About Us (Our Journey)

Welcome!

And Hello! Quick introductions: We're Scott and Brenda Nason and we like to camp, travel, walk, play with our grand kids, love on our dog and pursue a healthy lifestyle in the face of extremely confusing and contradictory information about what "healthy" even means.

In The Beginning

For use, the journey toward a new definition of health begins back in April of 2017 when Brenda had a stent put in after failing a routine stress test. It all seemed—not only acceptable—but at the time, I found myself thinking about what might have happened if we were going through this just a hundred years ago. Before we had all of this amazing technology that could see inside the human body and then correct issues that came from bad genes or sunspots or whatever. What an amazing time to be alive!

Early Questions

But then, a couple years later, that changed when we started investigating all the medications that Brenda was now on—for life—and started finding a not-so-reassuring association between some of those medications and Alzheimer’s and dementia. Something that Brenda was deathly afraid of after going through the horrible ordeal of watching her mom deteriorate over the course of several years, eventually succumbing to the disease. Again, from bad genes or sunspots or the luck of the draw I guess.

Our Ground Zero

Ground Zero for our journey happened when we came across a person by the name of Max Lugavere. He’d written a book—GENIUS FOODS—outlining what he’d found out about how diet most likely played a major role in his mother’s own struggle with, and eventual death from, Alzheimer’s. That very quickly led us to Nina Teicholz and from there, the race was on. Her book—The Big Fat Surprise—literally kept me up at night. I’d read a few pages and just get so disgusted at what I was reading that I had to put it down.

“Oh, we didn’t publish that paper because it just didn’t prove what we were looking for.”

Multiple variations of that quote appeared throughout the book as the story unfolded. The story outlines—in agonizing detail—the road we've traveled to get to this craze for all things low fat. And then eventually having it written into the fabric of “Nutrition Science” without it ever having a proper day in court. Prior to the Government, basically arbitrarily choosing sides in the 70’s, there was an active debate going on in the scientific community about what the true cause of heart disease was. After that...not-so-much.

Nina’s book demonstrates how it all came to be and is so well researched and investigated, it provides a healthy footing (pun intended) to stand on since about one third of the book is the actual list of references!

Low Carb

From those 2 early entry points, we had a foothold and from there we became obsessed with finding out more about, not only what other “conventional wisdom” might be slightly askew, but also on finding out more about how the body works (and how we can affect a change in it by what we stuff into our face).

So, if fat isn’t the problem, then what is? Well, there’s a long, sorted tail of mystery and intrigue around that answer. But it turns out that the dietary guidelines that were written (a long time ago and purportedly for our “own good”), may have been just a tad premature. (And by “premature” I mean; off-track, untested, unverified, unproven, very little supporting data…you get the picture.)

Back in the day (the fifties and sixties), there were two opposing schools of thought on what the main driver of heart disease was: saturated fat or sugar. And when fat won the popularity contest (not the scientific contest), we embarked on a 50-year experiment to see what effect a high sugar (high carbohydrate) diet might actually have on the American public. We were hoping for less heart disease.

Common Sense Sidebar

Since the dietary guidelines first came out in the late seventies, what’s happened to our general health as a nation?

Well, it’s not looking so hot:

• It doesn’t take too much digging to find out that heart disease is on the rise (not the expected decline from cutting out fat and lowering cholesterol). According to the CDC, Heart disease is responsible for 1 in 5 deaths and cost about $252 billion.
• Type 2 diabetes is on the rise along with the alarming new occurrence of juvenile diabetes. According to the American Diabetes Association, “In 2021, 38.4 million Americans, or 11.6% of the population, had diabetes.”
• According to the CDC, “More than 2 in 5 U.S. adults have obesity.” And “Obesity accounts for nearly $173 billion in medical expenditures in 2019 dollars.” And, alarmingly, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases reports that “Almost 1 in 5 children and adolescents ages 2 to 19 (19.3%) have obesity.”
• There's been an “Alarming Rise in Autoimmune Diseases”
• Metabolic Syndrome is on the rise
• According to the Alzheimer’s Association, nearly 7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's. By 2050, this number is projected to rise to nearly 13 million while associated healthcare costs are projected to reach $1 trillion.
• U.S. Fertility Rate Drops to Another Historic Low

 

Now, I'm admittedly no Rocket Scientist, but something seems to be amiss here. What the heck is happening to us?

So What About Cholesterol?

We’ve been so focused on cholesterol as the culprit for so long, that it’s kind of caused us to take our eye off the ball. Today, there is more and more research surfacing to indicate that cholesterol is a poor predictor of future heart disease risk. Roughly half the people hospitalized for either heart attack or stroke, have high cholesterol. Which means that roughly half of those people have optimal or low cholesterol.  (case study)

On one hand you have the case that cholesterol is an essential component of every cell in your body. Without cholesterol, you would literally die.

And on the other hand, there is evidence that shows that atherosclerosis (the hardening of the artery walls) is caused by a build up of Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL) inside the lining (endothelium) of your arteries.

The big question with that is: “Is the LDL just at the scene of the crime? Or did LDL cause the crime?” (stop and ponder that for a hot minute)

But, besides the poor association out of the gate, more and more research is now showing a correlation between low cholesterol and an increase in all-cause mortality (dying sooner) – Nature.com:22111,  PubMed:27292972

And associations between low cholesterol and dementia – JNM:content/62/supplement_1/102.

There are way better predictors of future risk than cholesterol:

Type 2 diabetes is associated with about 3 times more risk than smoking! And the Hazard Ratio for Insulin Resistance is almost 5 times greater than for LDL-cholesterol! (BMJ:e001680,  Dr Ken Berry looks at these numbers)

Where To Go From Here

Dig in and take an interest.

The links we've found useful may work as a starting point for you to embark on your own path.

Check out the Influencer's YouTube channels from the "Influencers" tab on our Health Home page and see if there's anything of interest in there.