Why are we going No Oil in our house?

When we remove the oil (yes ALL oil, even olive) from our diet, we PROTECT our blood vessels - especially the amazing tissue that lines the insides of them. Endothelium is perhaps one of the most important tissues in the body. According to the Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease book by Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., the “…innermost lining of all the blood & lymph vessels and the heart is called the endothelium. Far more than a simple membrane, the endothelium is actually the body’s single largest endocrine organ.” It can be damaged by many things and also protected by some things:

What is damaging to the Endothelium?

•Oils

•LDL Cholesterol from diet

•TMAO derived from breakdown of lecithin carnitine (meat ingestion)

What is protective of the Endothelium?

•Endothelium Progenitor cells

•HDL Cholesterol

•Dimethyl Argenine DimethylaminoHydrolase

How does one generate the “protective” things? I am not going to touch on pharmacology or drugs to do this, as that is in the realm of each person’s individual physician or health care provider to counsel on. One way to address this problem naturally, potentially without drugs, is to limit the damaging things…another way of course is to take in GOOD things that will boost the Progenitor cells, such as leafy greens.

The picture on the intro of this “Healthier You” post is from a Guyton Medical Physiology textbook that I use to teach my resident physicians about how the lining of the walls of the blood vessels may be protected by the generation of Nitric Oxide. Just looking at it sends shivers down the spines of most students, but it is the basis of mechanism of action of some drugs (think vasodilators like Nitroglycerin). More importantly, this beneficial compound can be theoretically activated by some of our food choices. The green leafy choices above are the sources of delivering the eNOS to the linings of the walls of the blood vessels. Conversely below shows the damage that can be done to those same vessel linings if we eat poorly with inflammation producing diet choices. For this reason we are going to eat no oil in our home.

This pictorial from a peer-reviewed article shows how the plaques build up in the walls of blood vessels. This is what leads to the atherosclerosis and potentially “breaking off” of the build up which can cause heart attacks and maybe even a stroke.