Researchers challenged a tenet of modern medicine that higher levels of “good” cholesterol automatically boost cardiovascular health.

In a study published in The Lancet, investigators said they found no evidence to back the belief that higher levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol routinely reduce the risk of a heart attack.

High concentrations of HDL are one of the big markers for blood tests.

They are monitored as much as low levels of “bad” cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein, or LDL) as a yardstick of dangerously clogged arteries. [Read more...]

But eating omega-3 fatty acids put critters back on track

The brain freeze from that hot fudge sundae might last longer than you think.

A new UCLA study on rats is the first to show how a diet high in processed sugar slows the brain, hampering memory and learning.

“Our findings illustrate that what you eat affects how you think,” study author Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a professor of neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said. “Eating a high-fructose diet over the long term alters your brain’s ability to learn and remember information.” [Read more...]

You’re watching your weight, so you opt for chicken rather than red meat as your go-to smart diet choice, right? We all thought of chicken as lean, protein-rich food that’s good for weight watching, but the truth is chicken might actually be making us fatter! I wrote in The Lean about overweight chickens bred on factory farms that may be passing their weight problems on to us. It turns out chicken at the grocery can have far more fat than protein!

Here’s the skinny (well, not really): Virtually all commercially-available chickens now have what many call the “obese gene,” which makes birds gain weight quickly to speed up production from birth to slaughter. That, combined with no exercise and a constant supply of high-energy (caloric) food, makes today’s chicken the opposite of lean: The amount of fat in modern chicken may be five or even 10 times what it used to be, according to a UK-based study published in the journal Public Health Nutrition. So if you serve a whole chicken to your family like grandma did, you may be serving them 10 times as much fat than the days of yesteryear. That’s a whole lotta fat, and big trouble for the waistline. [Read more...]

A low-carb, high-fat diet might help some people lose weight, but it could be deadly to those with a family history of heart disease, according to research presented March 25 at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Chicago.

Researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham found that obese rats fed a high-fat, low-carb diet — comparable to what many humans consume — had more damaging and deadly heart attacks than obese rats fed a low-fat diet.

Worse, the findings suggest that this type of diet also impairs recovery immediately following a heart attack. [Read more...]