Meet our writers

Health May 2014

Aid for Age

The Value of a ‘Fathead’

By Tait Trussell

    The October 2012 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease said people 70 and older who eat food high in carbohydrates have a higher risk of developing mild cognitive impairment; the danger also rises with a diet heavy in sugar, Mayo Clinic researchers have found.

    Fat, not carbohydrates, is what’s best for your brain.

    Not only that, you can lose weight by eating fats, and you get fatter by eating carbohydrates.

    These are the conclusions of Dr. David Perlmutter, a noted neurologist and director of the Perlmutter Health Center in Naples, Florida.

    In his new book, Grain Brain, Dr. Perlmutter makes the definitive statement that fat, not carbohydrate, is not only the preferred fuel of human metabolism, but it also has been for “all of human evolution.

    “We have consumed a high fat diet for the past two million years.” Dr. Perlmutter maintains that it was only since agriculture became a way of life approximately ten thousand years ago that carbohydrates became a major part of the diets of Americans and many other societies.

    Carbohydrates are one of three classes of food called macronutrients. The other two are fats and protein. The term “carbohydrate” covers a lot of ground. It includes everything from table sugar to cauliflower. The basic unit of a carbohydrate is a simple sugar (such as glucose or fructose). But these simple sugars can be linked together in infinite ways, and will have very different effects on the body, depending on their arrangement.

    The body can obtain everything it needs to survive from protein, fats, and the right kind of dietary carbohydrates – namely good carbs such as vegetables, which offer many valuable components such as antioxidants, fiber, vitamins, and minerals, he writes.

    “We still have a hunter-gatherer genome.”  [To remind you, a genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA, including all of its genes. Each genome contains all of the information needed to build and maintain that organism. In humans, a copy of the entire genome — more than 3 billion DNA base pairs — is contained in all cells that have a nucleus.]

    The genome “is programmed to make us fat during times of abundance. The “thrifty gene” theory was first described in 1962 by geneticist James Neel to tell why type 2 diabetes has such a strong genetic basis and negative effects. According to the hypothesis, genes make a person a diabetic.

    Historically, they served a necessary purpose. They allowed a person to get fat when food was available, because in past ages there were periods when food was not available. But once modern times made food readily available, “the thrifty genes were no longer needed.”  But they were still available.

    “It is believed that the thrifty genes are responsible for the obesity epidemic,” writes Dr. Perlmutter, “which is closely tied to diabetes.”

    Dr. Perlmutter says it has taken thousands of years for any change to take place in our genome to permit us to make such a drastic change in our diet and for our “thrifty” genes to forget about the deep instinct that told us to store fat.

    The October 2012 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease said people 70 and older who eat food high in carbohydrates have a higher risk of developing mild cognitive impairment; the danger also rises with a diet heavy in sugar, Mayo Clinic researchers have found. Those who consume a lot of protein and fat relative to carbohydrates are less likely to become cognitively impaired, the study found.

    The Mayo Clinic found that seniors who fill their plates with carbohydrates have nearly four times the prospect of developing mild cognitive impairment, generally considered a precursor to Alzheimer’s. Signs of mild cognitive impairment “include problems with memory, language, thinking and judgment.”

    This particular study found that those whose diets consisted of plenty of healthy fats were 42 percent less likely to have cognitive impairment. Those who had the highest meals of protein from healthy sources, such as chicken, fish, and meat, enjoyed a reduced risk of cognitive impairment of 21 percent.

    Regular users of butter had no significant risk of either dementia or Alzheimer’s. And those who regularly consumed omega-3 rich oils (such as found in salmon) and olive, flaxseed, and walnut oil were 60 percent less likely to develop dementia, Perlmutter pointed out.

    He recommends a gluten-free diet — generally absence of wheat and flour. I tried it, but lost seven pounds in nine days. So, I gave it up. I’m too skinny as it is. But I’ll eat proteins and fat and cut or reduce the sugars. Plus plenty of butter in my meals.

     

    Tait Trussell is an old guy and fourth-generation professional journalist who writes extensively about aging issues among a myriad of diverse topics.

    Meet Tait