The other day I was so pleased to see the message that I share on Heart of Perfect Health, my new PBS special, discussed from a different angle on the Dr. Oz Show. The more this heart healthy message is broadcast, the healthier Americans will be!
Dr. Sinatra, the cardiologist who wrote the book The Great Cholesterol Myth stated clearly that cholesterol doesn’t cause heart disease, and that sugar is the true enemy. He explained that the traditional cholesterol numbers are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of recognizing the silent inflammation beneath. As I explain even more clearly in my book, Heart of Perfect Health, cholesterol particle size gives true insight into your cardiac risk factors. I applaud Dr. Oz, trained by our traditional medical community, for his openness and acceptance of this groundbreaking information.
If you’ve already seen my show, I hope you’ll remember this life changing point—it is critical for your health to determine the number of teaspoons of sugar that you consume daily. If it’s over 10 teaspoons and you have any positive risk factors, consider modifying your sugar intake for your heart health.
In my PBS special you saw how extremely deceptive labels are with regard to amounts of sugar, and learned that the true determination of total intake of sugar is actually found by looking at the total carbohydrates, which turn to sugar once in your body. I showed you an easy way to figure how many teaspoons of sugar you are really consuming each day by using the numbers on those confusing labels.
Maybe I’m just noticing misleading information even more recently, but I have noticed that krill oil as a source of omega-3 is growing in popularity these days. In fact, some of these supplements are even promoted for the reduction of heart disease. But if you look a little closer—at the labels—you will find that krill oil supplements provide a very small amount of the beneficial omega-3s. Even so-called extra-strength krill supplements only provide 115 mg of omega-3, recommended in one soft gel daily.
Although certainly a little omega-3 oil is better than none at all, medical research clearly shows that, to enjoy the heart protective and triglyceride lowering benefits of omega-3s, you require 1000–3000 mg omega-3 daily.
Diving deeper, krill oil is promoted as more effectively absorbing into the body’s cells than fish oil. Well, one recent study found that the omega-3 EPA and DHA from krill oil and fish oil were absorbed similarly, even when the krill oil dosage was 63% lower. What you might not hear about this study, however, was that participants had to take 6 krill oil soft gels vs just 3 softgels of fish oil. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather take half as many softgels and still get similar absorption rates!
My only reason for coming forth at this point is that I believe Dr. Oz, Dr. Sinatra, many medical researchers (and my own team) have worked far too diligently toward our goal of sharing health evidence with our fellow Americans to simply ignore such misleading information.
Thanks for reading. And remember: Eat more fat—the good omega-3s— up to 3,000 mg daily! Your heart will be glad you did, and so will your family!