The Carb-Sane Asylum

There were actually two different papers from the Women's Health Initiative low fat diet trial brought up in the comments of another post.  It seems this one engendered more discussion and I mixed up who cited which paper.  So I started this thread.   Since this is a new concept, I'll briefly describe what I'm doing here and let y'all have at it!  I am embedding a discussion topic from the Meeting Rooms in this blog post (this time I'll shut off comments, if you want to give some input/feedback on this concept in general, add your thoughts to  the comments on the inaugural post ).   All are welcome to join and I hope you will!  I have some thoughts on this one, too, but will probably lurk and wait until hopefully a few folks have added their says.  I realize some made comments already on another thread regarding this.  If I haven't done so already by the time you read this, I will copy them to the discussion.   Hat tip to Lucas Tafur fo...

From:   Circulating Nonesterified Fatty Acid Level as a Predictive Risk Factor for Sudden Death in the Population  In ischemic conditions, concentration of circulating   nonesterified fatty acids (NEFA) is increased and has a proarrhythmic   effect that is responsible for ventricular tachyarrhythmias.   In nonischemic patients, high NEFA plasma concentration has   been shown to be associated with frequent premature ventricular   complexes and increased familial risk of cardiovascular disease,   but its relation to sudden death has not been studied. We assessed   the role of circulating NEFA in sudden death in asymptomatic   men in a long-term cohort study. Above is the abstract for the study.  Something that might not be alarming to some.  The association could be due to a co-correlation with insulin resistance, for example.

As many of my readers know, I've been challenged lately on my beliefs on NEFA.  So I thought I would summarize my thinking on this in a post rather than having several comments scattered amongst a few threads.   I'm not going to be referencing my post here at this time (it's too time consuming to do so at the moment).  If/when I have the opportunity to do so in the future, I'll do a bumped update.   These are my thoughts based on extensive research of the peer review literature on this topic, in almost all cases, considered review of full text articles including reading as many supporting citations in major reviews as possible.  Over the past year I have read at least a hundred such articles. Elevated non-esterified or free fatty acids (NEFA/FFA) are a symptom associated with insulin resistance, Metabolic Syndrome (aka Syndrome X) and Type II diabetes.  The overwhelming evidence in the literature points to elevated NEFA being more than just associated wit...

Here is the Heart Rhythm Society's Definition: Sudden cardiac death (SCD), also called cardiac arrest, is used to describe a situation in which the heart abruptly and without warning stops working, so no blood can be pumped to the rest of the body. It is responsible for half of all heart disease deaths. Sudden cardiac death occurs when the heart’s electrical system malfunctions. It is not a heart attack (also known as a myocardial infarcation). A heart attack is when a blockage in a blood vessel interrupts the flow of oxygen-rich blood to the heart, causing heart muscle to die. So if the heart can be compared to a house, SCD occurs when there is an electrical problem and a heart attack – when the problem is the plumbing. Later in that summary it is stated that 75% showed evidence of prior heart attack, and 80% evidence of CVD.  So that leaves 25% with no evidence of prior heart attack and 20% with no CVD. So I do a little math: *  SCD deaths occurring in people with no pr...