Category Archives: Q & A

I heard about a study that found that calcium increased heart disease risk. Should I not take calcium supplements for my bones?

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Discovery 13/365Creative Commons License  Yours is a very good question. Last year a  review of data from a large study found a slight elevated risk for heart disease and stroke in women who took supplements of calcium with or without vitamin D. What are we to do with this information?

First off, the best place to get all your nutrients is from food. Anyone worth their weight in nutrition credentials will tell you to go to milk and other calcium-rich foods. The reality is, few women drink 3 to 4 glasses of milk a day and their diets are far too low in this mineral. If you aren’t getting enough calcium from dietary sources, you risk the crippling disease of osteoporosis and possibly colon cancer and high blood pressure.

Second, nutrition is not a black-and-white science. Studies flip flop on topics, so you must look at where the weight of the evidence lies. Each study is like a thread in a tapestry. What does the tapestry say. In this case, there are many more studies showing calcium is safe and important for bone health and only a few that suggest it might slightly elevated heart disease risk.

The bottom line:  On the days when you don’t consume at least 3 calcium-rich foods in the daily diet, take a moderate-dose calcium (preferably with magnesium) supplement.  You only need to fill in the gaps between recommended intake and your dietary intake, not supply the entire 1,200 milligrams of calcium from a pill. I recommend one that supplies these two minerals in a 2:1 ratio, or about 500 milligrams calcium and 250 milligrams magnesium.

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I am considering going on a raw foods diet. What are your thoughts?

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The raw foods diet cycles around every ten or twenty years. Its premise is that raw foods are healthier (have “live” enzymes or are more nutritious). A raw foods diet usually consists primarily of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and other basic foods. While I am in agreement with people increasing their intakes of fruits and vegetables and nuts are certainly healthy additions to many diets, the raw foods diet is too restrictive to guarantee providing most people with all the vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and other nutrients needed for optimal health. Its premise also is false. As I discuss in The Origin Diet (Henry Holt 2001), humans have thrived for hundreds of thousands of years on diets composed of a mix of cooked and raw plants, nuts, cooked legumes, wild game, seafood, and other real food. While raw vegetables in salads are healthy and add variety to the diet and raw fruit is a great snack, many nutrients are actually better absorbed and available to the body when a food is cooked. For example, beta carotene is more available in cooked vegetables than in raw vegetables. The bottom line: You’ll be far better off focusing on minimally-processed foods, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, nonfat milk products, whole grains and extra lean meat,  and avoiding processed foods, than you are severely restricting your diet to only uncooked foods.

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I want to include more fish in my diet, but am concerned about mercury and pesticides.

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Salmon nigiri sushi - Shira Nui AUD18 special lunch setCreative Commons License   That depends on which fish you eat. While fish are a healthy alternative to red meat for lowering heart-disease risk, some of the waters in which they swim are not so pure. Many of the chemicals and pesticides used on land leach into the lakes, rivers, streams, and coastal waters where they are ingested by simple forms of marine life. These lifeforms, in turn, are consumed by medium-sized fish, which then are consumed by larger fish. Each step of this food chain – from plankton to trout – further concentrates chemical contaminants in fish tissues.

The chemicals of biggest concern in fish include pesticides such as DDT and dioxin, mercury, and PCBs or polychlorinated biphenyls. DDT and PCBs were discontinued in the 1970s, yet decades later residues are still found in samples of domestic fish. Granted, levels are gradually receding in the United States, but DDT is still used in other countries and its wide distribution in the environment and slow disintegration means that DDT and its breakdown products will be around for decades to come.

Despite these concerns, fish and shellfish remain one of the healthiest, low-calorie sources of many nutrients, such as protein, special fats called omega-3 fatty acids, the B vitamins, fluoride, iodine, zinc, and iron. Canned salmon and sardines eaten with the bones are excellent non-dairy sources of calcium. Oysters are the best dietary source for zinc (one large oyster supplies an entire day’s requirement for this trace mineral) and a good source of copper.

So how to get the benefits and reduce the health risks?
1) Select lean fish (most chemical contaminants concentrate in fatty tissues). Cod, flounder, haddock, Pacific halibut, ocean perch, pollock, and sole, are relatively safe from chemical contamination.
2) Select Pacific- and offshore-caught fish (limit or avoid near-shore saltwater or inland-caught freshwater fish). Salmon (caught in the Pacific, or farmed in Chili or Norway) also is safe.
3) Choose small, young fish. It’s the older, fattier fish that have had time to bioaccumulate pesticides and PCBs.
3) Cook shellfish and select clams and oysters harvested on the Pacific coast, if possible. (Food poisoning cases are caused by natural toxins or microorganisms that migrate into seafood because of poor handling practices. The greatest health risk is with raw oysters and other mollusks, accounting for up to 85% of all food poisonings caused from seafood.)
4) Limit tuna, swordfish, and shark to one serving a week; women who might become or are pregnant should limit these fish to once a month, since these types of fish may contain mercury, a toxic metal known to cause birth defects. Canned tuna contains less mercury than fresh tuna steaks, but limit intake to no more than two medium-sized cans a week (about 6 sandwiches).

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Have you heard of a supplement called Protandim? I hear it is an antioxidant and boosts energy.

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Not only have I heard of Protandim, but I was the spokesperson for the product the first year it came out. Dr. Joe McCord, the researcher that first discovered the antioxidant enzyme, superoxide dismutase, developed the supplement. It is not an antioxidant, but rather affects gene expression, turning on the cells’ production of antioxidant enzymes, much like all colorful fruits/vegetables, turmeric, etc do. It won’t give you energy. There are studies to support its use. Several years ago, I guessed it was the first of a new wave of supplements that will take advantage of this new area in nutrition, nutragenomics, which is the study of how food affects gene expression. The problem is most people don’t understand how foods affect cellular DNA, and the supplement, Protandim, was expensive. It’s a great supplement and I trust the researcher and the research to support its use. I know of no negative side effects.

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Do I need to cut back on salt if my blood pressure is normal?

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Yes.Salt drives up blood pressure in both healthy and hypertensive people. Studies show that daily intakes of sodium below 2,400mg (estimates of our typical intake range from 3,200 to 6,000mg daily) help prevent rises in blood pressure that occur with advancing age. The best results are noted with sodium intakes of 1,500mg or less.

The issue of salt really is one of how sensitive you are to its effects. About one-third of us are salt sensitive, which means that our blood pressure goes up when our salt intake goes up, and our blood pressure drops when we cut back on salt. For people with high blood pressure (hypertension), cutting back on salt and losing weight is so effective at lowering blood pressure that many people are able to go off their blood pressure medications as a result. The problem is that there is no way to tell who is and who isn’t salt sensitive until you develop high blood pressure. Granted, if you are overweight, older, or African American, you’re at higher risk, but others are salt-sensitive, too. That’s why the American Heart Association recommends that everyone keep their intakes to less than 2,400mg (the equivalent of about 1 teaspoon of salt). Too much salt in your diet today also might be harmful to your bones, increasing the risk for osteoporosis down the line.

While you miss the salty taste at meals, in reality only a third of our dietary salt comes from added salt in the kitchen. By far the biggest contributor is processed foods. Up to 77% of people’s salt intake came from processed foods! Some of those foods most of us know are high in salt, such as soy sauce and canned soup, but many will come as quite a surprise. For example, a cup of canned tomato sauce has up to 1,498 mg, a cup of canned chili contains up to 1,336 mg, and a half cup of cottage cheese has 914 mg. In general, the more processed a food, the higher its salt content.

To cut back on your salt today and save your blood pressure and bones in the future, try to:

1) Read labels. Keep an eye out for ingredients with “sodium” in the title, including sodium chloride, sodium benzoate, monosodium glutamate, and disodium phosphate.
2) Limit fast, convenience, and processed foods, including all fast foods, canned soups and sauces, all processed snack foods (chips, salted peanuts), and luncheon meats.
3) Limit salty condiments: bouillon, garlic salt, meat tenderizers, MSG, and baking soda. Instead, use lite salt substitutes, and season with herbs, lemon juice, and other flavors.
4) In restaurants, ask that food be prepared with less salt.
5) Flavor your food with other seasonings, such as herbs, roasted red pepper, chilies, fresh ginger, garlic, onions, salt substitutes, and lemon juice.
6) Base your diet on fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nonfat milk, and extra-lean meat and beans and you automatically will eat a low-sat diet. The added benefit is that this diet also helps curb your risk for all age-related disease, helps you live healthier longer, and will even help you shed a few pounds!

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