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Page 9
| a medical setting that heart disease can be reversed with diet and lifestyle changes alone. |
| Essential Fatty Acids |
| Some argue that the extremely low-fat diet advocated by Pritikin and Ornish is itself unhealthy. In the 1980s, Ann Louise Gittleman worked as the Pritikin Center's director of nutrition. In her book Beyond Pritikin, she described the symptoms of nutritional deficiency experienced by people who adhere to a strict no-fat regimen and reviewed research proving the importance of "beneficial" fats in the diet. To Nathan Pritikin, there was no such thing as a beneficial fat, but some cultures, such as American Eskimos, have diets very high in fat without high rates of heart disease. |
| In the last few years, the abbreviations EFA (essential fatty acids), GLA (gamma linolenic acid), EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahex-aenoic acid) have become as widely used as the omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids they describe. |
| Omega-3 oils derived from fish and marine life and omega-6 oils from unrefined plant sources form the membrane that surrounds every cell in the body and are the source of prostaglandins, which regulate the entire body. A 1986 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine indicated that oils such as olive and peanut oil are as effective in lowering cholesterol levels as a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. A case in point: the Greek island of Crete has the world's highest consumption of olive oil and the lowest rate of heart disease. |
| "Believe it or not," wrote Gittleman, "almost 80 |
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