, Antoneta Granic, PhD, and Huntington Potter, PhD, show that cholesterol, particularly in the LDL form, called 'bad cholesterol', causes cells in both humans and mice to divide incorrectly and distribute their already-duplicated chromosomes unequally to the next generation. The result is an accumulation of defective daughter cells with the wrong number of chromosomes and therefore the wrong number of genes. Instead of the correct two copies of each chromosome, and thus two copies of each gene, some cells acquired three copies and some only one.

Granic and Potter's study of the effects of cholesterol on cell division included a prominent finding of cells carrying three copies of the chromosome (#21 in humans and #16 in mice) that encodes the amyloid peptide that is the key component of the neurotoxic amyloid filaments that accumulate in the brains of Alzheimer patients.

Human trisomy 21 cells are significant because people with Down syndrome have trisomy 21 in all of their cells from the moment of conception, and they all develop the brain pathology and many develop the dementia of Alzheimer's disease by age 50. Earlier studies by Granic, Potter and others have shown that as many as 10% of cells in an Alzheimer patient, including neurons in the brain, have three copies of chromosome 21 instead of the usual two. Thus, Alzheimer's disease is, in some ways, a form of acquired Down syndrome. Furthermore, mutant genes that cause inherited Alzheimer's disease cause the same defect in chromosome segregation as does cholesterol, thus indicating the presence of a common cell division problem in both familial and 'sporadic' (non-familial) Alzheimer's disease."

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-cholesterol-alzheimer-heart-disease.html#jCp