It takes a well-trained CIA operative to decipher some of these Internet medical news alerts. This recent article on fatty liver syndrome is a good case in point. If the consumption of fat is thought to contribute to fatty liver (which it doesn't), then why is it found in the context of starvation? Why is alcoholism the leading cause of fatty liver disease (FLD) in people? And why does gastric bypass surgery, which involves a dramatic reduction in calories, trigger FLD? This same surgery is also associated with the precipitous development of iron deficiency anemia, bone density issues (osteoporosis) and immune failure in many cases. The morbidity rate following this harmful surgical invention is staggeringly high, and totally explainable. They're making acute surgical celiacs out of these people. The symptoms they show could be the direct result of malabsorption of vital nutrients that would normally be picked up by the duodenum (calcium, iron, iodine, B complex, vitamin C, and trace minerals). This kind of physiological stress could trigger just about anything, including a subclinical viral infection (or viral adaptation) of the liver.

But why do I get so upset over seemingly insignificant news items claiming that FLD is the result of eating fat? Because the low fat diet is one of man's worst dietary inventions! Fat is crucial to a healthy diet, serving as a vehicle for certain vitamins to enter our body (the fat solubles A,D,E,K) the source of essential fatty acids (omegas), and the provider of protection against things trying to affect and invade our body, including these pesky lectins I keep writing so much about. Yes, dietary fat (animal fat not man-made trans fats) helps to block the attachment of certain dietary glycoproteins (e.g. the harmful ones from gluten, dairy, soy, etc.) to the villi of our intestinal tract. Other things that help in this regard are good carbs and glycoproteins from fruits and veggies such as pectin from apples. Pectins actually bind lectins. Fats more or less coat the GI tract and prevent the attachment of lectins. That is why whole milk is less harmful than skim milk, as I have discussed before.

About five years ago I started seeing more and more chicken allergies in dogs. I wondered if it was because dogs were eating more chicken and that it was a secondary food allergen due to the damage being done by the "big 4" (gluten, casein, soy, and corn) like so many other food allergies, or whether there was something in the chicken that was inducing the problems.

I decided to check out what they were feeding poultry on the hunch that they were loading them up with gluten grains and corn. Five minutes into an Internet search yielded my answer. As of about 10 years ago now, they have been pouring the wheat to chickens and turkeys. If they fed them too much wheat, do you know what happened? They died of fatty liver syndrome. Until now, fatty liver syndrome has been considered "idiopathic: in veterinary medicine. Cats die from fatty liver syndrome. FLD is the leading cause of liver disease and failure in the cat.

And what is the leading cause of fatty liver disease (FLD) in people? Alcohol - grain alcohol. Most alcohols are made from grains, including beer. Could it really be the lectins in the grains that are inducing the FLD more than the alcohol itself? That makes sense when you think about the number of people who drink (excessively) versus the number who develop FLD. There has to be something special about those people. Either they have gluten sensitivity or a resident virus or both.

We are making great strides in expanding our understanding of lectins (e.g. those in the "big four", legumes, grains, corn and dairy), environmental pollutants, trans fats, and the damage done by some drugs. Celiac awareness has opened a number of doors and will lead to improved understanding of dairy, soy and corn intolerance as well. I can't wait for cow milk to finally be publicly convicted for what it has done to human and veterinary health. That time is coming soon. 

We have had this wrong for years and the evidence has pointed us in a better direction for a number of years as well. Fat is not the enemy. You don't get fat from eating fat. Dr. Atkin's helped prove this. Similarly, your cholesterol does not go up primarily from eating dietary cholesterol. Further, an unusually low cholesterol diet is not healthful. Cholesterol, for example, is the building block for all of our hormones, including sex hormones and cortisones. It is an essential component in immune responses and in the protection of individual cells from invasion by harmful substances and organisms. The anti-cholesterol and anti-fat campaigns are ill-conceived, misguided, and harmful to our health, thus my passion on this topic.

John B. Symes, D.V.M. ("Dogtor J")
www.dogtorj.net
Read- "Food Intolerance- Man and Animals versus Gluten, Casein, Soy, and Corn OR How We Won the Battle of Helm's Deep"

You can now go to the new site!

 

The New DogtorJ.com is done! Yes, the time has finally come for this homemade Website to go the way of the buffalo. I know that you all join me in looking forward to using a site that is better organized and more accessible....prettier, too! I've even corrected most of those annoying typos (I hope).

Feel free to check it out now at www.dogtorj.com. I am still working hard to populate all of the pages so don't worry if a link does not work. They should all be active in the near future. In the meantime, this current site will remain on-line until I get all of the bugs worked out.

Let me know what you think! It's not too late to make some changes.

Dogtor J