Are Egg Yolks and Grass Fed Beef Really What I Should Eat?

Our basic premise is that your body is amazing.  You get a do over. It doesn’t take that long, and it isn’t that hard if you know what to do.  In these notes, we give you a short course in what to do so it becomes easy for you and for you to teach others. We want you to know how much control you have over both the quality and length of your life.

To borrow from a chapter we are authoring for a book to be published about a year from now: “There are plenty of health concepts that are easy to visualize even if you can’t see them such as a broken bone, a clogged artery, or a torn muscle. At the chemical level, it gets a little trickier to see your anatomical world working. Because of that, perhaps, it can be harder to grasp the scale and importance of certain health events. That’s really the case when it comes to inflammation.”

Yet inflammation—in its chronic form—ranks as one of the most important concepts you should familiarize yourself with. That’s because, in the beginning, inflammation serves as a positive process in your body. Inflammation is a signal that your body is fighting off something that shouldn’t be there. But if your body thinks you’re constantly under attack, such is the case when you have too much blood sugar circulating through your veins, then inflammation can persist with negative consequences.

For example, when you eat egg yolks or red meat, it raises your inflammation, which damages your blood vessels, which makes it more likely to increase your lousy (LDL) cholesterol as your body attempts to heal itself. That cycle happens all over your body with all kinds of organs, cells, and systems. This places you at higher risk for developing heart disease, stroke, cancer, arthritis, memory issues, pain, hormonal issues, organ damage, and more.

However, you can do a lot to help quiet inflammation by eating foods that will help shush the immune response. Your anti-inflammatory all-stars:

Fruits and vegetables: Mix produce of all colors into your diet to get a wide range of vitamins and nutrients.

Fish, nuts, oils: Healthy fats are some of the strongest foods to bring down inflammation. This is one of the reasons why a salad with salmon and a little olive oil and a few walnuts may be the most powerful meal that your body can have.

What Not To Eat: Added sugars, syrups, simple or stripped carbs, foods with saturated or trans fats all stimulate inflammation. And anyone who says eating egg yolks with their choline content doesn’t cause inflammation should have their books, columns, and blogs banned from your reading materials.  The science of harm from carnitine, lechithin, and choline that Drs. Hazen, Tang, and colleagues first found at the Cleveland Clinic is strong and repeated in animals and four other human studies.  Anyone who says red meat (whether grass fed or not) or egg yolks are great or even okay for you to eat should justify to you why the Hazen-Tang science is wrong—it isn’t the saturated fat, although that is a little bad. The major bad is the inflammation caused by the amino acids and proteins that accompany that saturated fat in the red meat and egg yolks (egg whites are fine).

And it may take nearly 20 years for such bozos who are ignoring the science or don’t understand this science (even if some of them are from a noted institution like mine and ignore the data from their own noted scientists) to admit they caused more deaths and disabilities. Okay, let’s give ‘em a break and say they are just trying to stimulate more studies that confirm they are wrong…

I want you to thrive: The science was strong in 1998 (there were more than 4 studies that linked egg yolk and red meat consumption to shortening of life spans and an increase in disabilities) and there have been over 10 randomized studies since then confirming that data of harm from these on one or more aspects of heath.  Hopefully Hazen and Tang will find an antidote for this harmful effect of red meat and egg yolks.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to send questions to: AgeProoflife@gmail.com

Dr. Mike Roizen

PS: Please continue to order the new book by Jean Chatzky and myself, AgeProof: Living Longer Without Running Out of Money or Breaking a Hip.

NOTE: You should NOT take this as medical advice.

This article is of the opinion of its author.

Before you do anything, please consult with your doctor.

You can follow Dr Roizen on twitter @YoungDrMike (and get updates on the latest and most important medical stories of the week).  The YOU docs have two newly revised books: The patron saint “book” of this column YOU Staying Young—revised and YOU: The Owner’s Manual…revised —yes a revision of the book that started Dr Oz to being Dr Oz.  These makes great gifts—so do YOU: ON a Diet and YOU: The Owner’s Manual for teens.  

Michael F. Roizen, M.D., is chief wellness officer and chair of the Wellness Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. His radio show streams live on http://www.radioMD.com Saturdays from 5-7 p.m. He is the co-author of 4 #1 NY Times Best Sellers including: YOU Staying Young.