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 Eating egg yolks regularly increases plaque buildup about two-thirds as much as smoking does, according to a new study.
August 15th, 2012
05:38 PM ET
Is eating egg yolks as bad as smoking?A new study suggests eating egg yolks can accelerate heart disease almost as much as smoking. The study published online in the journal Atherosclerosis found eating egg yolks regularly increases plaque buildup about two-thirds as much as smoking does. Specifically, patients who ate three or more yolks a week showed significantly more plaque than those who ate two or less yolks per week. It may seem harsh to compare smoking with eating egg yolks, but lead study author Dr. David Spence says researchers needed a way to put it into perspective since both eating cholesterol and smoking increase cardiovascular risks - but the general public believes smoking is far worse for your health.
The issue is with the yolk, not the egg, says Spence, who is also a professor of neurology at the University of Western Ontario's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. "One jumbo chicken egg yolk has about 237 milligrams of cholesterol." Keeping a diet low in cholesterol is key, says Spence. Even if you are young and healthy, eating egg yolks can increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases later. "Just because you are 20 doesn't mean egg yolks aren't going to cause any trouble down the line," he says. Study: Egg yolk nearly as bad as smoking For those patients with increased coronary risk, such as diabetics, eating an egg yolk a day can increase coronary risk by two to five-fold, he adds. Atherosclerosis, also called coronary artery disease, occurs when plaque builds up in the blood vessels leading to the heart, specifically the inner arterial wall, and limits the amount of blood that can pass through. Doctors write a prescription for fresh produce In the study, researchers looked at 1,231 patients of the vascular prevention clinics at London Health Sciences Centre's University Hospital, with a mean age of 61.5. Each patient had already experienced a small stroke or had high blood pressure, hypertension or a family history of cardiovascular disease. Spence says researchers chose to use patients with a higher likelihood of cardiovascular issues because it would have been harder to get visible results using the general population with a lower risk. Patients were asked to fill out questionnaires about their diet, lifestyle and medications, including how much they smoked and the number of egg yolks they ate. An ultrasound was performed to examine their plaque buildup. Researchers took into account sex, cholesterol, blood pressure, smoking, body mass index and diabetes. In addition to relying completely on the recollection of patients as to what they ate, the study did not account for waist circumference and it did not account for a patient's exercise program. And perhaps most notably, it only looked at patients with existing cardiovascular issues. The study confirms what doctors already know about eating cholesterol and cardiovascular disease, says Dr, Gordon Tomaselli, chief of cardiology at John Hopkins University School of Medicine and the former president of the American Heart Association. "Cholesterol intake should be limited to 300 milligrams a day, particularly in people who do not have underlying heart disease," he says. However, people with high LDL blood cholesterol levels or those taking a blood cholesterol-lowering medication should eat less than 200 mg of cholesterol per day. So what can you do to keep your heart healthy? Talk to your doctor if you have a history of heart disease and consider a change in lifestyle – things like eating better, watching your cholesterol, stopping smoking, and exercising. soundoff (1,086 Responses)« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next »Leave a Reply to RW
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Get a behind-the-scenes look at the latest stories from CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen and the CNN Medical Unit producers. They'll share news and views on health and medical trends - info that will help you take better care of yourself and the people you love.
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What, eggs are dangerous yet again?!
But we were recently have been told that eggs are NOT harmful, and their cholesterol is NOT bad. 🙁
And that too was a medical study!
Whom should we believe?!
Wait a year and a new study will put eggs back in favor again.
The key to all food is moderation and knowing how your body responds to different types of foods. What your specific body can handle will determine how much is ok. There are those who can eat eggs for breakfast, lunch and dinner and live to be 100 years old. Also there are those who will fall over just touching an egg and everything in between.
Here's how I feel about it: If an egg is the unhealthiest thing I'm eating than I am doing amazingly well.
If your diet consists of lots of meat, etc., those yolks might be a bad idea. However, for many people protein is necessary. Cancer patients must eat lots of protein, or they starve to death: the body stops being able to take in any food. Egg whites raw are not good for you, but in moderation the yolks can help a person recover from surgery. For anybody with high cholesterol, the opposite is true: you should avoid eggs, and check what kinds of foods you may eat. Since there are more heart patients than cancer patients, the recommendations are made for the heart patients.
The egg industry apparently did not pay off the medical researchers. That'll teach 'em!
Wow, never knew so many doctors browsed these comment boards!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I always thought humans ate eggs (yolk and all) since the beginning of time. Nobody was worse off doing it – as far as I know.
What nonsense again – just forget what these bozos tell you.
If the wallet allows, opt for free-range organic.
And this crap is news? Why not slam the Catholic church or republicans? CNN you are slipping.
I'd personally rather know about medical and day to day stuff than all the junk we're forced to listen to about politics these days. We can affect our own health. Politics? Snowballs chance in hell at making a meaningful difference.
No -blame Mr Harper. That is fashionable nowadays.
The Catholic church and republicans are their own worst enemies. No need for CNN to slam them.. just report what they do. But it does beg the question.. if you believe CNN to be such a biased, agenda driven network like Fox, then why are you here?
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/08august/Pages/Eating-egg-yolks-as-bad-as-smoking.aspx
read that please.
Thanks for including the link. Now I know for sure I can eat egg yolks. I do not have any pre-existing risk factor for heart disease so.
Link has this statement about the study:
"The news is based on a Canadian study which used ultrasound to look at the fatty build-up in the arteries of around 1,200 adults who were attending a clinic because they had pre-existing risk factors for heart disease"
Yes...thank you for the link. Although the CNN article is technically correct, it is a bit misleading. The National Health Service of England article referenced by your link is much more informative.
I'm not letting one study sway me. They always seem to be changing their minds on this stuff. I'm eating eggs! And I'm going to eat the whole egg, yolk and all. They cheap, yummy and you can prepare them a million different ways.
This "study" reeks strongly of bad statistical conclusions. Sadly one too often one notices doctors confusing "correlation" with "causality".
I'm going to be you don't really understand the expression "correlation is not causality." Because correlation is the cornerstone of causality–without it, you have no causality. Studies therefore establish a correlation while controlling on as many potential confounders as possible. In an experimental design, random assignment controls for almost everything. Without an experimental design, statistical control CAN do as well as random assignment (in fact, there is a huge literature on this).
In other words, just throwing out the "correlation does not prove causation" expression isn't enough to discredit the finding, especially if you don't know or understand what was done.
No Scott, I don't believe you know what you are talking about – read the study and then try and tell me if there is cause and effect
scott. #1 – correlation via oibservational research suggests a hypothesis for later clinical studyies. there is no causation here. #2, like you mention, to get to causation, you need to control for confounding factors. read the study. this was most clearly not done here.
also, the difference between 3 was 7mm, or around 5% in surface area. what they fail to quantify, though, is that the uncertainty in measurement is ~100% of the total measurement. so, this is not even worth discussing.
"Too much of everything is just enough"
Oh we're going to do this particular scare dance again? We're back to being afraid of eggs? Really? Cigarettes with hundreds of toxins and carcinogenics that line your lungs with thick black resin and fill your cells with toxic smoke and cause life threatening respiratory, circulatory and digestive diseases, vs. a few eggs a week? Take your scary overblown lies some place else. This is garbage.
Sadly, it doesn't seem that you are in a position to evaluate the finding. You can make cigarettes sound as bad as you want with words and try to make eggs sound innocuous, but you really don't know. I think I'm going to put more weight in a study of more than 1000 persons measured with clinical instruments by researchers than in your opinion.
OOOOhhh. Scott wants to believe a study of 1000people! How about this study: The Harvard University study flies in the face of conventional wisdom on eggs. U.S. health authorities advise Americans to eat no more than three or four eggs a week. The theory has been that eggs, which are high in cholesterol, could increase cholesterol in the blood and lead to heart attacks.
But the study of nearly 120,000 people found that those who consumed seven to 14 eggs a week had the same rate of cardiovascular disease as those whose consumption, on average, didn't include even one egg per week.
"Eggs will raise blood levels of cholesterol, but the increase is actually very small and appears to be compensated for by other nutrients, beneficial nutrients, that are present in eggs," says Dr. Meir Stampfer of Harvard University.
Courtesy of CNN back in April.
Don't worry captain – Scott doesn't understand what an epidemiological study is – he's like 95% of America and believes what these morons in the media write without any sense of merit
Actually Scott – the facts are in about smoking and common damn sense will tell you the difference between what smoking does and what eggs – which people have been consuming since the beginning of time, do. I know many many smokers who have permanent damage from smoking. Know even more people who have been consuming eggs for 70 years and guess what – perfect health. This is nonsense.
Oh great, next you're going to tell me that bacon isn't good for me – what the heck am I supposed to eat for breakfast now?
Eating eggs as bad as smoking? It's even WORSE, for the chickens!
you have never raised chickens have you? They often will eat the egg themselves if it gets cracked or broken.
Good. I'd just as soon not have to live in a world where people are scared to death of every little pointless thing anyway. I'll have mine scrambled, with a side of extra greasy pork sausage.
what a bunch of bull crap. I go through about a dozen whole eggs a week and my cholesterol is below where it needs to be
so what? You don't sit on the average. Good for you. Your exception doesn't disprove the rule. Furthermore, your cholesterol is only a proxy measure for the extent of blockage you MIGHT have in your arteries. In other words, you might be deluding yourself with your cholesterol measure.
All those that think if they don't eat eggs, smoke, drink alcohol, bacon, whole milk,etc will live forever...please raise your hand.
Wow, it seems like there are many angry people over this one, I guess since so many people eat eggs no one wants to believe that it can be bad for them. Do check out this presentation on the leading 15 causes of death and it talks about eggs on how it compares to smoking. Really interesting information people should know about because making judgement.
http://nutritionfacts.org/video/uprooting-the-leading-causes-of-death/
We eat three times a day and over the years and decades the effects really add up, and the consequence on our lives is huge. I think we all should be more critical on what we do and not just rely on assumptions and our current habits. Clearly, there is a health problem in this country on a massive scale, the reason is likely over things we have assumed is okay for a long time.
Wow, if you read the real article you will find that once again CNN lies. http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/08august/Pages/Eating-egg-yolks-as-bad-as-smoking.aspx The article does not compare yokes to smoking, It's looking at people the do both. Nice job CNN. Just proves my point yet another slanted CNN view. The facts are what we say they are.
funhouse, your argument is completely irrelevant–it really isn't even an argument. You may as well have said you disagree with their conclusions because the sky is blue. In a sample, there will be variability in the outcomes as well as the inputs. Statistical methods are used to account for the variability. The fact that some people were smokers and ate eggs is irrelevant.
The closer you get to one ingredient per food item, the healthier it is. This is why I don't believe this study. Name one single-ingredient food item that's bad for you. The problem is all the crap they add to your food, the colors, preservatives the hydrogenated fats and the high fructose corn syrup! Not to mention the pesticides and genetic modification that goes on for everything from a carrot to a multi-ingredient box of cereal. Free range chickens or chickens you keep in your own yard are not producing harmful eggs. This is yet another reason to buy locally. Lots of people have yardbirds (our next door neighbor does, and we live in a city), find out who they are and buy from them! More junk science. Wonder who funded it??
This just in; everyone dies eventually.
This just in, what's your point? Not a single word on this article or comment section states otherwise. So why are you acting like you are pointing out some revelation to the world?
Ryan, can you spell "sarcasm"? I'm pretty sure Andy can.
If the government really wants us to eat healthier then they should subsidize all organic vegetable and fruit farming so we don't have to pay anything for it.
Instead you either eat chemically tainted fruits and veggies or pay 2-3 times as much for organic fruits and veggies.
Once again the medical community proves it doesn't understand the nature of food. Ever since we called red meat and eggs bad for you and started pushing the whole grains (fatten the cattle on corn ya know) and dousing everything fat free with sugar (think kids lowfat chocolate milk in school with 23 grams of sugar per tiny serving). Gues what we became FATTER and more UNHEALTHY than ever.
The medical establishment has everything backwards and keeps pushing the wrong info. I now
eat whole foods, organic, non-GMO. Stay away from wheat, grains, starches and sugar. Fruit in moderation. I tried it for a month and was amazed to see how energetic and healthy I felt. My allergies and issues started clearing up. Not to mention medical doctors scratching their heads all confused when you tell them you eat RED grassfed meat, fresh farm eggs and have lost 20 lbs. of fat and your cholesterol numbers and BP are great.
The docs just DO NOT GET how food is meant to nourish your body and these studies are all on unhealthy people who eat tons of wheat, carbs, junk-food. It's not the egg yolk that is the culprit.
Excellent post by someone who actually gets it. Thank you!
Ummm...pretty sure you are completely reversed on logic...
Actually, Ryan, they're both on the ball when it comes to nutrition.
Oh thank God there is intelligent life out there who visits the CNN blatherblog. A refreshing voice of reason. Come back again please!
You have it all backwards. Just a couple years ago scientists and dieters discovered the exact opposite of what you wrote. Your consumption of red meat is a sure road to cancer.
Sorry grain for brain you are 100% wrong. Grass fed red meat is absolutely healthy and will not lead to cancer. The grain you seem to love absolutely will though. Humans are not meant to consume grains.
The truth is, everything eventually leads to death; noone escapes it so, eat a friggin egg, follow it with a smoke and live it up!
By that logic, you should just take a knife and slit your throat right now, since we all die anyway, right?
Two of the researchers have ties to the statin industry!! Here's a good analysis of the study: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/are-eggs-really-as-bad-for-your-arteries-as-cigarettes/#more-30830
And there it is. Thank you!
hey cnn, AWESOME RESEARCH! oh wait this article isn't based on science.
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/08august/Pages/Eating-egg-yolks-as-bad-as-smoking.aspx
womp womp
Outright lie, at least for properly raised eggs, which is all I eat. Could be true about sweat shop eggs though.
I haven't eaten red meat, egg yolks, or dairy fat in the last 2 years. The preponderance of scientific evidence that saturated fat and dietary cholesterol are horrible for us, convinced me that I should make the change.
It's actually surprisingly easy to adjust to a no saturated fat diet as there are still plenty of other food options. For example, egg whites, non-fat milk, fish, white meat and chicken still provide a great deal of non-vegetarian dishes.
Sorry there is no evidence at all of those things. You cannot live without saturated fat, period. There is not a single study ever done that correlates saturated fat with heart disease. Yeas you heard me right, NOT ONE.
I get up to 60% of my daily calories from delicious saturated fat. I lost 45 pounds in 4 months, was taken off all meds, and am healthier now than I ever have been.
Enjoy your tofu and bean sprouts. Make mine over-easy. By the way, did you know that a bean sprout screams when it's harvested. You heartless cad, you.
No, more like – enjoy your heart disease and systemic inflammation
Interesting article... yet, I am 51 years old and have been eating 3 eggs a day for breakfast most of my life (omellete or scarmbled). I thankfully have no medical issues at all and can honestly say that my heart is ticking away just fine. So, what gives?
That’s rather poor science you are using there. Once you read up on the basic scientific method you will be able to answer you own question.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Again?
I KNOW I KNOW!!! Where are the hard hats!
If they were eating toast with those eggs, and almost assuredly they were, that is the culprit, not the yolk. This is just a very bad article full of nothing but bad information.
Amen brutha – Paleo Strong
it's the bacon and 'other protiens' eaten with eggs, contributing to the plaque.
Nope, 100% false. It"s from grains and white potatoes if anything.
you people with your epic replies, no one reads them and no one cares
Did you say something. I didn't think so.
I lowered my cholesterol from over 240 to below 70 by taking Lipitor and Centrum Cardio in conjunction with eating nutritious foods including salads, salmon, fresh fruit and yogurt WITHOUT ELIMINATING EGG YOLKS. I have one whole hardboiled egg a day. The egg a day has not interfered with lowering my cholesterol. I think a cholesterol reading under 70 and maintaining for a year now is pretty darned good for a nutrition fanatic, non-smoker and light red wine drinker whom this article says should be paying a similar price to smokers - because of that one hardboiled egg with yolk a day.
This doesn't make sense. Egg yolks are supposed to be pure HDL which is actually very good for combating atherosclerosis. There's something else going on here that was not accounted for in the analysis. Also, I'm not sure how this got published at all given that is now well-accepted egg yolks are good for you. Remember the French paradox that was so frequently cited during the years that egg yolks were theorized to be bad? Were these London study participants also eating a giant steak with every egg yolk? You can't overturn established science with a simple correlative study.
Brilliant. By selecting for a sample population predisposed to cardiovascular disease rather than the general public, they've proved that people with a history of cardiovascular problems should limit dietary cholesterol. Who would have ever thought??
Since assimilation of dietary cholesterol into the body is genetically mediated, and almost certainly is higher than average in the selected population (how many people < 60 in the entire population have already had a stroke?), these results are not generalizable, regardless of what the researchers say. Nothing to worry about here, folks. Move along. They just wanted a scary headline to get a publication out of their research.
Please do not tell Illinois government this. They will tax the yolk out of eggs and chickens and feed and farmers and consumers!
It's Obama fault for the yolk
Don't let a news paper, a neighbor or somej ournalist tell you how to eat. Read the compelte study/research yourself before you make a choice about what is bad for you. Journalist just want you to read their article and be "shocked"
and tell everyone you know to read their article....like I said before, if you want to know the truth, read the full study yourself and do with it how you see fit.
Eating egg yolks increases your risk of developing heart disease if you're already predisposed to heart disease. Smoking increases your risk of developing heart disease, lung disease, lung cancer, mouth cancer, throat cancer...and raises the risk of ALL of those things for EVERYONE NEAR YOU. So which is worse – eggs or smoking? Um, SMOKING. DUH.
Please watch the movie Fat Head. It streams on Netflix. In it you will find out why this article is nothing but a lie. You will learn what the real culprits that cause plaque buildup are.
So true!
Thank you. I'm glad there are a few of us who've figured out that it's not the cholesterol, it's the inflammation in the blood vessels that causes it to collect.
Wow, horrible research, horrible methods. And DUH total cholesterol doesn't matter. France has the highest cholesterol (over 230) and one of the lowest rates of heart disease, and Russia has cholesterol under 190 and one of the highest rates of heart disease! I'm happily eating my eggs and bacon (cooked in bacon fat, mind you) each morning, and my cholesterol is BETTER than when I ate grains and lowfat. Seriously the medical community is nuts any more and need to get their smug heads out of their...
THIS IS A BIASED STUDY
"The news is based on a Canadian study which used ultrasound to look at the fatty build-up in the arteries of around 1,200 adults who were attending a clinic because they had pre-existing risk factors for heart disease"
Hmmm, why leave that out of the article? As always, the devil is in the details.
Here comes Peter Cottontail with an Easter basket filled with DEATH.
egg yolks are high in folic acid which is essential for pregnant woman or to replenish your body after consuming alcohol. basically what i'm gathering is if you're at a high risk of heart disease or are generally unhealthy to begin with, you shouldnt eat egg yolks all the time.
They must be yoking
Big clarifier is needed in this article that seems to suggest "us public" just doesn't know - egg yolks are almost as bad maybe when it comes to heart disease...let us not forget cigarettes link to lung cancer, emphesyma, many other forms of cancer, etc, etc. It's ridiculous to arge the public doesn't get that yolk in general is as bad as cigarettes. Not even close. Show me the link between egg yolk and cancer...guarantee it's FAR, FAR lower than cigarettes.
Romney's yolks don't give you heart issues it fixes them.
So how come we have also been repeatedly told that eating cholesterol food sources has NO impact on our body level – it is only dependent on cholesterol our own body makes – ?? "The study confirms what doctors already know about eating cholesterol" Huh, say what???
Of course there are also plenty of studies that show that the plaque doesn't build up on the vessels unless there is already inflammation present. Inflammation that is caused by gluten and other anti-nutrients in grains like wheat, corn, soy and rice. So, unless they did studies prior to this study to determine if inflammation was already present in the blood vessels of the test subjects, the results of this study are invalid. I love science. So many variables to consider.
Hey Government. Here is your chance to outlaw something else. Eggs are bad. Outlaw eggs or put such a high tax on them no one can afford to by them.
Rocky is screwed...
I'd like to know how long this study was conducted- I saw that it only had 1276 participants
See, Obamacare is bad.
I'm screwed I eat eggs everyday and smoke...double trouble!
Please realize that this is a "case-control" study, so you have to take the results very lightly. What this does, is indicate the need for a more comprehensive study (a longitudinal cohort study would probably be the most feasible). Case control studies have lots of issues as far as determing causality, and contain too many biases to be able to take the results as cause and result. There may have been many other factors that contributed to heart disease that were not asked by the researchers. Specifically, genetics may play a very large factor. Also, there is a huge problem with dietary recall – especially if you're asking about behaviors that occurred years ago (do you remember how many egg yolks you ate per week when you were 20?). So I'll keep eating egg yolks, but take this study into account along with others showing the benefits of egg yolks when making my decision.