By Coach Maria - Salus Nutritionist and Food Expert
It's true....there are misconceptions when it comes to this
eggstremely delicious and
eggstraordinarily versatile food!
To be honest, there was a point in my life when I fell into the untruths of eggs and ate mainly the egg whites - believing that the egg yolk contained too much cholesterol and also contained too much fat!
Each and every time I threw away the yolk, however, my ancestral inner voice kept telling me it was foolish.
Americans are almost neurotic about avoiding cholesterol-containing foods - especially egg yolks - for fear of developing heart disease.
It's true the yolk contains cholesterol and also true they contain fat - the misconception, however, is that we need to avoid both!
Our body has between 1,100 - 1,700 milligrams of cholesterol - 25% of that comes from our diet and 75% is produced by our liver.
Much of the dietary cholesterol, however, cannot be absorbed by our bodies and our body is extremely efficient when regulating the amount of cholesterol in the blood - when we reduce cholesterol from our diets, the body makes more and when we increase cholesterol in our diets, the body makes less.
Studies have shown little impact on dietary cholesterol having impact on lipid cholesterol.
(1)
In other words, eating cholesterol isn't going to give you a heart attack!
Did you know that all of the 13 essential nutrients found in eggs are in the yolk?
Most especially
choline, an important B-vitamin that has a huge impact on our body's ability to detoxify and maintain healthy cells!
(2)
Ok, so what about the fat in the yolk?
It's true that there have been many studies that show saturated fat increases lipid cholesterol, but it's also true that those studies turn out to be short-term, lasting only a few weeks - we hear much about the initial study, but we never hear anything about when those studies end up failing.
(3)
Longer-term, more accurate studies have shown no correlation between saturated fat intake and lipid cholesterol levels.
(4)
In our own family, we put this to the test with a family member that was on a
very common statin for high cholesterol. Read....
Jack
(name changed for privacy) had high cholesterol for a few years and was finally told he needed to go on a statin drug. He was also told to avoid cholesterol containing food, which included eggs.
For years, he avoided eating many eggs at all and, if he did, he opted for egg-whites only.
He avoided saturated fat like the plague.
The result?
The statin drug lowered his cholesterol levels to within a
normal level, but even that "normal" was on the high end.
That's good, right?
Wrong!
The statin drug was causing more problems than the small reduction in cholesterol was worth - numbness and pain in his joints that we later learned could be permanent when taking that particular and
common statin.
Jack decided it was not worth the risk and wanted a different, more natural alternative.
We decided to take a non-conventional dietary approach to see if it would work. It wasn't the typical avoid-eggs-avoid-saturated-fat routine suggested by his physician.
Although Jack's physician was not completely on board (or even the slightest bit happy) with this approach, he took him off the statin.
Jack eliminated all grains (a known pro-inflammatory food), ditched all processed foods, began eating grass fed meats only (the cows are not fed grains, are not given antibiotics or hormones), started eating eggs again -
whole and on a frequent basis - and also avoided dairy.
Within 40 days, Jack's cholesterol numbers came down. Within 60 days, his numbers were on the low end of the "normal" range and well below what the statin drug could ever do.
Oh, and the side effects from that approach?
They were difficult to deal with (warning: sarcasm)
Jack now had to buy new pants and new belts because he lost a few inches in his waist, his body composition improved (hello six-pack!), sleep patterns improved tremendously, his recovery time after his workouts improved dramatically (no mid-afternoon energy drop!) and - most importantly - the numbness and joint pain that began when taking statins, disappeared...completely!
It has been well over 6 years.
Bring on the eggs!
