Is Peat Wrong After All? The Lyon Heart Study

[Wilfrid]

Hi coco,

Thanks for your reply.
My main point by quoting Broda Barnes was to raise a legitimate concern: have any even " better " ( by better, I mean, of course, above the 70% of the Lorgeril study ) results been obtained to treat this life threatening condition? And also addressing your quote about " No drugs have ever done that!".....
I put below a summary of his study:

" In 1970, Dr. Broda Barnes had 1,569 patients on natural thyroid hormone who were observed for a total of 8,824 patient years. These patients were classified by age, sex, elevated cholesterol, and high blood pressure, and compared to similar patients in the Framingham Heart Study. Based on the statistics derived in the study, seventy-two of Dr. Barnes’s patients should have died from heart attacks; however, only four patients had done so. This represents a decreased heart attack death rate of 95 percent in patients who received natural thyroid hormone."

Keep in mind that alterations in the diet and even quitting smoking was discouraged. The only variable was the exogenous thyroid supplementation.
I think that you can probably get as much information as you can by just contacting the Broda Barnes foundation. And then it would be interesting to ask Lorgeril about Barnes work. Barnes was very pro-saturated fats and not very found of the unsaturated ones.

And this quote from one of Ray's newsletter:

"Broda Barnes was right when he said that the “riddle of heart attacks” was solved when he demonstrated that hypothyroidism caused heart attacks, and that they were prevented by correcting hypothyroidism. He also observed that correcting hypothyroidism prevented the degenerative conditions (including heart disease) that so often occur in diabetics."

I'm French too by the way.

 

[Crazycoco]

Un compatriote! Hello Wilfrid !

I dont know about barnes. Is there any randomized control trial of barnes recommandations? 95% is huge. Any control of theses claims? What epidemiologists think of these "study"?
were patients of Barnes Had heart before as in Lyon heart study?

 

[Crazycoco]

*heart attack

 

[ddjd]

I think it's around 30% PUFA, so about the same as modern day lard. Soybean averages at about 58%, sunflower oil @ 66% and safflower @ 75%.

Edit: It's actually 28% PUFA.

That's still a huge amount

 

[HealthisWealth]

united nation of xisca.....

so dairy/calcium to lower iron after meals

i might try rice with tahini.

Oils are more than oils... Olive oil has oleuropein, the same as in olive leaves that are sold as a supplement, which I investigated thanks to @Daniel11

Diets in the world have alsways been GOOD at finding a balance within the unbalance due to nature's providing this but not that, and "es lo que hay"! Meaning that you have no choice but finding a creative solution within your local boundaries.
1st do not die of hunger!
2nd, eat what there is, so that you do more than surviving, and more than hibernating.
3rd, find in your place how to eat problematic food by the right processing, and the right other food that compensate the original problem.
4th comes a world where we can:
- eat part of a masai diet, and part of an inuit diet!
- extract and separate food elements, including oil...
Argh, 3rd point becomes complex!

When I saw some asiatic claiming about the necessity to eat some sesame like tahini with their white rice, and chew all that well, and that those people in a poor hospital were recovering much better than in the hospital for the rich!!!! This is about balancing, about less sugar pike, and sesame is more than sesame oil, and more than pufas. And better than rice alone.

When the masai drink blood, this is obviously to not burn the cherry tree in winter and complain of no cherries in the spring! Too much iron, well dairy next. Amd keep the animal alive as long as it helps you live.
And when a doctor says to eat a piece of cheese after red meat, this is the idea of a French doctor isn't it? Local solution in a place where you can breed cows for meat and dairies.

But when instead of your fields for cultivating, and your forests for hunting, and your river or sea for fishing, you have a supermarket with tropical fruits "fields", and freezing ice north pole conditions a few steps away... sure you loose some creativity to overcome local drawbacks! The less choices, the more you need creativity. More choices seem to trigger less creativity, but indeed even more is needed, and much more knowledge. The scientific knowledge has to help the intuitive one.

Also, when you eat all the time the same local food, you know what you feel when you introduce one new food, so you are closer to your body sensations, or better said, you can translate your body sensations much better.

Sooooooooo, yes this is interresting to see where are the points in different diets. But @Crazycoco you just do not know the difference between french and others! It is normal and not rude to be provocative in France! Much less than anywhere else!

Please others who are not European, be ethnologists and laugh at the French trick that is no way rude in this country : you are supposed to stimulate others by a word like "wrong", so that they are triggered in their creativity to answer you! And the person who uses the word "wrong" is just trying to make end's ends meet, look for where the opposites have something in common or can enrich each other! This coco nut told you many times that he was trying to see what was good and in common in 2 different diets, and where the differences come from. Why some opposite in the diet reach good or even same results?

cococrazy, how would you rephrase your question as a wise ehtnologist who drops his native trick?
I have wished for a long time that this forum's members would all put their country visible to others... We are here like the supermarkets: very international and a mix trying to match and create something new.

 

[tankasnowgod]

"Toxic" is a tough term in general, particular in medicine. If you give "toxic" thing to a patient with heart problem he will die. Here they survive very well, with this "toxic" thing in spite of butter.
So no, i can as' the question
"Is peat gone too far?".

Well, in that case, cigarettes and alcohol aren't toxins, then. Billions of people engage in one or both of those behaviors every day, and don't die. Many engage in them for several decades chronically, and survive.

The same would have to be true for pretty much any illicit and prescription drug. Even radiation and chemotherapy. You can find examples of people who took high doses (in some cases acute, in some cases chronic) of all of those things, and survived. Sometimes for several years or even decades.

 

[Crazycoco]

Tankasnowgod,

Of course some people smoke and dont die then. But here is the point. Take 600 hundred of smokers who had a major lung problem. then put them on a randomized control trial: 300 continue to smoke in the control group, 300 forbidden to smoke in the experimental group. Wait some years and see what happens. It's obvious the second group Will have far less lung cancer.

Again peat says That pufa oils are toxic, so they harm or kill people. Hé says That saturated fat are Protective. More than That, i quote: "It isn't the quantity of these polyunsaturated oils which governs the harm they do, but the relationship between them and the saturated fats. Obesity, free radical production, the formation of age pigment, blood clotting, inflammation, immunity, and energy production are all responsive to the ratio of unsaturated fats to saturated fats, and the higher this ratio is, the greater the probability of harm there is. "

In the Lyon heart study, RCT, the group with the ratio favorable from a peat perspective is the group with the more heart attack...

So what i say here is:

Saturated fats didnt protect the first group very well
Not all pufa are create equal. "toxic" is may be too much for small or reasonable amount.

 

[schultz]

That's still a huge amount

Yah, I'd be happier with 2%

 

[tankasnowgod]

Tankasnowgod,

Of course some people smoke and dont die then. But here is the point. Take 600 hundred of smokers who had a major lung problem. then put them on a randomized control trial: 300 continue to smoke in the control group, 300 forbidden to smoke in the experimental group. Wait some years and see what happens. It's obvious the second group Will have far less lung cancer.

Again peat says That pufa oils are toxic, so they harm or kill people. Hé says That saturated fat are Protective. More than That, i quote: "It isn't the quantity of these polyunsaturated oils which governs the harm they do, but the relationship between them and the saturated fats. Obesity, free radical production, the formation of age pigment, blood clotting, inflammation, immunity, and energy production are all responsive to the ratio of unsaturated fats to saturated fats, and the higher this ratio is, the greater the probability of harm there is. "

In the Lyon heart study, RCT, the group with the ratio favorable from a peat perspective is the group with the more heart attack...

So what i say here is:

Saturated fats didnt protect the first group very well
Not all pufa are create equal. "toxic" is may be too much for small or reasonable amount.

Alright, I've grown weary of this argument. You keep on going on about the ratio. So, I decided to look at the study (attached here), and guess what? The researchers FLAT OUT agree with Peat in the second paragraph of the introduction, and I quote-

"We have reported that a dietary polyunsaturated to saturated fat ratio more than 1, even if associated with a decrease in plasma cholesterol, enhanced platelet aggregation to adenosine diphosphate. High platelet aggregation is associated with myocardial infarction and closely predicts coronary events.9"

So, what did the researchers do? They controlled for this across groups. The experimental group had a ratio of .588, while the control had a ratio of .519. Although this is based on dietary recall data, blood tests do seem to back it up.

Again, that's not the only difference. Quoting again from the actual study- "In the experimental group, plasma levels of albumin, vitamin E, and vitamin C were increased, and granulocyte count decreased."

So, while the control group did have a slightly better (estimated) PUFA to SFA ratio, the experimental group was still estimated to eat less overall PUFA (10g as compared to 14g in the control), while also CONFIRMED to have higher levels of Vitamin C, E and Albumin.

This study does way more to confirm Peat's ideas than it does to challenge them.

 

[Crazycoco]

If you think That a diet with more legumes (anti-thyroid for Ray peat) more bread, less butter, more canola oil , "does way more to confirm Peat's idea That challenge them", how would you name those quotes from the study itself ? "super-peaty"?

"Whether it is alpha-linolenic acid that plays a protective part cannot be determined by this study; it is one of the most striking differences between the experimental and control groups and already present at 8 weeks. Also, whether alpha- linolenic acid acts by competing with arachidonic acid for prostaglandin E2 synthesis2 or as the precursor of
eicosapentaenoic acid is not known; this last hypothesis, however, concurrs with then results of Burr showing that a small increase in intake of fish decreased mortality within a few months, possibly through the prevention of ventricular fibrillation during acute myocardial ischaemia."

 

[Xisca]

united nation of xisca.....
so dairy/calcium to lower iron after meals
i might try rice with tahini.

Do you mean there are seven islands in the Canaries?

A typical French meal was salad with olive oil and vinegar and mustard ; MEAT and potatoes and whatever veggie ; CHEESE ; dessert.
Tahini is a local solution to add some fat and more to the only food, rice. But it is full of pufa of course, though the non rafinated one might be packed with antioxydants, and the seed itself has proteins. The big "healthfood" mistake is to use it whole, which means a lot of lectins and phytic acid! And I am almost sure it can trigger allergies.
I do not use it personally...

Of course some people smoke and dont die then. But here is the point. Take 600 hundred of smokers who had a major lung problem. then put them on a randomized control trial: 300 continue to smoke in the control group, 300 forbidden to smoke in the experimental group. Wait some years and see what happens. It's obvious the second group Will have far less lung cancer.

Yes but you can find here a discussion about the good point from smoking, as it helps the thyroid! So, far less lung cancer, but far more what? Just to show that something obvious can hide something else, like a train another train....

 

[Wilfrid]

Un compatriote! Hello Wilfrid !

I dont know about barnes. Is there any randomized control trial of barnes recommandations? 95% is huge. Any control of theses claims? What epidemiologists think of these "study"?
were patients of Barnes Had heart before as in Lyon heart study?

Hi coco,

As far as I know Barnes made one ( and only one ) recommendation...which was to take thyroid hormones, that's it.
Why don't you ask directly to De Lorgeril about Barnes results?
He will probably more than happy to point Barnes study's limitations, don't you think?
As soon as you get his response, please post it.
I'm telling you that because it seems that you were at one point in contact with him ( cf the articles about cholesterol made by Ray that you submitted to him.). It's not very important that you didn't know about Barnes but it would be interesting to hear ( or at least to read ) what De Lorgeril have to say about the man and his works.

You can use those following references for De Lorgeril:

Barnes BO and Barnes CW : Heart Attack Rareness m Thyroid treated Patients . Springfield, Illinois. Charles C Thomas, Publisher, 1972.

Kouncz WB. Thyroid Function and its Possible Role in Vascular Degeneration . Springfield. Illinois. Charles C Thomas . Publisher. 1951.

 

[Crazycoco]

No problem Wilfrid, but i think he is currently on vacation. He has a blog and he replies! So you can ask the question if you want it is easy.

Check his articles on wine, intersting stuff. He has obsessions too. Cholestérol theories and statins are entierly bull**** for him. (i think he is right on that)

 

[Wilfrid]

Thanks, coco.
If you have time to read the following link, you will also find informations about thyroid and CVD:
Thyroid Hormones and Heart Disease - 180 Degree Health

 

[Crazycoco]

Yes thank you, i've already learned about it because you mention Barnes.
Matt stone is funny. I think has a peat paradigm but Laugh at peat regarding what peat says on starches. Like "hello skiny asian people skip the rice and take ice cream because starch is fattening" lol.
But i think, like elswhere, he goes sometimes too far. Saying cookie are perfect food to raise metabolism and beiing healthy euh... Lol.
But it's important to have guys like this to challenge conviction or to have a recovery for crazy vegans ultra-low fat low proteins sh***ing bananas all day

 

[jyb]

If you think That a diet with more legumes (anti-thyroid for Ray peat) more bread, less butter, more canola oil , "does way more to confirm Peat's idea That challenge them", how would you name those quotes from the study itself ? "super-peaty"?

As an aside, those ideas are not specific to Peat. It has been almost common thinking in many places. Many medical doctors hold one or the other view. As you can see there is a lot of public debate about this, even researchers in this field don't agree.

 

[Crazycoco]

As an aside, those ideas are not specific to Peat. It has been almost common thinking in many places. Many medical doctors hold one or the other view.

I dont understand what you are saying. Could you explain more? Not you don't wrote well. Just i dont understand. Thank you:)

 

[tankasnowgod]

If you think That a diet with more legumes (anti-thyroid for Ray peat) more bread, less butter, more canola oil , "does way more to confirm Peat's idea That challenge them", how would you name those quotes from the study itself ? "super-peaty"?"

A diet with more legumes and bread and canola oil and less butter than........ what exactly? The control diet where people just ate whatever they had been eating?

Looking at the estimates, the control group ate an estimated 244g of bread and cereals. The experimental group? 261g. That's less than a 7% difference. Both those amounts are far more than Ray would recommend. I think, ideally, his number would be zero grams of bread and cereals.

This is the point. NEITHER the experimental nor the control diet in the Lyon Heart Study is a diet that Peat would recommend. Both groups consumed bread and legumes and oils and margarine. But in this context, the experimental group is more in line with Peat's ideas than the control group.

Again, we know the experimental group had higher serum levels of vitamin C, E, and A, as confirmed by actual blood tests, and lower serum amounts of PUFA in the cells, along with lower estimated PUFA intake. Those things are absolutely in line with Peat's ideas, and are beneficial regardless of other components of the diet. It is quite possible that the experimental group would have had better outcomes if they had been given coconut oil based margarine instead of canola. And completely eliminated bread and cereals. And legumes. But we don't know that, cause that wasn't tested.

 

[Crazycoco]

I can agree with most of what you said, if not all.
Yes more vitamins in the experimental group, less overall Pufa (but a ratio pufa/safa less favorable and Ray peat says That the ratio is what matters) and yes they, haven't tested all that versus coconut oil group.

But again, Ray peat thinks That pufa are ..."toxic" -his own terms.

So imagine before the study we have:

-american heart association "Omega 6 prevent heart diseases"
-Ray peat "all pufa are toxic"
- french guys "well, not all pufa are created equal, we eat too much Omega 6. We think That it causes heart attacks and cancers. A good way to solve the problem is to remove lot of Omega 6 and add a bit Omega 3"

In a peat paradigm nothing Would happen, minor changes. In the french paradigm a lot of things Would change. Guess what happens?

 

[ecstatichamster]

These studies are a dime a dozen and largely worthless.

There can be great discussions nevertheless, as this thread attests, but the basic study is idiotic.

I have seen 100 studies like this and they are never revealing EXCEPT as to the trendy fads and prejudices of the researchers at the time.

Cholesterol study showed low cholesterol was better in similar study.

HRT study showed fake estrogen-like drugs were better in a similar type study.

There are a hundred "mediterranean diet" studies like this.

Drivel.