What about your brain and oil?

So during my Lenten fast, giving up all oils, I have been asked many times by many very educated individuals: “Doesn’t your brain need oil to be healthy?” and my response is the one I found in Dr. Esselstyn’s book…

“Cholesterol is a white, waxy substance that is not found in plants-only animals…our bodies need cholesterol, and they manufacture it on their own.” So getting extra oil from our diet in the form of added oil or animal products is unnecessary. He had some really interesting things to say about Vegetarians and Coronary Artery Disease which we are discussing on Good Reads.

In fact there is a nicely done article I saw that was released in January of 2020 showing Soybean Oil to be BAD for our brains! It lead to increased genetic changes perhaps even predisposing to obesity, diabetes, ADHD, Alzheimer’s and anxiety/depression. However before you go to throw out all the healthy soy products you own:

“Do not throw out your tofu, soymilk, edamame, or soy sauce,” said Frances Sladek, a UCR toxicologist and professor of cell biology. “Many soy products only contain small amounts of the oil, and large amounts of healthful compounds such as essential fatty acids and proteins.”

The overall premise of the online article citing peer-reviewed research from 2020, 2017, and 2015 was that we should not just assume that a “polyunsaturated fat” like soybean oil is good for us to eat. In fact all oils may HARM the brain and other vasculature. Although these added oils taste good and actually make the food cheaper to produce, they are not otherwise beneficial to us.

Every person makes up their mind regarding their own risk assessments to undertake in life. Meaning how much one is willing to give up in order to gain a yield - kind of like navigating financial investments. However, I just turned the age at which my Dad was when he died of a heart attack. As I have said in the earlier post on endothelium (Why we are going no oil in our house - Feb 27th), if you have heart disease, then likely you have every other artery also diseased, including ones in the brain~as the endothelium lines all blood and lymph vessels in the body.

As of late I had been getting chest discomfort walking up this really steep hill in our neighborhood on fitness walks with my family (which being a vegan, did not make sense until I began to re-read Dr. Esselstyn’s book). I was brushing it off as being out-of-shape because it is Winter and we have walked less when it is very, very cold.

I was attributing (rationalizing) the “discomfort” to the cold weather and my breathing. On our fitness walks I have had to slow down and either ask my family to wait, or let my kids get pretty far ahead…even a week into my “no oil” experiment this was so. The last walk we did, which was 18 days into my no oil diet, not only was that persistent pain walking up the hill GONE, but I lead my family on that hill and my kids had to catch up with me!!! It was in turning around to urge the kids to hurry up to get to me that I realized what had happened…I had to verbalize to the other Dr. Mueller and check on his assessment of all conditions being equivocal (it was one of the colder days we had been out walking with even occasional snow falling). I was able to lead on all the hills that day effortlessly!

Dr. Esselstyn had said things like this happened to his patients, and it had happened for me when I was first Vegan. I had been vegetarian for decades due to my yoga practice, but still ate eggs and milk/cheese and again at the beginning of COVID when I gave up processed foods out of practicality - I felt stronger, better, and healthier/fit. It was just so insidious the way the processed food (vegan, but still “junk”) snuck back into my diet as the world re-opened to me post “COVID-normalization”. I know with results like the way I felt on my walk, there is no going back to the added oils in my diet! I will definitely consider convincing my children (and anyone else who will listen) to do the same. It is a small price to pay for the enormous gain of function to be able to stay healthy longer and keep up with my children - and presumably be around longer for them and hopefully their children as well.