That Health Rules

One of the top posts of this website is about eggs.  It has really been a puzzle to the medical community as to how this seemingly affordable and easy available food can be so intriguing in terms of its good and bad effect on health.  Its really an option for anyone to take which sides you are depending on what study you read.

A recent publication from the Harvard Health Publications regarding the myths and facts on eggs is worth mentioning here for my readers to know my answer when they ask…Can I eat eggs everyday doc?

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BOSTON, MA – Common misconceptions keep many people, especially those worried about heart disease, from eating eggs. The July issue of the Harvard Heart Letter unscrambles the dietary facts and myths about the egg.

Fact: Eggs are a good source of nutrients. One egg contains 6 grams of protein and some healthful unsaturated fats. Eggs are also a good source of choline, which has been linked with preserving memory, and lutein and zeaxanthin, which may protect against vision loss.

Fact: Eggs have a lot of cholesterol. The average large egg contains 212 milligrams of cholesterol. As foods go, that’s quite a bit, rivaled only by single servings of liver, shrimp, and duck meat.

Myth: All that cholesterol goes straight to your bloodstream and then into your arteries. Not so. For most people, only a small amount of the cholesterol in food passes into the blood. Saturated and trans fats have much bigger effects on blood cholesterol levels.

Myth: Eating eggs is bad for your heart. The only large study to look at the impact of egg consumption on heart disease—not on cholesterol levels or other intermediaries—found no connection between the two. In people with diabetes, though, egg-a-day eaters were a bit more likely to have developed heart disease than those who rarely ate eggs.

• If you like eggs, eating one a day should be okay, especially if you cut back on saturated and trans fats.
• Other ways to enjoy eggs without worrying about cholesterol include not eating the yolk, which contains all the cholesterol, or using pourable egg whites or yolk-free egg substitutes.

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One major reason why we advocate a low cholesterol diet is that any diet that is high in cholesterol may downregulate LDL-receptor (Bad cholesterol) synthesis which are the receptors that degrade or breakdown the bad cholesterol in our body. This bad effect apparently becomes more pronounced if the diet is also high in saturated fat because it can interfere with receptor binding and removal of the bad cholesterol and therefore accumulates in our system!

Likewise… if you eat a high cholesterol food…it is almost always associated with a high saturated fat meal! If you love egg yolk then it means the meal may also have steak or fried pork and other oily foods in it! This spells DISASTER!

Almost always… it’s already a cliche: eat everything in moderation.  I will continue to advocate 2 x or less eggs per week for my patients until more solid evidence tells me otherwise. 

It’s a matter of choosing the right food for a healthy body.