Our heart is one organ that works unendingly alongside the brain, to keep us alive. While with a hemispherectomy, a person is possibly going to lose the major function of the part of the brain removed such as losing the ability to see on one side of the body, losing the ability to move on one part of the body, and so on, the person can still move and be alive, but with the heart-stopping work, then the person is dead. While a hospital can still keep people who are brain dead since other organs of their body are still functional, this is not possible when the heart stops pumping blood. This shows how important the heart is and so, a lot of care needs to be placed on the heart. You must have been told that the sugar you take can affect your heart leading to cardiovascular diseases, well that's true. Also, you might have been told that it is Omega-6 fatty acids like corn oil, that's also bad as well but I am looking at another type of fat today, and that is Trans Fat or trans-unsaturated fatty acids.
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As the name implies, they are unsaturated fatty acids, and at one point in time, it has been banned then the FDA in 2015 stopped classifying them as generally recognized as safe. This is a result of its effect on the body and is very bad for the arteries but this doesn't come to light fast enough. The effect of Trans Fat or unsaturated fatty acids can go on as long as Heart attack, Type 2 Diabetes, Stroke, Cancer, Increased LDL, Decreased HDL, Inflammation, infertility, bone degeneration, autoimmune disease, as well as tendon degeneration.
Like I said, the oil is made from an unnatural process where liquid oil gotten from soy, sun flower, or maize. Then high temperature, and pressure are added into it after which hydrogen gas is added in the presence of a metalic catalyst such as nickel. Having the highly heated fat that becomes thicker and hydrogenated, allows the oil to process the trans fat. Most food that has on its label partially hydrogenated oil surely contains trans fat. It is found in so many oily snack food. To tell you how bad trans fat is, if there is an increase of about 2% in our diet, it can lead to a 20% increase in the risk of heart attack as the arteries become rigid. At some point, hydrogenated fat was meant to replace saturated fat. Before I continue, let me quickly do a run through of fat, for those that don't know what fat is. While you are told to eat carbohydrate for energy, the body stores energy as fat. Fat is energy dense having twice the energy that other food class have. Fat has since knowing this been classified into good and bad fat. Fats can be categorized into Trans, Saturated, Unsaturated, Hydrogenated, Polyunsaturated, and even Omega-3. Saturated fat have their carbons in a saturated chain with each bonded to two carbons and hydrogens, and they are mainly animal fat. Unsaturated fat is made up of double bonds having fewer hydrogen molecules. Unsaturated fats are mainly liquid and that is why they exist in oils and exist in Cis isomers. They come mainly from fish and plants. Unsaturated fats are less healthy compared to saturated fat. Trans-Saturated are very bad and are manufactured by adding hydrogens or hydrogenating partially unsaturated fat. These fats stack well with their double bonds and they interact badly with cholesterol. Back to the trans fat, since we understand where we are going now.
Would we say that most fat-related problems that we have been experiencing are as a result of manmade and trans fat? Fat can be natural and manmade, and trans fat is one of them.
Reference
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3551118/
- https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/nutrition-trans-fat
- https://academic.oup.com/advances/article/11/3/697/5645621
- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.771492/full
- https://medlineplus.gov/ency/patientinstructions/000786.htm