Thursday, November 27, 2014

The P479L gene for CPT-1a and fatty acid oxidation

In order to work out what is happening with a given child having an episode of hypoglycaemia as a result of having the P479L version of CPT-1a, we need some information.

My thanks to Mike Eades for the full text of the paper on the Canadian Inuit, which does include a certain amount of useful clinical data.

Here is the snippet about a young girl having a hypoglycaemic episode while hospitalised:

“Plasma free fatty acid was 3.8 mmol/L and plasma 3-hydroxybutyrate was 0.5 mmol/L”

Blood glucose was 1.9 mmol/l at the time. An FFA level of 3,800 micromol/l is impressively high. She was generating a small amount of ketones.

No one would argue with intravenous glucose at this point, the question is about how she got here.

So. The problem here does not (as I'd initially thought) appear to insulin induced suppression of FFAs to a level at which beta oxidation fails to support metabolism. FFAs are very high, even for an P479L person after a short fast. With ketones starting to be produced (and low blood glucose) I feel it is reasonable to assume that her liver glycogen is depleted and, while some fatty acids are entering the hepatocytes, not enough of them are being oxidised to support ketogenesis. Glycogen is being depleted to keep liver cells functional. Gluconeogenesis from protein is unable to meet the hepatic (and whole body) demand for glucose calories in the situation of limited access to FFA calories.

However much glycogen derived glucose you consider that the ancestral diet contained I feel it is very, very unlikely to be greater than the glucose and fructose of a modern diet. I feel that getting enough glycogen in to the liver to fully fuel its metabolism in the absence of adequate fatty acid oxidation is a non starter. The P479L mutation was not "permitted" by high oral carb loading, it was permitted by conditions which facilitated fatty acid oxidation. You don't have to agree.


What starts to look much more interesting is what controls CPT-1a activity and how this might vary from the ancestral diet to the modern diet.

The paper makes the point that omega 3 fatty acids appear to up regulate fatty acid oxidation (in rats at least) by the liver. If this is true in humans then a high level of omega 3 fatty acids from marine fats might up regulate fatty acid oxidation to a level which no longer necessitates the depletion of hepatic glycogen derived form oral glucose intake or protein catabolism.

In support of this is that the distribution of P479L within Alaska is not uniform, it's significantly commoner in the coastal regions compared to the inland areas.

"The allele frequency and rate of homozygosity for the CPT-1a P479L variant were high in Inuit and Inuvialuit who reside in northern coastal regions. The variant is present at a low frequency in First Nations populations, who reside in areas less coastal than the Inuit or Inuvialuit in the two western territories"

I'm open to other explanations, there are papers suggesting that the mutation helps to preferentially dispose of omega 6 PUFA, with omega 3 fatty acids as the facilitator.

In summary: Maintaining adequate FFA oxidation to avoid glycogen depletion looks to be the core need in P479L. A high fat diet with a large proportion of omega 3 fats might be a plausible way of maintaining adequate hepatic fatty acid oxidation. Hyperglycaemia (via Crabtree effect) looks to be anathema. Glycogen loading with a normal starch/sugar based modern diet is clearly ineffective to prevent hypoglycaemia for some individuals. Resistant starch as a reliable nightly adjunct to infant feeding seems very unlikely in the ancestral diet. Repeated periods of fasting were probably routine when hunting was poor and does not appear to have selected against P479L in weaned children. Unweaned children are unlikely to be exposed to fasting, provided milk was available from lactation.

Well, there are some more thoughts on the biochemistry.

People clearly have very differing ideas of what the Inuit did or did not eat as an ancestral diet. The P479L gene eliminates the need for source of dietary glucose to explain very limited levels of ketosis recorded in the Inuit. While it is perfectly possible to invoke a high protein diet to explain a lack of ketosis in the fed state this goes nowhere towards explaining the limited ketosis of fasting. P479L fits perfectly well as an explanation.

I have some level of discomfort with using the Inuit as poster people for a ketogenic diet. That's fine. They may well have eaten what would be a ketogenic diet for many of us, but they certainly did not develop high levels of ketones when they carried the P479L gene.

However. Over the months Wooo and I seem to have come to some sort of conclusion that, while systemic ketones are a useful adjunct, a ketogenic diet is essentially a fatty acid based diet with minimal glucose excursions and maximal beta oxidation. Exactly how important the ketones themselves are is not quite so clear cut. From the Hyperlipid and Protons perspective I would be looking to maximise input to the electron transport chain as FADH2 at electron-transferring-flavoprotein dehydrogenase and minimise NADH input at complex I. Ketones do not do this. Ketones input at complex II, much as beta oxidation inputs at ETFdh, but ketones also generate large amounts of NADH in the process of turning the TCA from acetyl-CoA to get to complex II, which ETFdh does not. I'm not a great lover of increasing the ratio of NADH to NAD+. These are my biases.

Confirming that the Inuit are not poster boys for ketosis is a "so what?" moment for me. Using their P479L mutation to argue against ketogenic diets is more of a problem. It's a massive dis-service to any one of the many, many people out there who are eating their way in to metabolic syndrome to suggest that a ketogenic diet is a Bad Thing because no one has lived in ketosis before. Even the Inuit didn't! My own feeling is that everyone comes from stock who occasionally practiced and survived intermittent fasting so we are should be adapted to this. I'd guess that if you are of Siberian, Inuit or First Nations extraction you might benefit from Jay Wortman's oolichan oil as part of a ketogenic diet.

I'm always amazed by the concept that a ketogenic diet might be temporarily therapeutic but must be discontinued because it eventually becomes Bad For You. It reminds me so much of the converse concept that low fat diets, which might worsen every marker of health which people may care to look at, will deliver major benefits at some mythical future date.

Ultimately, point scoring on the internet about what the Inuit did or didn't eat shouldn't destroy people's chances of health. Destroying a circular argument about Inuit diets may may the destructor feel good. Destroying the feet, eyes and kidneys of a person with type 2 diabetes, who need a ketogenic diet, as a spin off from that victory must be difficult to live with. I don't know how anyone can do this.

I think that's probably all I have to say for now.

Peter

338 comments:

1 – 200 of 338   Newer›   Newest»
Michael Frederik said...

Thank you for another great post.

"a ketogenic diet is essentially a fatty acid based diet with minimal glucose excursions and maximal beta oxidation."

While there might generally be a lot of emphasis on ketones and ketosis elsewhere, following your and Woo's posts have made one very much cognizant of this point.

Thanks again.

Larcana said...

Thanks Peter! I agree the argument is now pointless, I still recommend a very low carb diet for my patients, most have metabolic syndrome diseases.
Sadly, most won't even try it.
L Romeo, MD

Unknown said...

Diabetics need a ketogenic diet? I expect it's an improvement on a refined carb diet, but do you think it's better than a zero refined carb low meat diet?

As far as I can see, the evidence is pointing towards T2D being caused by an excess of haem iron together with deficiencies of micronutrients needed to prevent iron-induced oxidative stress.

A ketogenic diet can help, by upregulating MnSOD (Nrf2 does this and so does BOHB, via HDAC inhibition), but MnSOD is no good if it can't get enough Mn. Excess Fe stops Mn from getting into mitochondria, you may remember, and this causes diabetes in fat fed mice.

Unknown said...

Great points Peter! They in the FTA camp as well as others may come in an tussle some feathers and you can counter back and forth but in the mean time there's something called metabolic syndrome and its growing at a furious pace. My only problem with the ketogenic approach is not the fact(in my opinion) that it easily is the best approach to metabolic syndrome but the fact is there are just so many powerful and influential forces that will always minimize the keto approach. You and the Whooo have done a great job of clarifying my opinion on this but what about the ave Joe out there?

Unknown said...

BOOM.......cold and DHA who would have thought that? Circadian biology and DHA are the keys to electrons and protons. In my own surgical specialty, the sudden use of the operating microscope by "one surgeon" revolutionized the things we were able to do for mankind in cranial and spinal surgery in the 1980's. His idea only began several decades ago. My idea is to shrink our focus even smaller than the operating microscope allows. I believe we need to begin to operate using techniques on a smaller subatomic scale. My bet is we will improve outcomes further. The use of the operating microscope allowed us to deal with smaller scales of complex diseases of the brain to improve outcomes for our patients. My belief today is that the same idea will bear fruit when we begin to use focus less on the macroscopic things in medicine and begin to focus on the subatomic world of biology and how mitochondria fundamentally work.

Tim Steele said...

I'm not sorry I helped topple a faulty core tenant of the modern day Ketogenic Diet.

But I won't belabour the point. I have always agreed that a supervised ketogenic diet can be therapeutic.

I'm wondering, did anyone else catch the fact that the P479L mutation also seemed to select for high HDL cholesterol and apoA-I levels? Carnitine palmitoyltransferase IA polymorphism P479L is common in Greenland Inuit and is associated with elevated plasma apolipoprotein A-I (Free Full Text!)

The high apoA1 is more interesting! It sequesters endotoxic lipopolysaccharide (LPS) released by gram-negative bacteria, and has an 'anti-infective' quality. This higher expression of apoA1 is protective of atherosclerosis and also several common microbiota related diseases (H. pylori infestations, Crohn's Disease, UC).

I just find it extremely ironic that this society who needed to survive with hardly any plant-based carbohydrates evolved to compensate in a way that produced fewer ketones, more HDL, and gut protective mechanisms.

Maybe they are an inspiration after all.

Michael Eades said...

@Tim Steele

You wrote: "I'm not sorry I helped topple a faulty core tenant of the modern day Ketogenic Diet."

Pretty hubristic, I would say. I would argue that it hasn't come close to being toppled by you or anyone else.

tomR said...

"Over the months Wooo and I seem to have come to some sort of conclusion that, while systemic ketones are a useful adjunct, a ketogenic diet is essentially a fatty acid based diet with minimal glucose excursions and maximal beta oxidation. Exactly how important the ketones themselves are is not quite so clear cut."

-> doesn't your conclusion, based on Protons and tiny stuff, miss an elephant in the room in the form of the question how to feed the brain - the organ that doesn't really burn fats as fuel?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23921897

"accumulated nonesterified fatty acids or their activated derivatives could exert detrimental activities on mitochondria, which might trigger the mitochondrial route of apoptosis. Here, we draw attention to three particular problems: (1) ATP generation linked to β-oxidation of fatty acids demands more oxygen than glucose, thereby enhancing the risk for neurons to become hypoxic; (2) β-oxidation of fatty acids generates superoxide, which, taken together with the poor anti-oxidative defense in neurons, causes severe oxidative stress; (3) the rate of ATP generation based on adipose tissue-derived fatty acids is slower than that using blood glucose as fuel. Thus, in periods of extended continuous and rapid neuronal firing, fatty acid oxidation cannot guarantee rapid ATP generation in neurons."

Wasn't this for what ketones were the miracle solution - provide the energy for the brain that is not glucose, especially for someone with glucose metabolism problems? And these are actually proven in this brain fuelling function, both for people with problems with brain, and normal people just enhancing stuff (biohacking)? Now you are kind of disregarding that as if it was inessential in favor of non-ketogenic fat oxidation that can't fuel the brain? What sense does that change of preferences make?

As an addition - one of the fuels the brain loves is lactate - a product of glucose metabolism.

http://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/opinion/blogs/lactic-acid-found-to-have-a-role-as-a-brain-fuel/10038374.blog

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140211084053.htm

http://www.med.uio.no/imb/english/research/news-and-events/news/2012/lactic-acid-protects-brain.html

Michael Frederik said...

Who is this tenant you speak of? Perhaps this person's keto diet was unsupervised.

Tim Steele said...

"Who is this tenant you speak of?"

OK. That's embarrassing!

But I think Peter is actually the one toppling the "tenants" around here when he said:

"I have some level of discomfort with using the Inuit as poster people for a ketogenic diet. That's fine. They may well have eaten what would be a ketogenic diet for many of us, but they certainly did not develop high levels of ketones when they carried the P479L gene."


Bea said...

Ultimately, point scoring on the internet about what the Inuit did or didn't eat shouldn't destroy people's chances of health. Destroying a circular argument about Inuit diets may may the destructor feel good. Destroying the feet, eyes and kidneys of a person with type 2 diabetes, who need a ketogenic diet, as a spin off from that victory must be difficult to live with. I don't know how anyone can do this.

I think that's probably all I have to say for now.

Peter

That brought a tear to my eye.....love your blog! 99% of it WAY over my head but the last paragraph is enough for me.
A LC/VLC ( and probably ketogenic alot of the time) diet has resulted in a 100 lb weight loss between my husband and I.
Husband -60lbs.. No more eye floaters. No more foot ulcers. No more fatty liver. He was never diagnosed diabetic and was told an A1c of 6.5 was fine.
Me -40 lbs. No more unexplained heart palpatations. Energy thru the roof. Look better at 54 than all of my 40s. My A1 c was 5.6 before LC
We have maintained this for 6 years. Most of our friends think our way of eating is rigid but we are slim and they are overweight and obese. Thanksgiving Day started with a 2 hour hike.
I love what I eat which consists of lots of eggs because I have chickens. Raise a cow or pig now and then. Fatten them up with carbs first:-) Berries, some squash, nuts, onions, garlic. I am not suffering or starving myself. This rubbish about LCers starving their gut bugs is nonsense. They get enough to eat but not enough to turn me into a flatulance machine. My mom is Cuban so I had plenty of rice, beans, plantains etc growing up. Made my fat and gassy. Not going back. Till they can tell me why vegatarians have the highest rates of colon cancer I'm not convinced fiber or rs makes a difference.
Picking up that old beat up Atkins book at a garage sale was one of the gets decisions of my life!

Richard Nikoley said...

"Pretty hubristic, I would say."

Hi Mike.

Would you still say, as you did when you dismissed the research we showed months ago, that the reason Inuit were never measured in ketosis by researchers (Stefansson never took any measurements I'm aware of) is because they are "keto adapted?"

tomR said...

"In support of this is that the distribution of P479L within Alaska is not uniform, it's significantly commoner in the coastal regions compared to the inland areas."

Duck Dodgers wrote, that sea mammals that coastal Inuits hunt have blubber that is rich in carbs.

Unknown said...

tomR,

Glial cells in the brain are ketogenic. They take fatty acids and turn them into ketones for the neurons to use. The CPT-1a mutation may even increase ketogenesis in the brain since it results in higher plasma FFA.

Richard Nikoley said...

"Duck Dodgers wrote, that sea mammals that coastal Inuits hunt have blubber that is rich in carbs.”

Not uniformly. However, for diving marine mammals it can be significant, as much as 30% carb measured in some blubber. Here’s the relevant section from a previous post.

LAND MAMMALS ≠ MARINE MAMMALS

Stefansson—who died of a stroke at 82 (though, surprisingly, he lived longer than a lot of other VLC authors)—made the fatal assumption that land mammals and marine mammals are similar. They aren't. They are entirely different, and the difference is tantamount to different species classification. The Inuit were exploiting unique carbohydrate properties in these marine mammals that aren't found in land mammals.

It turns out that marine mammals that spend a good deal of their time diving to great depths have significant glycogen stores. Sperm whales make routine dives to 400 meters for 40 minutes and can reach a maximum depth of 2000 meters (6,560 feet, or 1.25 miles). Narwhals make some of the deepest dives recorded for a marine mammal, diving to at least 800 meters (2,600 feet) 18 and 25 times per day every day for 6 months, with many dives reaching 1,500 meters (4,900 feet). Narwhals have been recorded diving to as deep as 1,800 meters (5,900 ft, over one mile). In addition to making remarkably deep dives, narwhals also spend more than 3 hours per day below 800 meters—this is an incredible amount of time at a depth where the pressure can exceed 2200 PSI (150 atmospheres).

During their deep dives these marine mammals run out of oxygen and switch to their unique glycogen-based energy stores. They store large quantities of glycogen in very odd places, but it typically gets concentrated in the skin and organs. Researchers have discovered significant "glycogen pools" in the narwhal's arterial thoracic retia. Ringed seals have "large quantities of glycogen" in a gelatinous material near their sinuses. A sperm whale's blubber ranges from 8—30% carbohydrates, mostly believed to be glycogen. The hearts and brains of weddel seals have concentrations of glycogen that are two to three times that of land mammals. Furthermore; in marine mammals, these organs tend to be larger in proportion to the total body weight than in land-based mammals.

[to be continued]

Richard Nikoley said...

[continued...]

In 1973, George and Ronald wrote about the harp seal, "All the fiber types contained considerable amounts of glycogen...it is postulated that the seal muscle is basically geared for anaerobic use of carbohydrate as an adaptation for the animal's diving habit."

In a paper on diving marine mammals Hochachka and Storey wrote, in 1975, "In the terminal stages of prolonged diving, however, even these organs must tolerate anoxia for surprisingly long times, and they typically store unusually large amounts of glycogen for this purpose."

Perhaps what's most disappointing is that Stefansson never bothered to clearly explain the Inuit's favorite sweet-tasting whale skin dish (muktuk), that was already known by scientists to be a carbohydrate-rich food. In 1912, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) had reported, "the skin [of the narwhal] contains a remarkable amount of glycogen, thus supplying sufficient quantities of a carbohydrate to cure the scorbutus. The walrus liver also contains much glycogen."

So, this idea that we can compare glycogen content of a [grilled, braised, stewed, or otherwise thoroughly cooked, long after dead] cow or human to that of what the Inuit were eating is entirely misguided. We're talking about marine animals that need large quantities of glycogen to complete their extended deep dives.

---

So, this isn't exactly "carb munching Inuit" as some have misrepresented we put out there, but it is another piece of a curious puzzle. And, now we find that the PUFA are perhaps very important for this genetic "feature" the Inuit carry.

...I mean, we are talking about a feature here, right? Not a bug?

mem said...

Some might find this an important read. Binford lived with and studied the Nunamiut Inuit for at least a year and has been considered an expert in the study of hunter-gatherers. Binford's estimate of the Nunamiut's non-animal based food intake per year was about 1/2 cup.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0979773180/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_8?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

I think the idea of whether someone measured them or any other tribe as being in ketosis is silliness. I am far more interested in a scientist who lived with them and watched their every activity for months on end than whether or not they were in ketosis all the time.

However, via Binford's work, it is quite difficult to imagine that they were NOT in ketosis a HUGE majority of the time.

mem said...

Here's some nutritional info on muktuk which is UNCOOKED bowhead whale for Barrow and all but one surrounding village.

I ate alot of bowhead muktuk and unaliiq (boiled muktuk) when I lived there and when I began very low carb eating in the late 90's. I was able to pee nice purple pee + ketone pee sticks while eating large amounts of it.

http://skipthepie.org/ethnic-foods/whale-bowhead-skin-and-subcutaneous-fat-muktuk-alaska-native/compared-to/squash-indian-cooked-boiled-navajo/

Here's more nutritional data on muktuk ~

http://www.nutritionvalue.org/Whale,_skin_and_subcutaneous_fat_%28muktuk%29_%28Alaska_Native%29,_bowhead_nutritional_value.html

And yet more ~

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/ethnic-foods/8137/2

Here's more on bearded seal which is what is eaten on the North Slope of AK by all the Inupiaq people. And what I ate plenty of and stayed nicely in ketosis per pee sticks.
Now, did I go on and on testing? Certainly not. That, too, is silliness. I tested to see if I was getting into paydirt, having read Atkins book many years before and Eades around that time, and others as well.

http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/ethnic-foods/9982/2

Hmmmm.....Seems there is some conflict in nutritional data somewhere.

Richard Nikoley said...

"However, via Binford's work, it is quite difficult to imagine that they were NOT in ketosis a HUGE majority of the time."

Ok, so you didn't read either of Peter's posts.

Nor have you read the studies that actually measured for Ketones.

What you did read is keto CW and it's difficult to imagine that you aren't right in your beliefs. The Inuit have never been documented to be producing ketones and the measured research goes back over 75 years, including respiration chambers.

I hope some of the proponents are getting a sense of what they've wrought in terms of people being open to actual measured data.

But what do you expect when even Mike Eares dismisses it out of hand, calling upon "keto adaptation," which made hundreds of his followers breathe a sigh of relief,

And was WRONG.

Aaron said...

While I respect Peter's writing style, I think he is doing a disservice to a large majority of people who will not destroy their feet, eyes, and kidneys on a low fat/high carb diet. Even the most insulin resistant type 2 person will "probably" regain the ability to utilize insulin when fat content is lowered enough. Peter has talked about this in another post (on super low fat diets). (though he still maintains he likes the high fat diet better). In the end you are going to keep with the diet that allows you to function the best. I doubt I'll ever see evidence that ultra low carb diets are the best for longevity. (even if they allow some individuals to function well). I think the biggest issue with high fat diets is that postprandial surge that occurs after a high fat meal. While one might burn these fats well if they are fat adapted, I think the initial surge probably causes damage over time. (I don't have the time to lay out all the data on this, but I'm throwing it out there as food for thought).

Richard Nikoley said...

Mem

The Inuit are well documented over 75 years of research to eat 270-300g of protein daily.

We're you eating that much? On this ice, ice huts, hunting?

Or, were you enjoying the fat of the land and peeing purple?

Are you aware that excess protein gets converted to sugar in important proportions and kills ketosis? What do you think this "nutritional Ketosis" craze is all about, with people now testing blood ketones because plain LC is not good enough, nor ketostix? Are you aware that Jimmy Moore just published a book, Keto Clarity, that promotes the idea that protein needs to be low, fat high, carb nil, in order to TRULY be in ketosis.

Did you see his speech in Australia where he equated excess protein to chocolate cake?

...I'm actually a fan of low to moderate carb, and I have plenty of ZC meals, also HC meals. And, I dive I into ketosis a couple of times per month. I call it a fast. That's what ketosis really is, metabolically adaptively.

It's silly to think any ancestor over millions of years would have sought ought a ketogentic state on purpose.

Richard Nikoley said...

Aaron

There are millions of people who have replaced their pancreas with a brain, meter, and needle.

For sure, some diabetics do best on VLC because it's the EASIEST way for them to manage their condition. On the other hand, I know people who are very disciplined and know how to use insulin, and they can eat what they want.

One case in point I'd my father in law. We just watched the game, he's in lafing and playing a game witht family in the kitchen. He's late 80s, type 2 for over 50 years. Lean. Healthy. Alert. Happy. He eats pretty high carb, Mexican, so often 2-3 tortillas with beans and eggs for breakfast. He watches the fat.

Retired air traffic controller, so Cartesian and meticulous. He measures, he manages. He gets to eat how he likes.

Aaron said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Aaron said...

Ricard, the whole transformation of your diet and lifestyle over the years has been a great ride to watch. I like how you are able to look at current data and change your opinion when the science seems to call for you to do so.

You are correct that a keto diet might be the easiest for a diabetic to use, but it just seems like a band-aid to the larger issue at hand. (which you also point to) Peter seems to suggest that a high-fat diet is really the only/best solution for the issue at hand and I am just voicing my opinion that I just don't agree with that. And data around the world does not agree with that. Extreme diabetics are not what the norm is. We need to reach people way before they are off the deep end anyway.

Duck Dodgers said...

mem said: "Hmmmm.....Seems there is some conflict in nutritional data somewhere."

Thanks for bringing that up, mem. The “official” government nutrition databases don’t accurately test for glycogen. Glycogen is only detectable by direct analysis—not the subtraction method that is considered the standard for databases. We already covered that discrepancy here:

One Thousand Nails in the Coffin of Arctic Explorer Vilhjálmur Stefansson, and His Spawn

Cheers.

Richard Nikoley said...

We're in full agreement, Aaron.

There's whole ranges of people who do best on vastly different diets. It's a Bell Curve.

At the extremes are vegans and keto. Both seem to be workable for some. Perhaps optimal for them.

Most people are omnivores.

For me: best policy is mostly whole foods, and eat with some sense and presence of mind. I partook of most everything this Thanksgiving dinner, including the pretty amazing raisin bread-based stuffing. But I just ate light. Feel fine. Heartburn is my telltale. Six hours later and none.

Ash Simmonds said...

"Confirming that the Inuit are not poster boys for ketosis is a "so what?" moment"

Haha - this is the bit I've been saying forever whenever someone brings up another stupid argument about them - for or against the ketard stuff.

SFW?

It has no real bearing on the conversation, but people keep dragging it up over and over and over. Chihuahua's with a Barbie doll.

Aaron said...

Richard, it's interesting that you bring up the appearance of heartburn as the telltale sign if you are eating farther from optimal. That is the exact same thing I do for myself and I usually have to be careful of the worst offenders. (ie, eating too much/too much fructose with starches/most unrefined grains also)

Giving my body a break from eating now and then has also done wonders for intermittent heartburn (ie,non hardcore intermittent fasting and just making sure I don't snack between meals) I can't believe people want to take PPIs when it just detaches you from what your body should be eating.

Lastly, I think it's interesting that a lot of the times I mull over the data that Peter mentions on his blog and I can almost use some of it sometimes to promote the opposite of his way of eating. (obviously, his diet works for him so I'm not discrediting that. I'm grateful for a lot of studies he puts up on this blog)

Puddleg said...

825Not everyone in these populations has the P479L CPT-1a mutation?
Evolution still has a bet each way - anti-fragility, so to speak.
So what are the rest doing?
Pretty much still keto diet Inuit, innit.

ItsTheWooo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Melchior Meijer said...

Peter, thanks for all the effort you put into this.

It’s great that Richard’s father in law remains complication free after such a long period of DM2, but the question should be why he developed the condition in the first place. Given the fact that rice and lentils eating India has now stopped the conventional sugar production from cane since it’s cheaper to extract it from the boat loads it’s citizens piss out, I would guess the Mexican tortillas weren’t entirely innocent.

I would like to bring up some observations again.

1 Ketosis is crucial for proper human brain development (Stephen Cunnane et al). Not even the Standard Dutch Crap Diet will kick a healthy infant out of ketosis. This does not imply that ketosis is the optimal state to be in for adults, but when this metabolic state is neccessary in our most vulnerable years, there might be something profoundly postive to it.

2 Charles Mobbs (the brilliant guy from Mount Sinai who reversed diabetic kidney failure with a ketogenic approach in a mouse model) has convincingly proposed that glycolysis itself is probably what drives aging and pathology. You don’t want too much of it. We are franticly trying to force our diabetics to become more insulin sensitive in order to burn (and ‘tolerate’) more glucose, but Mobbs suggests we might be doing more harm than good.

3 Betahydroxybutyrate is a strong and important signalling molecule. It flips a switch in the hypothalamus, which then sends out a body wide message to shift from (predominantly) glycolysis to (predominantly) beta oxidation. Mobbs has shown that this is a Very Good Thing. It even reverses the molecular memory that seems to be largely responsible for most diabetic complications. You can still have high blood sugars, but absent this memory of extreme glycolysis complications do not occur.

4 I think drifting in and out of ketosis has been the norm throughout our evolution. Even in the tropics there are no Snickers bars and it seems far fetched to me that tubers would provide enough starch (consistently) to keep us in a constant glycolytic state. Jane Goodall observed that fruit eating urang utans are in ketosis 6 months of the year. An N=1. I eat a pretty strict Lindeberg style paleo diet, leaning to a coastal dweller diet. Completely ad libitum. Fish and shellfish, meat, eggs, nuts, vegetables, fruits. I don’t count calories or carbs, don’t poor a lot of extra fat on my meals because I doubt this would have been possible ‘back then’. Do quite a lot of exercise, both highly intense (freeletics) and slower stuff (running, swimming). Recently a friend borrowed me her ketone meter, so I got the opportunity to see where by macronutrient agnostic (albeit intrinsically lower glycaemic) ancestral lifestyle gets me metabolically.

I hover in and out of ketosis. In fact, just as I expected. I refuse to believe that I am a unique snowflake. Normal humans in their normal habitat experience regular periods of ketosis and our genome expects this. I think the Inuït, in their extreme econiche, have been evolving towards some canine or feline kind of metabolism. They might be hardly relevant to the rest of us.

I don’t understand this whole paleo/LCHF is for idiots thing. I still have to meet the first real person who did not saw lasting improvements from it. It’s therapeutic properties have in no way been debunked, as is claimed by some of the more agressive starchapologists.

Anna, please weigh in :-).

Melchior Meijer said...

Did not see, not saw.

Sorry, Dutch. And blonde :-).

Unknown said...

Wooo, this is a little disingenuous. Your wellbeing nowadays seems to be due not to your ketogenic diet but to something called kratom, which has opiate like effects including apparently, addiction, if the size of your pupils in a recent selfie is anything to go by.

You and Peter say now that the benefits of a ketogenic diet don't come from the ketones but from the fatty acids. How? What is the mechanism? If you look up 'high fat diet oxidative stress' you will find many papers showing that, um, high fat diets cause oxidative stress. I have never heard you mention oxidative stress, ever. Why not? How can you explain metabolic disease without reference to oxidative stress?

Unknown said...

Peter, did you remove Wooo's comment?

Richard Nikoley said...

"Haha - this is the bit I've been saying forever whenever someone brings up another stupid argument about them - for or against the ketard stuff."

So, you're the anointed one on high, then, right? And forever even.

You get to say the Intuit are no basis for a keto diet (essentially what we've been saying), but we don't.

Richard Nikoley said...

@George:

"Pretty much still keto diet Inuit, innit."

If we're talking about the traditional Inuit diet (I think we all agree modern Inuit are no standard for anything), not likely. All the research points to a massive protein intake, like 40-50% of calories.

As I believe Bill Lagakos has suggested, 30% is about the upper limit (most of the rest from fat), and spread out during the day. Still, ketosis will probably be spotty when there's no energy deficit (you can be in ketosis on a potato diet, as many of my readers demonstrated—but it's the deficit causing it).

@Melchior:

"I think drifting in and out of ketosis has been the norm throughout our evolution."

Bingo (and really, your entire point 4). You get no argument from me that ketosis is an entirely natural state, and thus probably hormetic and otherwise beneficial.

Two ways to do it:

1. Nature's way, which involves either restricting food partially, or completely, episodically. And it's entirely natural to me, once you get away from the idea that hunger means you must eat now, every time in our corner-supermarket-food joint society. My two dogs fast 1-2 meals (1/2 - 1 day) once or twice per week. Completely random. Probably helps that I feed them quality df with no grains or rice (it does have bits of fruit, veggies, tubers).

2. The completely unnatural way of tweaking macros in perpetuity in order to achieve a color on a piece of paper or number on a meter.

...And, now that it's been demonstrated that the Inuit were not in ketosis either due to a genetic mutation or too high of protein consumption or a little of both, then there's no epidemiological basis for any lifelong "lifestyle" for it. Can't point to a single population and that ought to count for something.

Accordingly, we are left with the only way Inuit might have been in ketosis (discounting the mutation thingy): episodic starvation, which has an entire planet worth of epidemiology supporting it and is included even in many religious traditions going way back.

To me, this out to be enough reason to toss those meters and strips and eat just like you do, with individual variations, of course. I happen to do very, very well on some beans once or twice per day. I'm keeping them. :)

mem said...

Sure, I read Peter's posts. I read them carefully. I've also read lots more. I have also LIVED in the larger area that is being discussed.



Here's a pop-quiz for you: WHERE were the Nunamiut that Binford studied located? Answer: Anakuktuvuk Pass. The translation is: Place where caribou poop. Anak=poop Tuttu=caribou. This is located INLAND in the Brooks range. This is an inland inuit tribe whose food intake was highly concentrated on caribou. Binford describes them as THE highest meat eating hunter-gatherer tribe known.

Addtionally, it could be worthwhile to ponder that while this tribe would be projected to have a LOW incidence of P479L mutuation, even those in the coastal areas who DO have the mutation at reportedly much higher rates, have LOW PENETRANCE.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penetrance





Richard Nikoley said...

mem:

You mean like this?

http://www.ohsu.edu/xd/education/schools/school-of-medicine/academic-programs/graduate-programs-human-nutrition/programs/combined-di-masters/upload/Sarah-Lowe-manuscript.pdf

TL;DR: The variant seems to affect some, but not others.

Galina L. said...

In order for a low-fat to diet to cause a positive metabolic shift it has to be no more than 5% of fat, as Dr. Kempner found out, it was also found out that occasional whipping was necessary to insure a better adherence.
LC diet is much easier to sustain due to the lack of hunger, not to mention the fact that the LC food has better nutritional value than the one constituted the famous rice diet.

Michael Eades said...

Hey Richard

You wrote:

"Would you still say, as you did when you dismissed the research we showed months ago, that the reason Inuit were never measured in ketosis by researchers (Stefansson never took any measurements I'm aware of) is because they are "keto adapted?""

The short answer is probably.

With all due respect, I'm not sure 17 FTA posts and 1500 comments, half of which are you calling people fucktards, rises to the level of true science.

For whatever reason - RS, desire to eat more carbs, who knows - you've decided the ketogenic diet is problematic. Since many people, myself included, point to the Inuit as examples of folks on a long-term ketogenic diet who seem to do fine, you feel the need to refute that notion.

You've argued from basically three premises:

1) Due to the large amount of glycogen in the Inuit diet, they couldn't possibly be in ketosis.

2) The protein content of the Inuit diet is extremely high and keeps them out of ketosis

3) On measurement, the Inuit have never been found to be in ketosis

#1 is a non starter for a couple of reasons. First, as I've explained ad infinitum what starts as glycogen in the meat ends up degrading rapidly after death, so there is little there when it comes to eating time. You've countered by selecting bizarre anatomical locations in various animals purporting to contain large amounts of glycogen, e.g., "ringed seals have "large quantities of glycogen" in a gelatinous material near their sinuses." I'm not sure the Inuit find the gelatinous material near seal sinuses to be a delicacy, but if they do, I doubt there is much of it to pass around. Also, most of the tissues you describe as containing plentiful stores of glycogen - blubber of one sort or another - contain vastly more fat than they do anything else. Consuming nothing but these foods all by themselves would pretty much keep anyone in ketosis.

#2 has no basis in reality other than a few observations here and there. I don't think any serious nutritional anthropologist would believe the Inuit on their traditional diet ate much of anything except a high-fat diet. An interesting book confirming this is Overland to Starvation Cove by Heinrich Klutschak, the engineer and artist on the Schwatka expedition to the far north lasting from 1878-1880. The author describes many meals with the Inuit. All of these meals contain copious amounts of fat and lean meat. The lean caribou meat was always accompanied by either blubber or seal oil. Although caribou were plentiful, the Inuit always traveled with either blubber or seal oil because, according to Klutschak, they believed they had to have fat to survive the cold. Klutschak's observations almost exactly match those of Stefansson 25 years later.

#3 I'll stipulate that this may be true. I haven't buried myself in the literature to see whether the Inuit were in measurable ketosis or not. You have, so I'll stipulate that they aren't in measurable ketosis. Since they were doubtless on ketogenic diets, the question remains: Why were they not in ketosis? I've offered my opinion that they were probably keto adapted. Peter's analysis of the paper I sent him gives another rationale.

But whether they were in measurable ketosis or not doesn't matter to the argument on ketogenic diets because the Inuit of old certainly followed such diets throughout their lives.

Aaron said...

Once again, why does any sane person want to compare themselves to the Inuit? They are live in a particularly harsh environment and do not have life span I want to emulate (Do I need to list the studies?). Also, if you get rid of the overabundance of polyunsaturated fats that shorten their lifespan and replace it with a cornucopia of saturated fats, they would have probably diet even faster.

Ilaine Upton said...

I do have type 2 diabetes. I don't want to shoot insulin to cover my carbs. Low carb and metformin and exercise for me. But a ketogenic diet makes my guts sick. So, it's a balancing act. Eat small quantities high quality carbs with prebiotic fibers and lots of probiotic supplements. Eat high quality fat and skip meals.

All the male ego display behavior going on about the Inuit is revolting. Tim Steele gets bonus points for actually listening to what people are actually saying, looking for areas to agree about, and being interested in other people's point of view.

tomR said...

Oliver Magoo said...
"Glial cells in the brain are ketogenic. They take fatty acids and turn them into ketones for the neurons to use. The CPT-1a mutation may even increase ketogenesis in the brain since it results in higher plasma FFA."
That's interesting. Do you have numbers like what percent of energy for the brain is this internal generation of ketones is able to provide? Is it vunerable to being easily shut down for multiple of reasons like the liver-based ketone generation, or can neurons rely on it working non-stop? And since this is a discussion about "P479L gene for CPT-1a" - does the ketone generation in the brain work in people with this gene?
Also notice that the theory that normal fat burning is dangerous (via "severe oxidative stress" etc.), dangerous enough for neurons that they had to evolve to avoid it, doesn't add a positive argument for the theories about the safety of high-fat diets for other cells.

Galina L. said...

The phrase "I have always agreed that a supervised ketogenic diet can be therapeutic." robbed me in a wrong way. Supervised by whom? Such arrogant thing could be said only by the person who (1) has no need in a ketosis whatsoever, (2) never had any need to figure out ON HIS OWN how to heal yourself from a neurological condition because normal physician just doesn't go outside very inflexible protocol of "standards of care" guidelines, which consists mainly of trying different pills on you. You are very lucky if you GP is intelligent enough to support you in a such quest(like mine doctor does), but don't expect him/her to know how to supervise a LC or a ketogenic diet. There are very few clearly psychotic people around who should be under the care of psychiatrist , but there are a lot of others with migraines, mood disorders, the people with mood severally affected by seasonal changes, and they are not receiving an adequate help. My mom normalized her high blood pressure (a very wide-spread condition) by LCarbing, and since I fill better with less fiber of all types in my food, I suspect that eating big quantities of plants and fiber is the overrated trend.
We susceptible to fashion in everything, diets included, and Tim is not responsible for the swinging pattern of a diet pendulum. All that periodical revival of modeling your gut flora after people from African tribes who lived on fibrous tubers or some latest favorite set of bugs in a research looks ridiculous from the common sense point of view. Instead of finding the food which provides you a better health with a reasonable hope that your GI tract would be colonized by a micro-flora suitable for your food, you put a carriage in front of a horse and aim for obtaining the dream set of GI micro organisms, use different probiotcs , endure farting, all that because you have read some research, then you take the photo of your still bloated face as a proof of a "dramatic transformation". The people who manage to sell few books in a process may get more benefits than others.Also, many paleos didn't need any ketosis in the first place,only limitation of junk food in their diet, they played the paleo-reenactment game because there is an exitement in following a movement. However, many, who needed ketosis , couldn't get all results they wanted from just because it is not always possible. Look at Jimmy Moor. When you are fat already, and your ancestry is against you, it is very, very difficult to get a miraculous result.

tomR said...

@Mike Eades:

Your definition of keto adapted is not "eating a diet that is named "ketogenic diet" even if it fails do generate ketones". It has always been about GENERATING and USING ketones:

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/ketones-and-ketosis/beware-confirmation-bias/

"What he fails to understand is that the Inuit are keto-adapted. Their lifelong diet of high-fat meat has gotten their ketone-producing-and-consuming systems working in precisely controlled fashion. Like, dare I say it, a well-oiled machine.

The Inuit burn ketones as they make them, so it stands to reason that they might not have measurable ketones under normal circumstances."

This thinking is unreasonable in itself, it's like saying "the traffic is high, but because there are no traffic jams, you can't see cars on the road". Don't you understand that in order for ketones to go from the liver to the other places they have to be in the blood in the mean time?

When it comes to probability calculations you always include a thing called "background knowledge", and yes this would include Inuits being people, and some number where you divide people that are in chronic ketosis by the total number of people... Hint - that's not a high number...

Beside - why do you ignore what Peter wrote on his blog? Like "They may well have eaten what would be a ketogenic diet for many of us, but they certainly did not develop high levels of ketones when they carried the P479L gene."

mem said...

No, Richard, *this* is what I was referring to and provided the "genetic penetrance" article on wikipedia because it is a foreign concept/word to many. Degree of penetrance is important - whether high or low.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20696606



With low penetrance you may have many individuals affected by a mutation but few who actually *express* the adverse symptoms related to it.

Tim Steele said...

mem - I've been reading your posts and even the links, and I think you have some very good/valid points.

I'm not really interested in the oneupmanship, and I really find the anthropology more interesting than arguing the merits of a ketogenic diet.

My thoughts on this mutation in the Inuits are that over the thousands of years that these Asian travelers occupied the Arctic coastline, they probably became 100% P479L mutated. Then, as coastal P479L carriers intermingled with inland dwellers and European explorers,the genes became less ingrained, but still, 80% seen today is impressive!

The mutation, as Peter said in his first post, was positively protective of the Inuit lineage. As this variant is found in Asia, it's not a stretch to believe that the Inuit brought it with them rather than developed it. Luckily, a few of the first Inuit to arrive and begin eating the Inuit diet had these genes, those that made ketones like the average Californian were given the "Darwin Award" and promptly removed from the gene pool.

If you've spent time on the North Slope of Alaska, you have undoubtedly seen the miles and miles of berries growing in the fall. There is no way the Inuit would have ignored this bounty, gorging when they could, just as bears do. They also had to survive many months on survival rations of rancid meat and oil if they had it.

The Inuit were tough people. They raided each others encampments, took slaves, made art, and established trade routes that stretched 1000 miles.

I was duped into believing they were in constant ketosis and with that in mind, embarked on the Atkins Diet in the '90's. As I read up on ketogenic diets, it was stressed that the Inuit were prime examples that constant ketosis had a basis in our prehistory. This is the only point I wish to correct.

I thought it was great what Duck Dodgers was finding...that the Inuit were found to be not in ketosis by early scientists, yet portrayed to be a model ketogenic society by people who looked only at their diet. I guess I don't care why they weren't in ketosis. I just find it amazing that we can now put this to rest...the Inuit were not in perpetual ketosis.


I tried the Atkins Diet in the 90's, first by winging it, then with the Ketostix, only to realize I was not in ketosis eating lots of meat, eggs, and butter. When I finally tweaked enough to turn the Ketostix the proper color, I was so sore and loopy that I had to quit. Yes, I never became "ketoadapted" but I also learned that a ketogenic diet is not very intuitive (for me) and requires much discipline. I found a general 'low carb' approach to dieting much easier, and eat that way still.

If I had a child with epilepsy, I would not hesitate to have him placed on a ketogenic diet if that seemed the most logical approach, but it would have to be a well-supervised ketogenic diet, and not just one that appeared to be a ketogenic diet by its macronutrients.

I think in the end, these 'Adventures in Diet' we embark on are very individual journeys.

And that's probably all I have to say on the subject.



Michael Eades said...

@Tim Steele

You wrote:

"I think in the end, these 'Adventures in Diet' we embark on are very individual journeys."

To a certain extent, I agree with you. But to another, I don't. Based on a lot of years of practice with many thousands of patients, I noticed that just about everyone improved on a lower-carb diet. But not all lower-carb diets are ketogenic diets, at least not as most people think of ketogenic diets.

When I first started putting patients on low-carb diets, I always had them check for ketones. But I learned in a hurry that over time the Ketostix become more and more difficult to turn purple. The patients continued to lose weight, they continued to be satiated, they continued to eat their low-carb, high-fat diets - all that changed was that they threw off fewer and fewer measurable ketones, at least as measured by Ketostix.

After seeing this happen countless times, my not unreasonable assumption was that these folks were becoming keto adapted and we're efficiently burning ketones for fuel at about the rate at which ketones were being produced. Therefore they didn't really spill them into their urine. I'm sure there is some sort of threshold effect on ketones as there is with blood sugar. It takes a certain level of blood sugar elevation before the sugar starts spilling through the kidneys. I assumed the same held true for ketones, and that my patients obviously had some ketones in their blood, just not enough to reach the threshold and spill into the urine.

And I assumed the same situation with the Inuit, most of whom have been on ketogenic diets since weaning, the occasional foraging for a berry windfall aside.

Now with the info about P479L, there is another mechanism as to why the Inuit might not measure positive for ketones.

But it doesn't really matter whether it's ketoadaptation at work or P479L, the fact remains that for most of their lives, the pre-contact Inuit consumed what would definitely be a ketogenic diet for the vast majority of people.

If you really find the anthropology more interesting than arguing the merits of a ketogenic diet, you should grab a copy of Overland to Starvation Cove. It is an up close and personal look by an acute observer at the Inuit, many of whom had never seen a white man until encountering the author. His take, based on his first hand observation and living cheek by jowl with the Inuit for almost three years, does not paint a picture of them as a warlike people who raided one another's encampments and took slaves. His view was just about the polar (no pun intended) opposite.

I do agree with you that this entire debate has become wearisome. It's a tar baby that I haven't been able to get unstuck from. So, like you, I hope I can just leave it alone.

Tim Steele said...

@Michael Eades - Read it! And dozens of other books like it. It completely boggles my mind to think that they lived in complete isolation from the rest of the world along the Arctic coastline for nearly 6000 years. We have some ancient settlement sites here in AK that were continually habituated for 2000 years, and with a population that never exceeded a couple hundred residents. Still frozen bodies and well-preserved garbage give great insight into their lives.

This new twist with the P479L gene is huge. It means we cannot recreate the diet of the Inuit. We can eat the same foods, but the foods will not cause the same metabolic response. Also, many of the Omega-3 studies were based on Inuit metabolism. Are these still valid now that we know about P479L?

From Inuit to implementation: omega-3 fatty acids come of age.

And hate to sound like a broken record, but I think the common element to the great health we all strive for is found in the large intestine.

Duck Dodgers said...

Dr Eades wrote: "I don't think any serious nutritional anthropologist would believe the Inuit on their traditional diet ate much of anything except a high-fat diet."

Dr. Eades, with all due respect, the main reason this is becoming wearisome is because you continue to make statements like that, without ever referring to the scientific literature.

Case in point, here's a paper from the American Anthropologist, which I assume you would agree is a journal published by and for "serious" anthropologists:

The Aboriginal Eskimo Diet in Modern Perspective, by Harold Draper, American Anthropologist, June 1977

"It is concluded that, despite its remarkably restricted composition, the native diet is capable of furnishing all the essential nutritional elements when prepared and consumed according to traditional customs. However, its low carbohydrate and high protein content necessitated major metabolic adaptations in energy and nitrogen metabolism...a high concentration of protein therefore was an essential feature of the Eskimo diet...Their high-protein diet imposed on Eskimos a need to dispose of an unusually large metabolic load of urea, a potentially toxic nitrogenous compound formed during the conversion of amino acids to glucose."

The entire paper is about the Eskimo's high protein intake. Draper speculated that the pre-modern Eskimo diet was 2% carbs, 66% fat and 32% protein—which is the most generous allocation of Inuit fat consumption I've come across in the published scientific literature.

Draper was also referenced in the October 2004 issue of Discover Magazine, as saying:

"On a truly traditional diet, says Draper, recalling his studies in the 1970s, Arctic people had plenty of protein but little carbohydrate, so they often relied on gluconeogenesis. Not only did they have bigger livers to handle the additional work but their urine volumes were also typically larger to get rid of the extra urea."

It's more than a little odd that you are willing to discard and ignore over a century of published scientific literature—all showing high protein intake—while only favoring one or two unreliable and casual observations by explorers who, in general, were well known to embellish their findings. That kind of blatant selectivity is the very definition of confirmation bias.

How do you expect anybody to take such blatant selectivity seriously? I think that kind of unwillingness to acknowledge the scientific literature does nothing but tarnish your reputation.

Cheers.

Antonio said...

"I think that kind of unwillingness to acknowledge the scientific literature does nothing but tarnish your reputation."

Obviously this is in your head. Your target I presume. Now you've said it.

Unknown said...

Well I'm not finding this discussion wearisome at all. It's absolutely electrifying.

donny said...

Is it as energy intensive to produce glucose from glycerol as it is from amino acids? I'd think not...starts a lot closer to glucose on the pathway of gluconeogenesis. Get lipolysis high enough, and maybe, as long as there isn't something in place to inhibit glucose production by the liver massively (insulin), well, maybe it just doesn't take as much energy through fatty acid oxidation for the liver to do its job of providing glucose for the brain. This fits with reports of a high calorie intake in Arctic explorers and traditional, active Inuit hunters. Lots of lipolysis, lots of glycerol being released. I guess there's the potential for some amount of glycerol feeding the brain directly without getting into gluconeogenesis, as well.

I look at ketosis as sparing not just protein, but fat as well. Ten percent of triglycerides can produce glucose--try to feed the brain off of glycerol alone, and you're going to have to be burning an awful lot of fat. And if you need to do that anyways, to stay warm... an adaptation that would make you go through body stores more quickly and starve to death sooner in the tropics could become advantageous. A very common adaptation in Arctic mammals is the ability to use glycerol as the only input to keep them in glucose balance. Seals, whales etc. don't do ketosis, even in starvation, glycerol is sufficient to feed their brains glucose.

donny said...

I guess if free fatty acids oxidation were low in the liver, with a high protein diet, you could also consider that the fate of excess amino acids in the liver might be oxidation rather than gluconeogenesis, as well.

Richard Nikoley said...

"The short answer is probably."

Then you appear to be at odds with Peter. A healthy thing, I think. I hope it gets resolved. Science is the most fun for me when I find I've been wrong about something. Best wishes.

"With all due respect, I'm not sure 17 FTA posts and 1500 comments, half of which are you calling people fucktards, rises to the level of true science."

I'll overlook the exaggeration. This series has been pretty tame in that regard. Nonetheless, I'm the least stuffy guy out there for sure. And, I call myself a fucktard on my own blog plenty. So there's that. Moreover, I don't think you minded much when the targets were vegans, statinators or fatphobes. And, you did tell folks in your comments once that I was a "nice guy in person." Laf. You too, by the way,

Anyway, I'm on the road, in Vegas, last day of R&R. I'll address your points (politely) in the post I've been working on covering both of Peter's posts.

Cheers, Mike.

Richard Nikoley said...

"With low penetrance you may have many individuals affected by a mutation but few who actually *express* the adverse symptoms related to it."

So I suppose you missed that precise point in the link I put up, as well as the fact that I was acknowledging yours. In fact, Tim Steele and I had a discussion in email about penetrance within a day of Peter's first post and that's one of the studies he had showing that it doesn't appear to cause significant numbers any harm irrespective of diet.

Richard Nikoley said...

"I don't want to shoot insulin to cover my carbs"

I do not understand this attitude at all. What do people think a pancreas does?

I also don't (any longer—I used to and regret being so fucktarded about it) get the sort of hauty superiority I see so often in LC folks towards those who prefer to eat a normal omnivorous diet and let their brain, meter and needle do the work of the pancreas.

I'm coming to think that the real help for diabetics is more dietary design around real foods, and not phobias over starches and carbs. Or, rather than shame them for not being ketarded, suggest they buy real foods and prepare them. It's a more uplifting message.

I also have begun to question the general assumption that insulin resistance is caused by excess carbohydrate, even sugar. I speculate that modern processed foods, frankenfats, and the gut biome have more to do with it. Way too many populations that consume high carb diets traditionally and didn't have T2D until the convenience of modern foodstuffs came along.

Richard Nikoley said...

...As a general comment, here's the sort of thing I'm talking about when I'm seeking to find out I was wrong.

People don't eat macronutrients. They eat FOOD, and as it turns out, the complete meal (including starch) is probably best.

http://suppversity.blogspot.com/2014/11/chicken-rice-vegggies-oil-and-how-their.html

Ilaine Upton said...

Richard, for type 2 diabetes, metformin and low carb is all many of us need to keep blood sugar low. Insulin makes you gain weight. It's expensive. Not just the drug, but the needles, the pads to clean the injection site, the meters, the test strips which cost a small fortune, the cases to carry it all, the vials need to be refrigerated after they are opened or they degrade, the risk of hypoglycemic lows, fainting, comas.

Metformin is dirt cheap. A three month supply costs me $8. It seems to have the effect of decreasing cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia and aging, although I don't think they have entirely teased out the fact that it decreases blood sugar, yet.

When I was first diagnosed with diabetes, I researched diet. Some said low carb, some low fat. I asked my endocrinologist, and he said, "flip a coin." He told me, if I didn't get my A1c low in 3 months, he would put me on insulin. As I was leaving, his nurse told me, in a low voice, "count your carbs." I went with low carb. Three months later, my A1c was 5.4. The first visit, it was 9.

When my father was first diagnosed with diabetes, we went out for breakfast. He ordered eggs, bacon, pancakes, and biscuits. I was shocked, and took his plate away from him. He said, "my dietician said I could." I said, "your dietician is trying to kill you." He tried low carb for a while, but couldn't do it, but he did stop with the pancakes and the biscuits at one sitting.

Telling diabetics that they can eat a lot of carbs and just shoot insulin is, in my opinion, irresponsible.

Unknown said...

Ms Upton, Rich is not a doctor he is person looking for his truth. You are looking for yours. Neither of you will find it in each other's version because this is the fallacy of evidence based medicine. Cancer researchers are waking up to this reality no wand designing N=1 treatments. We need the same in chronic diseases because all our based upon enzymatic kinematics that all run on tautomers. Tautomers are all tied to protons and this is what Peter's series was teasing out. Problem is it got side tracked by thing like this. Biology is really applied chemistry, and chemistry is just applied physics at the quantum scale. Peter was headed there and Richard does not want us to go there. If we do, his beautiful theory will be blown up by experiment. Ironically, we know all food has to filter through a mitochondria that only uses electrons and protons. That is a truth no one can argue with.

Unknown said...

All matter is energy according to E=mc2. Food is a source of mass. The more disconnected you live from the sun or earth the lower the electric current your cells and mitochondria contain. Laws of electrolysis confirmed what Faraday found that electric current in all things are proportional to mass in question. This means the food macronutrients you should be shooting for is based upon your cellular redox potential. Until you know those variables, you know nothing about what foods are optimal for your mitochondria. They key parts of this experiments is watching how your mitochondria handle your current food sources. This is what I did in my latest bio hack I detailed in Tensegrity 5 blog post and what I spoke about in Pasadena. Mass is always proportional to the electric charge within a substance.......and that substance can be your body or a pot of boiling chemicals. For example compare, Dave Asprey, who is bulletproof, and Jimmy Moore who is LCHF. Jimmy has a poor redox potential this is why he thinks you need ketosis 24/7. Dave has a different redox state in his mitochondria so he thinks Jimmy's idea are a bit extreme. Jack Kruse thinks they are both partially correct, and FTA makes fun of this. I believe they both have only half of the story correctly laid out so this is why they have different idea and beliefs on things tied to food. This is really a physics 101 experiment. No one likes to do real science thought experiments anymore but I do; They are called bio hacks. Most would rather sling their beliefs and want to share dogma with others to gain some advantage. Most, like Jimmy/paleo, want to just tell you it is all about food……..and it’s not. Dave, knows there is fat on the bone and he uses bio hacking to tease out his own results that form his own ideas of what optimal is. He branded it, in fact. This is why Dave, for me anyway, is like a brother from another mother. In paleoland, this makes me the bad guy there, because they are selling a diet/lifestyle. It is a lot more than that. How your mitochondria work is tied to circadian biology. Food and circadian cycles set the redox potential in a mitochondria. This determines your results. This is what I tried to share in Pasadena, during Dave's conference. That is what my biohacks have taught me over ten years. When you know these variables then you get the right ideas on how to bio hack your own diet and what you need now based upon your current conditions of existence. If you don’t, you have one oar in the water, and when you use it, you go in circles. I am seeing a lot of that here. When you go in circles you start to form beliefs that are not true. You need both oars in the water to move forward in your understanding so that it develops into wisdom. Bill Lagakos has been applying this in his own blog and I suggest you read his work.

The basic fabric of my biohacking research consists of imagination with threads of reason, measurement, and calculation woven together to gain a full understanding of the recipe. Don't let other people think for you......it is dangerous.

Richard Nikoley said...

"Richard, for type 2 diabetes, metformin and low carb is all many of us need to keep blood sugar low."

LC is not necessary for many, many T2s, and perhaps you ought to look into "Tight Control" for T1s, where an insulin pump (electromechanical pancreas) reduces heart disease by 50% and never damage 60% (according to the info when I last looked). And neither have anything to do with LC diets, per se.

I'm not denying LC is a good approach (my T2D mom does LC—not keto). But metformin, exercise, weight loss and a Real Food diet the eschews processed food are effective approaches too, and work for millions of people.

Your anecdote about pancakes and biscuits is non-sequitur.

BTW, look into the T2D Steve Cooksey who decided to try the resistant starch as about 3,000 others of my readers have (according to Amazon sales). He can now eat potatoes and have normal blood sugars. He's has T1 readers with similar results.

Or, you can scoff.

"Telling diabetics that they can eat a lot of carbs and just shoot insulin is, in my opinion, irresponsible."

Fine, when you find someone doing that, let me know.

Ilaine Upton said...

Richard, I do consume resistant starch after you popularized it. Helped get my long term IBS-D under control. I thanked you for that, and you put it up as a blog post. Great for my poop. No help for my diabetes.

As you may be aware, Tim Steele and Dr. Grace continue to make advances that left you in the dust on this.

I recommend Tim's blog, vegetable.pharm, and Dr. Grace's blog, animal.pharm, for those who wish for better gut health. And Peter for cutting edge on lipids and blood sugar and such.

Michael Eades said...

@Duck Dodgers

After citing a 1972 paper in American Anthropologist in which you claim the author found the aboriginal Eskimo diet to be high in protein and a reference in Discovery Magazine purporting to show enlarged livers in the Inuit, you wrote:

"It's more than a little odd that you are willing to discard and ignore over a century of published scientific literature - all showing high protein intake - while only favoring one or two unreliable and casual observations by explorers who, in general, were well known to embellish their findings."

Let's explore that claim in a little detail.

Over the last century, the person publishing the most on the Arctic in general and the Inuit diet specifically was non other than Vilhjalmur Stefansson. If you check his bibliography, you'll find he wrote 33 books, contributed to 49 others and either wrote or contributed to 375 other publications. It's difficult to find a paper about the Inuit or the Inuit diet without a reference to Stefansson. The paper you quote from in the American Anthropologist cites Stefansson. In fact, I would guess that almost every paper you've referenced to substantiate your position cites Stefansson.

So, if I'm basing my notions of what the Inuit ate on Stefansson, I'm relying on one who not only lived with the Inuit and as an Inuit for five years (Have any of the other authors you've cited lived with the Inuit for any length of time? Have any of them taken an Inuit woman as a common law wife?), but who published more than anyone else on the subject. How does that qualify me as "discarding over a century of published scientific literature"? Stefansson published in Nature, Science, JAMA, Natural Science, Human Biology, The Yale Review and a host of others including the same American Anthropologist you cite above. And why wouldn't he? He was a Harvard-trained anthropologist, and that's what anthropologists do.

Your problem is that Stefansson's observations and writings fly in the face of your own absurd theories, and since you can't really refute his work, you've tried to denigrate the messenger by purporting that Stefansson was a huckster, a poltroon and, consequently, totally unreliable. And, sadly, many people, who don't know any better, have fallen for your schtick. Unfortunately, it seems, Gruber was right.

End of Pt 1 (apparently there is a limit as to how long a comment can be. Pt 2 to follow)

Michael Eades said...

@Duck Dodgers

Part 2

As to your interpretation of the American Anthropologist article you cited…

You wrote:

"The entire paper is about the Eskimo's high protein intake."

Not so. And the paper is there linked in your comment so anyone who wants can pull it down in full text and see. It seems you, not Stefansson, are the one embellishing things. About a page and three quarters of the eight page paper are devoted to both energy and protein.

And as usual with your analysis of the paper, you've missed the boat. As Holmes said to Dr. Watson, "You look, but you don't see."

The author, HH Draper, reflects on how the aboriginal Eskimo might be able to "maintain glucose homeostasis in the face of a paucity of carbohydrate in the diet." He goes on to list the actual measured protein in a couple of groups of Inuit adults and children living in the far north in 1971-1972. He compares their diet to the US diet of that same time and then for comparison shows the diet of the "Premodern Arctic Eskimo." You have to read the fine print below to discover that these were not measured values, but were speculative values. (Which, to your credit, you described as speculative in your comment above.) The point is, these aren't real numbers. They are what Draper imagined them to be. Did Draper live with the Inuit for five years? Did he travel with them for three years as Klutschak did? I don't think so.

Did he have a basis for coming up with his speculation? Sure he did. It was wrong, but he at least had some rationale. Here is what he did.

He looked at the diet of the 1971-1972 Inuit that were measured, and he saw that the diets contained a fair amount of protein. He then looked at the types and amounts of what he called native foods these Inuit ate - meat from both marine and land animals. He then calculated what the caloric content of these native foods was and compared it with the total caloric intake of the Inuit. So, if, for example, Inuit men in Wainwright (one of the areas studied) ate 43 percent of their calories as native food, Draper then extrapolated that figure out to represent what the diet would be if it were all made of native foods.

Sounds reasonable, but there is a big problem.

See Pt 3 below

Michael Eades said...

@ Duck Dodgers

Part 3

Modern (versus premodern) Inuit eat a lot of fairly lean meat. They eat a lot of seal and a lot of caribou. Both of these meats are lean. But they compliment these meats with a lot of carbs that weren't available until relatively recently. In fact, Draper shows they ate a diet that almost mirrors the US diet of the early 1970s except that theirs is a little higher in protein.

It is well known that too much protein is problematic unless it is accompanied by fat and/or carbohydrate. In the case of the modern Inuit under discussion, they had plenty of both carb and fat to allow them to consume a little excess protein in the form of seal or caribou. There situation would be similar to one in which a modern American ate his typical diet but ate a bunch of jerky along with it. He would reduce his caloric intake of his regular diet and replace some of that with jerky. His carb intake and his fat intake would go down a bit while his protein intake went up. This mimics what happened to the Inuit in this study.

Now let's say our typical American really likes jerky and so eats a fair amount of it. Would it be scientific to analyze the nutritional composition of the jerky, then extrapolate that out to a full 2500 calories and say that represented the native diet of this guy? That's what Draper did.

I doubt he did it maliciously. I suspect he figured that the seal and caribou his subjects ate mirrored their native diet. Had Stefansson and/or Klutschak been around, he would have been set straight. Because both of them wrote extensively on how the Inuit supplement their lean meat with blubber or seal oil or fish oil or marrow.

And Draper figured the premodern Eskimo had to get a lot of protein to convert to the glucose they needed. That notion led him to not question the large amounts of protein his faulty calculations derived. It's not entirely his fault because when this paper was written there wasn't a lot of information available on ketosis.

Draper writes that "recent evidence indicates that under conditions of severe glucose shortage the brain is also capable of adapting extensively to the use of ketone bodies to meet its energy requirements." This is well known today. At the time, not so much so.

Draper also writes in this same paper that, "an abrupt change from a mixed diet to a meat diet leads to asymptomatic ketosis and ketonuria [what we call nutritional ketosis today], but these conditions gradually diminish as a result of biochemical adaptation to the use of ketone bodies for energy. Whether Eskimos have unusual adaptational capabilities in this regard are unknown."

"…but these conditions gradually diminish as a result of biochemical adaptation to the use of ketone bodies for energy…" That exactly describes what I wrote in my last comment to @Tim Steele about my own patients becoming ketoadapted over time.

Although you still haven't learned how to read a paper critically, I'm glad to see that you have apparently abandoned your risible hypothesis about the Inuit getting plenty of carbohydrate as glycogen. Did you notice how much glycogen Draper reported as being in the native diet? A half a gram, maybe.

As they say on the talk shows, I'm going to give you the last word. I'm withdrawing from this idiocy because I have far too much to do to keep it going. Give it your best shot.

Michael Eades said...

@ Richard Nikoley

You wrote:

"People don't eat macronutrients. They eat FOOD, and as it turns out, the complete meal (including starch) is probably best."


Which comes dangerously close to the mantra of everything in moderation that has lighted countless fools the way to dusty death.

gunther gatherer said...

Why has telomere length been proven to be longer in those eating LESS animal fat, not more:

http://nutritionfacts.org/video/telomeres-cap-it-all-off-with-diet/

I think you should give up on the Inuit as an example of a healthy lifestyle. They are obviously outliers and were lucky to live to an average age of 42 anyway.

And besides, following the "natural is always good" dogma that this armchair paleo world seems to love, shouldn't you also be eating feces, dirt and bugs? Shouldn't you be in some state of activity virtually all day? Shouldn't you be going to bed hungry most days?

Let's face it guys. All you have is speculation as to what our body's "natural, healthy state" is. Meanwhile you ignore the current research coming from actual clinical researchers like Esselstyn, Ornish, Barnard and others who are reversing heart disease, diabetes and prostate cancer with a vegan diet.

This whole imaginary paleo reference you all love so much falls apart in light of today's research. Why not use the information we ACTUALLY HAVE to extend your life instead of hiding behind false pretenses just to justify your bad habits?

tomR said...

Mike Eades - "I'm glad to see that you have apparently abandoned your risible hypothesis about the Inuit getting plenty of carbohydrate as glycogen."

If glycogen is an important part of a meat meal then water cooking meat for like few hours is not a good idea of meat preperation. A conflict of interest for slow cookers and sous-vide cookers promoters or sellers when they talk about the glycogen in the meat or organs. As long preparation times degrade this valuable nutritient.

By the way - why not do some self-experiments to check what is the influence of glycogen on ketosis, like buying flash-frozen meat (immediately frozen after slaughter), or just buying live chicken/fish and killing it yourself?

tomR said...

Mike Eades wrote:
"Over the last century, the person publishing the most on the Arctic in general and the Inuit diet specifically was non other than Vilhjalmur Stefansson."

So it's like he was a spammer in addition to: "a huckster, a poltroon and, consequently, totally unreliable"?

"It's difficult to find a paper about the Inuit or the Inuit diet without a reference to Stefansson."

It simply means now is a great time to use some kind of a "reset" switch when it comes to the obervational knowledge about Inuit dietary habits. The discovery of "The P479L gene for CPT-1a and fatty acid oxidation" is a great moment for that, as right now we can make observations while having a strong context of genetics.

LeenaS said...

Peter said: "However. Over the months Wooo and I seem to have come to some sort of conclusion that, while systemic ketones are a useful adjunct, a ketogenic diet is essentially a fatty acid based diet with minimal glucose excursions and maximal beta oxidation. Exactly how important the ketones themselves are is not quite so clear cut. From the Hyperlipid and Protons perspective I would be looking to maximise input to the electron transport chain as FADH2 at electron-transferring-flavoprotein dehydrogenase and minimise NADH input at complex I. Ketones do not do this. Ketones input at complex II, much as beta oxidation inputs at ETFdh, but ketones also generate large amounts of NADH in the process of turning the TCA from acetyl-CoA to get to complex II, which ETFdh does not. "

You put this into words so well.
Thank you once again o/

With all the best first advent wishes for you and yours,
LeenaS

praguestepchild said...

@tumR

"If glycogen is an important part of a meat meal then water cooking meat for like few hours is not a good idea of meat preperation. A conflict of interest for slow cookers and sous-vide cookers promoters or sellers when they talk about the glycogen in the meat or organs. As long preparation times degrade this valuable nutritient."

You make very valid point tumR, everyone should be aware that Dr Eades, with his sprawling glycogen destroying sous-vide empire, cannot be trusted due to his clear conflict of interest.

But, in the interest of fairness, perhaps you would like to step out from behind your anonymous internet veil, so we can examine your background for conflict of interest? Certainly there's no reason for your anonymity? Do you expect to be fired for arguing about keto diets? Do you think Dr Eades, with his vast resources, will put out a hit on you? It's time to come clean for the sake of science.

Gemma said...

@Dr. Eades

I have taken the trouble to read the papers on macronutrient composition of traditional diet of Northern and Inuit populations, respectively, that DD linked. It is easy to look up some more. No, we do not have to rely on anthropologists or Stefansson to get some data, we can read other papers on nutrition, all showing the same: high protein intake, high fat - but not so high as many believe, and definitely not so low in carbohydrates.

Their diet was not very high fat / very low carb.

Just read Dyerberg, Bang, Sinclair, Leonard or Snodgrass...as an example a quote from the last one (2005):

"Because these diets are comprised heavily of animal foods, protein intakes are relatively high. Protein accounts for up to 26% of dietary energy in the more northern indigenous groups (the Chukchi and Baffin Island Inuit), whereas intakes among more southern groups such as the Buryat are more modest (∼13%). Men consume an average 110 g/day and women consume about 94 g/day.

Dietary fat intakes in circumpolar men and women average 90 and 79 grams/day, respectively, and comprise approximately 34–36% of dietary energy. These levels of fat intake are quite moderate in light of their high meat and animal food consumption."

Richard Nikoley said...

"Which comes dangerously close to the mantra of everything in moderation that has lighted countless fools the way to dusty death."

This misrepresents both the article and study cited (the meal was chicken, rice, some added oil--peanut--and vegetables), as well as what I've been advocating for: whole/real food diet.

Yea, countless fools dropping dead eating chicken,Mir e and veggies.

Duck Dodgers said...

Dr Eades said: "I'm glad to see that you have apparently abandoned your risible hypothesis about the Inuit getting plenty of carbohydrate as glycogen. Did you notice how much glycogen Draper reported as being in the native diet? A half a gram, maybe."

You are either having difficulty reading or you are quite dishonest, Dr. Eades. Half a gram?? Draper wrote:

"The all-meat diet typically provides about 10 grams of glucose in the form of glycogen per 2,500 calories"

The Eskimos often ate far more than 2,500 calories, so the glycogen estimates line up with everything that's already been reported in other studies that I referenced. Clearly far more than "half a gram."

Dr. Eades said: "I would guess that almost every paper you've referenced to substantiate your position cites Stefansson."

Wrong again. There's 150 years worth of research showing high protein consumption. Rink 1855. Krogh & Krogh 1914. Heinbecker, Heinbecker 1928, Rabinowitch 1936. You seem so tickled when someone references Stefansson, but when Sinclair 1953 reviews dozens of studies/observations and then references Stefansson's travelogues and still concludes high protein, your logic is that we either have to believe all of Stefansson or none if his work is to be cited in any paper. If that logic is true, then surely we can't believe anything you say given how you've blatantly misstated Draper's own glycogen conclusions above. And let's not forget how you misread John Murdoch 1892.

The sad part about all this is that you want people to believe that these are my theories. They are not. I am simply quoting 150 years of research and observations (including Stefannson debuking Stefansson) all of which you refuse to acknowledge and apparently never read in the first place.

Good day.

Unknown said...

@DrEades

"And as usual with your analysis of the paper, you've missed the boat. As Holmes said to Dr. Watson, "You look, but you don't see."

Reminds me of perhaps the funniest/best story I've ever heard! For those of you who haven't heard it before...

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson went on a camping trip. After a good meal and a bottle of wine, they lay down for the night and went to sleep.

Some hours later Holmes woke up, nudged his faithful friend and said, "Watson, I want you to look up at the sky and tell me what you see." Watson said, "I see millions and millions of stars." Sherlock said, "And what does that tell you?"

After a minute or so of pondering Watson said, "Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo. Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three in the morning. Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful and that we are small and insignificant. Metereologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day today. What does it tell you?"

Holmes was silent for about 30 seconds and then said, "Watson, you bloody idiot! Someone has stolen our tent!"

LeonRover said...

Well, quite, Solaris Rex.

"Someone has stolen our tent."

"Oh, and look, someone has taken my clothes:
my very special Emperor clothes."

Now, who is to be the naif child when Holmes solves his next case?

Galina L. said...

I have been eating the "real" self-cooked food all my life, and I can assure others who romanticize such normal, but somehow exotic for many practice, that while it is way better than eating an industrial food from a health perspective, it is not enough to avoid or heal many health and metabolic conditions. I am sure switching on a self-cooked food from an industrial food would be an improvement anyway, but too little too late step in many cases.
I am not a unique case in my experience. Due to my native background, I know many people, who also started their lives and spent formative years in a socialistic environment , and continue to eat how they got used to, while getting fatter as they age, developing a high blood pressure, diabetes, some people I know got a cancer. The main difference - it happens with them later in life, and their children are not fat.

There are numerous comments on nutritional forums how somebody got fatter after adopting recommendations of Weston Price Foundation.

It is easy to mix natural ingredients in a way, that effect will be almost the same as from eating an ice-cream.

Richard Nikoley said...

"It is easy to mix natural ingredients in a way, that effect will be almost the same as from eating an ice-cream."

I'm always amused at how people go out of their way to proudly display their ignorance. Like you have no clue what I'm taking about, so I must be taking about home made cakes and pies.

And you cite WAPF; where, in my experience beyond pastured animals and such, is high fat, grains, sugar. Perhaps not Price's intention, but I've seen lots of pictures of potlucks and it's basically the look of church ladies from my youth, where the best food on earth is something baked and sweet.

Then you have the ridiculous Atkins crowd that will scoff at the rice with your chucken while standing in line with a shopping cart full of processed LC "food."

Michael Eades said...

@Duck Dodgers

That's your best shot? Wow!

Sigh. I'm not really responsible for your education, but I'll help you out anyway on how to better critically evaluate a paper.

You wrote:

You are either having difficulty reading or you are quite dishonest, Dr. Eades. Half a gram?? Draper wrote:

"The all-meat diet typically provides about 10 grams of glucose in the form of glycogen per 2,500 calories"

No dishonesty on my part at all. You once again are getting confused by Draper's speculation versus what was actually measured.

It is true that Draper did write the above line in the paper in question. But here is where critical reading of the literature comes in. In Table II on page 314 (for those of you who want to follow along from home), in the far right column, it shows the glycogen content of the native foods (meat) to range anywhere from 0.1-0.9 grams. I averaged it to 0.5 grams. Remember, these are not speculative - they are measured. And measured in the native foods. Which is what, I have assumed, we've been talking about all along - the native Inuit diet of meat.

Michael Eades said...

@TomR

You wrote:

By the way - why not do some self-experiments to check what is the influence of glycogen on ketosis, like buying flash-frozen meat (immediately frozen after slaughter), or just buying live chicken/fish and killing it yourself?

I don't need to do these experiments. They've been done and repeated countless times. Researchers have killed animals and immediately plunged them into liquid nitrogen only to find that the glycogen is already gone. Many of these studies were done not to see how quickly glycogen degrades post mortem, nut to see how much glycogen is actually present in various living tissues.

So, by the time your steak is put into a sous vide unit, all the glycogen has long vanished.

Michael Eades said...

@gunther gatherer

Your fevered ravings make the pitiful Duck Dodgers look like the Einstein of nutrition.

Galina L. said...

No, I am not talking about a home made versions of junk foods. When I was convincing my mom to go on a LC diet, I brought a glucose-meter with me during one of visits to Russia 3 years ago. Her blood sugar levels were off chart after eating unsweetened still-cut oats,meals with potatoes, buckwheat, rye bread. We didn't try rice and beans since she didn't like it. Her fasting blood sugar was 91. She is much healthier that average senior person her age, she lives without a car, on a 4-th floor of an apartment building without an elevator, before she turned 65 years old(right now she is 77) her blood pressure was always normal. Her healthy life-style was sort-of working, but troubles from increasing weight and blood pressure signaled about the need for some intervention. Her mother died recently at 95, after 6 years living with Alzheimer.
My son and husband don't have blood sugar spikes after eating above-mentioned traditional foods. In Russia buckwheat and oatmeal are considered to be absolutely safe foods for diabetics , unlike refined bread,sweets pasta and potatoes.

gunther gatherer said...

@Michael Eades,

You are already the laughing stock among the entire medical health profession. Are you shooting for the same position among paleo researchers too?

Ok so you are a multi-disciplinary halfwit, but laughing all the way to the bank. You should be ashamed of yourself for peddling your lies, cherry picking and misinterpretations to those desperately looking for help. I shouldn't be surprised at your arrogance, you scumbag.

LeonRover said...

McClellan & Du Bois state that in BelleVille, the CHO content of the diet consisted only in the meat glycogen, which for both VS & KA was mostly 10 gms per day (see the tables).

The acetone bodies for KA seems to have had low variance and averaged around 5, while KA had higher readings in teens and twenties.

This meat diet simulacrum of the Inuit diet is definite low CHO, even by Bernstein standards & seems to have produced ketones as well.

The VS % KA study showed that a 1930's all meat diet was "not unhealthy" which met the needs of the 1930's US cattlemen quite well.

It would delight my soul to see as much intellectual blood, sweat & tears being expended on the pesco-vegetarian diet of Kitava.

Sláinte

Michael Eades said...

@gunther gatherer

I love to inspire a little true foaming at the mouth every now and again. Thanks for accommodating me.

Cheers

gunther gatherer said...

@Michael Eades,

What a knee-slapper you are. The only thing you've ever inspired in your whole evil career as a fad-diet charlatan is a lot of misery due to heart attacks and kidney disease. This is what you'll be known for long after you are gone.

Instead of taking little petty jabs at strangers on the wacko blogs, why don't you run an actual trial of your diet against all the others? OHHH that's right, because you'd be outed as a fraud if you did.

Galina L. said...

Once upon a time a former militant LCarber looked at grazing horses and jumped to a decision to eat like a horse in order to achieve the same degree of muscles definition, blissfully unaware about some anatomical differences. Soon after he placed a horse-inspired comment on the WHS blog and became the laughing stock of the whole internet. Since then he is looking around in a hope somebody else would blurb something equally funny.

Michael Eades said...

@gunther gatherer

All kidding aside, I don't really need to study my diet because it has been studied multiple times. Over the past 10 or 15 years, the low-carb diet has been pitted against low-fat, high-carb diets in at least 30 studies. Probably more. In each case, the low-carb diet at worst held its own with the low-fat diet and at best crushed it.

One of the earliest and most famous of these studies used my actual diet, not just a generic low-carb diet. The study was published in the May 2003 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. See the link below:

A Low-Carbohydrate as Compared with a Low-Fat Diet in Severe Obesity

If you click the reference tab and check #6, you'll see that it was our specific diet used in the low-carb arm.

If you can show me a published study in which a low-fat, high-carb diet trounced a low-carb diet, I would very much like to see it. And I'm serious. I really would like to see such a study.

If I were you, until I came up with a body of published evidence to support my views, I would be a little hesitant to describe low-carb diets as evil and faddish and to call those who promote them charlatans.

Ash Simmonds said...

@ Dr Eades:

There's over 40 LC/LF papers summarised here:

--> http://highsteaks.com/low-carb-vs-low-fat-for-weight-loss/

That's just the weight loss stuff, I have hundreds more that are about the gamut of other health outcomes.

Duck Dodgers said...

Dr. Eades wrote: "In Table II on page 314 (for those of you who want to follow along from home), in the far right column, it shows the glycogen content of the native foods (meat) to range anywhere from 0.1-0.9 grams. I averaged it to 0.5 grams. Remember, these are not speculative - they are measured."

LOL, so you are having trouble reading. You read it wrong!

Table II is not measured in grams. Table II is a measurement of percent of nutrients obtained from native foods.

In other words, each column is just the percentage of that nutrient that was obtained from native foods.

Try reading a little more closely next time, Dr. Eades!

Michael Eades said...

@Duck Dodgers

You got me! I missed that one. I should have been a more careful reader.

If you calculate it out, it comes out to be about 5 grams of glycogen per roughly 1000 calories of the native diet.

Point to @Duck Dodgers

Duck Dodgers said...

Now we are getting somewhere! Keep in mind that I am trying to take all of the evidence into consideration. So, I do appreciate your contributions here. That's all I wanted from the beginning.

So, I regret this debate has taken a negative spin. My position throughout this debate has simply been that the literature is claiming no ketosis according to the macronutrients measured by the various researchers over the past century. Whether those researchers are right or wrong is anyone's guess. I'm just the messenger.

Draper's paper is highly speculatory because it's anthropology (i.e. he's guessing the past). In reality, we can't truly know what the true Inuit diet is because access to bread and sugar pre-date these studies, as Rink 1855 shows us.

For all we know, the Eskimos may have ate more fat before bread and sugar showed up on their shores. Or perhaps they ate more angelica. We can't really know! (I'm throwing you a bone here).

Nevertheless, we cannot deny that, overwhelmingly, the actual data and scientific opinions on the Inuit either demonstrated or concurred that the Inuit diet was high protein and not considered to be ketogenic.

Here's a list of researchers who believed that the Eskimo native diet was a high protein diet:

Krogh & Krogh 1914 (Nobel Prize winner)
Lusk 1914
Joslin 1921 (first doctor to ever specialize in diabetes in the US)
Schaffer 1921
Heinbecker, 1928, 1931, 1932
Tolstoi 1929
McClellan & DuBois 1930 (Stefansson's own doctors)
Rabinowitch 1936
Rabinowitch & Corcoran 1936
Rabinowitch and Smith 1936
Kaare Rodahl 1952
Sinclair 1953 (A detailed review of the literature)
Ho 1972
Hui 1975
Bang, Dyerberg & Hjorne 1976
Draper 1977 (Anthropology/speculatory)
VanItallie & Nufert 2003
Leonard & Snodgrass 2005

And where this gets interesting is that some of these researchers actually fed their Eskimo subjects a high protein native diet and noted that they seem to metabolize it differently than Westerners do (very large urea metabolism).

If indeed such a high protein diet can still support ketosis in Westerners, wonderful! But I think Peter has shown us here that the Inuit have a very rare metabolism that cannot easily be applied to Westerners.

But, if for arguments sake, we were all to hypothetically believe for a moment that the Eskimo diet was high enough in fat to be ketogenic in Westerners, it seems like you are re-defining "ketogenic" to mean "high fat," regardless of whether any actual ketones are involved. Do you think that's valid?

I would think that there would be a need for a diet to produce ketones for it to be "ketogenic." Perhaps you can clarify?

Thanks again for your time. And yes, I do appreciate it!

Richard Nikoley said...

"So, I regret this debate has taken a negative spin."

Me too. Just caught up after driving most of the day from Vegas north to Tonopah, crossover west via the 6 and 120 to 395. 3 of the 4 routes over the Sieras are closed (within the last could of weeks--way late). So it's the 88 and so we're in Minden/Gardnerville for the night. About to have a big LC meal of ribeye steak and a few chomps on a baked tater.

Mike, we're probably 20-30 clicks from your Tahoe place up over Kingsbury. I grew up in Reno. This is all home to me.

We'll hit the 88 west and south in the morning.

Gunther. Did you really need to do that? On Peter's blog, a consumate gentleman and lover of animals (we have two rat killers with us).

Shit slinging is contextual. There's a time and place, and even the proprietor of FTA gets that.

Michael Eades said...

@Richard Nikoley

Give Gunther a break. I struck first.

Richard Nikoley said...

"Give Gunther a break."

No thanks. I've seen how he operates.

This is what people seem to not get about me.

One either must be an asshole all the time, or pretty smelling flower. How about both?

It depends, just like diets.

Anyway, gonna be the ribeye at the Carson Valley Casino steakhouse. Buzz is that the bass is fresh, so Bea and I gonna contrive a surf & turf.

Unknown said...

@Duck Dodgers

"I would think that there would be a need for a diet to produce ketones for it to be "ketogenic." Perhaps you can clarify?"

I thought he already did, at least 100x already! Didn't he suggest the possibility of keto-adaptation taking place in those who show no evidence of ketone bodies?

My understanding is that the point of a keto diet is to be in ketosis, meaning that your body is breaking down fat at such a rate that there are ketones in your bloodstream. However, ketones are not the be all and end all of being in "ketosis". If you are using all your ketones for energy and/or you're getting rid of the excess through sweat or saliva, there won't be much, if any, left over to be detected.

I seriously think it's time to stop clubbing this dead baby seal, already!



Duck Dodgers said...

Sky King,

I think you must be misunderstanding what I'm saying/asking. What Peter has shown us here is that the Inuit were not keto-adapted because they could not easily produce ketones. CPT1a presents as a ketogenesis disorder.

The Inuit's genetics mean that their traditional diet and health performance are largely irrelevant to Europeans, which—unless I'm mistaken—I believe Peter would seem to agree with when Peter said, "I have some level of discomfort with using the Inuit as poster people for a ketogenic diet."

What I'm asking is, why on Earth call a diet that doesn't involve significant ketones "a ketogenic diet"? Wouldn't a "FFA-based diet" be more accurate?

Unknown said...

@ Richard Nikoley

"Gunther. Did you really need to do that? On Peter's blog, a consumate gentleman and lover of animals (we have two rat killers with us)"

As for Peter, how do you know he doesn't keep a couple of rats as pets?

As for Gunther, you sure do try to engage in quite a bit of policing....both here and on the FTA! That's pretty ironic for someone who intimates they can't stand the police, not to mention doesn't have a problem calling every other person who disagrees with you a "fucktard".

For starters....I suggest you try and learn how to police yourself!

Unknown said...

@ Duck Dodgers

"What I'm asking is, why on Earth call a diet that doesn't involve significant ketones "a ketogenic diet"? Wouldn't a "FFA-based diet" be more accurate?"

Would it make more sense then to call it a FFA-based diet for the Inuits, but a ketogenic diet for everyone else who doesn't possess the CPT-1a mutation?

gunther gatherer said...

@Michael Eades,

Oh now you're "kidding", are you? Strange how I don't see the humor in telling already sick people to eat more of what got them sick in the first place. Yes I'm talking about saturated fat. And yes you are guilty of leading them to their deaths for money.

Of COURSE a fake doctor like you doesn't "need" to do trials on the diet he touts as the best one for weight loss and health!! Why would you do that unless you wanted to prove that you had facts on your side. A charlatan would never be that stupid...

Once again, you'll never do a trial because you can't, and you know you can't. You fraud.

You refer to the same pathetic body of debunked "research" as Taubes, Teichel, Atkins, all of whom, funny enough, have books and products to sell...

As an aside, I hear some tiny little squeaks from the usual bobbleheads Galina and the ever-stupid Sky Thing, which is to be expected, but thanks for chiming in Richard, as you're the Great Failure of the Internet. I couldn't be prouder. Not much to add except you could lose a few pounds before you open your trap.

Yep that's the lovely sound of you being ignored. And doesn't a little internet click-whore like you HATE that...


Duck Dodgers said...

Sky King,

Yes. That's what I'm asking.

Unknown said...

@Grunting Slanderer

English is not your 1st language, is it? And it's also pretty obvious you're suffering from a medical condition known as Optic Rectalitus. It's a congenital condition created when the nerve in the eye connects with the nerve in your rectum. It gives one a shitty outlook on life.

I'd tell you to go fuck yourself AND the horse you rode in on, but looking at that stupid look on your face in your pic, I'd say you already have!

Now, why don't you be a good little boy for a change and do everyone here a big favor.... go stick your tongue in an electrical outlet.

Tim Steele said...

Just had a laugh reading this article today from the New England Journal of Medicine and The Conversation.

The are belittling the 'Paleo' diet saying we don't know what our ancestors ate, so even trying to imitate them is pointless. Then this gem:

"Even among arctic people such the as Inuit whose diet was entirely animal foods at certain times, geneticists have failed to find any mutations enhancing people's capacity to survive on such an extreme diet."

Who wants to correct this error?

Even if I do agree with their conclusion:

"If there is one clear message from ethnographic studies of recent hunter-gatherers it's that variation – in lifestyle and diet – was the norm.

There is no single lifestyle or diet that fits all people today or in the past, let alone the genome of our whole species."

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-11-palaeolithic-diet-unprovable-links.html

gunther gatherer said...

@Michael Eades,

One more thing: the "low fat, high carb" diet that your diet supposedly "beat" was 30% fat. You are pathetic in your dishonesty, time and time again. Your link was yet another deception.

I said pit your diet against a vegan, vegetarian, 10% fat, 5% fat, or any other you like in a controlled lab setting. You will never do it. You cannot do it. I can promise you Dr. Eades that your brisk business of death cannot allow your diet to actually be tested against a true low fat, plant-based diet.

BigWhiskey said...

Dang!!! Boys n Girls, what happened to y'all?

Antonio said...

"I regret this debate has taken a negative spin. My position throughout this debate has simply been"

but just before

"I think that kind of unwillingness to acknowledge the scientific literature does nothing but tarnish your reputation."

Antonio said...

DD's friend gunther gatherer:

(same target, more clearly stated)

"You are already the laughing stock among the entire medical health profession"
"What a knee-slapper you are"
"your whole evil career as a fad-diet charlatan"
"what you'll be known for long after you are gone"
"a fake doctor like you"
"You are pathetic in your dishonesty, time and time again"
"your brisk business of death"


It's not just about ketones.
It's more kind of (childish) zero-sum game on reputations.

Melchior Meijer said...

"If there is one clear message from ethnographic studies of recent hunter-gatherers it's that variation – in lifestyle and diet – was the norm.

There is no single lifestyle or diet that fits all people today or in the past, let alone the genome of our whole species."

Tiresome to see this Zukky Marlene line of reasoning popping up again and again.

If there is one clear message from ethnographic studies of recent hunter-gatherers it's that absence of grains, concentrated sources of PUFA, concentrated sucrose (besides the occasional honey feast), dairy and sources of dense, acellular carbohydrates, was the norm.

There is a clear set of lifestyle factors and dietary characteristics that fits all people today or in the past, and jives with the genome of our whole species.

@Gunther Gatherer,

Wow, what has happened to you? You seem to be a perfect example of what a low fat, vegan diet can do to the brain. A friend of mine is setting up a study on a mental ward to see if a paleolithic diet can ameliorate aggression, impulsive behavior and paranoia in drug refractory psychiatric patients. You might want to enroll?

Seriously man, do you really believe your paleo lifestyle gave you your kidney stones? I would say it's highly unlikely.

Paleo Phil said...

Duck Dodgers wrote: "What I'm asking is, why on Earth call a diet that doesn't involve significant ketones [for the Inuit] "a ketogenic diet"? Wouldn't a "FFA-based diet" be more accurate [for the Inuit]?"

Right, or even just call it a "high fat diet" for the Inuit without calling it a ketogenic diet. Given what we know now, calling it a ketogenic diet would be inaccurate. A ketogenic diet is by nature high fat, but all high fat diets are not ketogenic for all people.

Galina L. said...

I vote for keeping gunther's comments as a perfect example of what a vegan girlfriend and a low-fat diet may do to a brain.

Peter said...

Galina, yes, absolutely. You need to keep examples of this level of mental health problem. Sorry if anyone is offended by my not deleting.

Peter

Michael Eades said...

@Duck Dodgers

Well, looks like I made yet another error.

I've been ruminating as to how Draper could have measured even 5 grams of glycogen in 1000 kcal of what is basically lean meat. It finally dawned on me that 0.5 percent of 1000 kcal is 5 kcal of glycogen, not 5 grams. 5 kcal of glycogen is a little over 1 gram of glycogen, which is a little closer to the 0.5 gram I stated originally.

I still misread the chart, but the 1 gram figure isn't that far off the 0.5 gm I originally quoted. And makes much more sense, which is probably why I misread it in the first place.

Richard Nikoley said...

"If you are using all your ketones for energy and/or you're getting rid of the excess through sweat or saliva, there won't be much, if any, left over to be detected."

How do your cells "detect" them to to use for energy or excrete in various ways if they're undetectable?

Someone already addressed this logical curiosity. If you have lots of traffic, but no traffic jam, you can't see the cars.

Here's the thing. Dr. Eades has claimed this "keto adaptation" many times. To my knowledge he's not precisely defined it, nor cited any science on the matter. Until he does, it sounds like a term that generally means "we're not detecting ketones but I think the individual should be producing them."

I say that the Occam's Razor explanation is that they aren't producing them (above normal baseline everyone does as fat is being cycled). For the Inuit, at least 80%, looks like we know why. On the other hand, Dr Mike has said he observed in his patients that over time, fewer and fewer ketones were detected.

I have personal experience. Whenever I would try Atkins, I'd get a few days of pink, then zilch. The ONLY time I ever peed purple was after a 24-30 hour fast with a workout at the end, or a long hike (8+ hours) where our salami, cheese and egg provisions were far less than the energy expended.

Duck Dodgers said...

Dr Eades wrote: "It finally dawned on me that 0.5 percent of 1000 kcal is 5 kcal of glycogen, not 5 grams. 5 kcal of glycogen is a little over 1 gram of glycogen"

Hmm... I still think you may be misreading that table. It's a very confusing table, so let's walk through it together. And you'll have to excuse me if I make a mistake here since it's just not very well spelled out.

The columns of macronutrients appears to simply be stating the percentage of that specific macronutrient that comes from the native diet. So, that should mean that a population consuming a 100% native diet would have 100% in each column.

The reason why I think that's the case is because the Protein, Fat and Carb columns do not add up to 100%.

In other words, the last column of Table II seems to suggest that these Eskimos are eating a lot of bread and sugar. If they were to only obtain carbohydrates their carbohydrates from glycogen, the last column should read 100%.

Check it over and let me know what you think. See, the last columns isn't grams. It's just saying that they are now eating a lot of modern carbs.

Duck Dodgers said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Duck Dodgers said...

By the way, before we slam Harold Draper, I'll point out that he was a biochemist.

The Inuit Paradox, Discover Magazine, Oct 2004

"What the diet of the Far North illustrates, says Harold Draper, a biochemist and expert in Eskimo nutrition, is that there are no essential foods—only essential nutrients. And humans can get those nutrients from diverse and eye-opening sources."

So, I imagine he knew what he was saying when he wrote:

"The all-meat diet typically provides about 10 grams of glucose in the form of glycogen per 2,500 calories"

Anyhow, I don't think Table II is telling us any information about how much glycogen is in meat. It seems to be more about telling us how much of their carbohydrate consumption overwhelmingly now comes from bread and sugar, which appears to be roughly 99.5%.

Richard Nikoley said...

"but thanks for chiming in Richard, as you're the Great Failure of the Internet."

By your standards, I'll consider that a Great Success.

But how ironic, eh? From what I gather, you yourself were on some kinda LC Paleo but now, LF Vegan. Why the switch? Great Success on the former?

I'm the first to admit that LC Paleo worked only to a point for me, combined with heavy lifting for my age of 49/50 at the time.

- After a 50 lb loss, had a tough time getting below 185.

- Toughed it out to 175 (165 is my "college weight" at 5'10") and felt like crap with lethargy and cold hands/feet all the time.

- Back up to 185, felt better. Built up to DLs at 325 for reps, squats at 250 for reps, and other heavy stuff. Rewarded with a cervical herniation leaving my right arm weak and aching to the point amputation seemed ideal.

- Various other stuff.

So, admitted that LC Paleo as construed wasn't for me. Evolution ensues (more starches, paying attention to targeting foods gut bugs eat, eating more mindfully: smaller protein portions, more starch, no added fat except very light OO dressings).

Turns out, it seems to work to various degrees for a whole lot of people (and some small % not). Too many anecdotes in comments and emails to mention but a recent one is a gut stalled on LC forever, added starches, resistant starch, and psyllium husk and dropped 25 lb quickly.

But I guess only you get to have Great Success. From one extreme on the Bell Curve to the other. I'll stay in the more widely distributed part, whole foods, omnivorous, and eating mindfully. And targeting the gut.

How about you, Tim? Duck?

Galina L. said...

Peter,
thank you for counting my vote. In order to be fare we should be grateful to the people who provide us with examples of fat- and cholesterol-deficiencies. It reminds us about how important animal foods are. I am not a fanatic of a deep ketosis , especially all the time, but it looks like we should be aware of the "moderation" diet state. The proponents of low-fat diets find some evidence their diet is anty-inflammatory when the percentage of fat is under 5%(OMG!), proponents of high-fat diets say fats are very healthy only when carbs are low ENOYGH, but how exactly low? The people from Paleo movement rightfully point out at the fact that pre-historic people ate everything except modern foods, and their environment often provided them with the opportunity to practice "moderation".

The evolution angle in diet discussions is very interesting and always provides a lot of food for thoughts, even when it doesn't give us all answers. I think it is also useful to keep in mind that our personal goals of having a perfect health and even younger appearance may be not particularly natural from the evolutionary point of view. It is especially true for females, who could send complitely wrong signals about their fertility with age-inappropriate hips/waist ratio and other features of their appearance. It is just my opinion that natural in human cultures mixing of starches and fats is more beneficial for children and young people, but as an individual gets closer to a retirement age, such combination may naturally speed-up his departure from ranks of alive humans or increase his/her fragility to the benefits of whole society and previous generations.

gunther gatherer said...

@Melchior, Peter and Galina, I guess one is mentally unstable if they disagree, and especially if they have proof of how your gurus are deceiving you.

Much intelligence there. Impeccable logic. You would have made great Nazis.

@The Failure-In-Chief,

I appreciate your honesty about your health trajectory. I agree that fiber and resistant starch are main factors in cultivating healthy bacterial populations, the ecology of which may have a lot to do with diabetes and other modern lifestyle diseases.

But get some balls man and cut your tether to these freeloading LC charlatans. If you were really the fearless experimenter you say you are, you'd try very low fat veganism for at least a month and chronicle your results.

Be the man Dr. Eades is too much of a coward to be, and actually test the diet before you write it off!



Duck Dodgers said...

Dr Eades,

I've reviewed the paper again, and I do think I have the analysis of Table II correct while you are still misreading it. I admit it's very confusing.

For example let's look at the first two rows of Table II:

Table II.
Percentage of Nutrients Obtained from Native Foods
--------------------------------------------------
Wainwright—Summer 1971

...... Cal . Protein .. Fat ... Carbs
Men: . 43% .. 79% ..... 48% ... 0.5%
Women: 52% .. 83% ..... 63% .... 0.1%

Note the title of the Table and that the macronutrients of protein, carbs and fat do not add up to 100%.

In other words, the table is not suggesting that the native diet of those Eskimos is 80% protein. Rather, the table is telling us that ~80% of their total protein intake comes from their native diet (i.e seals, caribou) and ~20% of their total protein intake comes from Western foods (hamburgers, hotdogs).

Similarly, Table II is not telling us that the native diet contains 0.5% carbohydrates. Rather, it is saying that 0.5% of their total carbohydrate intake comes from native sources (i.e. glycogen), and 99.5% of their total carbohydrate intake comes from modern sources (bread, sugar).

We can tell this because the macronutrient columns do not add up to 100% and because Draper tells us how to read Table II:

"Table II shows the percent of major nutrients derived from native foods at each village in 1971-72. Wainwright adults obtained nearly half of their calories from native sources and about three-quarters of their protein. At Point Hope, where dietary acculturation is more extensive, less than one-quarter of the calories id the adult diet were obtained from indigenous foods, which nevertheless provided over half of dietary proteh. The proportion of native foods in the diet of children, on the average, was about half that in the diet of adults. The difference between generations in the composition of the diet is striking."

One could illustrate Draper's table further by showing these extreme examples:

Table II.
Percentage of Nutrients Obtained from Native [Eskimo] Foods
-----------------------------------------------------------
...... Cal .... Protein .. Fat .... Carbs
Pre-modern
Eskimo: 100% .. 100% ..... 100% .... 100%
Vegan: . 0% .... 0% ....... 0% ..... 0%

Hopefully that makes more sense and clears up the confusion. I realize it was a confusing table.

At any rate, it would appear that Draper's statement of 10g of glycogen per 2,500 calories of the native diet isn't challenged by the data he published.

Tim Steele said...

Gunther - Seriously, if you experience bursts of outrage in real life like what you display here, you really may want to look into switching up something in your life. If it's all just havin' fun on the internet, then, you got me!

I know one other person who eats a nearly zero fat all vegan diet, and I had to cut ties with that person as he was subject to eerily similar tirades.


Peter - I hope you see that you opened up a much needed discussion, and have provided a neutral 'battleground' for some really good debate.




Anonymous said...

Basically what is new thing here under the sun (wich the Inuits in the Arctic won´t be seeing for a couple of months)here is that we now have a vere widespread mutation among Inuits that basically is an anti-ketoadaption.

Their bodies resist ketosis and the most pluasible explanation for this mutation to have thrieved is that it is after all a god bargain in taht climate to divert some fat into making heat than into fuel to the rest of the body.

This is all in line with the studies that has been done on Inuits. Not even 6 days of 75 % fat pemmican only made them go into ketosis. It took fasting to do that.

This is the only thing that has changed. The rest of the story is still the same - one single guy on this planet, Wilhjálmur Stefánsson claimed their diet was normal protein (max 20 % of cals).

All the rest of scientist making different kinds of research have concluded it was a high protein diet. It is not only proved by the lack of ketosis but also on the fact that Inuits had high measurements on nitrogen in both blood and urine.

Unlike the lack of detecteble ketosis this can´t be explained away by the Inuits beeing "ketoadapted" (while Stefansson & Andersen during the full year Bellevue experiment never reached "ketoadaption" enough to make ketones undetecteble.

Neither can high nitrogen be explained away by the fact that Inuits from the beginning of the 20th century consumed small amounts of imported sugar and some flour.

The simple, Occhams razor solution to this problem that has to be handled with this mutation, is that they acctually ate a high protein diet that can generate a lot of glucose and that this fueled their braians, liver and kidneys even if other parts of the body could partially be fed on the surplus FFA they generated.

Now it´s about time to go to bed here in Sweden so I apologize if I will not answer rapidly.
/Per Wikholm of the Swedish LCHF Magasinet

Gemma said...

@Duck Dodgers

The link to Draper's paper you posted is to the abstract only, here the full:

The Aboriginal Eskimo Diet in Modern Perspective (1977)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1977.79.2.02a00070/pdf

Anonymous said...

But before I go to bed this is to Michael Eads:

You have my full respect and admiration for all that you have done that has for sure saved a lot of peoples lives. But I feel that you succomed to some confirmation biase regarding Stefánsson.

So when ever you have the time, take a look at this 1 hour, high quality documentary on Stefánsson´s life.

Then ask yourself: Would you bye a used car from this man? And next question: Would you belive that this man is the only guy that tells the trouth about the inuit diet and all the rest (including the inuits themselfes) are lying about it)?

Anonymous said...

Oops, just forgot to leave the link to the Stef´snsson documentary. Here it is:

http://www.isuma.tv/DID/community/CambridgeBay/arctic-dreamer

Galina L. said...

A fair warning to the people who may think that in order to be a man they have to try a LF diet - don't worry, guys, having balls is quite enough.

Here is my story. I had to follow a very low-fat diet before and especially after my gallbladder was removed. I really didn't have a choice, but it was fine with me because I though back then it was the healthiest way to eat.Not a surprise I was always hungry. LF was also necessary before because otherwise I had colics, after - because consumed fats produced an Olestra effect when gallbladder was absent. It is a small wander many report a weight gain after a such surgery. Later I decided to follow even healthier diet and seriously limited meat and all animal foods in my diet. A very long list of health conditions got worse, 26 lbs were gained during one year despite 10 hours of intense cardio a week, I even had a kidney stone episode first time in my life (I hope it was also the last one). All that while eating self-cooked traditional Eastern European foods with whole grains, fruits, vegetables, even fermented ones. When a life hits your hard on a head, it is easier to come to your senses. I started LCarbing in order to deal with migraines, and now I have even longer list of health issues which got better or disappeared, and 30 lbs were lost. It was not easy to build-up my tolerance to fatty foods, but I managed. My vegetables consumption is way down, but even now I have four kinds of fermented produce in my fridge, and two gallons of sauerkraut is a part of it.

Richard Nikoley said...

"If you were really the fearless experimenter you say you are, you'd try very low fat veganism for at least a month and chronicle your results."

First of all, lots of people doing that already and I gather some swear by it, others not. Also, it's too short of a time to know anything. Probably any of the common diets are "good" for a time, for a variety of factors including placebo. Or, had I done LC Paleo for just a month, stellar report, right? After 18 months? Not so much, and then the flailing.

I don't want to deny myself any vegan real foods or so-caled paleo real foods. I just want to eat more mindfully and apply an evolutionary context. It's funny, but a while back I noted in a post how I've kinda come full circle with Art De Vany. He took some ridicule for his stance of not piling on the fat. Also, he seemed to always have leftover protein. For instance, he advocated trimming fat from his meat. Saw a lot of crab legs on his plates too, but never a side of clarified butter. Etc.

So, I'm good for now. I'll toss you one bone, which is that now I understand how some vegans claim that taste changes in terms of veggies without added fat. I still dress my salads, but very minimally. Alternatively, I put things in them like cold garbanzos and red beans. But also, I don't want to deny a few slices of hard boiled egg if available.

In an evolutionary context, this makes sense to me since whole foods would have been rated. So, whatever fat is in the food. No fear of fat, but in normal proportions. Like, rather than cream of half & half in your coffee, whole milk. Etc.

And in order to model whatever hormetic effect feat and famine affords, eat mindfully, resisting the urge to spurge or put concentrated fat on everything, and do a fast once or twice per week.

It's working well. I'll report how it's going in another 15 months (about 3 since I began all this).

Michael44 said...

Dr Mike.

I want to say that you have been a great pioneer within the health and wellness movement. You were one of the people who told me that animal fat won't destroy my arteries! And, on a personal health level, animal fat has been a great help to me. My liver was not in a good way, and animal fat has been a saving grace for me! But, to virtually live off animal fat for the rest of your life?...well, we have no examples of such a diet existing anywhere in the world ever except for the Inuit. And,the evidence that the Inuit lived in almost a permanent state of ketosis is now looking very shaky indeed (not withstanding we now have Peter saying that some Inuit can't even make ketones! (as an aside Peter, thanx for giving us the chance to talk this stuff through on your site).

Dr Mike, I'm hoping that you will look into all the research. Duck Dodgers has given you these papers to look into Krogh & Krogh 1914 (Nobel Prize winner)
Lusk 1914
Joslin 1921 (first doctor to ever specialize in diabetes in the US)
Schaffer 1921
Heinbecker, 1928, 1931, 1932
Tolstoi 1929
McClellan & DuBois 1930 (Stefansson's own doctors)
Rabinowitch 1936
Rabinowitch & Corcoran 1936
Rabinowitch and Smith 1936
Kaare Rodahl 1952
Sinclair 1953 (A detailed review of the literature)
Ho 1972
Hui 1975
Bang, Dyerberg & Hjorne 1976
Draper 1977 (Anthropology/speculatory)
VanItallie & Nufert 2003
Leonard & Snodgrass 2005,

and Gemma has given you Dyerberg and says there are many others she could look up.

All the FTA guys know the Inuit/glucose consumption is a side issue anyway. The glucose discussion is to show how misinformed it appears we have been over the Inuits' diet in general . But the FTA guys know that the elephant in the room is what appears to be their high level of protein consumption. This has to be addressed.

So, please look into those papers. Lets just find out the truth of things (as much as we are able to anyway). And then, we can all lick our wounds and get on with it.

Duck Dodgers said...

Michael44 said: "...Not withstanding we now have Peter saying that some Inuit can't even make ketones!"

Well, it's not just some Inuit. Roughly 80% of Inuit are believed to be homozygous for CPT1a and it's those 80% that would have difficulty making ketones.

Given how this variant can only be passed down if both parents have it, it's almost certain that this variant would have been 100% in pre-modern Eskimos—before interbreeding with whites.

So, it would be more accurate to say the overwhelming majority of Inuit have trouble making ketones.

Richard Nikoley said...

"All the FTA guys know the Inuit/glucose consumption is a side issue anyway. The glucose discussion is to show how misinformed it appears we have been over the Inuits' diet in general . But the FTA guys know that the elephant in the room is what appears to be their high level of protein consumption. This has to be addressed."

This is precisely correct. Initially, it was fun and I think even Duck got excited (he researched it) because to our knowledge, nobody had even considered animal fiber or glycogen. Bill Lagakos even did a post on animal fiber.

I was mulling over the same thing this morning. It's difficult to regret how you go about a campaign because you have no idea of the end. I just saw that there were potentially important things not being integrated into a general narrative, and that's as charitable as I can put it.

Dr Eades chose to make it about the glycogen, even in face of added info showing that glycogen in diving marine mammals can be very important and it takes substantial time to degrade.

Nonetheless, it's about the high protein. I'm sure Peter would agree that protein consumption over 200g per day (researchers generally pegged it at 270-300g) is going to kill ketone production. I have personal experience in that, too. Did Martin Berkan's Leangains for 6-8 months and he had me at 270g for 3 workout days and 230g on 4 rest days and it quickly became apparent that drinking part of it was the only way I could get it down.

Ketogentic? Don't make me Laf and not even close.

So, though those gene mutation is interesting, I think it's more applicable to fasting, not fed. In a fed state, Occam suggests it was the astounding protein consumption.

One thing I've wanted to ask Mike for a long time and so now he's on the spot a bit, I guess 8 will: why "Protein Power?" Have your views changed? Seems to me "Fat Power" would be more in line.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

@ Richard

[more starches, paying attention to targeting foods gut bugs eat, eating more mindfully: smaller protein portions, more starch, no added fat except very light OO dressings]

Well, at least you admit that you sure do love your starches at the expense of eating more fats! Especially SFs since you won't add something like butter to your meals and prefer a small amount of OO on your salads.

What's your take on this recent study where they found that doubling, or even nearly tripling, SFs in the diet didn't drive up total levels of SF in the blood (in the context of a LC diet), but when they lowered the dietary SF and increased the levels of carbs, on the other hand, there were associated incremental increases in the proportion of plasma palmitoleic acid, which may be signaling impaired metabolism of carbohydrates..?!

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0113605

It appears that there are some folks who would benefit more from lowering their carb intake, and there are others who do just fine with higher amounts. Each person must find their own safe level for maximum carb intake before the body starts converting carbs to fat, which we all know eventually leads to metabolic syndrome.

Richard Nikoley said...

What's your take on the on the ground reality that Hadza get 95% of calories from honey about 2 months of the year?

See, now that's real.

I'll tell you what I've come to hate: gluttony, and low carbers are the very most guilty in that respect. They strive to and celebrate gluttony and ignore the fact that many, many people pour on weight like crazy. I've had them in my comments for years.

This is not the same thing as holding that any sort of naturally proportioned fat in real foods (and grai fed animals are a red herring in my view) is deleterious. It is merely a recognition for me that I've probably got it nailed if I have no fear of any natural fat, but that I'm going to consume it mindfully as part of its quotidian natual part of real whole food.

Don't know if it makes sense to you, but I'm finding a certain elegance with it.

Look, I'm the last one who's going to predict that Dave Aspey is going to drop dead. Hell, I like a BP coffee now and then (it's dessert to me), but. It only does he do that, but I've sat across him at dinner a coupe of times. He literally carries a cube of Kerygold with him. He'll spread it on a steak with already enough fat. I've even seen him spread butter on sushi.

Why, please?

This is not the same as saying it's goig to make him fat or clog arteries. And hell, who knows? Maybe if I ate a pound of butter every day it would help me? I don't know.

What I do know is that I have no interest in that level of flamboyance.

gunther gatherer said...

Richard,

There are certainly branches of gluttony on both sides of the spectrum. Certainly raw veganism touts continuously that you can "stuff it down" and "eat as much as you can", as long as it's bananas or something.

And it's also funny that the only paleo constant we really know is that portions are NOT big, no matter if it's fat, protein or carbs. And this holds true from the North Pole to the Equator. You just can't have food anytime you want and as much as you want in a natural situation.

Agreed also that 1 month of veganism is just as non-conclusive as any other diet. I just threw that period out for you as a minimum for you to try it and see if you could stand it.

Looking for a diet, any diet, where you can stuff your face all day should not be the goal.

LeenaS said...

Listening to you I do know that this is NOT the right time or place to ask anything, so my question is only rhetoric. But why on earth one would need to be in ketosis, if one eats, say 80% fat lowcarb diet?

As for myself, I have been eating 80% fat for several years and I'm practically never in ketosis. It cured me, it keeps me going and it is tasty and satiating. Just like Kwasniewski suggested. The theory here (e.g. on brain fuel and ETC) fits nicely with my reality.

Furthermore, I'm not the only one doing well for years on animal fat based food, without ketosis. I know several ex-chronics in our local community who thrive, too. (Dear GG, no need to convert me; been there too, not good. Yet I know that you do not listen. My vegan real life connections are a bit like you; however, in real life I see also their problems and not only the boast.)

IMO the ketosis-protein discussion misses the point entirely. Ketosis is NOT necessary in high fat, adequate nutritients food.

Cheers,
LeenaS

Richard Nikoley said...

"Looking for a diet, any diet, where you can stuff your face all day should not be the goal."

We find ourselves in agreement and I also agree with the reason, which is plenty implicit. In a natural setting you stuff yourself because tomorrow is uncertain. In civilization, I'm pretty sure every Safeway in existence will still be there for a long time.

Indeed, whether it be fat, some point or block system, or bananas, so much underlying motivation in all dietary systems seems to be "we're different; in our deal you can eat your fill and still reach goals."

And comfounding is that it's so age and background related. Hell, up until about 30 something I could eat whatever too. Never had to think about it. Now, I realize I was conditioned poorly.

Gemma said...

@LeenaS

Was it you who wrote that you eat 80% high fat diet as your Northern ancestors did?

Well, the problem here is that no data show such a high fat consumption in traditional Northern populations. In my opinion it is maybe diet-wise OK as a short-term reset, but not good for chronic use. Several years, say you? I would like to see your gut flora.

gunther gatherer said...

@Leena, Peter, Galina, Sky Prick, Tim Steele and all the other hostile twats on this blog:

I'm beginning to think LC, and especially VLC is like the new death cult of the day, just another version of Jim Jones or the Branch Davidians. You have false principles led by a guru or a series of gurus using fake scripture and histories, you are aggressive and defensive with anyone who tries to de-program you, you think there is a big bad conspiracy against you and, as we see, you are highly marginalized because you somehow think 99.9% of the world is wrong.

When those groups drank the Cool-Aid, got on the "space ship", fought the FBI in firefights or whatever, I remember thinking how beautiful nature was. It has such an elegant way of cleansing the genepool of idiots and retards. Maybe I shouldn't intervene in what seems to be just our DNA taking out the trash.

I'll leave you with one more thing: the only actual thinking person in the entire LC community is Richard.

Goodbye until my next blog bomb some other day.

Anonymous said...

I have some questions, probably rhetorical, but I figure this comment section is so messed up, I'm not going to do much damage:

What is Ornish's squat 1 rep max?
Would his diet cure the Inuit of their P479L gene?
If so, will it also cure homosexuality and hipsters?
What is a blog bomb and will dropping one make you a candidate for rendition?
Why not?
What has Jake Gyllenhaal been eating and how the hell do you pronounce his surname?

gunther gatherer said...

A blog bomb is when I give you all a link that challenges, if not completely reveals the stupidity of, your VLC premise.

And as expected, you could only respond with insults and ad hominem. None of you clicked on it. None of you would have the brains to explain it if you did.

Inuits doing squats while on Ornish diet has been proven to cure Jake Gyllenhaal of his homosexual surname.

Melchior Meijer said...

"It has such an elegant way of cleansing the genepool of idiots and retards. Maybe I shouldn't intervene in what seems to be just our DNA taking out the trash."

Apart from the megalomania it so clearly reveals (you personally intervening in an ultimate, heroic attempt to save us retards), this reaction is rather unlucky from a person named Günther.

By the way, you don't seem to understand the concept of evolution through natural selection.

LeonRover said...

Hee, hee Melchior

Do you now suggest that that Günther's ass is Grass ??

Melchior Meijer said...

"None of you clicked on it."

I did. The link goes to a vegan propaganda site run by a GP called Michael Greger, who promises eternal health if one adopts his diet of whole grains, beans, fruits and vegetables. The guy shows the most prevalent visible features of metabolic derangement: sarcopenia and a scary distribution of body fat. An exact copy of the guys a meet in the swimming pool, thinking they are doing everything right and wondering why they feel so shit and keep looking like Death warmed up despite all their efforts.

But okay, that's one man. Could you provide a pubmed link?

In the mean time I might remind you of the Norwegian geneticist Berit Johansen, who showed that just a few days of eating a low carb paleo diet turned on genes that control inflammation and atherogenesis, while a few days of a 'prudent' diet did exactly the opposite.

http://www.ntnu.edu/news/feed-your-genes

"We have found that a diet with 65 per cent carbohydrates, which often is what the average Norwegian eats in some meals, causes a number of classes of genes to work overtime," says Berit Johansen, a professor of biology at NTNU. She supervises the project's doctoral students and has conducted research on gene expression since the 1990s.

"This affects not only the genes that cause inflammation in the body, which was what we originally wanted to study, but also genes associated with development of cardiovascular disease, some cancers, dementia, and type 2 diabetes -- all the major lifestyle-related diseases," she says.

Melchior Meijer said...

Leon, yes, his ass is almost certainly Grass. Don't get me wrong, I love Germany since I left Kindergarten. But if I were German, I would be extra careful with expressing eugenetic fantasies.

LeenaS said...

@Gemma

Why should I have problems with my gut? Digestible starches and sugars never get there anyways, and cup of fresh local stuff with some home fermenting provides more than enough for the gut bacteria, while the digestible carb content stays easily under 10 E% - even in theory. And in practice I have no constipation, no diarree, no flues and no signs of trouble around the digestive path.

Furthermore, in practice and all in all this is the paradise found - for someone like me, who had constant skin and imflammatory troubles for the first 40 years :)

LeonRover said...

Mel Meij

From NTNU:

"The answer researchers have come up with may surprise you: the best diet, from a gene's standpoint, is one-third protein, one-third fat and one-third carbohydrates. That's what the research shows is the best recipe to limit your risk of most lifestyle-related diseases."

I have been "listening to my genes" :)) :)) ever since reading the diet percentages in Eaton & Konner's 1985 study and taking the median %ages.

Sláinte

Melchior Meijer said...

Congrats for clicking, Leon :-)!

And I have been listening to my late grand grand mom in Mosselbaai (who happens to be your grand grand mom too), who told me the same thing. But she was also constantly whispering "Spreadbury. Always listen to Spreadbury. Keep it cellular." Never found ou what she meant.

Gemma said...

@LeenaS

Well I don't know what your background knowledge on gut flora and its metabolism is, so how to start such a discussion?

Do you hope to feed your gut flora with fat and a cup of fermented veggies daily, if that's what you meant?

I believe that as a reset it is helping you, but again: long-term?

LeonRover said...

Melchior

Dublin celebrates it's Mussels in the ditty Molly Malone - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdxLxnhGnvo

And yesterday I had a cellular wheat day, eating 250 gm of berries slowly simmered for 40 minutes.

Complimented with 4 eggs, 250 gm fish, 25o gm beef and using KerryGold ghee for cooking- more than 1 meal!

Sláinte

LeenaS said...

@Gemma

This is not the place to start, but yes, I've learned a bit lately, and all seems to be just fine. No medications for more than decade must help, too :)

Of course you never know about the future. Yet during these 14 lowcarb years (with the last 7 or so on truly high animal fats) I have seen what goes on with my equally aging relatives. I don't need to live forever; feeling ok while living is quite big enough a gift.

Good luck with your life, too

Unknown said...

@Melchior Meijer

Could she have been referring to this study by Ian Spreadbury of the Gastrointestinal Diseases Research Unit at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada entitled, "Comparison with ancestral diets suggests dense acellular carbohydrates promote an inflammatory microbiota, and may be the primary dietary cause of leptin resistance and obesity".

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3402009/

Looks like he's trying to put forth his hypothesis that carbohydrate density is probably the most important determinant of whether a food promotes inflammation/obesity or not.

He seems to be saying that the more processed a food is the more dense it is since processing will damage or obliterate the original food's cell walls. So, according to Spreadbury processed foods are acellular....almost totally lacking in intact cells making them "dense". This in turn may help to make our normal, natural gut bacteria become pro-inflammatory.

It's a very interesting hypothesis that I've never heard of before and makes a lot of sense.



Melchior Meijer said...

Leon, I've been told that the Irish subsisted almost entirely on mussels during an Gorta mór and that they only recently started to get over this trauma. A long, long time mussels were considered poor man's food, associated with famine and Death. Luckily, most of the terrific mussels that grow on your Gaelic banks go directly to Holland to be consumed by me :-).

Sounds good what you are cooking, but I'm too brainwashed to enjoy the wheat. Can it ever become cellular? And what about Alessio Fasano?

Sky King, thanks for going after Ian Spreadbury! In my view he ties all the loose ends together. I always wondered why Y en Roux gastric bypass, fasting and VLC produced the same immediate results. His hypothesis explains it neatly.

Melchior Meijer said...

Sorry, I should have said:

I always wondered why Y en Roux gastric bypass, fasting and VLC produced the same immediate results and why macronutrient agnostic paleo accomplishes these same results after only a few days.

Galina L. said...

How typical! A raging vegan comes to a blog , provides links to sites about his religion. After being told that too much of foaming from mouth is unnecessary, accuses everybody in aggression, having closed minds and Nazism. A very good case of the low-fat brain damage.

Galina L. said...

@Gemma,
I think it is reasonable to treat our body as a complex system - assuming we can reasonably view it as a black box, with understanding we can asses with 100% certainty only the input and output. When we try to crack-open such box, we may misunderstand the meaning of different connections due to the very high complexity of the object.

Gemma said...

@Galina

Keep your box closed as much as you like, if you wish.

But that is not my way.

LeonRover said...

Melchior

" I'm too brainwashed to enjoy the wheat. Can it ever become cellular? And what about Alessio Fasano? "

Grainwashed ? :))

My father used check when wheat was becoming harvestable by hand winnowing it & chewing the berries. This is much too "al dente" and time a way to eat wheat, even tho' it leaves it at it's most cellular. Simmered wheat is nicely chewy & more tasty than rice.

If I had a glutenous issue I would eat buckwheat. (Occasionally I have a gluttonous issue but it revolves around whipped cream sherry trifle.)

Before An Gorta Mhór, Irish peasant diet was of Kitavan %-ages with potato taking the place of Kitavan roots and with protein from sour milk, eggs and pigmeat including bacon. Fish was urban, other than fishing communities on the seaboard.

I view the resistant starch phenomenon as a subset of Spreadbury's cellular hypothesis.

I am indifferent (agnostic?) as between potato and wheat as raw ingredients. However I do not eat such over-processed products as Texas 'tato Skins or white bread.

In my view Kitava is as paleo as Northern Greenland or Alaska.

Sláinte

Duck Dodgers said...

LeenaS said: "Digestible starches and sugars never get there anyways"

Well, it's believed that 10% of digestible starches in Western diets tend to escape digestion and feed gut flora. When you consider how many grams of starches a SAD dieter eats, you can sort of see how the SAD dieter may have a head start in obtaining fiber over a LC dieter.

LeenaS said: "and cup of fresh local stuff with some home fermenting provides more than enough for the gut bacteria"

Leena, what it comes down to is something known as Microbiota accessible carbohydrates (MACs).

See: Wikipedia: Microbiota accessible carbohydrates (MACs)

Now, before everyone gets defensive, by "carbohydrates" the researchers who coined the phrase actually mean glycans—the indigestible carbohydrate molecules found in everything from fungi, vegetables, starches, and animal tissues (polysaccharides, glycolipids, β-glucans, glycoproteins, etc). So, even the Inuit ate lots of MACs since glycans are highly prevalent in animal tissue—particularly raw/fresh animal tissue.

There are about 2,000,000 different kinds of glycans in the human body alone—a.k.a. the "human glycome." And every food or plant has its own glycome as well. What makes these glycans indigestible to us are the β glycosidic-bonds that your native enzymes can't break down. But your gut bugs specialize in breaking down β glycosidic-bonds.

You might think that MACs is another name for "prebiotics" but the key difference is that our personalized gut flora determine whether what we eat is a MAC or not. What may be a MAC to an Inuit (glycoproteins in raw seal meat, for instance) may not be a MAC to a Westerner for the simple fact that we do not have the same microbiota as an Inuit who chows down on raw and rotted meat every day.

I suspect most VLC dieters fall into the trap of believing that most of the "local stuff" they find at the farmer's market is a MAC, but it turns out that's really difficult to find low carb MACs at the market since most low carb plants are high in cellulose and most humans don't have the gut bugs to degrade cellulose—not to mention that cellulose doesn't even ferment into many SCFAs.

The cellulose-degrading microbial community of the human gut varies according to the presence or absence of methanogens, by Chassard, et al. (2010)

"Attempts to elucidate the cellulose-degrading microbial community have only been partially successful as only a restricted number of individuals appear to harbour such cellulose-degrading organisms (Bétian et al., 1977; Montgomery, 1988; Wedekind et al., 1988)."

The mucus in your gut lining is probably a MAC for most Westerners and particularly VLC Westerners. And maybe that's ok for those who are able to produce enough mucus. Who knows?

So, if we want to bring this back to the Inuit, it's likely that the Inuit obtained their fiber as raw animal fiber (glycoproteins, glycolipids, etc.) while eating rotted/putrefied meats to populate their colons with animal fiber-degrading bacteria.

In the West, our meats are intentionally hung for days before ever showing up in a butchers shop so that the bacteria break down most of those glycoproteins/glycolipids and convert them into lactic acid to tenderize the muscle into edible meat.

It's just another example of how we can't really replicate the Inuit diet in the West and how MACs determine what fiber is to each person. Hope that helps a bit.

Richard Nikoley said...

"....thinking person in the entire LC community is Richard."

Well, thanks for the vote. I hope I'm one of an ever-increasing number.

I like to approach all this stuff the same way I've approached all my business dealings where there's real money on the line. It's not about being right, ever. It's about a continuous improvement process of being less wrong. I think that requires more critical thinking.

I also think it's good to find areas of agreement amongst a sea of disagreement. I'm a fan of Hegelian Dialectic:

http://freetheanimal.com/2014/04/confirmation-landscape-dialectics.html

When asked the question: are you ZC, VLC, LC, LF, HF, or HC, I like to answer YES!

For example, I hade two huge prime rib my last two days in Vegas, then a big ribeye last night on the road back (with just a little baked potato and a few bites of a salad—definitely LC in terms of percentages). Then last night, I made potato soup with minimal protein, a few strips of chopped bacon, a little whole milk for creaminess at the end. Definitely a low fat, low protein, high carb dinner.

I like it that way. And, I have leftovers so for the next couple of days, I'm gonna be LF, LP, HC.

Then I'll probably do a nice 30-hr fast.

LeonRover said...

"When asked the question: are you ZC, VLC, LC, LF, HF, or HC, I like to answer YES!"

Quite so.
Moi aussi, with the rider:

"Not all at the same time. And I'm HP as well."

I call this being macronutrient agnostic, while maximising micronutients by minimising processing.

Real food about half of it plant.

Sláinte

LeenaS said...

@DD

I was not going to asnwer, but you got me curious. What makes you think that I have problems with my gut - or anything?

People, even paleos, have lived (and thrived and copulated) with quite many different macro compositions. The only thing similar in all old diets was their locality and seasonality. That's it.

Also, so far the only things you know of me (provided that you take my words for real) is my fat eating, my feeling well doing this, and me being free from life-long problems doing so.

So?

Galina L. said...

@Gemma,
There is a difference between not being interested to know what is inside that black box and the acknowledging the degree of the complexity of that design , and the assumption that it is easy to make mistakes with attempts to micromanage some parameters of the whole thing.

I think Leena's approach is reasonable. Since she is satisfied with the state of her health, she safely assumes that the gut microbiota , which developed as the result of 14 years of her diet, doesn't promote any excessive inflammation. My way - not to try to fix what is not broken.

Duck Dodgers said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Duck Dodgers said...

LeenaS said: "What makes you think that I have problems with my gut - or anything?"

What makes you think I claimed you had gut problems? Relax. I was just correcting some of your misconceptions about indigestible fibers. You are probably one of the lucky ones whose microbiota can live solely off of your mucin production. As the Wiki page pointed out:

"Lack of dietary MACs results in a microbiota reliant upon endogenous host-derived MACs, such as mucin glycans"

Lucky you.

LeenaS said...

This is making me only more curious :)

Since you are correcting "my misconceptions" on digestible fibers, you must know what I know (and what I don't know) about them?

And no, I do not believe in luck. But how do you know all this?

Tim Steele said...

You know, this does seem a perfect segue into Denise Minger's ideas from AHS14. She proposed that an all-carb diet is very similar to a ketogenic diet in terms of short-lived gains, and that living perpetually at either extreme is likely to be a futile effort.

The "Potato Diet" is a perfect example of a low-fat, plant based diet that helps people lose fat fast and seems to reset a stubborn weight set-point, and interestingly, often leads to the person being in ketosis much of the time. A high-fat diet may be of similar ilk, in that a short term ketogenic diet, as in intermittent fasting or a week-long high fat 'nutritional ketosis' plan may provide short term changes with long-lasting results.

If you haven't seen her speech, have a look...I expect to see more from her on this subject as we all sit around arguing and scratching our heads.

Minger on "Carbosis"

Galina L. said...

I think a VLC diet is less suitable than most other diets to be used inconsistently - body develops physiological IR and higher blood sugar spikes happen during "carbo-reloading during first couple day after ending LCarbing, so it is wise to think how to eat right after a fast.

Richard Nikoley said...

"with attempts to micromanage some parameters of the whole thing."

That's one way to put it. Shorter version: just ignore it. In terms of cells, the microbiome outnumbers ours 10 to one. in terms of genes, about 300 to one.

They eat fibers and other stuff resistant to our digestion. Some rely on eating the shit of others. Some produce chemical compounds we use, and others produce chemical warfarez that keep other in check. For many species, they can be beneficial or pathogenic depending on numbers and relative numbers to other species. Some microbiome conditions are highly correlated with auto-immune issues.

It's complicated. Too complicated, really.

So, just ignore it and starve it. Let them eat your intestinal mucous. You can't get rid of them completely. It's gonna be some number between 300 and 1,000 species. You might face adverse consequences. It's becoming more plausible that the gut may play a role in a vast number of diseases. This would make evolutionary sense, since no person until Atkins, et al, came up with the curious notion that you're better off avoiding 1/3 of food.

You know what the most interesting is of the thousands of anecdotes over more than 100 posts on the microbiome and resistant starch, more than 10,000 comments?

The dreaming. Nearly everyone notes it. Very vidid narrative dreams you remember. Unfortunately, mostly only women report X-rated. Go figure. For me, it's the surest sign that there truly is a gut-brain connection. Or, second brain.

But how would you know if you just scoffed at it, because the term resistant starch has the word starch in it and as a good digester of regurgitate, you simply follow people that wrote things like, "and yes, resistant starch is an anti-nutrient," with never a challenge or question, but rather, an 'OK, I don't need to think.' Or, you're simply afraid of words you don't fully understand.

The other few prominent anecdotes with resistant starch consumption (usually as easy/cheap potato starch):

- Better fasting BG
- Better post prandial BG.
- Increased body temperatures
- Unexplained satiation (a huge one for me)

Like it or hate it, your gut biome is inexorably part of you. You'll never figure it out. ...Even Jack Kruse will be mystified over the electron-ic implications. There are may foods, not just resistant starch.

For me, I choose to pay attention to its feeding, just as I do my pets. Then, I let them fight it out and establish their own balance.

...And BTW, intermittent fartage and diareez is part of the chemical warfare process in the same way a fever is part of an infection-remediation process. You'll never understand how both generally normalize until you get over your fear of exercise.

It's always the same story, just like physiological insulin resistance. The couch potato that finds himself having to climb several flights of stairs, heart races to 250 BPM, and his natural conclusion is that he can't tolerate any exercise whatsoever. So it is with the convenient confirmation bias of very low C that produces not only elevated fasting BG that would be a diagnosis of T2 or pre in anyone but an anointed LC eater (where, magically, it's HEALTHY!), but post praedials to 200+ where a SAD eater can eat the same thing and top out at 140.

And now it's going to be the same logic with the gut biome. "I farted!" I had d'reez!" I can't tolerate any fiber whatsoever!

It's pathetic, and it's my mission to undercut all this convenient bias confirming.

So there.

Duck Dodgers said...

LeenaS said: "Since you are correcting "my misconceptions" on digestible fibers, you must know what I know (and what I don't know) about them?

And no, I do not believe in luck. But how do you know all this?"

I'm not claiming to be a mind reader. You said that digestible carbs don't feed gut bugs. But that's not entirely true. Secondly, you claimed that a cup of "local stuff" (and fermentable foods) is enough to feed the gut bugs. Given that most people don't have the gut bugs to degrade cellulose, it's unlikely that one obtains more than a paltry amount of exogenous MACs from a cup of low carb random "local stuff" since most low carb plants are just cellulose.

Some of that "stuff" ferments more than others (dandelion greens for instance, which are high in inulin) but most of the "stuff" isn't fermented into anything. It just keeps your poop moving, and that's always a good thing too!

Anyway, you must have misinterpreted my posts as some kind of an attack. I intended no such thing and apologize profusely if you think otherwise. Good luck to you.

LeenaS said...

@TS,
did you address me? If so, how do YOU know what I know or have read/experimented (and what I have not)?

You seem so very, very sure what other people do and don't know

... and yes, I'm still waiting for DD's answer on my misconceptions - since he's the one that got me curious :)

(and Sorry Peter; I just could not help myself. I'll try to behave next time...)

Richard Nikoley said...

"The "Potato Diet" is a perfect example of a low-fat, plant based diet that helps people lose fat fast and seems to reset a stubborn weight set-point, and interestingly, often leads to the person being in ketosis much of the time."

Tim didn't you point me to an LC forum some time ago that mostly women, and they had all been doing the "Potato Hack" and were raving about it?

Yea, isn't it ironic? Folks trying to get a magic color or meter reading forever, to no avail, suddenly finding themselves not only peeing deep purple, but losing wright precipitously, just as Chris Voigt experienced (and others of us)?

Of course, the answer was obvious. Boiled potatoes are the very highest single food on the satiation scale, and eating them exclusively (even with dribbles of fat and dustings of protein like bacon bits) means it's very hard to meet energy requirements.

Meaning, you could be in ketosis on an all super diet, if you maintain a significant caloric deficit. I know this is elementary, Watson, but you would be surprised how many people think that any amount of any carb over about 30g per day, in absolute terms, i.e., irrespective of anything else consumed, will kick you out of purple or a good number.

This is a failing of LC advocates. Ketosis ought to be primarily explained in terms of a starvation adaptation. Secondarily, that LC seems to help. But, not because of magic, but because it tends to do better at maintaining an energy deficit for longer. Not magic. Same old in/out deal and it's perfectly true that a high fat/protein proportion with LC is generally more satiating, and for the obese weight falls off, but so very often, stops 10-30 pounds from goal when homeostasis is reached.

I explained that here:

http://freetheanimal.com/2012/02/synthesis-low-carb-and-food-rewardpalatability-and-why-calories-count.html

Tim Steele said...

@LS - No, I did not address you.

LeenaS said...

@DD

So you have no idea how much (or little) I know about gut biofilms, starch types, celluloses (some of them are soluble, btw), pectins, glycoproteins, bacterial species and so on. That is quite ok, since I did not tell you.

I'm just trying to warn you kindly. Guessing and quick wikipedia googling don't get you very far. You actually need to know quite a bit (on science and on people you are talking to) before starting to correct "misconceptions" :)

Cheers, and hopefully you too find what you are looking for

Galina L. said...

@Richard,
Telling a person to change her working diet for the sole purpose of developing more numerous and variable microbiota is demonstrating the wrong set of priorities. GI flora supposed to be the derivative from your diet.

Probably you are right to be annoyed with your riders who are too impatient. The people , who are interested in experimenting with RS because they are not satisfied with their health, should not be freaking out immediately due to several extra farts at the beginning. However, I guess thous who think their diet is working, will be better off appreciating what they have already. Many of us, who improved their health through life-style choices,just can't stop experimenting. I guess, you get the majority of annoying for you comments, when people get cold feet too quickly, from the experimenting kind - they mostly don't need to fix anything already,reading nutritional blogs continues spiking their interest, but their motivation is low, so what is the point to suffer an inconvenience? I tried raw potato starch and didn't like it at all, mostly due to the GI reactions, but what really gave me the red flag - my normally well-controlled Rosacea got more noticeable. May be green plantains would be a better choice. If I had a problem to address - constipation/ diarrhea/ too high blood sugar on the morning, I would be more persistent. LCarbing basically killed my appetite, and I used to be famous for being always hungry, and I am happy about my body shape at the moment. I know how to be persistent when I get something in my head. It took me close to nine months to be able to exercise at high intensity level in a fasted state, I was hardly able to move at the beginning.

Duck Dodgers said...

LeenaS, you seem exceptionally unnerved by a simple conversation about the properties of fiber. Too bad. I'm sure you're a Nobel Prize winning microbiologist. Congrats to you.

Gut bugs are a key source of neurochemicals for us—they keep us relaxed and normal. Personally, I found that I stopped snapping at people for no reason—and felt far more relaxed—when I increased my fiber consumption. Others have had similar results. Hint, hint.

Tim Steele said...


For everyone (except Leena);

The question I always get is, “Do I really need resistant starch?” The answer is, “Most likely!”



If you recognize yourself as having the modern, dyspeptic gut you see repeatedly described: Frequent heartburn, loose stools or constipation, indigestion, smelly gas, GERD, IBS, or worse. You may even have one of the many autoimmune diseases that are running rampant, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, or cancer.



Digestive diseases affect over 70 million people in the US alone! These diseases required 48.3 million ambulatory care visits, 21.7 million hospitalizations, and caused 245,921 deaths in 2009. Total costs for digestive diseases was estimated at $141.8 billion in 2004. And, these stats are getting worse, not better.



It’s estimated that over 90 million Americans use antacids or other digestive upset medicines. Upset stomachs are the number one cause of self-treatment, and those late-night trips to Wal-Mart yield an impressive display of over-the-counter offerings for the modern, dyspeptic human gut.



If none of these describe you, then you have somehow discovered a way to feed your gut flora and you have managed to collect a diverse supply of happy gut bugs—Good Job! But, if you aren’t happy with your gastrointestinal tract or immunity, increased fiber, such as resistant starch may be just the ticket! There is so much known about resistant starch, yet it is an unknown entity to the people that could benefit from it.


"One of the major developments in our understanding of the importance of carbohydrates for health in the past twenty years has been the discovery of resistant starch.”


— Joint Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations/World Health Organization, 1997


In 2003, the World Health Organization attempted to define the perfect diet for world-wide health in their publication: 'Population nutrient intake goals for preventing diet-related chronic diseases.' They made numerous recommendations on dietary fat, sugars, carbohydrates and protein, but when it came to fiber, they admitted defeat in light of new information concerning RS:




“The best definition of dietary fibre remains to be established, given the potential health benefits of resistant starch.”

LeenaS said...

"If you recognize yourself as having the modern, dyspeptic gut you see repeatedly described: Frequent heartburn, loose stools or constipation, indigestion, smelly gas, GERD, IBS, or worse. You may even have one of the many autoimmune diseases that are running rampant, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, or cancer."

Maybe you should read what Peter is writing in this very blog that you are visiting? Once again, this is just a kind suggestion and nothing more. After these years I know quite a few who have achieved symptom free digestion without tons of resistant starch.

Cheers,
LeenaS

Tim Steele said...

Hi LeenaS! I'm addressing you now.

I guess you have lost me. If you, or anyone, is totally happy with the gut you have developed over your lifetime...then leave it alone! Surely there is more than one way to a healthy gut besides RS and fiber.

My advice is for people who are not happy with their current gut situation. Which, in my view, is lots of people.

Norm Robillard is helping lots and lots of people with his low 'Fermentation Potential" diet advice. If it is a choice between seeing people on PPIs or undergoing surgery, I'd pick low carb any day.



Richard Nikoley said...

"GI flora supposed to be the derivative from your diet."

Well, that's just an assumption. Probably wrong. Very wrong in terms of imprecision and ambiguity.

"I eat honey only. My gut biome is 'supposed to be' derivative of that."

I don't even know how many logical fallacies are contained therein.

Evolutionarily speaking, you are "supposed to" eat whatever is available in your environment and if insufficient, you migrate to where it's better. This is human evolution.

The biome is what it is, but it's certainly not the cart leading the horse. Incidentally, I also have tons of anecdotes of people developing craving for things they never had cravings for, once they began having wild ass dreams every night.

But I don't care, let everyone have the bugs eat them alive from inside out, setting off innumerable associated auto-immune conditions.

Feed them, or they'll feed on you. You might have bad consequences.

Richard Nikoley said...

"have achieved symptom free digestion without tons of resistant starch."

Resistant starch can be had from food only. Harder to do in modern than ancient. Some find supplementation just easier. Kinda like it D rather than lounging in the sun daily as used to be the unavoidable norm.

But, I have a question. What do you mean by symptom free digestion? Can you describe just what the 100 trillion gut bugs are digesting (or not digesting) and how you know that what they are (or are not) digesting, given the myriad compounds they can produce in response to feeding, starvation (like exotoxins) or in response to compounds produced by other species, or hormonal signals from The Native?

Sounds like you know all of this and are just being like, super modest. So please enlighten us poor, mired souls.

Galina L. said...

I ate too much vegetables and fiber of all kinds during my low-fat day, mostly because I used to be too hungry too often and bulky things looked like safer food to eat. Flatulence and other GI unhappiness are firmly associated in my minds with a compromised health. It looks like my GI microbiota was much happier than I. Now I have no symptoms Tim just described.

I can't believe a Nature put a horse in front of a carriage when microbiota was developing. It has much longer time than almost any creature on Earth. How it could be so fragile and in the need of a protection after millions years of evolution?

Duck Dodgers said...

Galina L said: "I can't believe a Nature put a horse in front of a carriage when microbiota was developing. It has much longer time than almost any creature on Earth. How it could be so fragile and in the need of a protection after millions years of evolution?"

I believe that it has to do with the atmosphere once being very low in oxygen. As the atmosphere became oxygenated, they designed animal guts as part of walking/talking spaceships to survive in :)

Animals in a bacterial world, a new imperative for the life sciences

Tim Steele said...

Galina and whoever else may care, Please take this in the context of 'conversation' and not me trying to be smarter than everyone here.

Any diet will create a gut flora that can digest/ferment it. The gut flora changes after every single meal in response to the foods eaten, it is like a '3D Printer' in that respect, according to Dr. Art Ayers.

But what I think the main goal needs to be, is eating foods that have a known fermentation path into butyrate, predominately. The colon relies on butyrate to fuel its cells and also butyrate creates an environment with the right acidity to foster a healthy community of beneficial bacteria, such as Bifidobacteria, Roseburia, and others that are only here to help us.

The SAD diet, and fiber-poor LC diets, can create a gut with an improper pH allowing more pathogens to grow and take over vital niches.

Yes, the elephant in the room is the many people who eat fiber-poor diets and have seemingly good health. Good genes or ticking time bombs? Who knows? I wish I knew.

Tim Steele said...

"How it could be so fragile and in the need of a protection after millions years of evolution?"

I think this is the key! It shouldn't need any special attention or molly-coddling...it should be there for you. Actually...you should be there for it! It should be guiding you to make wise food choices based on smell and 'gut feelings' but we've lost all that.

We've been led to making bad food choices. Fast foods, slick advertisements, artificial colors and flavors, etc... fool our senses. Add to that antibiotics and food toxins and poor quality foods and you maybe see the problem.

Our gut will populate with microbes no mater what, but the best microbes will be selected for in a diet filled with natural foods.

Richard Nikoley said...

"in my minds"

Thanks for allowing me an easy dismissal, then.

i just don't tolerate just-so posturing based on ignorance of now 30+ years of research, more even than on LC and kept dieting combined.

You're right though, that undue flatulence and runny shits may signal compromised health. But, you have the cause and effect reversed, as I and countless commenters have noted.

I could explain, but I'm having a pearls/swine moment.

Richard Nikoley said...

"I believe that it has to do with the atmosphere once being very low in oxygen. As the atmosphere became oxygenated, they designed animal guts as part of walking/talking spaceships to survive in :)"

And we're the ugly stepchildren. All the billionaire bacteria are in the cow and other ruminant Penthouses.

Unknown said...

Galina, if I remember correctly you have allergy problems which are controlled on your present diet but not cured. And you recently ate some fruit from your garden and had such bad symptoms you had to take some drug or other - I think it was an antiepileptic drug, correct me if I'm wrong. Eating fruit is a problem? I'd say that indicates something is not right. Ditto your allergies. Gut bacteria are very important in preventing unwanted immune reactions.

Antonio said...

"It's pathetic, and it's my mission to undercut all this convenient bias confirming."

"I have no interest in that level of flamboyance."

Galina L. said...

Jane,
when a person has an inherited chronic condition like allergies from a very young age, she/he can't complitely avoid allergic reactions on everything, and a big improvement is considered to be a success, even though ups and downs are always a possibility. I used to have the need to use two asthma inhalers and a cream with steroids daily 7 years ago, not so now. I am also still satisfied with the migraines management. Both conditions are not easy to deal with in general. I am not susceptible to the wide-spread GI troubles so many people complain nowadays - bloating, constipation, heartburn, different stomach pains.I also sleep well and have good cardiovascular health markers. May be I inherited it from my mom, like I got allergies and migraines from my dad.
I didn't like how my face got redder (I have a Rosacea, another well-controlled autoimmune condition) after trying the raw potato starch. Very often it is the first indicator in my case that mine immune system gets overstimulated (I can't find the better word at the moment). It is very possible that a green plantains flour would be the better choice, but in my area it is not sold in stores. I am not in the serious mood for starch experimenting right now to buy it on-line.
I noticed many people on nutritional blogs do not follow the principle "don't fix what is not broken" and relentlessly try one latest diet fashion after another.
I feel that at the current state state of my health I have more to loose than to gain from introducing something new. In several day I will turn 54.

Richard Nikoley said...

Greetings, All.

New post, recapping both of Peter's posts on the CPT-1A mutation, and some of the stuff in comments.

http://freetheanimal.com/2014/12/acknowledge-ketogenic-recommend.html

Unknown said...

@Jane Karlsson

You said, "Eating fruit is a problem? I'd say that indicates something is not right. Ditto your allergies. Gut bacteria are very important in preventing unwanted immune reactions."

Are we going to blame our gut bacteria for all ills, now? "Fix the gut" and you'll be cured of everything!

She actually may be suffering from something called Oral Allergy Syndrome (OAS). Allergic reactions that are caused by a variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and even spices can share allergenic proteins with specific hay fever-causing trees and plants.

For example... if you are allergic to the pollen from a peach tree, you could also be allergic to peaches. I doubt very much that "fixing the gut" is going to be of any help!

LeenaS said...

Galina, you are doing fine!

I'm two years your senior, have had all sorts of allergies from 11 months to 41 years years (in spite of whole foods and even vegetarism). Yet now I can tolerate most anything except grains, industrial seed oils and fish (and btw, fish no longer makes me lethally sick, as it used to, before carb restrictions).

I guess though that grains and seed oils would NOT have been a problem in paleo time. Anywhere.

However, I tolerate all this only as long as I do restrict carbs seriously and use fats for energy instead. If not, it all comes back to me in few days.

Tim (if you still are listening): have you taken a closer look what Dr. Ayers says? I've seen you there, too. Now, he knows much more than anybody here so far, on bacteria and biofilms. And, surprise, surprise, his main point in healing is not ton of starch, either :)

Cheers,
-- Leena-Sisko --

Duck Dodgers said...

Sky King said: "if you are allergic to the pollen from a peach tree, you could also be allergic to peaches. I doubt very much that "fixing the gut" is going to be of any help!"

I'm sure you would doubt that if you didn't bother to look into what Jane was saying.

Are you not familiar with the Hygiene Hypothesis?

From: Innate Immune Responses of Human Neonatal Cells to Bacteria from the Normal Gastrointestinal Flora, by Helen Karlsson et al. (2002)

"The innate immune responses to bacteria might have a role in modulating the adaptive immunity to allergens as postulated by the hygiene hypothesis. An association between the normal flora and development of allergies has been based on findings of differences in composition of the gut flora between allergic and nonallergic children. The composition of the intestinal flora of children differs in Estonia and Sweden, which are two countries that have low and high prevalences of allergies, respectively. Allergic 2-year-old Swedish and Estonian children were less often colonized by lactobacilli and harbored higher counts of aerobic bacteria than did nonallergic children. A Finnish study showed that perinatal administration of a gram-positive probiotic bacterium, Lactobacillus rhamnosus, decreased the occurrence of eczema in infants at high risk. Other recent studies have shown that early colonization with bifidobacteria and low counts of Bacteroides and Clostridium difficile appear to be associated with protection against allergy."

Richard Nikoley said...

"when a person has an inherited chronic condition like allergies from a very young age, she/he can't complitely avoid allergic reactions on everything, and a big improvement is considered to be a success, even though ups and downs are always a possibility."

You're begging the question, Galina. You're subsuming the unsupportable claim that you inherited this condition as the basis of your argument. And, it flies in the face of what we're learning about the gut biome.

Let's compare anecdotes. I too suffered debilitating allergies from when I was a kid. I was taking OTC stuff at 10. In those days, it made you drowsy. Eventually, they developed the nose steroids like beconaise/flonaise without many side effects and they were life saving/enhancing for me, but I took them year round. Couple squirts per nose hole daily.

LC Paleo initially got me off them, but only for about 18 months and they crept back. Avoiding inflammatory foods, until the point where my gut was too compromised? Maybe.

But now I'm better than ever. Potato starch, cooked and cooled beans, cooked and cooled rice, or other supplemental fibers, or the combination? Maybe.

But there is definitely an adjustment period. Fartage, di-ree, etc. It's unpredictable what happens when you engage in an arms race in your gut. But, I did understand that it was too complex to figure out, and so eat stuff with an evolutionary basis and let them fight it out.

Worked for me. But, I will mention that things got really better quickly when, through Grace Liu's (Animal Parm) advice, I added periodic supplementation with a few brans of "soil-based probiotics," i.e., stuff in dirt some of them spore formers.

Happy B-Day. We're almost the same age. I'll be 53 end of Jan.

Richard Nikoley said...

"Oral Allergy Syndrome (OAS). Allergic reactions that are caused by a variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and even spices can share allergenic proteins with specific hay fever-causing trees and plants."

Laf. I love when ignorance is exposed. You're unaware that that, too, is heavily gut related.

But, peals/swine.

Richard Nikoley said...

Sky

I'll toss you a small bone:

http://allergicliving.com/2014/09/11/gut-bacteria-show-potential-to-block-even-treat-peanut-allergy/

Moreover, as we're descended from primates, it ought to be obvious in an evolutionary context that fruit in general ought to be the one thing we're more adapted to than anything and unlike lots of other plants, fruit "wants" to be eaten to spread seeds.

If you have a problem with fruit from an allergenic standpoint, you have some serious issues.

Richard Nikoley said...

"btw, fish no longer makes me lethally sick, as it used to, before carb restrictions"

What a tender little bunny. Hundreds of millions thrive in tropical areas on fish, rice, fruit.

Poor little bunny. So special. Everybody should be as special as you.

You're not broken. You're an EXAMPLE of how everyone ought eat!!!

(Do a google alert for everything coming out about the gut biome.)

(/pearls-swine)

Unknown said...

Let's run the snarky-numbers on this baby!

- 198 comments, no end in sight, as of 3 Dec 2014.

- Some of the posts, esp. the early ones, appear to address Peter's salient points. For example, some of us very curious to learn more about things like Peter-Woo idea that ketones "are a useful adjunct" but "ketogenic diet is essentially a fatty acid based diet." Some of us not so interested. So it goes.

- 66-ish posts by RN, DD, TS -- a solid 1/3 of comments. Lots of points scored.

- 1 comment by Peter, on a non-delete issue. (Admirable restraint award, on both counts.)

- Best non-sequitur post, capturing non-themes of thread: Spittin'chips' "What is Ornish's squat 1 rep max?" beauty.

- Clearest proof that Godwin's Law is alive n kickin: GG invoking the Nazi-slur on, well, everyone except RN it seems. Awesome.

Richard Nikoley said...

Matt Houston understands the anarchy of blog comments.

Or, as Jeffrey Tucker puts it: Beautiful Anarchy.

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