AJCN Publishes New PUFA Study That Should Make Us Long For the Old Days

I have a new post over at Mother Nature Obeyed:

AJCN Publishes New PUFA Study That Should Make Us Long For the Old Days

This is my response to the new study published in AJCN showing that replacing butter with sunflower oil decreases liver fat, PCSK9, and improves a handful of metabolic markers.  I begin with a critical review of the 2010 meta-analysis by Mozaffarian and colleagues claiming that the randomized, controlled trials substituting vegetable oils for saturated fats show that this swap reduces heart disease risk, which was cited by the AJCN authors in justification of their research approach.  I then move on to reviewing the animal evidence suggesting that saturated fats increase fatty liver in certain contexts while polyunsaturated fats do so in others.  I conclude by reviewing the AJCN study and lamenting its irrelevance.  I suppose this is quite long for an analysis of a study I finally conclude is irrelevant, but I hoped we might all learn a few things (especially including myself!) and perhaps score a chuckle or two in the process. 

Enjoy!

Glutathione 101, Part 1: Cysteine Misbehaves, But Glutathione Saves

New post over at Mother Nature Obeyed:

Glutathione 101, Part 1: Cysteine Misbehaves, but Glutathione Saves

Enjoy!

With the Wave of a Wand Raw Milk Wipes Away the Wheeze: How Our Good Friend Glutathione Protects Against Asthma

New over at Mother Nature Obeyed:

With the Wave of a Wand Raw Milk Wipes Away the Wheeze: How Our Good Friend Glutathione Protects Against Asthma

Enjoy!

My Interview With "Ask Bryan" Davis on his "Doc Fermento Discovers the World" Podcast is Now Up!

Last Friday I recorded a podcast interview with "Ask Bryan" Davis, and it's now available for listening.  We talked mostly about cholesterol and fat-soluble vitamins, but also about my experience with vegetarianism, my encounter with T. Colin Campbell, the harms of micromanaging your diet, surviving in an academic environment, and the philosophy of science.  Below I've included a table of contents to help you navigate.

My "Cholesterol 101" Q&A Podcast on "Ask the Low-Carb Experts" Is Now Available for Listening

On Thursday evening I appeared live on Jimmy Moore's new "Ask the Low-Carb Experts" series to talk about "all things lipids" for an edition Jimmy has dubbed "Cholesterol 101."  There isn't much new material here, but there's a lot of application of the theories I've discussed to listeners' questions and anecdotes.  The recording is now available for downloading, and below I briefly discuss what I consider the most interesting case study we talked about and provide a table of contents for easy navigation.

I'll Be Live on "Ask the Low-Carb Experts" With Jimmy Moore Tomorrow, Thursday, February 16, 7PM EST -- Call In With Questions!

My Third Cholesterol Podcast with Chris Kresser Is Now Up: What to Do, If Anything, About High Cholesterol

My latest podcast interview with Chris Kresser is now up.  We discuss therein what I consider the most likely reasons why someone switching to an ancestral diet would develop cholesterol levels outside the range of non-industrialized populations eating traditional diets rich in saturated fat and low in polyunsaturated fat, the upper range of which I consider to be about 220-250 for total cholesterol, with increases being of concern primarily when they are either greatly elevated above this range or when they are more moderate but constituted primarily by an increase of non-HDL-cholesterol so that the total-to-HDL-cholesterol ratio increases substantially.  

We discuss these not as causes of heart disease, but as metabolic markers.  For that reason, we discuss "good" reasons why this might happen transiently (such as correcting obesity or fatty liver) and "bad" reasons why it might happen more permanently, the latter of which require corrective action.  These "bad" reasons mainly include hypothyroidism secondary either to an elevated ratio of plant goitrogens to iodine (which I discussed in great detail in my Thyroid Toxins Special Report) or to excessive carbohydrate restriction.

This is new material, so I recommend listening to the whole show, but if you follow the link you will find a useful table of contents that will help you navigate to the part of the podcast that most interests you if you so choose.  There's even a full transcript for those inclined to read rather than listen.  I had a little cold when we recorded, so please excuse my voice if it sounds just a little bit nasal.  Here it is:

Revolution Health Radio: Chris Masterjohn on Cholesterol and Heart Disease
(Part 3)

Enjoy!

My Interview With Carl Lanore on Superhuman Radio: The Real Story About Vitamin A

Earlier this afternoon, Carl Lanore interviewed me about vitamin A for his show, Superhuman Radio.

The easiest way to access this show is to right-click on the following link and save it to your computer, though you can also access it in ITunes or listen to it on the front page of Carl's web site.  Here's the show:

Superhuman Radio #896: The REAL Story on Vitamin A

My interview is in the second half of the show, beginning about an hour in.  To make it easier to navigate through the show and find what you want, I created this table of contents:

New Evidence of Synergy Between Vitamins A and D: Protection Against Autoimmune Diseases

I have a new post over at Mother Nature Obeyed:

New Evidence of Synergy Between Vitamins A and D: Protection Against Autoimmune Diseases

Enjoy!

Does Green Tea Protect Against Fatty Liver Disease?

Nutrition Reviews just published a review that I wrote with my doctoral advisor on the potential of green tea to prevent or reverse nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.  Nutrition Reviews is a widely cited journal, ranking ninth out of 70 nutrition and dietetics journals.  The review is indexed for pubmed here, and if you'd like to read it you're in luck: the journal has decided to make the entire January issue available for free, so you can download the full text here:

Masterjohn C, Bruno RS.  Therapeutic potential of green tea in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.  Nut Rev. 2012;70(1):41-56.

Please note that this is a collaborative effort, and anything I write myself on this blog or elsewhere about fatty liver disease does not necessarily reflect the views of anyone I have collaborated with in this or other papers, my university, or the journals we have published in.