If you hit 40s, 50s, or beyond, chances are you may be worrying about cholesterol. High cholesterol has bad reputation and scared middle-aged health nuts to the point of insanity. And by insanity I don’t mean worrying sick, I mean dementia.
Somehow butter, eggs, and anything saturated became “no-nos” among cardiologists and heart-savvy nutritionists. Although cholesterol-atherosclerosis link has been long debunked, the myth that cholesterol is a heart killer remains strong and it is as hard to change as a diaper on a screaming baby.
The right way to be fit after 40
Today I read a few profiles on fitness groups and weight loss enthusiasts. Oh, boy! Some people are stuck at “fat-is-bad” and “cholesterol will kill you” myth without realizing how their “healthy low-cholesterol diet” may actually contribute to their premature aging.
I am not going to talk about wrinkles, osteoporosis, and anxiety attacks now. I’ll leave it for the next time.
Let me paraphrase it.
When you hit 40s or 50s and your cholesterol goes up, you try to get it down, as per your doctor’s advice to reduce heart disease risk. You figured out that lower cholesterol means lower chance for a heart attack or plaque in the arteries. So when you get that cholesterol down, your body is going to be much healthier, right?
Wrong!
Eggs won’t give you heart attack
Cholesterol has nothing to do with heart attacks. Actually, that’s not true. It does. 75% of people that have heart attacks have either normal or low cholesterol. Which means out of all heart attack victims only 25% have high cholesterol. I’m not sure if my logic is right, but doesn’t it look like high cholesterol actually means fewer heart attacks?
Anyhow, your doctor’s logic may be different. And you may be scared sh…less not to follow his. So, you follow a low-fat diet and avoid cholesterol to please his protocol. Meanwhile…
But eggs can make you smart
A Finnish study on 2497 middle-aged men conducted over 4 years concluded that eating eggs regularly substantially improves cognitive scores. The conclusion why it was so, wasn’t obvious. Maybe the post-egg smarts were due to abundance of lutein, zeaxantin, or choline contained in the yolk, or maybe it was just that “awful goo”, cholesterol, that gave the brain a boost.
In any case, egg-eater came out as cognitive winners. They scored better on various neuro-psychological tests, the trail making test, selective reminding test, visual reproduction test, as well as the verbal fluency test. They were also less prone to dementia and Alzheimer disease.
We love eggs
As you may know we eat about 100-200 eggs a week between the two of us. We’ve been doing it for over a decade together. Maybe it’s the eggs, or maybe it’s our personalities, but we enjoy verbal battles, selective reminding (like did you take the trash out), and making trails with our van on the North American continent. We apparently can also recognize friends faces.
If you want to test our memory capacity, hit us up. We are up for meeting an old friend or a friend-to-be. Meanwhile here is a challenge for you. Take this test. If you are just as insane as we are…. that would be lovely.
