 |
The Importance
of Saturated Fats for Healthy Hormones
The following is an excerpt from The Fourfold Path to Healing, Cowan,
Chapter 3
Given this model (see complete chapter), one would expect those people
who do regular exercise and eat a diet consisting plentifully of healthy
fats and low in carbohydrates to have the healthiest hearts and circulatory
systems. This exactly fits Dr. Weston Price’s descriptions of
the Swiss, Gaelics, Eskimos, African cattle herders and South Sea
Islanders as well as modern observations of the French (the so-called
French paradox). Finally, the confusing world of cardiology begins
to make sense.
This simple model is the backbone of all my recommendations to those
with problems of the heart and circulation: eat more wholesome, saturated
fats and get more exercise. If possible, 80 % of your caloric intake
should be from fats, mostly saturated fats. Fortuitously the high-fat
diet will make you feel more like exercising. Metabolization of fats
generates healthier circulation by making the osmotic gradient more
pronounced.
Here are a few points to remember as you begin to increase the fat
content of your diet. The first is that signs of fat deficiency include
the feeling of coldness; in his Fundamentals of Therapy, Rudolf Steiner
states that eating fats is the way to generate more warmth. (Claudia
B Wolfe’s note: Guess the Tibetans and Eskimos know what they
are doing in their cold environs). This is because fats improve the
circulation. Other signs of fat deficiency include craving for anything
(from sugar to water), poor circulation, the feeling of dryness in
any body part (such as eyes, skin and joints), or simply the feeling
of tiredness. These are all signs of fat deficiency and you cannot
solve them by drinking more water – this only makes the circulation
more sluggish. You can only solve these problems by increasing the
efficiency of the pump, that is by eating more good fats.
A sign of excess fat consumption is the feeling of nausea; if this
happens reduce your fat intake temporarily and eat more bitters and
fermented foods such as sauerkraut, beet kvass and dandelion greens,
to help you digest the fats. If you undertake to increase the fat
content of your diet along with a regimen of regular walking, your
circulation will demonstrably improve in a matter of weeks. Perhaps
this requirement for walking was the reason Steiner said heart patients
should never travel faster than their own two legs could carry them.
He was encouraging people to walk.
This model also explains why there has been an “epidemic”
of congestive heart failure in the recent ear of low fat diets. This
phenomenon has also increased since the promotion of cholesterol-lowering
regimes. Lowering the fat intake or level in the blood lowers the
efficiency of the pump, the circulation gets sluggish, and eventually
can hardly go forward. At that point the heart enlarges and weakens,
a condition we call congestive heart failure. The basic cause of this
condition is bad advice – the low fat, cholesterol-lowering
measures orthodox medicine promotes as gospel. Most cases of congestive
heart failure can be reversed simply by increasing fat intake and
engaging in regular walking.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
