Put Your Heart in Your Mouth: Color My Food Book Chat Notes

Did you know that cholesterol is essential to human health?

Check out the highlights from my February online book chat: Put Your Heart in Your Mouth, by Natasha Campbell-McBride. The hypothesis that fats cause heart disease is scientifically incorrect. Inflammation is the root of heart disease. It is caused by processed carbohydrates, excessive sugar, man-made chemicals.

The Diet-Heart Myth
For 50+ years we were told to eat low fat. The diet-heart hypothesis that dietary fats and cholesterol caused heart disease was held as truth. Avoid these foods, we were told, to avoid developing heart disease. But this hypothesis is scientifically wrong.

Cholesterol is Essential to Human Health
We cannot live without it, nor function well. Your immune system needs cholesterol to function properly.

Your cells

• Your body is made up of billions of cells. Almost every one of the billions of cells in your body produces cholesterol all the time, all our life.
• Saturated fat and cholesterol are an integral and vital part of your cell membranes

Your brain

• Every cell, every structure in the brain and your nervous system needs cholesterol to build itself and to accomplish its functions. Interfering with your body’s ability to produce cholesterol, puts your brain and the rest of the nervous system at risk
• Memories are formed by brain cells establishing connections with each other called synapses. Synapse formation is almost entirely dependent on cholesterol

Your hormones

After the brain, the organs most hungry for cholesterol are your endocrine glands (adrenals and sex glands). They produce steroid hormones (such as estrogen, testosterone etc.) that have innumerable functions:

• regulate your metabolism
• energy production
• mineral assimilation
• brain, muscle, and bone formation
• mood, behavior, emotions
• reproduction

Inflammation is the Root Cause of Heart Disease
Atherosclerosis is a disease that can cause narrowing and obstruction (plaque) of your arteries –

• impair blood flow to your heart and can cause heart attack
• to your brain and can causes strokes – the 3rd leading cause of death (after cancer)

The chronic causes of inflammation are:

• Processed foods
• Processed carbohydrates spike blood sugar and provide little nutrition. And can feed pathogenic bacteria your gut which damages your immune system
• Sugar consumption and excessive blood sugar
• Nutritional deficiencies –your body needs nutrients: amino acids, vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, fats. Our modern diet does not provide many of these nutrients.
• A sedentary lifestyle
• Pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer, agricultural chemicals
• Man-made chemicals – personal care and household products

What To Do?
Mother Nature gave us perfect bodies – miraculous creations. Our bodies have the complete power to keep themselves healthy, to repair any damage and health themselves.

• Stop eating processed foods
• Minimize exposure to chemicals
• Eat nutrient-dense whole foods
• Compromise and economize on clothes, cars, entertainment etc., but never on food. Buy good quality and fresh food.

Register and tune in for the March Book Chat! Eat to Beat Depression and Anxiety, by Drew Ramsey, MD.

Wednesday, March 9 at 5:30 Central Time.

I look forward to seeing you online 😁