The Essential Guide to Saturated Fat

Another great big hello to you!

I’ve decided to start a series of ‘Essential Guides’. This series will thoroughly cover the most important health topics in the realm of curing constipation.

I’ve had quite a few people email me to talk more about saturated fat, so that’s where I going to start of this series. The email’s I’ve been receiving have been of the worrisome type. Something like,

“Kris, you recommend upping the fat intake, but what about the danger of saturated fats? Aren’t we supposed to be avoiding those kind of fats in our diets? These are the bad fats right?”

You know, I totally understand the worry that you may have when it comes to saturated fat. I too wrestled with the on-going battle of trying to get as little saturated fat in my diet for years! During this period I suffered from frustrating digestion problems that left me mentally exhausted and fatigued, physically beat-up and unable to function properly, socially withdrawn and anxious, and emotionally depressed and defeated.

It wasn’t until I started to discover some truths about nutrition, and new scientific breakthroughs, that I started to make real progress with my own constipation horrors. This came from chance meetings with people who had successfully overcome their own constipation and digestive issues and my own research and experiments until I started to finally connect the dots and see a true consistency of what WORKED.

Saturated fat is probably the number one thing that stops people from totally trusting the ‘Cure Your Constipation’ protocol. Almost anyone can agree with the basic premises – eat more vegetables, choose clean, organic meats, get more probiotics, stop the intake of processed foods, get plenty of good sleep and exercise is generally acceptable to the mainstream notion of proper nutrition. But saturated fat? People have a knee-jerk reaction to the idea that saturated fats are healthy and acceptable.

So all I ask is you hear me out.

Put aside your present perceptions of saturated fat on the shelf for just a few minutes.. and then make up your mind after you’ve read what I’ve got to say. After you hear me out, if you still believe saturated fats are the devil I’ll be totally fine with that as long as you’ve read this whole guide through.

The term saturated fat isn’t just referred to as just that, it’s usually referred to as ‘artery clogging saturated fat’. In fact, a quick google search of that term produced 4,220,000 search results… it’s soon to be 4,220,001. Most doctors do what they’re told and condemn it, companies and industries feel compelled to do the same, and soon enough the media follow suit and the general public have no alternatives but to believe it at a truest truth. The product of all of this is a deeply ingrained assumption that saturated fat is bad, the devil, toxic, evil, dangerous and sinful. An assumption so powerful that is disables any constructive and meaningful dialogue to be exchanged on the topic. All alternative views, which are also supported by new scientific research, are cut off at the knee’s even before they have been expressed.

Everyone knows that saturated fat clogs your arteries and is bad – that’s treated as a given – so when someone starts to question it they are automatically put into the ‘crazy bin’. Well, if I’m in the crazy bin in your mind at the moment I’m ok with that. Real life examples in superior cardiovascular health of the Tokelau (with their 50% dietary saturated fat intake) or the Masai (with their diet of meat, blood, and milk), or the Inuit (with their ancestral diet consisting of high-blubber animals) are all healthy populations eating tons of saturated fat… but this will typically be disregarded and ignored by the majority.

It’s infuriating, especially when there’s so much literature out there refuting the saturated fat hypothesis.

It all started with the infamous Ancel Keys and his Seven Countries Study, which tracked the fat consumption and heart disease levels of various nations. The study was named after the seven countries that saw an increase in heart disease rates with a correlation to increased fat consumption, but it should have really been named the Twenty Two Countries Study for all of the data he chose to omit. Data, I should mention, that totally destroys his whole hypothesis of fat intake causing heart disease. The original paper revealing Keys’ vital omissions was largely ignored and is difficult to track down. But thankfully for you I have it here. The original graph with all of the “22″ nation’s data is included (along with isolated outliers Masai, Inuit, Tokelau and Rendile thrown in for good measure – represented by the red dots):

Now try drawing a line through those data points… I challenge you! As you can obviously see from first glance, there is a very faint, weak correlation between fat intake and heart disease, but it’s simply just that: a weak correlation. It in no way confirms anything at all about fat causing heart disease. Sure, the study could be good reason for eliciting further controlled experiments to directly measure the effects of dietary fat, but that was not needed in the eyes of those who were after a pre-defined outcome.

As the graph shows, many countries consumed much more saturated fat, compared the 7 countries carefully chosen by Keys, and experienced vastly lower levels of  heart disease… the fact that all this was thrown out in the final wash up offers a shocking insight into the skewing of facts to fit a certain objective. Unfortunately, for this objective, correlation was enough to get Keys the front cover of Time magazine, and widespread acclaim as the father of dietary science.

The hypothesis gained momentum in the scientific community which filtered down into it becoming a mainstay in convention wisdom, where it continues to be held up as a truest truth. Wealthy food giants spent billions employing an army of ‘scientists’ to provide them with “scientific proof” of their claims.

Meanwhile, much more compelling connections between dietary sugar and heart disease were being discovered by Keys’ peer, British scientist John Yudkin. However, his ideas fell on deaf ears and therefore no calls were made for further significant follow up experimental studies. Keys got the cover of Time and all the adulation in the world, whilst Yudkin got downsized to writing for virtually unknown scientific journals which floated in relative obscurity.

In more recent times, subsequent controlled scientific research set out to detail the harmful effects of saturated fat by real scientists have found nothing to support the saturated fat-is-evil hypothesis. Further more, people like Dr. Fred Kummerow, have spent nearly six decades studying the heart disease inducing effects from one of the real culprits; Trans-fat, which are derived from hydrogenated fats (e.g. margarine, cookies, pastries, processed vegetable cooking oils, etc). They have all concluded that saturated fat has nothing to do with it.

The statistician Russell H. Smith had this to say about the Seven Countries Study:

“The dietary assessment methology was highly inconsistent across cohorts and thoroughly suspect. In addition, careful examination of the death rates and associations between diet and death rates reveal a massive set of inconsistencies and contradictions…

It is almost inconceivable that the Seven Countries study was performed with such scientific abandon. It is also dumbfounding how the NHLBI/AHA alliance ignored such sloppiness in their many “rave reviews” of the study…

In summary, the diet-CHD relationship reported for the Seven Countries study cannot be taken seriously by the objective and critical scientist.”

- Diet, Blood Cholesterol and Coronary Heart Disease: A Critical Review of the Literature, Volume 2, November 1991.

Whilst George Mann M.D, an eminent American Professor of Biochemistry and Medicine, called the saturated fat-heart hypothesis “the greatest scientific deception of this century, perhaps any century”.

The names of different fats (saturated, poly-unsaturated, mono-saturated, etc) indicate how many, if any, double bonds exist in any given fat. Double bonds, or saturation, as well as chain length, are what differentiate each fat from another. Saturated fatty acids (SFA’s) are classified as saturated because all available carbon bonds are tied up with a hydrogen particle. That means there is no openings for rancidity os spoilage, whereas a poly-unsaturated fatty acid containing two or more pairs of double bonds without hydrogen atoms occupying the open space between these two double bonds is wide open for oxidation.

SFA’s are resistant to heat damage, shelf-stable, and essential to a myriad of bodily functions and processses.

Here are a few reasons for you…

1. Helps Cure Constipation

Saturated fat mainly helps cure constipation indirectly from many other benefits it gives to the body (some of which I will talk about below). However, the direct advantages of increased fat intake are important as well. Just a small amount of undigested fat can help grease the passage of stool through the colon. Increasing fat intake will make it more difficult for your bowels to retain feces. This is why indegistible oils, like jojoba oil or Olestra, cause diarrhea. Another direct advantage is that bile is released into the intestine when fats are eaten, and bile acids have a laxative effect. Both the main bile acid chenodeoxycholic acid (CDCA) and the secondary bile acid deoxycholic (DCA) act as laxatives by promoting water secretion in the colon. An excess of bile is a popular cause for chronic diarrhea and an insufficiency of bile can be a contributing factor of constipation.

2. Fantastic Source of Energy

Your body is much well adapted to burn fat stores for energy than it is burning carbs stores. If this isn’t true why else would we store excess carbohydrates as saturated body fat? To be brutally honest, when we burn body fat for energy, either through exercise or through dieting, we are literally consuming huge amounts of saturated (and mono-unsaturated) fat to do this. Stored body fat is just energy to be used later; dietary fat is energy to be used immediately.

Using fat as your prime energy source will enable you to avoid adding extra fat pounds to your body, and, trust me, your energy will soar through the roof.

3. Healthy Brain and Nervous System

Approximately half of each cell membrane in our bodies is composed of saturated fat, between a third and over a half of the fat in our brains is saturated, and 49% of human breast milk is saturated fat. Mother nature does not mistakes. Both saturated fat and cholesterol represent a vital portion of the myelin sheath that encloses nerve fibers and preserves proper function of the brain and nervous system. Your lack of saturated fat intake is most probably harming these delicate neurological parts of the body which in turn is filtering down to interrupt, or even damage, proper function of GI muscles, nerve tissues, etc.

4. A Source of Fat Soluble Vitamins

Saturated animal fats, like butter or fatty organ meats, contain large numbers of essential fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, K2, etc). Why in the hell would mother nature place essential fatty acids in the evils of saturated fat?

Maybe it’s not so evil after all.

Researches were bowled over at one study which clearly demonstrated that eating high-saturated-fat fermented cheeses containing large amounts of Vitamin K2 actually reduced cardiovascular mortality. But obviously real food isn’t enought right!? Of course not, the researches soon woke up to their senses and recommended obtaining these precious vitamins through supplements rather than real food!

Crazy!

These fat soluble vitamins are essential for proper bowel function, immunity, correct gene expression, bone production, and many other vital functions.

5. Defense Against Toxins

Research has proved that saturated fats help to reverse liver damage caused by alcohol and other harmful substances. The liver in one of our main detoxifying organs and its ability to function properly is of great importance. Because saturated fats produce very few free radicals, they’re very supportive and nourishing to the liver.

The justification for the anti-saturated fat campaign that has been burning out of control for over half a century is implausible. Proponents of cardiovascular mortality due to saturated fats have never been able to accurately demostrate their ideologies.

The Finnish Mental Hospital study, which the saturated fat critics love to use as their tried and true evidence – though their results were inconclusive – has been discredited for its poor control.

Whilst their is real life examples abound, and up-to-date scientific evidence that proves that saturated fat intake is not only a harmless substance, it is actually very beneficial and imperative for the body to have for proper function, the insanity of misinformation still charges on in the mainstream domain.

Your health and constipation is your responsibility.

It’s up to you to discover the truth of proper health. Not wait until your doctor has been informed of new scientific research that proves saturated fat is good for us, because it doesn’t look like that is going to happen any time soon.

Myself, and many others, have found incredible and life changing health improvements from increasing fats, saturated included.

Maybe its time you did too.

Best in health to you,

Kris Cleary

Any questions, comments, thoughts – please comment below. I would love to hear from you!