Excel & Thrive

Today we will discuss fat.

Not your fat (your actual endocrine organ), but the FAT that you consume that is actually a vital part of your diet.

I doubt many of you have heard of the electron transport chain or ROS (Reactive Oxygen Species), or remember what a “proton” is from your middle school science class. You may or may not have heard of the mitochondria being the fuel center of your cells.

I am not here to explain these to you in detail (you can check out these podcasts - Is it Saturated Fat or Polyunsaturated Fat That is Killing You with Peter Dobromylskyj and Part 2 on that Subject with Peter Dobromylskyj if you want the deets, and also check out the excellent blog Hyperlipid by Peter Dobromylskyj linked HERE).

I am here to tell you that YOU are making or breaking your health because of these operations.

Why?

Because natural saturated fats drive the correct and healthy version of these events. In all your cells. At all times.

Polyunsaturated fats (i.e., vegetable oils) drive the opposite.

In all your cells.

At all times.

You, yourself, are the sole controller of this process, by what material you are putting in your mouth (FOOD or NOT FOOD).

Not your genes. Stop blaming them.

Not your doctor. Find a new one.

Not your nutritionist. You’re likely wasting your money.

You.

Let’s explore this together. What exactly is going on in the mitochondria of your cells that is so affected by which type of fat you eat?

I will try to make this simple for you to understand, but bear with me.

Your body is built and designed to utilize fat to make energy in your cells. Because of the natural movement of electrons and protons (remember your middle school science), whether that fat is saturated or polyunsaturated makes a BIG difference to this system (technically called the electron transport chain).

The input of saturated fat eventually contributes to a natural negative feedback loop (this is where the ROS comes in) that signals to the body that the cell is FULL. However, when the input is polyunsaturated fat, the negative feedback loop doesn’t work right, and even though the cell may be full, it can’t signal this. So the cell keeps taking in calories, and since they aren’t needed it must convert them to either glycogen (a form of sugar) or lipids.

Obesity, anyone? Diabetes, anyone?

Yes. You heard me. Let’s just state it clearly:

Polyunsaturated fat causes your cells to STORE FAT.

And even more clearly:

Polyunsaturated fat causes your fat cells to GROW.

This process works very much like a switch. Saturated fat causes the energy storage of the cell to switch OFF at the correct time. Polyunsaturated fat struggles to flip the switch, so it stays turned ON way too long. This causes your cells, especially your fat cells (called adipocytes) to grow and grow.

In fact, your fat cells can get so big with their membranes almost ready to burst that they start leaking fatty acids (this is the scientific word for free-flowing fat) into your body. Does the term “triglycerides” ring a bell? You may have gotten a test for this from your doctor at some point. Triglycerides are a type of fatty acid, and yes a high number is a sign something really BAD is happening.

Now yes, polyunsaturated fats do exist in nature in perfectly healthy forms. There are small amounts in animal foods but that small amount is plenty enough for what our bodies require on a normal basis. They are also found in much larger amounts in nuts and seeds and in some starches like corn. But guess what? These were considered “survival foods” or “famine foods” by our ancestors and were only eaten when winter was approaching, animal foods were scarce, and it was time to....wait for it....STORE FAT.

Fun fact: squirrels cannot hibernate until they have consumed enough PUFAs from things like acorns. PUFAs direct their bodies to store fat and their metabolisms to slow down. Don’t be a squirrel.

So this is why our bodies have this feedback loop, or switch, to begin with:

When our cells have access to plenty of saturated fat, it is a signal to our bodies that food is plenty, so there’s no need to store anything. Burn it all, we don’t need to save it.

When our cells get a lot of polyunsaturated fat, it is a signal to our bodies that OH MY WORD food MUST be scarce, so STORE EVERYTHING.

And just to remind everyone, polyunsaturated fat = vegetable oil.

And as I have laid out before, it is EVERYWHERE. You are consuming many many times more than your great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents.

Beach photos from the US in the 1940s:

If you need more convincing, listen to this - The Omega 6 Apocalypse.

So have you figured out by now what happens when you consume all that material that contains vegetable oil (corn, canola, soy, sunflower, cottonseed, safflower, rice bran, and grapeseed oil)?

YOU GET FAT AND SICK.

On top of everything else.

So here’s the bottom line.

We were never meant to expose our bodies to such vast amounts of polyunsaturated fat every day, in every season, much less these horribly damaged versions in processed foods. We have literally brought this upon ourselves.

Us brilliant humans in our infinite wisdom took acres and acres of beautiful grasslands of diverse ecosystems, destroyed them, planted mono crops of seeds, then squeezed them to death, extracted the gunk, mutated and oxidized it and created an entire new category of cheap consumables and literally ignited the epidemic of heart disease. IN ADDITION we can now credit ourselves for creating and perpetuating the epidemic of obesity and diabetes. And did I mention cancer? Yep, polyunsaturated fats drive tumor growth.

And you think we are advancing the human race? Come on, guys.

Next up - some good news:

You can reverse this with FOOD.