Ask Dr. Mike: 17 Heart Disease Risk Factors, Soda vs Sports Drinks & Adding Butter to Your Coffee

Additional Info

• Segment Number: 4
• Audio File: healthy_talk/1507ht2d.mp3
• Organization: Life Extension
• Guest Website: Healthy Talk MD
• Transcription: RadioMD Presents: Healthy Talk | Original Air Date: February 10, 2015
  Host: Michael Smith, MD
  
  It’s time for you to be a part of the show. Email or call with questions for Dr. Mike now. Email: AskDrMikeSmith@RadioMD.com or call: 877-711-5211. What are you waiting for? The doctor is in.
  
  That’s 877-711-5211. Give me a call if you want to say “hi” and ask a question. You can also send me your emails, AskDrMikeSmith@RadioMD.com.
  
  This first question, I have to admit, I forgot to print it out, but I remembered it because it was based on a previous segment I did, maybe last week. I don’t remember exactly, but it was on sugary sodas—carbonated, sugary sodas—and the harm they do to your body. Specifically, they reduce the length of the telomere which is your biological clock. The shorter and shorter the telomere gets, the older and older the cell is. It’s one of the theories of aging. So, this person asked the question about sports drinks and I don’t remember the whole question, but basically, you know, the gist of it was, he stopped drinking the carbonated, sugary sodas, switched over to kind of fruit juices—sports drinks, I think he said—and he wondered if that was okay. Well, from the perspective of the telomere shortening, they did test different types of sugary drinks. They looked at carbonated, non-carbonated. I don’t know if they specifically looked at fruit juice versus a sport drink, but I do remember that being a division in the study—carbonated versus uncarbonated—and the only type of drink that shortened the telomeres was the sugary, carbonated drinks. So, at least for now—remember, in science, we’re always learning things, right? It’s dynamic. It’s always changing. At least for now, based on one study, sport drinks and fruit juices should be okay when it comes to telomere length. Just definitely don’t do the, you know, the Cokes and all that kind of stuff. Okay. So, that’s just with telomeres, though. So, that’s the good news, I guess. But, I have to talk a little bit about the bad news. There are other studies, though. Forget telomeres for now. There are other studies that have clearly shown that one 12-ounce sugary drink a day, regardless of the source—even the fruit juices--you have to be careful. If there’s a lot of sugar in that 12-ounce drink, which is the standard. Eight to twelve is kind of the standard they used in the study. So, 8 to 12 ounces of sugary drinks—carbonated or not—significantly increases the risk of diabetes and diabetes is devastating. So, one on hand, you know, based on how the question was asked, okay, in terms of telomere length, sport drinks that are loaded with sugar, fruit juices, should be fine. But, in terms of diabetic risk, diabetes risk? No. It’s not fine. We should be drinking more water. Water. And we have to get over that. We have to get over this need to be drinking anything but water. Now, I’m not saying you should be boring with everything. You know, a glass of wine on occasion. A beer here and there. Some coffee in the morning. Fine. But, we are addicted to sugar. So, this person who wrote this question went from the sugary carbonated drinks to sugary noncarbonated drinks. Well, to me, that’s not much of an improvement. It’s still sugar. So, we need to get off those types of drinks completely. We need to get more into water, water and more water. Okay. So, that was the first question.
  
  Question number two. Oh, and I had to write this down. Okay. I actually answered this question during the break here. The question is: “You once did a show on the 17 heart disease risk factors. Can you review them again?” Okay. So, I actually go over the questions in preparing for the show ahead of time and I saw this and I said, “Oh, God. That’s easy. I can answer that. No problem.” And, in between the segments, I looked at the question again and I thought, “Wow. Can I come up with the 17 risk factors?” So, I did my best here and wrote them down and I got to about 14 of the 17 heart disease risk factors that I’ve talked about before. So, I had to go on LifeExtension.com. If you search 17 heart daggers, we have this nice image where the risk factors are represented as daggers stabbing the heart. You can see all 17. So, I had to go there to finish my list here. So real quickly, the 17 heart disease daggers or risk factors would be: High bad cholesterol (LDL), low HDL (the good stuff), high Triglycerides. Let’s see. Number four. High sugar or diabetes, right? Then, we have inflammation, low testosterone, high estrogen, high fibrinogen, high homocysteine, low Vitamin D, low Vitamin K2, low amounts of Omega-3 oils, low what’s called PON1. PON1. It’s an enzyme that prevents oxidization of fat. So, low PON1. High blood pressure, lots of belly fat, smoking and then, lastly, of course, if you already have a history. Either a family history—first degree relative--or your own person history of heart disease. Those are the 17 heart disease risk factors. So, I had to look that up myself. Go to LifeExtension.com for the awesome image with the daggers. Okay.
  
  Question number 3. How am I doing on time? I think I’m okay. Alright.
  
  Question number 3. Because these next two questions are kind of long. So, this next one I had to have some help in answering this. You know, I have a whole staff of health advisors at Life Extension that can help me at times. So, the question was: “Will adding butter to my morning coffee really cut food cravings later in the day?” So, there is a movement, I guess, in the health and nutrition world of adding butter and, I think, maybe coconut oil--what’s called a medium chain triglyceride oil like coconut oil--to coffee and I just went blank on the name of it. Bulletproof coffee. Have you heard of that before? Bulletproof coffee. So, you take your morning coffee, which I like black, so I can’t imagine adding organic butter. That’s what it says here. “Organic butter” and coconut oil to it. But, apparently it does taste pretty good from what I understand. I even had some health advisors try it and they said it was pretty awesome. So, let’s go to the question. “Will adding butter to my morning coffee,” basically creating this Bulletproof coffee, “Will it cut my food cravings later in the day?” And, the answer I got from the health advisors here at Life Extension was “maybe”. It will boost energy levels if you’re on a ketogenic diet where you have a lot of low carbs, higher fat. Large amounts of fat should effectively kill the appetite for many hours, especially for people who are ketoadapted and used to eating a low carb/high fat diet. This could also provide plenty of energy by elevating ketone levels in the blood which then become available as fuel for the brain. Again, it’s called “bulletproof coffee”. I’m reading this right from our awesome health advisors at Life Extension. Fat plus coconut oil plus coffee. Bulletproof coffee. It’s important to keep in mind that everything in nutrition depends on dosage and context. Just because a little bit of something is healthy, it doesn’t mean that a whole ton of it is healthy or healthier or even safe. One expert compared her egg breakfast with fruit to bulletproof coffee and concluded that if you’re used to eating three meals per day, then replacing breakfast with bulletproof coffee will reduce the total nutrient load of your diet by a third because you’re just basically gaining fat. Right? You’re getting a lot of fat which may cut appetite, but you’re missing out on nutrition. I think it’s irresponsible for me to support anything that cuts away from a balanced diet and supplement approach. I mean, that’s just the truth of it.
  
  So, can you do this on occasion? Probably. I don’t know why you would want to do it on occasion. But, doing this every day, I just don’t know if it’s necessary and it would worry me that you’re going to get full. You’re going to get full on fat and you’re going to be missing the nutrition, especially at breakfast when most people drink coffee. And that’s when you need a good meal--a good balanced meal at breakfast. So, will it cut food cravings? Yes. Fat will do that, but it may not be the best way to do it.
  Alright.
  
  This is Healthy Talk on RadioMD. I’m Dr. Mike. Stay well.
• Length (mins): 10
• Waiver Received: No
• Internal Notes: NO GUEST
• Host: Mike Smith, MD