Disrupting Paleo: Inuit and Masai Ate Carbs and Prebiotics, Part 2
You’ll want to read Part 1 first, and just trust me on this. Would it surprise you to learn that obligate carnivores like African cats, hyenas, pack hunting dogs, northern wolves and the like actually ingest quite a lot of carbohydrate‚ and I mean apart from wild wolves chowing down on wild berries. In other words, they get carbohydrate from the meat of their kills, because it’s fresh and raw. By the Time Charles Washington and the Zeroing Down in Ignorance folks stand in line at Costco, it’s zero carb.
My deep appreciation goes out to “Duck Dodgers,” a commenter who prefers to remain anonymous; but perhaps there’s a clue as to why, when you read the 6,500 words he’s assembled in these two posts.
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THE HEALTH BENEFITS OF ROTTING ANIMALS
As Dr. Hui mentioned, in Part 1, the Eskimo practice of preserving a whole seal or bird carcass under an intact whole skin with a thick layer of blubber also permits some proteins to degrade into carbohydrates. Here’s how. When the Inuit prepared Igunaq or Kiviaq they take a seal and remove everything except the blubber. For example, in the case of Kiviaq:
From: Wikipedia — Kiviaq
Around 500 auks are put into the seal skin intact, including beaks, feet and feathers, before as much air as possible is removed from the seal skin, which is then sewn up and sealed with grease, with a large rock placed on top to keep the air content low. Over the course of seven months, the birds ferment, and are then eaten during the Greenlandic winter
But, this not really fermentation, it’s actually “rotting”—or more specifically, hydrolysis by anaerobic digestion that takes place, slowly, at very cold temperatures. That’s why they remove all the air from the carcass and seal it up. And what happens over the course of many months is that some of the many carbohydrates that are glycosylated to proteins and fats as glycans, including glycoconjugates, glycoproteins, glycolipids and proteoglycans in all those meats, beaks, feathers, collagens, mucins and blood—which most nutritionists just think of as simple proteins and fats—are degraded by anaerobic digesters into sugars, fatty acids and amino acids. Some of those are further broken down into carbonic acids, alcohols and gasses—which explains the awful rotting smell and foul taste.
The benefits of all this is that the final product contains some accessible carbohydrates, prebiotic glycans and pre-digested compounds (and awful smelling byproducts, of course). But, the pre-digested proteins are key here because protein takes the most energy to digest. 20-30% of total calories in protein eaten go to digesting it—compared to carbohydrates (5-10%) and then fats (0-3%). This is further improved by ingesting the raw enzymes that are still present in postmortem animals which spare the body from having to create those enzymes and aide in the breakdown of the food with much less effort for the Eskimos. Eskimos aren’t interested in burning unnecessary calories digesting food—they need to make their food as energy positive as possible, without denaturing its prebiotics that contribute to overall health and intestinal gluconeogenesis.
And, the Eskimo who eats raw and particularly rotting meats feels much warmer and stronger by doing so. In fact, eating those foods can make one sweat—implying tremendous energy-sparing qualities.
Enzyme Nutrition: The Food Enzyme Concept By Edward Howell, 1985
Dr. Urquhart wrote: “…If a dog team is worked hard daily for two weeks and fed with fresh fish caught under the ice and frozen without opportunity to become [rotten], that team will lose weight and show definite signs of wear and tear. If the team is fed with [rotting] fish, they will be as good at the end of that time as at the start, and often will have put on a little weight. The explanation is that it is probably more of an autolysis than a bacterial decomposition, or, in other words, pre-digestion.”
You would think that this rotting meat would be full of pathogens. But, if prepared properly, rotting meat is eaten with no ill effects. Remember, from Part 1, that the raw prebiotic glycans—in this case, cleaved from the glycoconjugates in those rotting meats—exhibit “ligand mimicry,” acting as decoys for pathogens. And it shows.
From: Igunaq-Aged meat By Elijah Tigullaraq
Igunaq has been traditional medicine to keep the digestive system clean, as it flushes away anything in its way…igunaq is good for the digestive system as it cleans it completely of any foreign objects such as viruses and sickness a person may have. A person may experience a natural “high” if they have not eaten aged meat for a while. Men who grew up with igunaq are usually more physically muscular than those who have not.
This rotting “cached” meat is clearly a superfood that is crucial to the survival of the Inuit.
Nearly every aspect of the Inuits’ diet was engineered to maximize their intake of carbohydrates and increase the energy positive and prebiotic aspects of their food.
THE MASAI CONSUMED A WIDE VARIETY OF CARBS
The “Eskimos” weren’t the only meat-dependent indigenous people to eat raw meats. Traditionally, the Masai diet consisted of raw meat, raw milk and fresh raw blood tapped directly from cattle—to preserve the rapidly disappearing milk and blood glycogen and glycoconjugates.
However, few people seem to realize that raw honey was a major staple for the Masai.
From: The Masai Part II: A Glimpse of the Masai Diet at the Turn of the 20th Century—A Land of Milk and Honey, Bananas From Afar, By Chris Masterjohn:
Wild honey was abundant in the region. Fermented into a beer, it served as a drink for male elders or as a sacred component of religious rituals. Mixed with plant extracts, it was an important component of many medicines. Masai men and women of all ages would eat unmixed honey as a regular part of their diet.
The gift that a man would give to the parents of his bride when arranging a marriage included five pots of honey…
One of the most frequent themes of Masai ritual is the pairing of milk with honey beer.
…Masai women were coming into the village with caravans full of bananas, corn, and sweet potatoes every three to six days!
They cooked sweet potatoes (Ipomea batatas) in water with a little steppe salt, drained them, mashed them with a whisk, and stirred in fresh milk. They cooked unripe dried bananas (Musa paradisiaca) in water, drained them, and stirred in milk and butter. They cooked beans with salt, but corn without salt. They cooked yams (Discorea abyssinica) and taro in salted water, and cooked sorghum into a thick porridge and lightly salted it afterwards.
In addition to their strongly intoxicating home-brewed honey beer, the Masai also purchased much milder beers from the surrounding tribes made from bananas, millet, corn, or sorghum.
The Masai traded their animal-derived foods for carbohydrates from neighboring tribes. It should be more than clear by now that the Inuit and Masai made a significant effort to eat carbohydrates.
RAW FRESH ORGANS = MORE ANIMAL CARBS
There is also a very long tradition among carnivorous cultures of eating raw livers directly out of the carcass of a killed animal to maximize one’s intake of animal starch and glycoconjugates.
From: Proceedings, Volume 13 By Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1886
“Kilma” is what seems to correspond to our idea of “soul” It is called “the power of the liver,” for, believing that the liver is the seat of the soul, it is considered that an increase of a man’s own soul may be obtained by partaking of an animal’s liver. Whenever an animal is killed its liver is taken out and eaten, but the people are most careful not to touch it with their hands, as it is considered sacred; it is cut up in small pieces and eaten raw, the bits being conveyed to the mouth on the point of a knife or the sharp point of a stick.
Even cannibals were known to consume the raw livers of their victims immediately after killing them.
From: Ethiopia: A View from Within By Michael B. Lentakis, 2005
Europeans up to this time cannot imagine human beings eating raw meat. Even during the Congolese civil wars in the period 1960 to 1964, cannibalism was performed in public, and the story of those unfortunate Italian Red Cross pilots who flew in a cargo of medicines and food, went for a promenade in the city, were seized, killed in public and eaten raw made headline news all over the world, shaking all civilised nations.
The mayor of a Congolese city that fell to the Balubas was tied up in the centre of the town and, although he was still alive, his liver was torn of of him and eaten by the rebel chief and then the man was torn to pieces and eaten raw by the rest of the rebels.
Eating raw the heart, the liver and the genitals of their enemies was based in the belief that all the powers of their previous enemy would now be passed to them.
What about Homo erectus? He ate a lot of meat, right?
From: Wikipedia: Homo erectus
There is no evidence that Homo erectus cooked their food…It is known, from the study of microwear on handaxes, that meat formed a major part of the erectus diet…Thus cooking cannot be presumed.
All of these indigenous cultures that favored meat ate their animals raw. Raw animals. Raw “animal starches“. Raw starches. This all sounds very familiar.
ANIMAL “FIBER”?
In Part 1, we already discussed how glycans can act as prebiotics. But, what about glycogen?
From: The Physical Processes of Digestion By Roger G. Lentle, Patrick W.M. Janssen
Like amylopectin, glycogen is a polymer of D-glucose but the ratio of branched α1-6 linkages to linear α1-4 linkages is twice that of amylopectin. Thus glycolgen is susceptible to hydrolysis by the same enzymes as the starch polymers. Studies suggest that purified animal glycogen is digested at a similar rate to that of purified short chain rice starches (Azad and Lebenthal 1990). However as in the case of plant starches, the rate of digestion may be lower when glycogen granules are contained in intact tissue owing to the physical effects of their structural organization.
Turns out that glycemic starch has a lot of alpha (α) bonds, or “alpha-glycosidic linkages,” that are digestible. Whereas resistant starch and fibers like cellulose have beta (β) glycosidic bonds that are very difficult to digest. Those beta-glycosidic bonds are typically found in dietary fibers.
So, if glycogen is primarily composed of α-glycosidic bonds, that means that it’s a glycemic starch. However, since the glycogen molecule is so densely packed, there are some instances where α-amylase-resistant regions exist in the glycogen molecule—at least from purified glycogen found in shellfish. (Fall seasonal cold-water oysters are rich in glycogen). If there are any resistant regions in animal starch, eating it raw would almost certainly be necessary to obtain any benefits.
Let’s dig even further.
From: Wikipedia: Cytoplasmic inclusion
Inclusions (Cytoplasmic) are non-living substances that may or may not be present in a cell, depending on the cell type. Inclusions are stored nutrients, secretory products, and pigment granules. Examples of inclusions are glycogen granules in the liver and muscle cells, lipid droplets in fat cells, pigment granules in certain cells of skin and hair, water containing vacuoles, and crystals of various types.
In addition to glycoconjugates, could raw whole animals have different kinds of “animal fiber” that is being ignored by Western diets?
That may very well be the case. After all, wild carnivores have to ferment SCFAs out of something. And unless you’re doing your own hunting and eating most of the animal raw—including the liver, intestines, colon, testes, placentas, blood immediately after the animal dies—you’re not ingesting much “animal fiber.” And, of course, if you’re not eating enough fibers, you’re not fermenting Short Chain Fatty Acids (SCFAs).
Animal fibre: the forgotten nutrient in strict carnivores? First insights in the cheetah.
Depauw S, Hesta M, Whitehouse-Tedd K, Vanhaecke L, Verbrugghe A, Janssens GP.
Abstract: As wild felids are obligate carnivores, it is likely that poorly enzymatically digestible animal tissues determine hindgut fermentation, instead of plant fibre. Therefore, faecal concentrations of short-chain fatty acids (SCFA, including branched-chain fatty acids, BCFA), indole and phenol were evaluated in 14 captive cheetahs, fed two different diets differing in proportion of poorly enzymatically digestible animal tissue. Using a cross-over design, the cheetahs were fed exclusively whole rabbit or supplemented beef for 1 month each. Feeding whole rabbit decreased faecal propionic (p < 0.001) and butyric (p = 0.013) acid concentrations, yet total SCFA was unaltered (p = 0.146). Also, a remarkably higher acetic acid to propionic acid ratio (p = 0.013) was present when fed whole rabbit. Total BCFA (p = 0.011) and putrefactive indole (p = 0.004) and phenol (p = 0.002) were lower when fed whole rabbit. Additionally, serum indoxyl sulphate, a toxic metabolite of indole, was analysed and showed a quadratic decrease (p = 0.050) when fed whole rabbit. The divergent SCFA ratios and the decrease in putrefaction when fed whole rabbit could be caused by the presence of undigested tissue, such as skin, bone and cartilage, that might have fibre-like functions. The concept of animal fibre is an unexplored area of interest relevant to gastrointestinal health of captive cheetahs and likely other felids.
The raw cartilage, collagen, and to a lesser extent hair, skin and other various animal-derived fibers have properties that are resistant to digestion and are fermented by carnivores into Short Chain Fatty Acids (SCFAs). In other words, it seems there are different kinds of animal fibers—that are typically absent from modern diets. And of course, the Eskimos were ingesting lots of raw meats, raw skins, raw blubber and raw organs, which means they would have been seeded their guts with a plethora of animal-fiber-digesting bacteria that could assist in the breakdown of ingested animal fibers.
Traditionally, as far as we know, humans hydrolysed (rotted) the stiffest animal-fibers or made cooked “bone broths” to assimilate their components. Due the nature of hydrolysis, the Inuit should have been obtaining hydrolyzed collagen and gelatin from their rotting kiviaq. Collagen hydrolysate, available in health food stores, contains some glycans that—for all we know—might have prebiotics properties. However, most people agree that the main benefits from bone broths and collagen hydrolysate are due to the assimilation of key amino acids, such as glycine and proline.
So, let’s think about this for a minute. If you’re an Inuit, or Hadza, or Masai tribesman, are you getting your animal food from a carcass that’s been chilled for many days, trimmed of various “animal fibers” and cooked to oblivion? Or are you eating your kills like this:
Jeff Leach: Please Pass the Microbes:
On our way back to camp, we came across another Hadza that had moments before killed an adult Impala. After helping hoist the deceased into a low hanging tree — to hang by its head for field dressing—I then witnessed something that up until that point I had not fully appreciated the significance of in the co-evolution of humans and our microbes and its potentially profound implications for our health in the so-called modern world…Once they had cleaned out—by hand—the contents of the stomach (“cleaned” is a generous word), they carved pieces of the stomach into bite-sized chunks and consumed it sushi-style. By which I mean they didn’t cook it or attempt to kill or eliminate the microbes from the gut of the Impala in any way…they then turned their attention to the colon of the Impala.
After removing the poo pellets…they tossed the tubular colon onto a hastily built fire. However, it only sat on the fire for a minute at best and clearly not long enough to terminate the menagerie of invisible microbes clinging to the inside wall of the colon. They proceeded to cut the colon into chunks and to eat more or less raw…
The Hadza explained that this is what they always do, and have always done.
“”Low carb paleo” is nothing like the diets of the cultures that it was supposedly modeled after. Those indigenous peoples ate animal fibers and went to great lengths to obtain and preserve glycans and carbohydrates in animals. In fact, we can now say that every indigenous culture that’s ever walked the face of the Earth ate raw fibers, glycans and starches wherever they could find them. “Low carb Paleo” has virtually no animal starch, no plant starch, and is usually devoid of raw glycans and animal fibers.
BUILDING AND MAINTAIN THE EMENSE GLYCOME
The glycome is comprised of an estimated 2,000,000 carbohydrate-containing glycans found in raw, undenatured, fats and proteins, discussed in Part 1.
From: Wikipedia — Glycome
The glycome is the entire complement of sugars, whether free or present in more complex molecules, of an organism. An alternative definition is the entirety of carbohydrates in a cell. The glycome may in fact be one of the most complex entities in nature. “Glycomics, analogous to genomics and proteomics, is the systematic study of all glycan structures of a given cell type or organism” and is a subset of glycobiology…
…The glycome exceeds the complexity of the proteome as a result of the even greater diversity of the glycome’s constituent carbohydrates and is further complicated by the sheer multiplicity of possibilities in the combination and interaction of the carbohydrates with each other and with proteins. “The spectrum of all glycan structures — the glycome — is immense. In humans, its size is orders of magnitude greater than the number of proteins that are encoded by the genome, one percent of which encodes proteins that make, modify, localize or bind sugar chains, which are known as glycans.”
It’s fair to say that many low carb doctors and nutritionists are unaware of the role of carbohydrates for maintaining this vast and complex glycome, for the simple reason that so little is still known about it. If they were focussed on it, they might realize that many of the obvious symptoms experienced on low carb diets, such as dry eyes and sinuses, is due to only a handful of those 2,000,000 glycans. In fact, in the vast majority of people the most glucose utilization in the body is used in the construction and maintenance of the human glycome. Since the mucins—found in mucus and tears—are required to protect our orifices from pathogens and keep the integrity of our intestinal mucosa intact, it’s not difficult to see that our health depends on us maintaining our glycomes. One can imagine how hard it would be for an Eskimo with chronically dry sinuses and dry eyes to maintain their health in the Arctic when Winter temperatures fall to lows of -94°F (-70°C).
We saw, above, how the Inuit were able increase the energy positive qualities of their cached meats by assimilating raw enzymes and pre-digesting their meats. So, it would also seem that the Inuit were able to further increase the energy-sparing properties of their cached meats by assimilating hydrolyzed compounds, such as amino acids and glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), that would otherwise need to be created internally. These energy-saving qualities of their rotted, hydrolyzed meats would explain why their cached food made them feel so warm.
ARE GLYCANS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG?
We can see that indigenous cultures have made tremendous efforts to consume all sorts of indigestible compounds, such as those found in seal flippers, walrus flippers, shark fins, rhinoceros horns, rectums, placentas and testicals. Even fat has indigestible compounds, such as phospholipids. Liposomes which are phospholipids that are often constructed to deliver liposomal glutathione or liposomal vitamin C safely past the stomach and into the small intestine where they can be absorbed directly into cells. Collagens, gelatins and other animal parts, that are often overlooked in Western societies these days, are full of glycans, including glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), and other indigestibles that may offer a wide range of health benefits. Given that few nutritionists seem to even notice that prebiotics tend to come from undenatured glycans, one can likely expect that many beneficial indigestible compounds have yet to be discovered.
TO COOK OR NOT TO COOK
It’s easy to read all this and conclude that cooking is harmful or undesirable. After all, cooking denatures all of the prebiotics and compounds we’ve been discussing here, not to mention enzymes often required for digestion. Cooking is also believed to contribute to the formation of advanced glycation end-product (AGEs). On the other hand, there is evidence that cooking enabled humans to obtain more calories and support our bigger primate brains. In other words, cooking makes us human.
It should also be mentioned that denaturing glycoproteins and other compounds can sometimes be a good thing as well. Various inhibitors, like phytates, can be found in seeds and embryos, since they tend to be useful in delaying germination until conditions are ideal.
For instance, avidin is a glycoprotein that contains the carbohydrate-rich β-ovomucin trypsin inhibitor found in egg whites, which binds to biotin. And if you ate avidin every day for several months, it can cause a biotin deficiency. Finally, cooking kills pathogens and can help reduce plant toxins. So, cooking has its purpose when excess fibers and starches are easy to obtain. It also explains why highly carnivorous cultures continued to eat raw meat after the invention of cooking — they needed to preserve crucial animal fibers, and animal starches to keep themselves in good health.
MISGUIDED LOW CARB CONCLUSIONS
When one glances at the diet of the Inuit, it’s easy to be fooled into believing that their diets were devoid of starches, sugars and prebiotics. Arctic explorers would arrive, see people eating lots of animals and then climb back on their dog sleds without understanding the intricacies of the plants, glycogen, prebiotics and hydrolysed glycoconjugates in their diets.
And researchers who travelled abroad to observe the dietary habits of the Masai either conveniently or carelessly omitted the fact that they were consuming significant quantities of milk and honey, while trading their animal products for carbohydrates from neighboring tribes.
However, we can now see that nearly every drop and nearly every morsel the Masai and Inuit consumed was engineered to maximize their intake of carbohydrates and prebiotics in one way or another.
Meanwhile, low carb promoters were too eager to believe the imprecise cultural observations of these tribes to support their hypotheses for a ketogenic lifestyle. But, they were misled. We all were misled into believing that populations could survive without prebiotics or carbohydrates.
Today that ends.
(Hat tip to Dr. S and Tim Steele for their help with this series of posts).
~~~
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Richard, you’re a little hard on LC people. Don’t let a few speak for the many many others out there. You get the credit for resurrecting prebiotics, most of us being LC we’re not aware of this fascinating new facet. I speak for a lot of LC people, we are overjoyed at this new information and are eagerly incorporated into our generally LC lifestyle. Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water.
+1 for your comment, john, and thank you for voicing that
Jo took the words right out of my pen. I would only add that the late great Dr. Atkins wrote about both prebiotics and probiotics in his (non-diet) book, “Dr. Atkins’ Vita-Nutrient Solution. He mentions the benefits not only for controlling blood sugar, but also for dental health and lipid normalization etc. He used both in his practice.
@v — I share that predisposition. I have low carbed (not no carbed) now for decades to maintain normal weight and blood glucose. When doctors read my family history, I’ve heard comments such as, why aren’t you fat or you are at extremely high risk for diabetes. Both parents were diabetic — mother (and her twin) were classic obese type 2s; my father was a slender all his life type 2 ; my only sibling a classic overweight type 2 (heavy as a child). My level of carb restriction varies with activity level and season.
John:
I don’t think I’m being hard enough. You know what Jimmy said when I tweeted him the link to Part 1 and pointed out that obligate carnivores get more carbs that he does?
“They can have them.”
When you’re dealing with that sort of ignorant dismissal from a leading voice in LC this is not too hard in my opinion. Plus, LC people are kind of missing the point in all this:
1. The Inuit or Masai, or any others we’re aware of are not any justification for a supposed “healthylowcarblifestyle.”
2. If obligate carnivores are actually, in the wild, getting more carbohydrate than a lot of omnivores, there’s something really screwy going on.
In short, much of the justification everyone has heard for LC over decades has been erroneous at best, fraudulent at worst.
Ouch. i’d like to point out that lumping all LCers together is just as much a logical fallacy as lumping all starches together.
My LC sun does not rise and set with jimmy.
Perhaps you misunderstood the point of these posts. I wasn’t criticizing those who need to be on a low carb diet (diabetics, metabolically deranged). If you guys need to eat that way to stay healthy, more power to you and good luck!
But, my post was targeted at the low carb gurus and promoters who wrote books, websites and articles claiming that the Inuit and other carnivorous cultures were ketogenic. I have three different studies here (one from 1928, one from 1936 and one from 1972) and in each case, they were no ketones in any of the Inuits’ blood. None. Zip nada.
In 1972 they even used the fancy “strip paper technique, which is sensitive to concentrations of 1 mg/100 ml or greater and all serums were negative” for ketones. (The only time ketones were ever found in the Inuit was when they fasted).
How did these low carb fanatics miss this? How did they dismiss it? And why didn’t they investigate it further? Why did they bastardize what these cultures actually did (eating raw, fresh animals)? Think of how many people went low carb and got sick because of those misleading suggestions.
So, if you want to eat low carb, great! Do it. But, don’t go around telling people that the Inuit were a ketogenic culture. Don’t go around telling people that homo erectus didn’t eat carbs. The evidence just isn’t there to support those statements when you consider what these cultures were actually doing.
You have websites like this this guy who wants people to believe that carnivorous hunters were always ketogenic. What he doesn’t seem to understand, or doesn’t want people to know, is those carnivorous hunters who chased down animals and slit their prey’s throats would plunge their fists into the carcass of their kills and pull out the glycemic equivalent of a giant cupcake…and eat it as quickly as they could.
All I’m here to say is that the ancestral-based justification of permanent ketosis is complete bullshit. That has nothing to do with the efficacy of LC, for those who absolutely need it.
Dear Duck, I really appreciate your post and it’s well pointed out. I just have a couple of issues, the first is just about clarifying that though Inuit diet it’s not a zero carb it remains a low carb diet with the term low compared to the bunch of acellular carbs empty calories of the crazy western diet. Second, the brain stuff is in my opinion in someway misleading, because our brain was already growing at the same pace much before the advent of cooking, and together with the fact that most DHA, considered crucial for the development of the brain, seems to be altered at 70 C degrees. Together, these evidence suggest that it’s not that cooking made us humans, though it’s a skill that has been spreaded and kept.
Were the majority of lowcarb advocating physicians actually using the Masai or Inuit as justification for this way of eating? I have gone to several physicians over the years that advocate this of eating as a healthy for some people, and never heard a peep about the Inuit or Masai. Rather, the excellent results they themselves or their patients and in two cases, their spouses, had in controlling weight and/or other health issues were the justification. Interestingly, not all of these practitioners ate this way themselves — some did, some didn’t — but those that didn’t still appreciated the benefits others were achieving.
I admire your passion setting the record straight regarding the need for carbohydrate in the human diet, and the information you are providing is clearly helping people find answers that may help them improve their health. I would like to think that lc advocates who relied solely on the Inuit/Masai diets as their central thesis justifying lc eating would admit their error. But error it was. Fraud on the other hand requires intent to deceive. I don’t see this. Did the sources some low carb advocates relied upon regarding the diet of the Inuits and Masai contain errors? Yes. But is the fact sufficient to advise people who have enjoyed success with a controlled carb lifestyle to abandon it and start eating potatoes or whatever just because the Inuit and Masai did? No. But it may provide clues that can help those who have not achieved success with low carb and are struggling for answers.
I became disenchanted with a very small portion of the LC community who began to insist everyone on the planet needs to be low carb and/or your lc diet must be 80% fat or it’s “dangerous” and/or balking at those who did not achieve good results with low carb and were told they simply weren’t following the diet accurately (this may be true for some but certainly not all). It’s never a good thing when one’s dietary choices morph into a religion. But again, I don’t see this rising to the charge of fraud.
jo
No ouch necessary and believe it or not, Jimmy and I still have a friendly banter back & forth. I’m kinda tired of explaining it, though, as I have clarified endlessly in many posts. Did you see where he told Tom Naughton he’s going to do an RS experiment when he finishes his Keto book, like in May or after?
https://freetheanimal.com/2014/03/mostly-resistant-starch.html
What I’m doing ought more rightly be seen as keeping the pressure on.
However, I emphatically do not think LC is an ideal or optimal healthy lifestyle. It’s an intervention, like a drug, and the negative side effects reported by so many ought to be evaluated as to cost/benefit just like any drug warning label.
This is my essential beef.
“I have gone to several physicians over the years that advocate this of eating as a healthy for some people, and never heard a peep about the Inuit or Masai. Rather, the excellent results they themselves or their patients and in two cases, their spouses, had in controlling weight and/or other health issues were the justification. Interestingly, not all of these practitioners ate this way themselves — some did, some didn’t — but those that didn’t still appreciated the benefits others were achieving.”
Do physicians take all the drugs they prescribe to patients themselves?
Once again, you’re missing the target of this post. This post was aimed at the low carb authors and bloggers who use the Inuit, Masai and carnivorous Paleolithic cultures as examples of low carb success. For instance:
That’s who I’m talking about. No one else.
Adrienne, as someone who is involved in the ‘health industry, I am constantly amazed at how much the medical profession has ‘forgotten’. It’s all about ‘evidence based’ these days and the baby is being thrown out with the bathwater.
So much was understood in the past and been discarded or forgotten today because it’s not been proven through molecular evidence. The bar is set so high that therapies which worked in the past have been neglected. The easiest to understand is peptic ulcer. This was treated with antibiotics during the 1950s. Then in the 1960s, peptic ulcer was labelled as a psychological stress problem. Then in the mid 1980s an Australian physician ‘discovered’ that a bacterium caused it. He was shat upon by the rest of the medical profession. He gave himself the infection with predictable results. He was awarded the Nobel Prize. Now Helicobacter pylori infections are treated with antibiotics. AND there are people who think that this bacterium is JUST FINE. More controversy. Most pathogens transmitted oro-fecally are not considered ‘just fine’. Hepatitis A, B, C, and E aren’t ‘just fine’. But for some reason H. pylori might be ‘just fine’.
So there you go. Human beings are resistant to change. It’s like moving a mountain.
“Fraud on the other hand requires intent to deceive. I don’t see this.”
I do.
Not so much in the Inuit deal. I see it every day in abject dismissal of any problems individuals have with chronic VLC, particularly women. The anecdotes number in the tens, if not hundreds of thousands now.
The guys don’t care.
Fais gaffe, chéri! Your misogynistic rep is in danger 🙂
“Your misogynistic rep is in danger”
je m’en fous.
Tout à fait.
Oka, Richard, I understand. My essential beef is being called an idiot all the time. I think I make the most intelligent decisions I can about my health, given the imperfect information I have (or understand).
I read your blog frequently, and I’ve learned a ton from you and tater and Dr BG and Gabrielle. And, yes, my choice to read and risk, etc. It’s just so hard to keep quiet sometimes when I feel slurred with someone else’s paint brush…to mix my metaphors.
Jo
Sorry if I don’t really know what you’re talking about. I do have a few readers and Jo doesn’t ring a bell as someone who has endeavored to add value by commenting and mixing it up with others so..
I’m just thinking shoe fit.
Simply put with this series (including all RS and HSO/SBOs posts) … Mind. Blown.
My conception of Paleo was already expanding and shifting over the past two years but this takes my understanding in directions I didn’t expect. I love it.
Ironically, while Paleo seems to be moving in broader options (in specific circumstances) slowly, mainstream media portrayal of Paleo is about six years out of date. I think you are right in targeting Paleo followers’ misunderstandings rather than the public’s misunderstandings of Paleo.
Very interesting series. I’ve now got a completely new perspective on tradtional diets! Very cool.
I was recently in Iceland, and i was able to try a similar fermented/rotten seafood dish that’s traditionally eaten towards the end of winter after five or six months of fermentation. Are they doing it for the same reasons? I dont know. Maybe. It was terrible tasting and had a very strong ammonia smell to it. Called “harkarl”…
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1karl
Thanks to all for putting this together!
Wow. Fantastic set of posts, both for correcting widespread anthropological misinformation in the LC-sphere and for presenting evolutionary evidence of the need for prebiotics.
However…. (yeah, there’s a ‘but’ in here 😀 )
Don’t take the next part the wrong way, I just finished critiquing a paper for publication, so I am in that mode of thought. It was a very good paper, btw.
The following is in the same spirit : let’s look at the weaker part of the argument and either correct what might, always, just be my misperception (in which case, thanks a ton for correcting!), or else fix the argument or discard it to make the whole stronger?
The only issue I see is in the evidence used to support the idea that humans need to eat carbohydrates for anything other than our evolutionarily-derived microbiome and it’s effects on our immunity, gut health etc.
Firstly, do we not produce the glycans exactly because we need them all over the body so badly? Just like we do with cholesterol?
Secondly, how does the fact that Inuit, or anyone else, did everything they could to extract as much energy as possible from limited resources relate to modern humans’ needs?
Didn’t the Inuit ‘rot’ and otherwise process food for the same reason that cooking was developed?
Yes, there’s glucose side-products, but that could just as well be a non-damaging side-effect, not a benefit necessarily.
As for just about any HG eating raw meat fresh, still warm, that’s the best way to make sure it didn’t rot in the usual way, in fact, the ability to eat meat safely after it’s been hauled-back to a camp that could be hours away may also be one reason cooking developed in many places.
Otherwise only the hunters would have survived and become intelligent, not the gatherers. Oops, inadvertent, but that could be a good argument for bad female drivers ! (ouch)
I hope I’m not being too ignorant, nor cantankerous. Please just ignore if so. You’ve done brilliant research and yeoman’s labor putting this all together and absolutely do Not have to respond to half-assed arguments. I know that feeling too 🙂
Marie,
Great questions!
Yes, we do produce glycans. Takes a lot of energy to do so. Just guessing, but I’m willing to bet that most Westerners create 95%-100% of their own glycans. Having to expend energy to produce glycans while also expending energy to digest food while also expending energy to keep warm in -94°F (-70°C) is likely a recipe for a short life if a few of the 2,000,000 glycans aren’t being produced properly.
So, it appears that the Inuit found ways to cut corners on the first two to improve the third. Some glycans, like glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) — which includes things like chondroitin sulfate, heparan sulfate, and hyaluronan can be assimilated by the gut. For instance, you can but them in oral form:
According to Wikipedia, the average 70 kg (154 lb) person has roughly 15 grams of hyaluronan in the body. It’s a big deal. Takes a lot of energy to produce these and maintain them.
We’re just beginning to scratch the surface on these GAGs. Anyway, imagine you could eat foods that had all the digestive enzymes you need in them. You eat fat and it comes with the lipase needed to break it down. Imagine you don’t need to produce any enzymes to digest your food. That would free up a lot of energy in your body.
So, if you’re eating raw animals like the Inuit did, you don’t have to produce your own enzymes, you don’t have to produce as many glycans, and you’ve just freed up a lot of extra energy to keep warm. Hence the sweating when one eats their raw animals.
Not sure. That’s for everyone else to figure out 🙂
I’m pretty sure they did it because it made them feel like Superman when they ate it. I suspect someone stashed some carcasses in a seal skin to preserve it for the winter in case food ran out. And one day they were so starving they had to eat it. And low-and-behold they felt amazing and warm. Recipe recorded and reproduced.
If there were gatherers, then they were likely gathering something starchy and cooking is ok. Problem solved!
Also, to give you an idea of the energy-sparing qualities of consuming glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), people who take them (hyaluronan, collagen hydrolysate, etc.) often claim it “gives them more energy and curbs their appetite“. I don’t think it does that directly. I think it just makes it so they don’t have to waste energy producing those glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), and that frees up energy for other things and reduces their caloric needs.
Thanks DuckDodgers.
Though, the point about needing to conserve energy and extract as much as possible from whatever they could get their hands on, by whatever processes they could, is what makes me question whether the aspect of getting some glucose though those same processes is just incidental.
<p
But yes, I see about the starchy bounty of the gatherers correcting for the loss of 'animal starch' by cooking. Then the meat gets to be both high-energy-yield and safe for them while everyone still gets lots of digestible carbs – if there was such a bounty. That wasn't the argument though 🙂
Meanwhile, what I really wanted to ask was, do you know whatever happened to the Illudium Phosdex, did Marvin the Martian get it? (no, but really, where did you come up with that name? I smile every time I see you commenting, thank you!)
DuckDodgers, just saw your second reply to me. Yes, but there’s the rub. Most people in developed countries have too much energy available to them. With 70% of the over-40 set being either overweight or obese (75% in some places), eating anything that makes it so you burn less energy is not desirable for good health.
Unless there is some distinct advantage to eating that particular thing.
So I’m looking at any arguments that there is/are such advantage/s.
The only thing I’ve got up to now as a Distinct advantage is feeding the microbiome. Luckily, even when getting prebiotics in their natural ‘packages’ that have some digestible starch too, that net carb is still massively less than in the typical SAD diet (and it has all the other BG advantages of not being processed).
So those natural foods that contain significant inulin, soluble fibers and RS are still a net benefit.
Marie,
Again, excellent questions. I admit that I probably don’t have the answers you are looking for.
But, I’m not sure I agree on your point that “eating anything that makes it so you burn less energy is not desirable for good health”. No matter how you look at it, it’s not efficient to eat something that requires energy to digest. That’s technically wasteful. And if we evolved with a considerable level of raw meats in our ancestry (seems very likely given that homo erectus apparently didn’t cook), that implies that the human body was engineered — at some point — to assimilate as many GAGs, prebiotics and enzymes as possible through the diet. And in a normal, and healthy individual, doing so makes the body respond with more energy and a lower appetite (we see this with the anecdotal evidence from consuming GAGs and prebiotics).
But, I would agree that someone with a metabolic disorder probably would not respond in that way. But, that’s not normal. What causes metabolic disorders? No idea. Could be something like Glyphosate (herbicides) in the food supply for all we know.
DuckDodgers, thanks again for helping me try to reason this out.
I’m not sure the evidence is there to say that modern humans were engineered to assimilate “as many……as possible through diet”, but obviously some significant amount of them, well beyond what the porcessed-food-heavy SAD supplies and beyond what a ketogenic dieter would get on a very low carb diet.
I personally don’t drop into ketosis unless I’ve been fasting. However, I don’t try to regulate ‘carbs’ at all, I don’t seem to have to, I’ve been eating an unprocessed, traditional cuisine forever and it just doesn’t promote cravings. I fall in at around 100-150gms a day.
So I certainly agree that being without a metabolic disorder and otherwise healthy would determine how well one responds today.
I’ve no clue either what causes the widespread metabolic disorders.
Some ‘perfect storm’ I suspect, of too much processed junk, industrial oils and sugars, coupled to too little prebiotics so that the undernourished microbiome can’t help the body compensate for bad nutrition and probably coupled to a a damaged biome in the first place from herbicides, pollutants du jour and especially antibiotics, after which a poor diet cannot replenish the biome… and round and round this goes.
I’m simply saying that if you obtain more enzymes, GAGs and other good things, you should crave less food, look younger, and feel like you have more energy — provided you are healthy and don’t have metabolic issues. We already know (anecdotally) that’s what happens when people take RS and GAGs.
I’m not aware of many healthy people gaining fat from consuming more fermentable fibers or hyaluronan, or collagen hydrolysate. If people gain weight, they seem to gain lean muscle mass (usually considered a good thing).
@marie – “The only issue I see is in the evidence used to support the idea that humans need to eat carbohydrates for anything other than our evolutionarily-derived microbiome and it’s effects on our immunity, gut health etc.”
How about a modern examle: a modern-day guy (Barry Sears) tries to invent a diet that leads to low inflammation. He anayzes some research and concludes that 40% carbs 30% protein 30% fat are the best proportions.
We know that very high carb, food-pyramid levels are inflammatory and cause bad gene expression.
http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2011/09/21/Best-diet-One-third-protein-carbs-fat/UPI-24351316658787/
“We have found that a diet with 65 percent carbohydrates, which often is what the average Norwegian eats in some meals, causes a number of classes of genes to work overtime,” Johansen said in a statement. “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.”
Pehaps Low Carb is just an overreaction to Very High Carb (promoted by the officials and the industry), from the people who couldn’t find optimal proportions of macronutritiens? So to protect themselves from the negative effects of carbs, while not knowing what the optimal level was they tried to eliminate them completly?
I see your point, and in this case anecdote is at least supported by a plausible combination of biochemical mechanisms that are already known to operate.
I was answering DuckDodgers above.
But GTR, I agree with your comment too! Mostly.
Yes, the rhetoric at least has always seemed an overreaction to me too.
However, I think when you’re suffering from obesity or diabetes or mad mood swings (or…), cutting out carbs is probably a very healthy first reaction.
If nothing else, the BG stabilizes. You’re not hungry all the time on the sugar roller-coaster. You feel sane. Inflammation dampens down, so puffiness and a whole host of less obvious effects related to inflammation improve, including blood markers. You lose weight without starving. Skin looks better…
Now, if they include or start including onions, cabbage, garlic, artichoke hearts and a variety of other “lo-carb” veggies which just so happen to have plenty of prebiotics (o.k., potato starch too, I’m rather partial to it for it’s unique benefits) they might not need to change, actually. A healthy body can certainly manage more carbs and will balance itself out calorically and even nutritionally, but that’s not a lot of people unfortunately.
Marie,
You might also find it interesting to know that in many tribes (and I saw this over and over again) women and non-hunters were either outright forbidden or unable to eat fresh livers right out of a carcass. Even the Inuit restricted fresh liver to the hunters. The women ate other organs that survived the trip back better but they always are after the hunters took what they needed.
This suggests that women and men evolved with different diets.
That should have read “The women ate other organs that survived the trip back better but they always ate after the hunters took what they needed”
For instance, this is right from Wikipedia:
But, again, I found this pretty much everywhere. Lots of hunters eating fresh livers quickly after postmortem with everyone else getting the rest of the animal once the hunters had first dibs.
That makes a lot of sense, the hunters have higher nutritional needs and liver is the real superfood, even though by the time it was back at camp there was no glucose to be had.
Also, going further back, in warmer climes, I wouldn’t be surprised if that tradition started at the kill sites as a practical matter (hungry after hunting) which gave them a nice shot of instant energy due to glucose still present, while they would also prepare the carcass for transport back to camp.
I was reading a great paper from 2013 in which the author’s try to define a healthy gut. They gave up trying to define a gut by its microbial inhabitants since there is so much diversity around the world. They did make a good case in saying that a healthy gut is one that displays ‘resistance and resilience.’
Indigenous microbiota are an essential component in the modern concept of human health, but the composition and functional characteristics of a healthy microbiome remain to be precisely defined. Patterns of microbial colonization associated with disease states have been documented, but the health-associated microbial patterns and their functional characteristics are less clear. A healthy microbiome, considered in the context of body habitat or body site, could be described in terms of ecologic stability (i.e., ability to resist community structure change under stress or to rapidly return to baseline following a stress-related change), by an idealized (presumably health-associated) composition or by a desirable functional profile (including metabolic and trophic provisions to the host). Elucidation of the properties of healthy microbiota would provide a target for dietary interventions and/or microbial modifications aimed at sustaining health in generally healthy populations and improving the health of individuals exhibiting disrupted microbiota and associated diseases.
http://www.cell.com/cell-host-microbe/retrieve/pii/S1931312812003587#Summary
Marie,
You’ve inspired me to formulate a hypothesis. Maybe you, and others. can help refine it:
THE GLUCOSE-SPARING HYPOTHESIS
On his blog, Paul Jaminet explains that “in the vast majority of people the biggest reason for glucose utilization is the construction and maintenance of the human glycome.”
He also explains how a mere two of the 2,000,000 [glycans] in the human body account for nearly 10% of [all peripheral glucose utilization]
But, this only true if an individual makes all of their own glycans (as most modern Westerners do)!
And based on what we’ve learned here about ancient raw-meat carnivorous cultures:
– and how they were consuming lots of prebiotics
– how they were consuming lots of bacteria-laden raw foods
– how they were consuming lots of glycans
– how they were consuming lots of enzymes (like lipase, which digests fat)
– and how some of those glycans could be directly assimilated into the body (like glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), collagens, etc.)
…we can see that consuming all of those things would reduce their need for glucose, since their bodies didn’t have to work as hard to produce compounds.
The bacteria ferments SCFAs that make life easier for the body in many ways. Bacteria create vitamins. They help with intestinal gluconeogenesis. The raw enzymes effortless break down the foods (virtually no energy spent extracting energy from food). The raw glycans — the ones that aren’t prebiotic and that can be assimilated — reduce the body’s need to manufacture those glycans.
We saw in this post what assimilating glycans, bacteria, prebiotics and enzymes does for an Inuit — it instantly makes them warmer and have more energy. That’s why they ate those foods! This implies that their body is rapidly unlocking energy by assimilating all these compounds. People who consume these compounds often say that they feel more satiated and have improved metabolism — all the same benefits we see with RS.
When you put this altogether, you can see how an Inuit might fully support their 2,000,000 glycans with a little less glucose than a Westerner can.
Therefore…
I hypothesize that one’s peripheral glucose utilization is generally dependent on how many pre-formed compounds an individual can assimilate into their body that would ordinarily require glucose to produce internally.
In other words, if you’re an Inuit and you’re eating say 10%, 15% or 20% carbs, you can still have all the 2,000,000 glycans your body needs by finding ways to take the load off your internal production of necessary compounds.
And what this all implies for modern-day humans is that by eating enough fermentable fibers, and consuming as many pre-formed compounds as possible (enzymes, GAGs, things we haven’t discovered yet, etc.) we may not need as many carbs to keep our bodies running properly.
Impossible to prove all that, but if one consumes those things and feels better and more satiated, I think it’s a start.
Ah, now that would be an ‘antifragile’ microbiome, yes?
Might be able to have it if we stop both directly killing-off it’s denizens and starving them.
I’ve always thought that metabolic flexibility must be one result of human evolution and is the natural state of the human body. Today’s Inuit, or Masai, or… Manhattanite all came from a long line of supremely migratory humans.
tatertot, response above is to you.
You’d think one these days I might get back in the habit of addressing these things 🙂
DuckDodgers, that’s lovely, I always wanted to be a muse…
Your glucose-sparing hypothesis makes a lot of sense. It might not be provable, but experiments can be designed to at least check some of the responses to those particular variables in the diet, since some of those responses are mediated by the liver, as well as monitoring insulin itself, metabolites in the blood, SCFA in the portal vein….you’re inspiring me to hit the books again.
Meanwhile “…but if one consumes those things and feels better and more satiated, I think it’s a start” – or it’s the end-all, it’s what actually matters after all 🙂
marie, migratory means back and forth. So your concept of flexibility has some traction except that migratory also means finding same in other location. When the weather is unsuitable for the ‘usual’, people moved to find the ‘usual’ someplace better. Then they’d go back when the season changed.
Migratory does not mean ‘refugee’. And I think a lot of us, here in North America, have that in our backgrounds. We had to get used to almost ‘entirely different’.
It’s what ‘home sickness’ is all about: not tasting the flavours of home anymore. ;(
Duckie, why do people drink litres of soft drinks per day? How does that, if it does, fit in with any perverted sense of glycome maintenance? What’s wrong with these people? Because people who do that sort of thing are also most likely deficient in certain dietary sources of building blocks for glycome.
And anyway, what about people who are trending towards type 2? Sweet tooth, hate sour, hate bitter. A really undeveloped palate. That’s what I’ve noticed for what it’s worth and it’s probably worthless.
tatertot, what do you think of the enterotype work three years ago?
“we identified three robust clusters (enterotypes hereafter) that are not nation or continent-specific. We confirmed the enterotypes also in two published, larger cohorts suggesting that intestinal microbiota variation is generally stratified, not continuous. This further indicates the existence of a limited number of well-balanced host-microbial symbiotic states that might respond differently to diet and drug intake.” (my emphasis)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3728647/
There was follow up by another group in Science looking at how diet influences quickly the microbiome composition (though it takes long-term diet to actually impact their enterotype classification).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3368382/
After that I’ve lost the trail.
marie,
I’m so glad that you brought up ‘net carb’ because this is what RS boils down to and how our evolutionary past catches up to us. We co-evolved eating synbiotics (tigernuts/tubers/RS/fiber + root dirt/probiotics), no? The carbs in tigernuts fed us, then the fiber/RS fed the microbes that make up 90% of us.
We ignore the gut microbes, then we get sick (me: adrenal dysregulation from excessive gluconeogenesis and a broken gut; others FODMAP intolerances, IBD, GI cancers, immune dysregulatio or some carbs.
You know what always made me choke when I wrote the VLC posts on animal pharm? The Okinawans. I could not for the life of me reconcile their ‘carby’ diet or that of my Chinese Hakka grandparents and great grandparents who had consistent longevity to 91-100 years of age. lol
During my nutri sci/food sci degree in the 90s, I didn’t learn about RESISTANT STARCH. It was just being re-discovered. However I did learn about glycemic index, load and net carbohydrates. The Okinawans and my ancestors ‘got away’ with a high carb intake without disease or disability because a vast amount of that was consumed room temp, reheated, cold or with vinegar, in other words as RESISTANT STARCH which doesn’t impact the blood sugars AT ALL and in fact LOWERS BLOOD GLUCOSES AND IMPROVES INSULIN SENSITIVITY by binding GPR41/43 and dulling the GI load. Also they moved around. They ‘exercised’ at work and at home — walking everywhere, carrying everything, doing dishes, doing laundry, taking care of kids (no TV), etc. No cars, buses, time-saving devices or machines.
Whether GPR41/43 happened for Nutcracker Man, I have no idea…Id say yes. GPR109? Don’t know. prolly no.
He probably was in the process of developing his second brain, the gut enteric nervous system, and switching from core gut butyrate to dietary fats and some ketones (b-OH-butyrate). Tigernuts and other sedge tuber/nutlets are super fatty (eg primrose oil).
The gorilla made 50% of energy from fermentation (with absolutely no help from pancreatic or oral amylase). For hominids, this switched up in the Pleistocene. We increased our oral and pancreatic amylase AND DECREASED our fermentation of fiber to only a fraction 10-20% of total energy. We traded in hard to chew fiber for easy to chew RESISTANT STARCHES. We also increased net carbs exponentially for the 2 brains — the gut and cranial.
marie ur a brilliant peer reviewing deity. “So those natural foods that contain significant inulin, soluble fibers, [oligos, insol fiber] and RS are still a net benefit.” Nothing can trump this statement!
During our transition to anatomically modern Homo, the hominid brain and body had to get conditioned and trained to deposit and re-access fat (as adipose; carbs going to fat and fat to fat). This was all with the help of our symbiotic microbial friends. IMHO this is why we are so f*kced up by fiber-deficient refined carb SAD or inappropriately chronic VLC. You can transplant gut bacteria and fungi from a fat person/rodent, and MAKE A SKINNY PERSON/RODENT FAT AND DIABETIC. Why does no tried and true VLC’er get this? To be reliant on thyroid supplementation and Bulletproof MCT oil is questionable. The need to look at insulin resistance-inducing environmental toxins and suboptimal gut ecologies and composition may yield more.
As Richards said earlier, I’d concur “there’s something really screwy going on”…
@mairie – “Your grandparents, just like nonagenarians-centenarians from the famous blue-zones, got plenty of daily slow exercise interspersed with intense exercise (Sisson would love this), they got a natural wake-sleep cycle, socialization, sunlight…and unprocessed food.”
Isn’t a key to success for long life of centenarians that they were a bunch of people with no notable achievments, who just were there in the background avioding major events? I’ll give you few examples:
1) Hryhory Nestor (died at 116 years, not well documented)
During his life, at exactly the place he had been living there were two world wars, communist revolution, Polish-Soviet war etc. His changed countries without moving – Austro-Hungary, Poland, Soviet Union, Ukraine.
But he didn’t participate in any of these events – was not drafted into the army as he was too short. The occupants and the dictatorships didn’t kill him because working as a sheppard or a factory worker he was both useful and non-threatning to them. He was always poor, and didn’t really try to change it (no ambitions, no career).
He never engaged in a “right cause” himself – fighting against communism, fighting against nazism, despite the fact that in the place he lived there were plenty of opportunities to join resistance etc.
He also also never freed himself from childhood religious indoctrination, participating in religious activities to the end of his life.
He never married – this is one of the factors that he attributes his lognevity to – “If I had a wife I’d be in grave now” – he said himself; mentioning something about married people constantly quarrelling. Has no know descendants (but who knows, so many man were at war, and he was present at his village all the time?).
Now of corse he followed healthy lifestyle: he was walking barefoot, washing in rivers, ate food from his own garden, had a good sense of humor and was generally a happy person, was singing a lot. Worked manually, no office work for him.
2) The oldest supercentenarian – Jeanne Calment
From Wikipedia: “In 1896, at the age of 21, she married her double second cousin, Fernand Nicolas Calment, a wealthy store owner. […] His wealth made it possible for Calment never to have to work; instead she led a leisured lifestyle, pursuing hobbies such as tennis, cycling, swimming, rollerskating, piano, and opera.” Had just one child.
OK, maybe I’m cherrypicking here. But does anyone has stats or examples to show big-achievers centenarians? I don’t mean hard repetitive work – many of them actually did it – but somehting like a carreer, changing the world in some way, a great invention, a dangerous job etc.?
So maybe just repeating what centenarians did is not a valid approach, what we need is a new way that allows one to both achieve a lot, and live a long life.
Grace, indeed screwy.
Your grandparents, just like nonagenarians-centenarians from the famous blue-zones, got plenty of daily slow exercise interspersed with intense exercise (Sisson would love this), they got a natural wake-sleep cycle, socialization, sunlight…and unprocessed food.
It doesn’t seem to matter much what macro ratios, your frustrating Okinawans’ case in point.
I think what mattered was that it’s traditional, because they still lived the traditional life-style that is matched to it. Our genetics are the same, we needn’t cut out whole macro categories either, but we can adjust the balance, for example, our lifestyles don’t utilize glycogen anywhere near as much as theirs did. Not to mention ‘our daily bread’ is totally FUBAR. And we never take a break either – almost all those cultures have fasting traditions.
When you add to this the fact that antibiotics knock out our first line of defense against modern diseases and the processed food diet does not replenish traditional line-backers and starves the few that we have left….
Yeah, screwy all right.
marie, have we considered that Grace is here because her grandparents and great grandparents lived to become old?
What about the non existent great grandchildren of people who didn’t live long enough? Why didn’t they? Not all died from accidents. Not all died of starvation. Lots of people were ‘the end of the road’ and there’s no one to talk about them. Why? They could have died of disease, for example. Why did they die and Grace’s great grandparents and grandparents did not?
Or yours, for that matter? Or most of mine? (The males died first due to accident and war. One died from type 2 sequelae.)
We need to turn this around. Or maybe I’m being ridiculous.
I think it means that we are getting closer to real answers!
What these enterotype studies remind me of is studies in forestry. A deciduous forest of oaks and maples, etc.. A rainforest. Or Arctic tundra. All can be healthy, resilient ecosystems but look totally different.
Gut bugs get their food from limited places: Indigestible (plant/animal) carbs, undigested (plant/animal) carbs, or by feeding directly off the mucin layer. I think that genetics play some role in how much mucus we make and maybe that predisposes us to an enterotype.
But it seems to be universal and unrelated to enterotype that only a few food items are converted (directly or indirectly) to lactic acid and butyrate AND cause an increase in bifidobacteria.
I’m not sure if bifido is the cause of great gut health or just thrives in a healthy gut, but when people eat RS, Inulin, and FOS/OS, in a fairly high quantity compared to Western Diets, the pH lowers, lactic acid producing bacteria thrive, butyrate gets made, and the gut is healthier for it.
Attar of Victory, cherie.
” I always wanted to be a Muse.”
And many us are totally aMused – including V/Mary, at Richard’s expense.
He, however echoes Albert’s Royal Spouse and intones:
“We are not amused.” to the tune of
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=355Fk8drgZE
You is one of “all those voices in my head”.
Ta voix, ta Vag-a-Bond.
(I realise this is exécrable!!)
Rover, “I realise this is exécrable” . Well, except for the atar-gūl 🙂
Oh, o.k., except also for “one of all those voices in my head”…..or, “everywhere I go, always on my mind…I know it’s plain to see” : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCJ-Yb-p6UI
vagari
You’re trying to bait me, aren’t you, Marie? I think you know very well that I saw Chicago live last summer at the coolest venue ever, the Mountain Winery in Saratoga, a paltry 15 minutes away from where I sit in my backyard at this moment, high overcast, a bit muggy and around 72F (eat your hearts out).
Seen a lot of concerts but I’m skeptical I’ll ever love another one so much. Number 2 has to be The Moody Blues at Ironstone Vineyards a few years earlier, barefoot on the grass amphitheater in Murphys, CA.
Mais oui. Also, that you “literally see everything” 😉
But 72F and sitting out in your backyard?! Ouch!! We are even.
I read this a few months ago and thought the guy was crazy. Maybe not so much now. He also eats rotten meat.
http://www.vice.com/read/this-guy-has-eaten-nothing-but-raw-meat-for-five-years
The fermented and rotted meat dishes (Kivaq, harkal etc) must also be high in SCFA’s which are the common currency of anaerobic bacteria. This is useful energy for the consumer. It might explain part of their bad taste.
One thing I didn’t mention in the article — but isn’t difficult to infer — is the ramifications for “animal fiber” for carnivores in captivity.
Besides the obvious problems with locking a wild animal in a pen, if you think about it, carnivores like orcas and lions in captivity aren’t typically fed with fresh live animals. Rather I suspect they give them old raw “chunk” meats and perhaps some old carcasses. They don’t get to kill and eat fresh livers and skins.
The carnivore SCFAs study I mentioned, above, suggests that most animals in captivity aren’t really fermenting SCFAs.
This is ground breaking stuff!
It’s obvious now that eating raw meet is good for you. My question is, what if you can only afford grain fed meat? Wouldn’t it be dangerous to eat grain fed meat raw?
You still have a tradition of eating an animal immediately after slaughter in Asia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNzwy6ZFnuk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sOpt8L17_M&t=7m52s
It’s also worth noticing, that village people ate freshly laid eggs everywhere. Some small animals, like chicken that weren’t made into the broth was also killed before the consumption. The meat from larger animals was cured, preserved though.
As of now, the online grocery business is trying to minimize storage time, and it’s partially succeeding. That’s not as much as eating right after the kill, but a time reduction anyway.
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/8202?pg=all
“Consider the seafood operation. FreshDirect’s representatives place initial orders at the docks in lower Manhattan as the catch arrives during the day and into the evening. At midnight, FreshDirect stops taking consumer orders for the following day and provides an exact order quantity to the seafood buyers. The prescribed quantities arrive at the Long Island City processing facility around 3 a.m., to be cut according to customer orders by early to mid-morning. Customer deliveries begin at 4 p.m. the same day, resulting in a “dock to door” time that is often less than 24 hours. “
🙂 That really wasn’t the point of the post. I’m not advocating raw meat consumption.
If you read Part 1, you’d see that you don’t get the same benefits from meat that was slaughtered by USDA standards (you likely get negatives). You need to go out and hunt your own caribou like Tim Steele does and eat/freeze your kills immediately to get all the benefits!
Duckie: NOOOOOOooooooo! I can’t unsee. Okay I watched the first one but I can’t. NOOOoooooooooo.
We’re even. 🙂
Anyway, I read a whole long document about animals brought to slaughter. How many hours they need to be rested so that they don’t have a lot of lactic acid in their muscle. Cattle are different than pigs. Etc. So if this freaked out cobra is being slaughtered, this thing’s muscles are shot.
Gab… that wasn’t me! GTR posted those videos.
LOL! Duckie. Phew.
@gabriella – This brings us to the interesting question. As I’ve written online grocery stores try to minimize time to customer. It’s even only 24 horus now for some (unlike few days for traditional stores). But you most likely still order a killed meat.
What if they manage to lower the time of the delivery so much that you first order meat, and only then, as a direct result of your request (rather than some business prediction) they kill the animal? “When you click – we slaugher a chicken” aprroach, and perhaps they bring it to you after an hour or so? This would probably work in Asia, but carries the possibility to spawn a new moral-vegan movement in the West.
Duck Dodgers
Ahh, what to say. Brilliant work. Thank you.
Pacem.
This is awesome information, Richard. Thanks for all the research.
An excellent, informative, and thought provoking series of articles. Under normal circumstances, I never post comments on blogs. But I am making an exception this time, due to the outstanding nature of the posts. One of the most intriguing articles that I have read in years, truly food for thought.
Maybe Aajonus Vonderplanitz eating raw and rotting meat wasn’t so daft after all.
So there is some carbs in rotted seal meat. How many usable carbs are there? Or did I miss something in the article.
Gene, there’s no way to know. Unless someone freezes some igunaq or kiviak the moment after it’s opened and analyzes it, we’ll probably never know.
But that may not be the key takeaway here. It seems like all of the undenatured hydrolyzed compounds, raw enzymes to digest the pre-digested matter likely reduced their need for glucose — since the body wouldn’t need to produce those broken-down assimilated compounds. The fact that they had more energy and felt warmer after eating the rotted foods suggests that they were able to divert energy away from forming those compounds and enzymes internally and not having to waste energy digesting the food. It was like getting a jolt of energy from the electric company without having to pay a bill.
So, from a net energy standpoint, it appears to have been an extremely energy positive food.
DuckDodgers:
Thanks for the response. That’s a lot of words to say that we really don’t know.
Or maybe you just chose to eat rice in the most glycemic way possible — without fat and not within the context of a meal.
v, thanks! 🙂
However, your experience with the rice doesn’t necessarily show that you can’t manage more carbs.
I don’t want to get any hopes up too much, but it’s at least possible that you are not as broken as you think. That’s because 150g of white rice is enough of a glucose challenge to an LC system that you may well be getting the false-positive GTT results that LC people often get.
There is a natural, reversible insulin resistance that happens with low enough carbs (less than about 100g/day). This gives the bad GTT results. So the common approach is to eat moderate carbs for three days to reset the insulin response and take the test again. Ta-da, it looks like an instant diabetes cure!
You can try the same thing at home. However, like DuckDodgers says, you don’t want to eat the starch alone, it can shock your system in your state. You’ve been keeping BG and insulin low for a long time if you’ve seen the effect in a1c (congratulations on that!) so go slow if you try this, yes?
marie, v used to be significantly overweight as well. So who knows what permanent damage that’s done. Right v? You lost a lot of weight at one point. And with your age as it is, recovery of beta cell function is not 100%. At least you don’t have hyperinsulinemia because if you did, eating the rice would actually prevent your blood glucose from rising much at all and then you’d get a dive downwards making you excruciatingly hungry after a couple of hours. The Chinese food effect.
But since you didn’t provide data points for 60 minutes, 90 minutes etc. it’s possible that by 120 minutes you got the shakes. What were those readings? Did you take them?
gabriella, thanks. With v’s history, she must be very familiar with what constitutes a carb-challenge for her system!
v, what would be interesting to find out is at what ages do you and your family deteriorate. Some genetic problems manifest at younger and younger ages as one generation follows the other.
When do you think, based on your knowledge of your family, did this genetic flaw appear? Was it present in your grandparents’ generation? I suppose it’s too difficult to know further back. And what with wars in Eastern Europe, people didn’t survive long enough.
Probably your children (or child) need to be monitored as well. If this begins to become a problem earlier in each generation, then you may not have the pleasure of becoming a grandmother. For example.
Out of curiosity how much glycogen in seafood? Anyone know? Oysters were mentioned above but I am wondering about other seafoods.
As a side note to glycogen in livers I know that in elite cyclists the amount of glycogen in a human liver is about 2500 calories and 2 lbs in weight increase to liver (includes water associated with glycogen). I have know this for a long time but I have never associated it with carbs. Thanks for enlightenment.
Walter, just as an aside, I was wondering about ‘fresh’ mussels. For example. Who knows how long they’ve been packaged until we bring them home. Ones that have been ‘starved too long’, when the shell opens, the meat is ‘torn’. There’s no discrete mussel in there and these are not ‘sweet’.
Which is why I’ve stopped buying ‘live mussels’. I buy the frozen mussel meat if I want mussels. There are places where ‘fresh live’ are truly fresh. But here in Toronto, it’s anyone’s guess until they are cooked and they are underwhelming to say the least.
Same reason I now buy the flash frozen oysters in a bag at the Korean supermarket. Or frozen cooked clams. By the time these bivalves survive and are available at the supermarket, they’ve cannibalized their glycogen stores.
I bet that cooling of organ meat quickly after slaughter (and this has to happen or it will go bad quickly) means that liver probably still contains a lot of glycogen (depending on how stressed the animal was prior to slaughter of course and this is a big issue for the meat industry. More to do with muscle meat but organ meat ought to be no different.) When you buy fresh liver, for example, if it smells sour then not only has begun to ‘go off’ but the glycogen is gone as well.
Back in 2011 when, unfortunately, one of my cats needed to be euthanized, I brought his body back home so the other cats could say ‘good bye’. (Believe me, cats are animals that people don’t customarily think of being very emotionally attached to one another but they are. And if a cat ‘disappears’ and never comes back, the remaining cats get very, very upset.) Anyway, his body was lax for quite a long time until rigour mortis set in. The air was quite cool so lactic acid buildup was a lot slower than I thought it would be. Then even 3 days later when I took him to the vet’s office to be sent for cremation, he was still as stiff as a board. In other words, glycogen breakdown appears to be temperature dependant. This is just the same science as coroners and pathologists use to determine how long a body has been dead.
Flash frozen is the way to go. I use to eat fresh mussels and clams etc (my parents lived on the ocean) and they taste totally different in the store. Sweeter they were and now I understand why.
Another aside coming up.. I am in the medical device business and we use hours old pork liver in our testing and you can actually see the liver changing in a period of an hour with the ultrasound. Little bubbles (tens of microns) form as the liver components change. I am not exactly sure what is changing but clearly it is changing.
Walter:
Yea, that’s interesting. 2500 cals would be 625 grams of carbohydrate.
I was wondering how many carbs a normal sized lioness, medium sized African cat or a wolf might get eating a fresh liver kill, not to mention muscle glycogen.
Duck, you run into any data in our research or intuit anything along these lines? Would’t it be funny to show that the average carnivore gets upwards of 500g carbohydrate in a fresh kill meal?
Best I can do right now is this for beef muscle (not liver):
http://books.google.com/books?id=ltqvLpKHRWIC&lpg=PA396&ots=Sl1rzEjlLm&pg=PA399#v=onepage&q&f=false
I’ve got a busy week ahead, so would be great if someone else could take the reins on this research a bit 🙂
Personally, I just don’t think it’s ever been studied, and it would be difficult to ascertain. Glycogen changes depending on the kill. I posted a video a few weeks ago that nobody (understandably) wants to watch of a lion killing a calf quickly and as painlessly as possible with a throat clamp technique. This preserves glycogen by killing the animal before it has a chance to get much adrenaline going, which would cause glycogen to dump. If the animal is stressed, or running and exhausted, not as much glycogen for the predator. Jewish Kosher laws try to do the same low stress kill for humane reasons and to preserve the beef from getting stress shock from glycogen dumps.
There’s also glycogen is in the skin of every animal (remember the narwhales in Part 1) but that vanishes before anyone can really measure it easily. So, it’s not just about the liver and the meat.
Also, when carnivores take down an herbivore, the first thing they do is open up the guts and eat the livers and tripe and stomach contents. The stomach contents can contain partially digested plant carbs of some kind (bonus carbs, if you will). I also find it interesting/odd that mammalian guts aren’t more protected. It’s like the bacteria in the gut helped designed their home to be unprotected so that they could be easily removed/stolen after the host dies (like an escape hatch).
And finally, I think the biggest bonus is that the raw meat seems to be energy sparing. It apparently takes less energy digesting raw meat and raw fat than cooked meat and fat because your body doesn’t have to produce the enzymes and you assimilate compounds that you would otherwise have to create. The enzymes and compounds are already in the food. (It also makes me wonder if eating a raw intestine allows you to incorporate the mucins right into your own intestinal tract.) So, I think there’s a tremendous positive there for the predator. It means their glucose requirements should decrease a fair amount because their bodies aren’t working so hard.
One way to look at it… perhaps meat-eating species evolved with bodies not having to work so hard to make every compound, and now modern humans are making everything from scratch. Makes us tired, weak, metabolically deranged and undernourished. Feeding gut bugs probably takes a load off the body (makes the bacteria carry their weight and help out running the show). Just musing.
marie, I think that’s one facet of the problem. There are definitely genetic propensities, but they need a triggering event or a triggering cascade to manifest. The large amount of abdominal fat is an indicator of other hormonal imbalances besides just insulin.
We can never know anyone’s true lifelong nutritional sufficiencies or deficiencies.
Geez Rich, are you also going to deal with Woo’s Morans also?
I prefer this approach:
“I say let avalanches of Morans sweep down to the Sea –
on St Paddy’s Day!
Sláinte”
Vag-a-Bond
Shouldn’t 150 g of glucose be within one’s glycogen stores ability to store, if these are empty? I only know data for men – about 100g in the liver, and 400g in muscles. Not even comparable to fat stores, but still should provide some protection from spikes – if empty.
Is there a non-invasive test for the fill level of one’s glycogen stores? Having such information would simplyfy meal planning. You can apparently do some computations, but these seem trobulesome and unreliable.
v, good thing you are on top of things.
All this PCOS makes me wonder if all the corn and soy fed animals are to blame. Plus all the rest of the corn and soy in the diet. Excess of course, because people who lived on corn didn’t get problems. There are far too many young women with PCOS. It wasn’t so prevalent in my generation. Our chickens at a lot of fish btw. Fish meal was a big part of their diet compared to todays ‘all grain diets’.
v, recently Stefani Ruper, whose blog I’ve never read before, reported on an endocrinology study where female rodents intermittently fasted masculinized. Perhaps this has some bearing on your daughter’s high testosterone level.
Maybe low carb is not the best diet for an adolescent female.
v, you think Duckie and Paul are the same person? I had never considered that. But considering it, I don’t think so. Paul is way to conservative to even entertain what Duck has researched. Heck, Paul doesn’t even like eating liver unless it’s soaked in milk for ages first. His food prejudices play into the PHD.
v ! DuckDodgers is not Paul. But hey, your synthesis of approaches is spot-on.
If you want to try my three-day suggestion by following PHD for those three days, that would certainly be the best way to do it so as to reset insulin responsiveness without big spikes during those days (if that turns out to be possible for you given your background/genetics). I’d suggest taking potato starch too, to really drop that post-prandial BG, but that would confound your experiment.
Have you been taking potato starch in the meantime, by any chance?
v.
I am not Paul. I follow the PHD myself, with great success, but I assure you I am not Paul. Paul would use his own name and his own blog if he were going to take down Paleo myths.
Secondly, Paul offers a number of suggestions for eating moderate carbs and preventing hyperglycemic toxicity.
See: How to Minimize Hyperglycemic Toxicity
If you take the time to read that post, and understand why glycemic spikes happen with different food preparations, you would understand why taking a bowl of plain rice out of the fridge and eating it straight while your BG spikes to the moon is a really dumb idea.
Do yourself a favor and learn how to use fats, acids, RS, different cooking preparations and retrogradation to protect yourself from BG spikes in the future.
Finally, getting used to starches is something that can take more than three days. Use your head.
V. My apologies if it seemed like I’m lashing out. I just don’t appreciate being accused of being a sock puppet.
DuckDodgers!
“Finally, getting used to starches is something that can take more than three days. Use your head.”
Ouch.
She didn’t say that and you Know I don’t mean she’ll get used to starches in that time. That requires gut biome changes, which I am intimately familiar with.
Most people however, including VLC and including T2D on LC or VLC, can and do reset Physiological insulin resistance in just a few days, That Physiological IR otherwise sabotages postprandial BG after a glucose challenge if you’re LC or full-blown ketotic, something I am also intimately familiar with.
Now you do some reading : have a look at this controlled data (RS effects in and out of ketosis), note the postprandial BGs without RS, in and out of ketosis, as well as with RS.
https://freetheanimal.com/2013/10/resistant-ingestion-blunting.html
BG moderation by our guts hardly gets off the ground when we are ketotic. So she, or anyone, can’t know how well or not her system handles glucose until they come out of physiological IR.
It doesn’t mean doing a three-day reset will give anyone suddenly a Great insulin response. It does mean it won’t be as low as it can get, which is during physiological IR.
marie, that wasn’t for you. I was talking to v.
I just didn’t think v needed to call something a failure after just 72 hours (and didn’t appreciate being called a sock puppet)
Yeah, I understand. It comes with the territory though when you’re anonymous but somehow prominent (said one anonymous commenter to another…)
Usually what happens is that others who’ve had more interaction or know them offline step-in to clear that up. That happened here too, so I’d fuggedaboudit if I were you.
At least you were confused for a really nice guy! I once was confused (not as a sock puppet, just misnamed) for a racist nazi f#$%. Folks jumped in and it went away.
Gabby, remember?! 😀
True. 🙂
I was really more concerned that I was dragging Paul’s reputation down somehow. He doesn’t deserve a 1 star rating just because someone is that impatient. Ridiculous.
I thinking of starting RS but I’m going on a four day business trip in a month, being very reluctant do take a baggie of white powder and pills with me thru an airport, what do others do on vacation or a business trip?
Start now. In a month, take a break. No prob.
If you find you miss it, stop by any grocery store and spring the $5 for a bag of potato starch. My wife just went through TSA tonight with a ziplock baggy filled 1/2 with potato starch. They don’t care. Just tell them it’s potato starch. No need to duct tape it to your thighs or swallow it in little balloons. Now, maybe if your business trip is in Tijuana and you look like Bob Marley….
Yeah, I carry it around with me too. It settles my stomach normally (I think Gabby mentioned that effect too?) and it turns out to do that on flights beautifully. So I actually dissolve it in water in those little 100ml carry-on bottles you can get in the travel section of the pharmacy and put 3-4 of those in my see-through quart ziploc. It’s just a little bit that way, but enough for flight. They really don’t care. Never been asked.
Meanwhile, you can put bags and bags of the still sealed, commercial stuff in checked luggage. Nary a problem, on international flights no less. Had luggage opened randomly at customs last month in London of all places (Heathrow takes the European prize for paranoia, well, if it was in Europe anyway 🙂 ). There I was expecting them to bring out the dogs, or slice one open and make me eat some, or….but they just asked me if I was a chef ?! Only the British….
Thanks tatertot and marie
marie? I insinuated that you are a racist Nazi f#$%?
Holy crapshit. Really? When?
Duckie, not a sock puppet. What about this instead? Go for the spandex instead: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/06/yoga-pants-prank-fouseytube_n_4906124.html?utm_hp_ref=canada&ir=Canada
Speaking of LC champions, has anyone seen any of Jimmy Moore’s latest stats? I can’t find a recent update anywhere. Maybe that says enough anyway.
ELMM, do you have any info?
😀 You mistook me for a certain “Maria” that posted briefly, oh about a year ago, something about ‘golden dawn’ and I don’t remember the rest. Sean and LeonRover set it straight. I think maybe JScott as well. She was rather obnoxious and religious to boot. Christianity at it’s finest! You apologized for the mixup. Polite as always.
marie, oh Yeah. Now I remember. By yo no sock puppet, marie.
That video above…… I totally laugh like dastardly dog when the black guy gets all ‘oh mayne, you wearing leggings!!’ and sort of chases the guy around a bit.
“my 16 yo was just diagnosed with testosterone over the reference range and is on birth control pills for it. it is a PCOS diagnosis.”
That’s what happens when you have a dumb shit moron for a mother, who spends all of her time on blogs and obsessing about all her numbers. The children suffer.
Mon cher, de tout en tout, un peu du remède de cheval!
Is Bea away visiting her family for the weekend?!
“un peu du remède de cheval!”
Pas du tout. Elle se moque d’ailleurs (FTA et moi), lit uniquement pour s’amuse. Donc, je lui aide.
Merde. Ça va, alors! 🙂
eeh, By Gum, I assume you meant “-gsesque”, & so this amuses:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_complete_poem_spring_has_sprung_by_ee_Cummings?#slide=3 – .
Mother Goose => Winnie The Pooh’s Sophia:
“Able to read and write and spell his own name Wol, yet somehow [he] went all to pieces over delicate words like MEASLES and BUTTEREDTOAST.”
Googling “owl Athens” reveals a whole bunch a coins in 3rd answer. The Wol images remind me of my Cretan Bull avatar. What does A O E stand for?
MJ ?
Mmmmm, no; it’s MJQ with a Thel Monk special:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M-QtVkqJZA
Maybe I should adopt moniker Leon O’Rizz.
On 2nd thoughts “No no, Antonio” –
Yeh gorra lurve 1900’s musichall.
Marie,
Oh wow “stóirín”. Here’s a folksong with the word’s “mo stóirín óg, mo bhúachaillín”. Hope you can make the words out – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWo8PY2CpUo
Do the teflon water beads form with a higher viscosity than that of DuckDown ?
And while my cherries are more bottoms up, my Cheries never emulate Blairs.
Anyway, Karen Cheryl’s antics had me in giggles, just roared at les Boys emulating the Cohen Leon’s “rose in your teeth”. Was Karen an EuroVision of Delight ?
Marie, Leon:
Not to distract you too much from your meetup in my seedy virtual hotel room with 24/7 video surveillance, but check this out.
At 7, can it be explained by anything other than prodigious, parrotesque, but precise mimicry?
Nice! There’s something to be said about an inimitable imitation. Or, couple mimicry to amazing vocal range and you get this amazonian magnificence :
I see you have quit Dodging & gotten enough Down to acquire the syndrome of being Impervious to Water.
In a more sardonic moment I speculate that Richard gave a sock to V/Mary and his mimicry is really remarkable, n’est-ce pas ?
Sláinte
PS
In an earlier post you quoted with approval Dave Asprey’s endorsement of Luke 6:27, but decline to follow suit in practice.
When BEAtrice is away, you indulge in “Juice o’ the Gnarly” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0PUgSKIW0g – ” getting tipsy with joy ” (Who the fuck is Joy?) or just rever to your youthful roles of Ginger Man or Balthazar the anti-hero of “The BEAstly BEAtitudes of Balthazar B” ? ? ?
Some times your ‘orse (arse?) spleendiferously “sûrement plus forts” TMIes from an excess of Communistic Bob’s Starch.
Sláinte
OMG – to be memorialised in dese patches. Yeah, I know She gets it – Hey She always got it.
Does Big Rich get it ?
Hmmm, well, Dis one do!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqz6Y9aHGIQ
Or, can’t beat “M**Maries are Made of This”. I know Dino’s not Greek –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKYwqqhqaxM
Anyway, seeing this was the “wing on the boid” that ensured my grass is rizzed, so I dropped some comments here n there.
Yesterday a little rizz had taken place so I concocted some uncooked potato shakes.
I was inspired to do this after googling ” “sweet potato” puréé ” & finding recipes for same for feeding to infants.
With my hi-powered stick blender I ground peeled tubers into mush.
I made a sweet shake from sweet potato, raw pear and kale, adding a little spenda and lemon juice for palatibility – using a Terry Wahls’ suggestion.
I also made a Mediterranean (Spanish) white potato shake with same grinding method, mixing tomato, onion, parsley and red pepper, flavouring with a little EVOO and Cider Vinegar for gazpacho style.
One at brunch with smoked coley, the other at dinner with slow-cooked belly ham. (Saved liqour and bacon fat for later. This is what my Mother use do, rather like yours still does!)
À bientôt.
Vag-a-Bond
PS Did your Ma think that Red Mill Starch in a plastic bag was taking Colas to Newcastle ?
gabriella and marie, and all others, great disscussion about LC .
I have traveled a long path. 24 years DM T2 diagnosed with 47 years. (My family, grandmother, father, my brothers and sisters all have diabetic )
First pills to the insulin production to stir up, then insulin because my pancreas was exhausted. Then even more pills, Avandia and Actos later. It worked well in the beginning, I got lower BG. But I was getting thicker, like a Michelin man. ( 299 pounds on the last ) Storing fat in the abdomen, upper arms and upper legs. With consequences of no longer can walk well. And pain in my back, pain and fluid in my legs. My doctor had no other advice, than medications. ( And yes, all of it statins, blood pressure lowering drugs, now all gone, only insulin. )
2003 I went back on Atkins, independently. I lost 33 pounds. It stopped there, but I could keep it there.
Beginning 2012 Paleo VLC/ketosis, IF. I lost 46 pounds, 3 pounds per month very slowly and better BG. But it stopped again in May 2013. Plateau of half a year, again. I got again 13 pounds there and higher BG.
December 2013 I started with RS/PS. My BG went down and I could use less insulin. I lost 13 pounds in 2 months. My A1c slumped in 1.5 months from 8.1 to 6.5.
I now do strength training, weightlifting and squats etc. Two times a week. And work in my garden and grow my own vegetables, again.
I wish I had known it before, but I know it now. No one knew it earlier 😉 I look ahead, let me no longer distracting.
I now know where I go to look for. Here! And listening to people who dare to reevaluate all knowledge. Not stick to old truths, but experiment with new insights.
I’ve got nothing to lose, only to gain. Maybe I have to keep LC, maybe not. It depends on how much I can heal. I have good hope. It doesn’t stop here, there are always new insights. Thanks to all the great people here and elsewhere. In my own country I find also good support, of people who can understand the science behind it and can explain what it means. It’s easier to read in your own language. I keep following 🙂
I am grateful, very grateful for all the so selfless shared information.
You all know who I mean 😉
“In a more sardonic moment I speculate that Richard gave a sock to V/Mary and his mimicry is really remarkable, n’est-ce pas ?”
Ha! You always crack me up, Leon.
Pretty much. Look, I’ve tolerated her, mostly, since 2008ish. Isn’t the first time. If she wants to go around elsewhere mocking this blog, me, telling people she ONLY reads it for amusement, then I’m going to oblige her.
Hopefully, she’s duly amused.
“In an earlier post you quoted with approval Dave Asprey’s endorsement of Luke 6:27, but decline to follow suit in practice.”
Hmm, not recalling the reference. Are you talking about the guy who went off and did his own coffee brand? If so, entirely different matter. That’s money, business, and so far as I know the guy didn’t steal anything. He simply decided to compete using what he knew or learned. It’s the way of life, everyone learns from other people and if you’re going to have a business you’ll end up having employees, affiliates, or both and unless you want to shoot yourself in the foot, then you have to come to grips with the reality that you’re training and apprenticing potential competition.
Nothing to get upset about.
This is quite different. This is the equivalent of having a nice party when one of your guests decides to take a big dump right in front of everyone.
But at any rate, she’s looking for amusement, so she’s got it. No booze involved and Beatrice is quite installed here at home.
Welkom Mariet. We zijn bijna homoniemen! Gezien uw spelling, je Nederlands?
(a wild guess, but thought I’d try just in case 🙂 )
Your story is heartbreaking and inspirational at the same time.
What an amazing job you’ve done, thinking and adjusting your approach at every plateau!
Please report periodically your progress if you can. I’m fascinated of course, but also, you are teaching me and I’m sure this information is teaching or inspiring others too.
Thank you greatly for sharing.
LeonRover, mo chéad stóirín, I am overwhelmed!
The homophone ‘Crotchety’ crooner is always a welcome voice, rather like the forever 21 grandfather inspired in LittleRichard’s serenade. Inspiration for chers oncles partout, Musing and not ? 😀
The Glorious girl can’t help it.
Nor the deity. Nor She of perfection.
After all that, water beading on teflon is just a cherry on top, mon cheri cheri.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JxhhX1Q8ts
v. – “my 16 yo was just diagnosed with testosterone over the reference range” – correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t such age exactly when female testosterone levels are the highest in her life?
Meanwhile, do famously misattributed cumminesque ditties usually surface when you’re stirring invigorating concoctions under the guidance of Mary Jane?
(Or, the multiplicity of ‘rizz’).
At such times, ‘the voices I hear in my head’ also are those of a boid, Mother Goose 😉
And yes, there’d be an Owls to Athens aspect, but for an absurd price difference and known processing/heat.
Mmmm you always .. .. add valorem.
Windmills, yes .. .. .. I should have asked your matronage as my Doña Quixotic Feb 14th.
I’ve Dun it my Way – .
(G)oogling “Spanish Lady” gave this – should have been ready for it!!
BTW – the Dubliners substituted Dublin for Galway – in the 1700’s there was a large wine trade between Galway & Spain.
“Healthy not Safe” Leon
Ahaha! Well, since I’m still laughing over ‘left me alone-ee-o’, you deserve to know that it’s not AOE, it’s ΑΘΕ, an abbreviation of ΑΘΕΝΑΙΟΝ (genitive “of the athenians”).
I will replay the heavenly θελόνιος for a lull-a-bye tonight – thank you for that.
Change in moniker, no. However, change in signature, oh bonding one, might be better than a good thing 🙂
Yes, I saw the words of “my dearest, darling, little boy”. Sweet, sweet folksong.
Glad I made you laugh, those boys in those hats with the flower in their teeth…all that’s missing is the famous raincoat.
Re: Bananas. They are actually a relatively recent addition to African diets, having been introduced around 400 CE by Polynesians via Madagascar.
“seedy virtual hotel room” ??
“omega-3 virtuous hotel room” I do concede.
She has the talent to reproduce the Torchiness and so the mimicry is prodigious and precise but not Parrotesque.
Mind you, when she adopts her own voice I hope she emulates Sweden’s Abba rather than Norway’s Ibsen or Breivik.
Sláinte
Ahaha, better yet, “K2-butter” – virtuous And versatile! (no one was holding coffee this time, I hope? 😀 )
I’m too discrete to comment.
I expect Cap Theta to be elliptical (like my thinking), not circular –
as you shewed this above with θελ… all his .. .. ..
Pógíní
+1 !
So, you made a meta-comment.
Singularity is the better part of valour.
Yes, I wouldn’t expect results in 3 days. I’m still exploring things at nine weeks on PS. Last week I substituted tapioca for half my PS and have all sorts of problems, as I did when I started with the PS. But then I have a particularly broken gut and don’t have access to the full range of US probiotics. So its step by step to work to improve what I can by as near natural processes as I can.
Gabby, +1! 😀
LeonRover, mo chroí : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXFh-mYh2dQ
Unfortunately, Marie, Apple, in its infinite wisdoms have seen fit to basically make their iPad unusable for what I do.
Tired of being unable to do so much stuff, like watch a video link.
I sincerely hope they lose this Flash battle with Google. And I hope they are embarassed about it. It’s time for us customers who’ve loved their products to tell them to fight their battles at their own expense, not ours.
Video not viewable, as it is 90% of the time if on the iPad, now. Used to use the pad all the time. Rarely anymore. Not useful.
Don’t you need the YouTube app to watch it?
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/youtube/id544007664?mt=8
Frustrating 🙁 . No words of wisdom here, I love my MacAir but use Samsung/Android for everything else.
Did you two virtual love birds see this one?
https://freetheanimal.com/2013/04/melissa-under-loven.html
Even a double entrendre in the Swedish title, of all things.
Given her hotness, I’m thinking the 5:1 ratio is about right. What do you think, Marie, accounting for the fact that you only have 2 hands….
Oh dear, you’re really having a lot of trouble with your system aren’t you? Here’s what I thought : https://freetheanimal.com/2013/04/melissa-under-loven.html#comment-453058
Meanwhile, don’t discount agile toes….
You people are incorrigible.
Duck, not the slightest interest in helping Apple win this one. They are going to loose and I would rather it be sooner then later. Steve was probably delirious when he did this or, he was the only one who could pull it off.
I refuse to download an app for anything that can be viewed in a computer browser, and that includes Facebook and a whole lot of other fucktard shit.
😀 Praise by faint damn, again. Incomparably incorrigible.
Marie, toes have their place. No match for hands and fingers–And Opposable Thumbs!!!– and tactile sensations that seem to cause heavier breathing, 🙂
“Praise by faint damn.”
Unfortunately, that level of understanding went out by about 1940. I was born in ’61, but I pay attention, most particularly to the inexplicit.
In Steve’s defense (may he rest in peace) Flash is a piece of crap. A big energy/resource hog too. I’m with HTML5 on this one.
Ah, you’ve got a point. Now I must claim the better part of valor 🙂
I don’t know if this is a thing but…
My normal process is: Glass of water > Add PS+other fibre and stir > Empty SBO caps into that and stir > Drink. I end up with some of the soil granules sticking to the sides of the glass.
BUT when I mix the PS and SBOs together dry, the sides of the glass come out clean. Is this the SBOs attaching to the RS more effectively?
“Praise by faint damn.” Indeed.
I intuit yr style is “Praised with hot damns” , which chimes with Asprey’s acquiescence with & yr not knowing about Luke 6:27 etc
“Love your enemies, do good to them who hate you .. .. ..”
.. .. .. or even “Praised by Hot Dams”.
Those who don’t like yr style “Faint by hot damns.”
Even the stasistician in me is gettin’ bored with this riff – permute no more!
Inexplicit, yes .. ..
I find it rather interesting that the latest “-plicit” word is complicit, which derives it’s sociologically correct connotatation because it rhymes with illicit – add an ell, move a mile.
Mind you, implication are in the eye of the looker and in the ear of the behearer. Which explains why theatre directors are in constant debate about subtext.
Lapdogs are corrigible, Germane Sheps only when convinced.
Rich & Marie,
I have gotten so used to PinnieTheWooo’s practice of indenting comments.
I’d forgotten that practice had been stopped here. You may argue it among yourselves – oh, the subtext gives the answer.
Sláinte
Hey Marie –
From yr comment I’ve deduced that Jerry Lewis was considered tone deaf by Dino: Joseph Levitch preferred his dinas-on-the-shore just like Paleoistus FlintStone.
Póigín amháin.
[…] It's more from regular commenter Duck Dodgers, the guy who brought us Tiger Nuts, a delightful ancient tuber with an amazing micro and macro nutrient profile. He did such a big job on this one that I'm going to have to put it in 2 parts for the TL;DR crowd. [Part 2] […]
Marie 🙂 only one letter and from the same source #homoniemen. Yes, I’m from the Netherlands, Amsterdam. Nice that you could guess 😉
Thanks for your kind words.
I can not return the tide, but others can maybe stop it in time. I hope for them.
Think Ah’s gittin’ a bout a Attarexia.
I did not know that Dino was messing with a Dina’s shore in ’56 – so I intuited my Levitch comment.
What about philandroid or do dat raise an unHoly ghost ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrK5u5W8afc –
Not so Righteous – more Nat “King”.
“And now for something completely different”.
Segway from recent death of TW3’s David Frost to Eddie Izzard
–
Here is an apocrophil Izzard one-liner:
Q. Did you hear how the Oxford don advised a recent graduate ?
A. I wouldn’t take up teaching Latin as you may have to decline anus.
(Zwei-liner, actually)
I see Dawn is finally fingering Rosie – need a double espress and e-fag.
Dá póg mhór
Y Y
LeoPirAtticus
PS – – agus ná ar do thón.
Quote – 2. If obligate carnivores are actually, in the wild, getting more carbohydrate than a lot of omnivores, there’s something really screwy going on.
Question – Honestly, do you REALLY think this is the case? Really?
He was probably referring to LC omnivores. He didn’t say most omnivores.
Truthfully it’s very difficult to really know how much glycogen animals were eating. However, it’s fairly well known that carnivorous animals go right for the tripe and livers right after a kill. Skins are usually devoured too. So, these carnivores preferred the higher carb animal parts. Also, since their food was raw, and full of enzymes and pre-formed compounnds, they didn’t expend as much energy to digest their foods and didn’t expend as much energy creating those compounds. Thus, their glucose requirements could be far less. So, it’s difficult to compare them to those of us who consume cooked foods.
Interestingly hyenas come in for the leftovers and rarely get a chance at the carby parts. But guess what? Hyenas are omnivores. They supplement their diet with fruit!
DD
Homo Sapiens, Porcus and Hyaenida.
What a truly Magnificent Threesome.
Sláinte
Truthfully, what I’d like to know is if wild obligate carnivores were ever found to be in ketosis after consuming a fresh kill. I’m not sure it’s ever been studied.
Hey Marie –
From yr comment I’ve deduced that Jerry Lewis was considered tone deaf by Dino: Joseph Levitch preferred his dinas-on-the-shore just like Paleoistus FlintStone.
Póigín amháin.
PS maybe you meant virophiliac, hmmm ?
Mmmm, to come home late after a grueling day and find all this…… and one little kiss.
But with it, not Billy Holiday’s moment of bliss, mo chroi. Rather, another Dinah’s : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmBxVfQTuvI
Meanwhile, ah ne’er did like that Dinah Shore, ‘cept maybe with Dino in this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8ivmypUVzA
PS virtuous, versatile , virophiliac permutation > end (now that there was execrable 🙂 )
Ah, I too noticed that the Ancient unperturbed one and you managed to incite some insightful perturbations. Delightful, in unexpected ways.
As for Eddie, that’s the act I went to last November! In Toronto though, part of the same tour. Hilarious.
Meanwhile, sounds like a gay dawn and, e-fags might get me hooked all anew. flavors! sigh.
[…] …The very first post on resistant starch was over 90 posts ago, April 24, 2013, with a prophetic title: Prepare for the “Resistant Starch” Assimilation; Resistance is Futile [emphasis added]. See, I actually did lots of homework on this with Tim, prior to sticking my neck out—while admonishing him that he'd better be right. It's naturally going better than according to plan and I simply intend to keep at it. The numbers tell the story, and it's a way to live in a natural, fed mode of being, rather than an unnatural, simulated starvation mode in chronic VLC or ketogenic fad dieting, typing LOLS with their fingers! at people who point out that even the Inuit were never producing ketones above the normal. […]
[…] ~ Dr. Bill Lagakos of Calories Proper seems to have been interested in my 2-Part "Duck Dodgers" series: Disrupting Paleo: Inuit and Masai Ate Carbs and Prebiotics (Part 1 and Part 2). […]
[…] and raw connective tissues that resist enzymatic digestion and the gut microbes take over). See more here. Here […]
[…] Disrupting Paleo: Inuit and Masai Ate Carbs and Prebiotics, Part 2 […]
I have just changed my diet to a diet based on Dr Weston Price. I am curious to know what the Paleo Dieters think of Weston Price as the two diets seem to be almost identical – the main difference being that Price is very big on dairy (raw milk, cultured milk, unpasteurised cheeses etc).
He also seems to recommend a balance of fats, proteins and carbs and a balance of raw food and cooked foods.
Because I had/have an incredibly bad rash and itching when I changed my diet 3 weeks ago, to the extent that I am on antihistamine tablets as the itching was so bad, I wanted to tear my skin off, I have been researching to see what I am doing wrong.
I think and I speak under correction – that I may have been eating too much meat , specifically protein without enough/any carbs.
This lead me to the question of what the proper ration of fats, proteins and carbs should be and I found on several websites that a ballpark figure is around 65% fats, 20% carbs and 15% protein. Now I have no intention of doing calorie counting as thats not a natural way to eat, but I just wanted to get a rough idea of the ratios to prevent getting another rash (which I think is because I was eating too much meat and not any vegetables and my one foot was swelling up as well which is a sign of dehydration). I wasn’t eating vegetables because I was concentrating on eating meat which has been lacking in my diet for some time.
The thing that puzzles me is the fact that the ratio is 65% fat and 15% protein. How is it possible to achieve that ratio when meat is high in both protein and fat. From what I can read I cannot see how anyone can achieve 65% fat, while limiting the protein to only 15% as meat is close to 1:1 ratio for them. I would have to be eating tablespoons of butter to get the ratio of fat at that rate.
I have found the same problem with Dr Price as with the Paleo diet. I understand that I need to eat grass fed meat, fish and I now realise that I need to eat a fair amount of vegetables. But what I am finding hard to work out is how often I should be eating meat and fish if I don’t need a lot of protein and how I am supposed to increase my fat intake without overdoing the protein intake as I think I must have been doing as I am sure that too much protein and no carbs caused the rash and itching. I am having a lot of dairy, but thats mostly fat and I would have had to eat tons of butter to get up to 65% fat ratio.
I am very pleased with this article as it made me more certain that a balanced diet should include a lot of vegetables especially the dark green variety – which again is what Price says. In fact this article confirms my feelings that Dr Price was on the right track how we should be eating.
Robert
You probably need to do some gut work. Hit the banner at the very top. Focus on both food to feed the 100 trillion, and also dirt-based organisms, in case you’re missing anything in this hyper-clean world.
Isn’t that a sign of gout?
I agree with Richard. You messed up your gut from VLC (it’s very pretty common, and I did it too). Rashes aren’t directly caused by improper macronutrient levels. Rather, it’s an indirect relationship. What happened is you didn’t eat enough starches and fiber so your gut flora starved and you got a leaky gut as your flora decided to eat your gut barrier, which now allows food toxins that would normally stay in the gut to leak out into your bloodstream and cause rashes.
The solution is to rebuild the gut barrier by doing the “gut work” as Richard says.
65% fats, 20% carbs and 15% protein is probably fine. You might check out the Perfect Health Diet which is a bit more balanced (55% fat, 30% carbs, 15% protein) and is a bit closer to the ratios of human breast milk (which is roughly 55%F, 39%C, 6%P), but is adjusted for an adult. When your gut is leaky, it probably helps to mimic mother nature a bit.
You may find that you need to limit your carbs to safe starches (as the PHD recommends) while you rebuild your gut barrier and you glycosylate your gut mucin.
After a few weeks, or months, depending on the severity of your sensitivities, you should be able to incorporate WAPF foods if you should choose to. I think WAPF is great, but it can be challenging when you have a leaky gut since many WAPF foods can still cause reactions in people with leaky guts. So, if you start with starches as your carbs (yes, it’s a lot when you weigh it out) you can rebuild your gut with minimal reactions and then start to tolerate more foods.
Good luck to you.
Swelling in the feet can be dehydration. When your body is dehydrated, it sometimes stores water such as in your cheeks so your cheeks look rounded etc. I have also noticed my skin is peeling especially on the elbows.
It is interesting that you mention 55% fat and 30% carbs from the Perfect Health Diet as the two websites both mentioned the ratios that I put in and they both linked to the Perfect Health Diet. I don’t mind increasing the carbs for two reasons. I do not have a weight problem as I have a very fast metabolism, its never been an issue and secondly because vegetables are cheaper than meat and dairy. And my food bill has gone up a fair bit as buying organic meat is not cheap!
I will have a look into this leaky gut you mention. You most likely are correct, although I will be honest and state that I very rarely ever ate vegetables and fruits in the past – in fact I ate very badly, so I don’t know how I could be starving the flora as I never really ate properly.
I don’t think that I will have a problem with incorporating WAPF foods – I think that my mistake was such a drastic change in diet. I ate way more meat and eggs and dairy than I usually do and I had virtually zero carbs as I was still researching what vegetables and fruits were ok ( I now know that I can eat any veg or fruit – but fruit in moderation – sort of like chocolate lol). I also cut out tea, coffee and sugar and chocolates at the same time so I was thinking the candida starvation could be the cause. There are so many things that can cause rashes, its doubtful I will ever know exactly what caused mine. Oh well.
I will continue to use the Paleo diet as a means of research as its virtually identical to the WAPF diet – the prime difference being the dairy issue and whether one should eat starch or not and subtle differences like that.
After doing a lot of research, I am leaning towards the feeling that as long as you eat organic, fresh natural foods and completely cut out sugar and drastically reduce tea and coffee (caffeine) to an occasional treat, I should be fine. Purely cutting out wheat and other phycite containing foods and cutting out sugar, caffeine and all the processed crap will make more difference than how much fish/meat/veggies you eat. This is just my opinion at this point in time and is subject to change as research continues. This is also the philosophy of Weston Price. He said don’t worry about how many carbs you are eating and so on. Just eat natural, fresh organic foods and cut out white flour, sugars, caffeine’s and all the processed crap and you are more or less there. Although he did say that you need a high ratio of animal fats to carbs such as the PHD recommends.
My next bit of research is to learn what makes a good breakfast and suppers (protein, fat or carbs based) so that I have loads of energy from breakfast time until lunch time and no hunger issues. The problem with WAPD and indeed Paleo is that our ancestors did not hold 9-5 jobs, so we have to adjust our eating patterns according to our working routines. My lack of energy over the last few years is the prime reason why I am changing my diet – I never had any energy and I always struggled and still do struggle to get out of bed in the morning. So I think I need to have higher protein for supper and breakfast to give me the energy that I need for waking up in the morning and keep me going from breakfast to lunch. And perhaps more carbs at lunch. I don’t know – that part is still a work in research in progress as it were. I know that a heavy carb meal does make you feel sleepy so maybe that is better at night, but on the other hand I have heard that carbs at supper time are what puts on the spare tyre that people get as they go from their 30’s to their 40’s.
Anyway thanks Duck Dogers and Richard for your comments. I will definitely look into this leaky gut thing as I want to go off the antihistamines this weekend coming up.
Your story is quite common. I’m just like you. Fast metabolism, very thin, I can eat whatever I want. I used to eat a big bowl of cereal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and pasta/meat for dinner. Yum.
But, the big flaw with low carb “Paleo” that few people seem to realize is that up to 20% of the carbs people eat in SAD escape digestion and feed gut flora. And, in fact, that’s how nearly every American feeds the majority of their gut flora, particularly if/when they don’t eat enough actual fiber.
Sooo…. If you were eating SAD, like I was, and then you suddenly decide to become “healthy” and follow a low-carb “Paleo” diet, you’ll soon find yourself getting less fiber to your colon than you were on SAD. Those big salads just don’t offer as much fermentable fiber as people think they do.
In other words, SAD dieters probably do a better job feeding their gut flora than Paleo dieters do. This is not to say that SAD is healthy. It isn’t.
Adrenal fatigue is rampant in the “Paleo” community, and I suspect this fiber deficit has a lot to do with it. Less fiber makes its way to the large intestine, pH rises from less SCFAs being fermented, commensal gut flora dwindles, pathogens move in, the gut gets leaky, toxins enter the blood, and so on…
So, that’s how low carb Paleo screwed up fiber. Never mind that our Paleo ancestors managed to eat at least 4 to 5 times the fiber that SAD dieters eat.
The modern version of low carb “Paleo” is a joke when you consider fiber quantities and how that impacts the gut flora.
Read the PHD. Eat the eggs, the meat, the carbs. You won’t regret it. Many here think the PHD should include properly prepared legumes, but do what works best for you.
In terms of tolerating WAPF, when your gut is leaky, it’s possible you can get reactions to some WAPF foods (gluten, grains, legumes). I guess you could say the point of the PHD is to get carbs, fat and protein from low toxin foods that tend to not cause as many issues in the context of a leaky gut. Once the gut heals, those toxins in various grains and whatnot should be more tolerable.
I found this pdf to be a great comparison. Based on more research that I have done, I am leaning towards the optimal paleo diet as described in this pdf in the sense of limiting my exposure to grains – I only really want to make sourdough bread and limiting fruits and starch (but not cutting them out entirely.) The fructose issue in fruit would suggest that fruit is not as healthy as it would appear to be.
I liked the opinions of the various diets by the author of this pdf
http://www.eat-real-food-paleodietitian.com/support-files/dietcomparisonguide.pdf
Interesting point to note, that according to this pdf, the Gaps diet excludes starchy foods despite the fact that you say a leaky gut in my particular scenario is caused by an absence of starch or fibre or both!
Robert,
What we are simply talking about is the difference between feeding and starving your gut flora. Plain and simple.
The GAPS diet was never really intended to be a long term diet. It can be very therapeutic for a few weeks or months, while weeding/starving pathogens from the gut. But, it will do very poorly for feeding your flora over the long term.
Here’s a good quote from Chris Kresser’s podcast where he discusses GAPS with Jeff Leach of the Human Food Project. If you’re not familiar with Kresser, he’s a practitioner who uses GAPS in his practice:
Safe starches (i.e. many complex carbs) are useful for glycosylating critical glycans throughout the body and promoting the production of mucins (especially for the gut lining) and the fermentable fibers in starches help close what is known as the “carbohydrate gap”.
Here’s another explanation of the carbohydrate gap:
So, most low carb diets are oblivious to the importance of feeding beneficial gut flora and maximizing SCFA production in the gut. If you want a healthy gut, maximizing SCFA production is the name of the game.
The one thing I’ve learned from looking into indigenous cultures, and how they ate, is that they all revered their carbs — and ate them whenever they could. I have yet to find any exceptions.
And.. the idea of a “leaky gut” isn’t something I came up with. Even allopathic medicine is beginning to understand the importance of the gut barrier.
From that same interview I quoted, above with Jeff Leach from the Human Food Project:
That’s all I’m saying.
So I think that a lot of this is true and correct…as far as it and our knowledge goes…which isn’t always very far.
I have recently written a bit about my ideas about the GAPS-ish protocol that my family has been using for the past four years, which we change up as we learn more and more: http://www.lifeisapalindrome.com/updates/thinking-about-gaps-resistant-starch-and-beyond .
What I’m mainly thinking right now, as I read these comments, is that it is very easy to extrapolate from what works for _healthy_ people to what _might or might not work_ for _not healthy_ people.
Sorry for all the underlining, but I think this is a huge, important distinction that must be made. When my son was exceedingly sick, about four years ago (when we began GAPS), he had a diet that was pretty high in fiber and resistant starch…but these things were not the most important, all things considered, when we began tackling the subject of his messed-up gut. He couldn’t tolerate raw vegetables, nor starch, nor sugar for a very long time. Now, however, he is doing better and better, finally able to tolerate “regular” starch seemingly because (or at least since) he’s also taking supplemental resistant starch.
But this is all in addition to so very many dietary factors! And us having dealt with his severe anorexia first, using seat-of-our-pants “therapeutic” approaches but mostly nutrition and a sense of desperation. And yes, maybe he could have tolerated these carbs two years ago, if I had known to trial them in a particular order (as I write in the update I link to above)…but maybe not. And there are many people who just don’t have the right bugs in their guts, even when they take probiotics, SBOs and all…and when they feed them, their symptoms regress. I’m not at ALL trying to imply that feeding ones microbiota is a bad idea!! I’m totally on that bandwagon. I’m just saying that when a person is severely ill, it’s not nearly so simple, and not everyone can digest or deal with the carbs that should, if they were healthy, be feeding their gut bugs.
Hi Duck,
You may have misunderstood my comment. I actually agree with you on the need for starches. I was just surprised that the GAPS excludes that, particularly as the pdf I linked up said that the GAPS diet is supposed to be a short term diet and not recommended as a permanent thing. So I would expect starches to be included to maintain the good bacteria.
My comment about the leaky gut was not because I don’t believe in the leaky gut – I have in fact been coming across a large number of articles by Kresser and other articles such that I am completely aware of it. My comment was more in mind of whether the leaky gut issue was the cause of my rash, or just the sudden drastic change in diet and huge increase in meat and dairy. A sudden rapid change could equally cause that.
But I will be following the GAPS diet to eliminate the toxins and rebuild my gut as it cannot be in good condition due to the many years of bad diet.
Thank you for all your comments – you have helped a lot and I do agree with what you are saying – I just found it interesting that the chart indicated no starches on the GAPS diet which is contrary to what both yourself and Kessler were saying.
@SarabethMatilsky: Totally understand. You have to do what works for your family.
@Robert. Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.
“But I will be following the GAPS diet to eliminate the toxins and rebuild my gut as it cannot be in good condition due to the many years of bad diet.”
Honestly, you probably do not need to go on GAPS. GAPS is really a starvation “weeding” protocol for when really bad pathogens are present, especially when psychological issues are manifesting themselves. But, for the usual detox and gut repair that you’re talking about, you can achieve all that with by just eating well. Your gut bugs play a major role in detoxification so it does not make sense to starve them for that purpose. Seriously, you can lose some rare keystone species during a starvation protocol.
Assuming you currently have a decent variety of gut bugs, feeding them fiber will turn your gut into a detoxification factory by getting your gut bugs to produce methylation-supporting vitamins and compounds that run your detoxification pathways. The flora (assuming you have them) will literally make many of the vitamins and compounds your body needs to detox.
The GAPS diet is excellent for people with psychological issues (hence the “GAPS” name for, “Gut and Psychology Syndrome”) in that it starves the pathogens that contribute to psychological issues. But, it’s not without risks to your keystone and commensal populations. I would be cautious as it can be a challenge to restore those beneficial flora.
Like most normal people who spent their lives eating SAD, you would likely do very well by simply eating a balanced diet that included fermentable fibers.
Once again Duck, I find myself agreeing with you. From what I have read of the Gap diet, low energy levels is a big problem. As my biggest problem is really low energy levels, it makes no sense for me to do the Gaps Diet. No what I will do is do as you suggest and just concentrate on eating a wide variety of meats, vegetables and fish. The more I read, the more convinced I become that just eating a very wide range of vegetables, meats and fishes is really the key.
I am going to exclude fruits for a couple of months (to reduce issues with sugar spikes) and the only grain that I am going to have is spelt and rye to make my sourdough bread. As so many people have such a differing opinion on dairy (is it good/bad for you), I have decided that I will continue to have dairy as its high in fats and I like milk and I don’t seem to have a problem with milk or any dairy product.
The main problem that I am having is learning how to cook properly. If you can cook – you’re hired!
Cheers Rob
Sounds good, Robert. Does your low energy feel like it’s related to adrenal fatigue? It seems to run rampant in low carb circles. Eating carbs/starches should help restore your energy levels after a few weeks.
There’s no need to avoid all fruit. Just don’t eat tons of it. Have a banana every day if you feel like it. It’s a good source of potassium.
Raw grass fed milk is pretty excellent if you can obtain it.
Cooking is easy the more you do it. Here are some of the most useful things to learn… Learn how to use a chef’s knife (watch a you tube video) and it will cut down on prep time. Learn how to make a pan sauce (also watch a you tube video) and it will make any meat taste amazing. Learn how to cook a yam or mashed potato to go with that meat and you have half a meal. Make a few yams at once and you have easy and wholesome fast-food for a few days. Get a rice cooker and you’ll never screw up rice. Learn how to make beans properly and just make 4 cups at once in a slow cooker and you’ll have high RS3 beans for weeks. Learn how to make a dressing (a little acid, a little more fat and some herbs, salt/pepper). Then it’s just the easy veggies after that. Get a few cook books with easy recipes, and low ingredient counts, for ideas (Jamie Oliver, Nigel Slater, etc.). I find the recipes with the fewest ingredients are the easiest to make.
Boom.. that’s 80% of it right there. You’ll be slow at first, but you’ll get quicker every week. Put on some music. Before you know it, you’ll be in a rhythm and having fun. When in doubt, add a little salt 🙂
Cooking is easy! Ha – no some people are good at maths and some people are good at cooking lol.
But I will get there.
No I think that my problem with energy is that I am simply not eating enough. In other words if I need 2300 calories a day, and I am only eating 1500 calories then naturally my energy will not be adequate.
For example having some left over chicken in a salad is not enough for lunch as half a breast is not enough chicken. Or having two eggs, but no sausages or bacon – again not enough food even if I don’t feel hungry after eating either of those things. I have to build up my appetite.
My God, you are a genius. I just came across another website saying that when you go “low” carb as in paleo style, you need to have a lot of potassium because you are losing a lot of water! And this is a major cause of tiredness.
As per comment Gigi on this website. http://clairediazortiz.com/what-i-learned-by-trying-the-paleo-diet/
It would explain my dehydration – low carb having less water than SAD foods and constant tiredness and why I seem to “pick up” after drinking some water or some milk. I hope that the dairy is not contributing to the tiredness as the paleo 30 day challenge excludes dairy which I have kept in as a necessary source of fat.
I will definitely go buy some bananas for that potassium. I got up this morning at 6:30, had two eggs, a glass of milk and two slices of sourdough bread and crashed absolutely shattered at 11:30, so I went to bed as I really needed the rest. I have just woken up, but not really feeling rested, but a glass of milk has picked me up a bit.
One other thing that I am finding is physical tiredness in the sense your legs and arms feel weak as if you had done a 30km walk – thats the kind of fatigue I am getting a lot – the last thing I want to do is go to the gym as I just don’t have any strength.
I don’t know if its because I have given up tea, coffee and sugar in addition to changing what I eat as well or whether my body is tired because its still detoxing or repairing internal/external damage, but I expected to have a lot more energy after 30 days on the diet. Although I have never had a crash like this one – I wonder if it is the sourdough bread that I bought this weekend that could be causing it. Not that I ever had such a reaction of tiredness to bread before! Although I was not eating sourdough bread in the past.
I also find when I wake up in the morning that I am very thirsty, even if I drink water just before going to bed.
I think that I am going to start doing a calorie, protein, fat counting logging to see if I am short in something. I also wonder if being very thin, my body is not able to use fat as an energy and instead is still trying to use carbs as energy.
I will persevere but its frustrating not knowing the cause of my tiredness and why I am always thirsty despite the fact that I drink a lot more water, probably about 5 glasses a day. I hope the energy levels pick up soon.
You are probably not going to want to hear this, but if you are crashing that hard and so soon after breakfast, it sounds like you are having a reaction to your breakfast. My money is on a gluten reaction in the sourdough bread. The eggs (at least the yolks) should be well tolerated. Raw milk should be well tolerated (if you are drinking pasteurized milk, all bets are off). That leaves the bread.
Now, I know what you’re thinking… how could I be having a gluten reaction after eating so much gluten for my entire life and having no issues? Well, I went through a similar experience, so I’ll explain.
I used to eat carbs all day and I felt pretty fine. I had some brain fog and skin issues, but never really noticed them until I fixed them somewhat recently.
I tried WAPF but found it extremely difficult to obtain/prepare their legal grains foods. Beans were a pain in the ass. Good breads were hard to find and even harder to make. I always forgot to soak my oatmeal and didn’t really love eating it every day. And I didn’t think to eat a ton of starchy vegetables to make up for the minimal amounts of carbs I was eating. (That’s the paradox of avoiding refined grains — complex carbs are mostly water and you have to eat a crap load of complex carbs to make up for not eating enough grains).
Lesson learned. If you aren’t that good at cooking — and I certainly wasn’t back then — don’t start with the diet that requires the most work of all of them. WAPF is a lot of work for newbies. Far easier to just heat up a yam or some rice.
After months of not eating enough carbs, and feeling like shit, I found myself passing out if I ate a pizza or a sandwich. Granted there were blood sugar issues that had developed from my accidental VLC diet, but my passing out reactions were much more pronounced from a slab of pizza than they were from potatoes.
At any rate, I couldn’t believe that I had gluten issues. It made no sense since I practically survived on gluten my entire life. What I suspect happened — and this is all very speculative — is that my carb-loving biome had dwindled and a fungal infection had flourished (a wonderful byproduct of VLC and ketone-adapted candida). This all likely punched holes in my gut and I had less carb-loving bacteria metabolizing the gluten toxins. Plus, eating yeasty foods probably also made the VLC-induced fungal infection bloom. Gluten is notorious at making susceptible people sleepy. I was stuck.
Fast forward a few months, and I can tell you that the Perfect Health Diet saved my life. Granted I had to weigh my starchy foods to make sure I was eating enough (I am thin and my VLC made me extremely thin). But, the diet eliminates virtually all food toxins and gives you a macronutrient ratio that mimics human milk. That’s pretty much all there is to it.
I continued eating a banana per day (the author does too and small amounts of fructose is encouraged). I continued drinking raw milk to heal the gut (the author doesn’t recommend it, but admits that it can have some benefits if you can find a good source), but I was eating a ridiculous amount of rice, potatoes and yams with fermentable fibers and taking RS and probiotics. Within 3-4 weeks I felt much better. Within 3-4 months I was already a new person.
Honestly, if you are having skin reactions from WAPF, that should be a massive clue that not only do you have a leaky gut (as explained in an earlier comment, above) but that you have toxins literally going through your blood every time you eat those foods. Those toxins are probably making you feel like you are drugged.
So, again, the PHD is designed to reduce those toxins to a minimum while eating enough carbs to support a healthy gut barrier and provide enough substrates for beneficial fermentation.
Seriously, look at the Reader Results page and notice how the diet fixes such a wide range of health issues. It’s no joke. All those health issues are related to the gut in some way or another.
Reducing food toxins while supporting your immune system, microbiome, and gut lining is definitely the way to go. Over time, you’ll very likely be able to eat WAPF foods again without reactions, and by that time you can ease into it since you’ll be an expert at cooking by that point 🙂
Thank you very much for you advice. You have been most helpful. I will take your advice and buy the book Perfect Health Diet as its clear that this is the path that I need to follow.
I do agree that it must have been something I ate for breakfast or supper the previous night as I don’t feel the same sense of exhaustion that I felt yesterday. My tiredness now is not tiredness as in sleep, but rather that I don’t feel like running around and doing cartwheels! But I think that will come in time.
Cooked pinach and raw avo’s are even higher in potassium just so that you know. I bought bananas as well!
I have now cut out the sourdough which was the only and first grain product that I was having this weekend.
I will keep you posted once I have my book and have read it. What is RS and probiotics?
“What is RS and probiotics?”
Hey Robert, come on man! Free The Animal is drowning in posts about RS and probs! Don’t piss off the host!! 😀 😀
Hint: click here https://freetheanimal.com/2013/12/resistant-primer-newbies.html
I quite concur with DD’s post. I ate a big piece of nasty cake a while back because of a special celebration, after 1 year of complete gut health turnaround (pre/probiotics, RS, etc). Result ? no reaction.
Is that a reason to indulge in crap ? Nope. I couldn’t care less about the cake. Tasted like sugary flour and my taste has changed dramatically since cleaning up my diet.
My experience too, though a fresh, light but crusty baguette is still awesome.
Hey Frite. Are you familiar with the sandwiches they make in the south, principally Toulon? They basically smash a baguette and whatever is in it flat with a panini grill. Navy guys called them “smash” sandwiches but I don’t recall ever noticing a particular French name for them.
My favorite was steak hache with gruyere. Then after smashing, it’s opened up and spread with mayo and a handful of frites are added in.
Made one at home the other day. First one in about 22 years.
@Richard
I know these meat and fries baguette-sandwiches as “un Américain”, haha 😀
Thank you Lafrite. I will read the article after supper. I just assumed it was something that duck was talking about an not something that was on the website. I have been doing a lot of reading lately and I have probably read about RS and forget all about it as that particular issue was not on my radar at the time! Rob
I thought I’d drop a picture:
http://justinsomnia.org/images/sandwich-americain-half-eaten-big.jpg
I also used to have them with “merguez” instead of minced meat (I still eat merguez).
And last but no least, Richard, if you never tried that, here is the truffade (Cantal area):
http://www.dumieletdusel.com/archives/2011/09/04/21937502.html
http://p6.storage.canalblog.com/63/82/432288/67865042.jpg
Look at the stuff, with a big steak of Salers cow … after a 48h fast, that’s what you want 😀
@Sarabeth
“…and a sense of desperation”. Quite a sensible response considering you were dealing with anorexia which is always a killer. One of the first things that happens with cancer patients when they finally give up is anorexia. Why eat when it’s making you incredibly ill?
This gut dysbiosis is an exceedingly nasty phenomenon. I can give you a couple of tips from my own experience that you may find helpful. I trust though that you have a pediatrician that’s helping you with your son’s condition, who is aware of GAPs? If not, I would find one. I’ve read the site you’ve posted and noticed that the whole family is afflicted with some type of dysbiosis?
I’ve had SIBO and to a certain extent still have it, but am much better than a couple of years ago. I like Campbell-McBride’s analysis of what is actually happening but like you ended up here because I still can’t quite shake it completely and have been left with the feeling that the complete picture is still a little cloudy concerning what is happening biologically. Campbell-McBride’s emphasis is on MSRA bacteria and probiotics. One problem I have with her analysis is the quite long time she gives for eventual resolution, a couple of years. My feeling is that if she had all the factors in perspective, it wouldn’t take near as long.
As you know, the condition is extremely inflammatory. Not only locally but systemically as well. This puts an extreme drain on the glutathione sysem which includes vitamin C. If I remember correctly, she does mention B12 as a component in her regimen. However, I don’t think she gives enough emphasis to it. Most will know that it’s required for the production of red blood cells. It’s also an absolutely required nutrient for the epithelial tissues, i.e., the enterocytes that line the small intestine. Red blood cells turn over at the average rate of once every 120 days. The enterocytes turn over at the rate of once every four days. When I first discovered that I almost fell out of my chair. If a subclinical deficiency of it presents, I would think that it would present there first. All my blood panels though were within normal ranges.
It’s also a required nutrient in the glutathione cycle. Glutathione being the body’s best and foremost anti-inflammatory. Glutathione is the replenisher for vitamin C in the body. If that doesn’t occur vitamin C is rapidly depleted and excreted.
Now…here’s something many don’t know. One of the first signs of scurvy is an incredibly bad attitude. I’ve had scurvy and I’ve previously had days when I was irritable. There is nothing that can compare to the irritability you face with scurvy. It is profound. And I’ve wondered when I’ve read Campbell-McBride’s work whether this had anything to do with the mental problems her clients faced. Physically, it will present on the lower legs as petecchia around the hair follicles. That’s minute amounts of blood that have leaked from the capillary beds. They take a biopsy then examine it for petecchia. Then you get a yea or nay diagnosis.
Not only does inflammation affect the beta cells of the pancreas and the insulin resistance of cells of the body, it also affects the acinar cells of the pancreas that excrete digestive enzymes and bicarbonate. I at one time was so affected that I couldn’t digest protein at all. If I tried, I swelled up for three days, then got massive diarrhea and lost all kinds of weight. I lost as much as 9 pounds in one single night. At first I had to take an amino acid mix just to get to a point where I could digest protein. This is a bit expensive so I ended up on pancreatin enzymes. I’m much better now, but don’t know how I would have made it w/o those aminos. One of the things that a naturopath will tell you to take to ensure digestion is hydrochloric acid, probably as Betaine hydrochloride. For anyone with pancreatic insufficiency, it’s not such a great idea (sorry Dr. BG). Because with pancreatic insufficiency you don’t produce enough bicarb, nor proteases. You can feel that hot little puppy all the way through your entire digestive system all the way to the exit. The only way to deal with that is to take a shot of sodium bicarb at about one hour after eating or when first noticing discomfort. Frankly, I just opted for the pancreatin. Stools are soft, consistent and without any sign of undigested matter. The problem there being whether or not it digested in the small intestine or did it digest mostly in the colon. Indigestion of protein is pretty serious. If it doesn’t go well you end up with putrification which puts off all kinds of nasty chemicals and peptides in your blood that only up the inflammation and overload you liver. You can find amino acids for about $25 at the Vitamin Shoppe. It’s the easiest way I’ve found. The only others that I’ve found are individual aminos from a bulk shop that you would have to mix yourself. Pancreatin can be found at one of the Gerson suppliers online, about $40 for 750 325mg caps. You might want to trial the aminos first as an adjunct to the normal diet, say 25% of normal protein intake. I felt quite good on them but their relatively expensive, they go quick. They would be palliative only, they prolly won’t do anything for the dysbiosis. They would help insure that one gets a minimum of the amino acids despite poor digestion. But if stools are consistent without much undigested matter you may not want to bother.
People talk about SIBO as if it affects only the small intestine. But from personal experience I can tell you that it can grow into the pancreas and also up through the bile ducts into the gall bladder and into the liver. This I know for a fact, but please don’t ask how I know. It’s not a pleasant story.
And of course all this puts a load on the liver. Malaise, low energy, etc. There were times that I didn’t eat anything during the day because I didn’t have time to be sick. And, I felt better. Then my doctor lets me know that well…your losing weight so I up my intake. But if I have a slow, consistent weight loss no matter how much I eat, it’s the b12. I’m serious, you wouldn’t believe how fast inflammation can burn up the substrates for glutathione. And that includes things like b2 (riboflavin) that’s required for enzymes in the glutathione cycle that help regenerate glutathione. Magnesium’s also a problem. Mandatory daily intake. I used to worry about the aminos that are components of the glutathione molecule, NAC, glutamine, glycine, but not so much anymore. As long as I’m digesting protein well, that’s not a problem. But I am surprised at the b12 loss. What healthy people would burn up in two or three years, I burn up in six months. I’ve taken it as injections, oral methyl cobalamin (best) and oral cyano cobalamin. The cyano’s I was taking by the handful, but I did get results…I started gaining weight. I didn’t know at the time that zinc was required for the enzyme responsible for it’s conversion to biological cobalamin. Interestingly, it’s the same enzyme that converts retinoic acid to vitamin A. Vitamin A is another nutrient that is essential for the maintenance of epithelial tissue (all mucus forming membranes) health and immune robustness. The extent of it’s involvement in the immune system of the gut is astounding. And zinc is another element that’ll be used up consistently in an inflammatory state. That’s just personal experience. How much does one need? Nobody knows. It’s never been studied in inflammatory conditions that I’ve found. But amounts below 100mg/day don’t appear to cause problems for an adult. Above that, the medical literature say that it can depress immunity.
I think mostly now I’m dealing with the diabetes side of my condition. Again, magnesium. Diabetics excrete magnesium at an enormous rate. Interestingly, cancer patients excrete calcium at a high rate. Ask a doctor why: “I don’t know.” It’s not unusual for me to take half of a 250mg magnesium citrate capsulet spaced out to 4 or 6 times in a day. I don’t get diarrhea and I’m regular. Works for me. You didn’t mention anything about blood sugar, I didn’t catch it anyway.
Chronic inflammation can also cause anemia of chronic inflammation. When an infection sets off the inflammatory cascade of the immune system, the liver and some other organs will start to sequester iron, copper and manganese to withhold them from the availability of pathogens. The cascade is triggered actually by one of the cytokines, IL-6 or -8. I forget exactly which one. When an acute inflammation such as a cold or flu is resolved this gets turned off. Interestingly, a pathogen isn’t needed to initiate this cascade. Inflammation alone can do it. Also, allergies can do it. In chronic inflammation the signal may not be turned off. When this happens the liver continues to sequester these elements. I’m not sure about the vitamins that are stored in the liver. I haven’t found anything on it in my research. But I have read about naturopaths being concerned about anything that gets stored in the liver. In any event, one then gets to consider the possibility of increased inflammation in the liver due to hemosiderosis, a build-up of iron in the liver. Incidentally, it may not show in a blood lab report. The only way to have this checked is either a liver biopsy or a fairly expensive f-MRI, a ferro-resonant MRI. Personally, I found a hemotologist that understood what I was talking about and was willing to give me phlegbotomies for iron reduction. Took six months to get me to the low side of normal. Oops, just slightly anemic, which was quickly relieved by a couple of iron pills. Copper: an essential for iron homeostasis. Again, you would not believe what will happen to your body if these two elements alone get away from their ligands (binding proteins). Massive inflammation, throughout the whole digestive tract, pancreas and liver; angiomas so numerous you would swear that you have melanoma metastasizing all over your body. It’s unreal.
If you have GERD, you could try a small amount, say 1.25mg of Benadryl, an antihistamine. If it makes the burning sensation of the GERD go away, you have allergies and most likely food allergies. That means that the lining of your gut is so sensitive that the remaining peptides and proteins in your not quite digested food is provoking a histamine release. That’s the first step in the immune response cascade. Doesn’t mean you don’t have GERD, just means you have allergies. A group of doctors have used it to desensitize their patients with food allergies and have had good response. When I take it, I don’t have any symptoms for 3 to 6 days. Next time I get a little heartburn, another 1.25mg and I’m good for another 3-6 days. Interestingly, it appears to be extending the time it takes for me to experience symptoms again, so that’s a positive. Maybe those doctors had something going for real, eh? Hope so, I’ve had that stuff for over 9 years. I discovered this thru serendipity.
So you can see that when the gut goes so does just about everything else. I’ve been through the ringer so I quite understand when someone speaks of desperation.
I wish I could give you links to references concerning the things I’ve mentioned as so many do with their posts here. But, I’ve done research for so long over the last five years, if I never saw another scientific paper I could die and go to heaven. You can find it easily enough using keywords on Wikipedia or Pubmed Central. Wikipedia even has wikibooks on physiology which you will find very helpful for basics. If I were to advise anyone to do specific research, it would be to focus on b12 and the other associated glutathione substrates. Also, vitamin A. The amount of interface with the epithelial tissues and the immune system of the gut and associated lymph is ginormous. It’s fantastic what this one vitamin does. From dendrites to T-reg cells, if you have a curious bent you will be absorbed.
Read more here. I seriously wonder if even those here understand the enormity of what they’re proposing and if true, how kind serendipity has been to them. They’ve done extensive research, some are working on a book which I understand will be extensively referenced. I’ve learned incredible amounts which only adds to my understanding of the biological processes that have sent me here. Occasional fussiness about how some things are presented occurs, but, all things pass. And I can say that overall, my experiences here have been positive. Really, it’s completely absorbed me for the past two days. Evidently they’ve at least made enough noise here that someone’s taking notice. I can now get a bug in a probiotic that I’ve been looking for for over a year. And I just got it delivered today!
Hi Kyle,
Thanks for your thought-provoking ideas! My first question: how in the world did you find a cooperative/knowledgeable care-provider/insurance company?? They don’t exist in my neck of the woods, so far as I know.
> …. Campbell-McBride’s emphasis is on MSRA bacteria and
> probiotics. One problem I have with her analysis is the quite long time
> she gives for eventual resolution, a couple of years. My feeling is that
> if she had all the factors in perspective, it wouldn’t take near as long.
I agree. And yet, it’s those elusive Factors that are the hardest to pin down. “Eat right and exercise” is advice that has the potential to make ~85% of people a whole lot better. It’s the smaller fraction of Tough Cases that I’m particularly interested in, and it’s the fraction that are generally ignored by all except interesting and anecdotal bloggers, the rare doctor, and individuals.
> As you know, the condition is extremely inflammatory. Not only locally
> but systemically as well. This puts an extreme drain on the glutathione
> sysem which includes vitamin C…
Yes, all the nutrient deficiencies… The million-dollar question is not whether they’re there, but…what do you do about them? How do you maximize absorption? And when absorption isn’t happening, how best to supplement the right things, without supplementing the wrong things, without spending your entire savings account in the process?? I’d love to know – I just don’t, and haven’t found anyone who could help me find the right combination, although I am currently experimenting with Paul Jaminet’s suggestions. Way too soon to draw conclusions, however.
> Not only does inflammation affect the beta cells of the pancreas and the
> insulin resistance of cells of the body, it also affects the acinar
> cells of the pancreas that excrete digestive enzymes and bicarbonate. I
> at one time was so affected that I couldn’t digest protein at all. If I
> tried, I swelled up for three days, then got massive diarrhea and lost
> all kinds of weight. I lost as much as 9 pounds in one single night. At
> first I had to take an amino acid mix just to get to a point where I
> could digest protein. This is a bit expensive so I ended up on
> pancreatin enzymes. I’m much better now, but don’t know how I would have
> made it w/o those aminos.
I am always heartened to hear when people, like you, find out what they need to turn the tide! I’m also interested to hear _how_ you figured it out – the diagnostic process, if you will.
> I think mostly now I’m dealing with the diabetes side of my condition.
> Again, magnesium. Diabetics excrete magnesium at an enormous rate.
> Interestingly, cancer patients excrete calcium at a high rate. Ask a
> doctor why: “I don’t know.” It’s not unusual for me to take half of a
> 250mg magnesium citrate capsulet spaced out to 4 or 6 times in a day. I
> don’t get diarrhea and I’m regular. Works for me. You didn’t mention
> anything about blood sugar, I didn’t catch it anyway.
It’s fascinating to me, the way blood sugar is at least implicated in so many of these cases. I’m always trying to figure out: is this causation, or correlation?? If you somehow get your sex hormones in order, will it fix the insulin? Or does insulin need correction in order for estrogen to settle out? etc… I tend to think that blood sugar dysregulation/gut stuff underlies a lot of things, but am not always sure what further to do about it! Besides to follow the nourish-deeply-while-waiting-and-hoping approach.
> Chronic inflammation can also cause anemia of chronic inflammation. …It’s unreal.
Once again, inflammation is such a cause vs. correlation situation. How do you figure it out?
> Read more here. I seriously wonder if even those here understand the
> enormity of what they’re proposing and if true, how kind serendipity has
> been to them.
I often think about this…and how, if we actually had to understand _even a fraction_ our inner workings, pretty much nobody would be alive today. 🙂 An amazing amount just _works_.
> enough noise here that someone’s taking notice. I can now get a bug in a
> probiotic that I’ve been looking for for over a year. And I just got it
> delivered today!
But now I’m curious – which probiotic?
Regards,
Sarabeth
Wow, Sarabeth.
You know how long it’s been since I’ve seen a properly formatted, clean reply using the old USENET and LISTSERVE quoting style?
Nice!
@Sarabeth
So many questions, so little time.
Sarabeth, the answer to a number of your questions is 5 years of intensive research. I wasn’t getting appropriate response or treatment from most of the doctors or naturopaths I’d seen. A lot of what I was running into was nothing more than BS. I have little to no respect for the medical establishment as it is today. You research and read, read, read. After a while some of it sticks with you and you slowly begin to build a general hypothesis upon which to base certain implementations. Out of many puzzle pieces a picture begins to emerge. And then you’ll run into a critical piece of information, integratge in to the rest and say, “So that’s why!” Many times, it was the older papers that carried the information I needed. A lot of todays research is only so much fluff.
But I will try to answer some of your questions.
> …how in the world did you find a cooperative/knowledgeable care-provider/insurance company??
I didn’t. After you find out most MD’s, ND’s are full of bull you quit going to see them. You can save enormous sums of money that way. They’re just palliative pill-pushers anyway.
> but…what do you do about them? How do you maximize absorption? And when absorption isn’t happening, how best to supplement the right things, without supplementing the wrong things, without spending your entire savings account in the process??
Become far more knowledgeable about them (deficiency symptoms, toxicity sympoms) than the average doctor. These people have their own paradigms and they’ll throw out anything that doesn’t fit that pardigm. And well, I pretty much spent my entire savings on trying this or that. But near death experiences do tend to have that affect. You’re gut, even when severely damaged will absorb far more than you would even want to. If you’re not absorbing, or simple supplements are having no affect, what could be blocking that??? With SIBO, the combination of certain strains of bacteria create a biofilm over surface of the entire small intestine. The bacteria/fungi live in that polysaccharide biofilm. That’s a heck of a thing to have between your villi and your food. Plus the bacteria/fungi get to your food before you get anything, except maybe the sugar. Then you get the excretions from their metabolism of your food. Make sense? That’s a blocking mechanism. Many of these bacteria/fungi put off some nasty toxins too and many of the nutrients you get are going to be exhausted dealing with detoxifying them. Look at the subsequent downstream sequelae of whatever problem you have.
>Once again, inflammation is such a cause vs. correlation situation. How do you figure it out?
Welp, first off leave correlation out of it. Correlation is strictly an artifact of statistical analysis. Most people will never deal with statistics. Just about anything that disrupts your body’s homeostasis will cause inflammation to some degree or another. Just eating does it, depending on what you eat and how it’s prepared. One of the most common causes is eating n6-polyunsaturated fats (PUFA). You only need about a teaspoon of n3/n6-polyunsaturated fats at about a 1:1 ratio a day. If you insist on eating more than that, expect a high degree of systemic inflammation. Stick with olive oil, butter, coconut oil and lard. Never eat margarine or any other hydrogenated fat, including hydrogenated lard. Inflammation? Where do you hurt? What’s physically upstream/downstram of that? Begin with a basic physiological understanding of that organ and the most common diseases associated with it. How is it hooked up to the other organs and what are their interactions? Signature symptoms of these illnesses?
>if we actually had to understand _even a fraction_ our inner workings, pretty much nobody would be alive today. 🙂 An amazing amount just _works_.
I’m going to speak to this even though it’s not a question. Successful Paleo societies, living in harsh and even hostile environments accumulated among their members the wisdom to survive those environments. It’s quite useful to have a large number of healthy individuals to defend a tribe from invading tribes from another area. Yes, they more than likely helped each other as opposed to the parasitic medical system we have today!
>But now I’m curious – which probiotic?
The probiotic is called Probiotic 3. Richard has a link on this site to Amazon where you can purchase it. The particular bug is Clostridium Butyricum. Why did I want that particular bug??? Because it produces butyric acid. Butyric acid is an anti-fungal. It’s pretty effective against Candida yeast even when in it’s hyphal form. And most fungi are quite capable of producing polysaccharides….biofilms.
All the microbiome articles here have been very, very interesting in relation to the ‘picture’ I’ve developed over the last five years concerning causes of illness. It filled in holes in that picture in ways that I’d never anticipated.
If you take anything away from what I’ve written here today take this one thing as a beginning. I forget whether it was Pliny or Soccrates or Hippocrates who said, “All illness comes from the gut.” Not sure about the exact phrasing…could have been ‘all disease’. But keep that always in your mind on your journey.
Now, what subset of people is there that seems to have a lot of problems with yeast and fungus???
Those with dysregulated sugar metabolisms. Take a culture sample from the skin of any of them and you’ll find an elevated presence of yeasts and fungi in relation to the cultures of healthy people. The same can be said of those with cancer. One thing feeds on another. Constant, chronic nflammation interferes with the normal immune defenses…sugar causes inflammation.
Starting to get the picture now??
If you had bugs in your gut that fed you energy in the form of easily assimilated fatty acids, you wouldn’t feel the need for high quantities of carbohydrates….such as sugar. There’s no hunger for it, no desire. Hence no inflammation, no fungus.
Kyle
@Richard,
Thank you. 🙂
@Kyle,
Thanks for your thoughts.
You wrote:
> I didn’t [find a cooperative doc/ND]. After you find out most MD’s, ND’s are full of bull you quit
> going to see them. You can save enormous sums of money that way. They’re
> just palliative pill-pushers anyway.
Ah, I concur, and therefore also have not found much help in that realm. I was wondering what your experience was, since you suggested a GAPS-literate pediatrician, which is a type of person I have not encountered during the last four years of my son’s illness (nor during his first six years of life, for that matter).
> I’m going to speak to this even though it’s not a question. Successful
> Paleo societies, living in harsh and even hostile environments
> accumulated among their members the wisdom to survive those
> environments. It’s quite useful to have a large number of healthy
> individuals to defend a tribe from invading tribes from another area.
> Yes, they more than likely helped each other as opposed to the parasitic
> medical system we have today!
Yes, but knowing _what_ to do (which I agree, has been long understood by many more “primitive” cultures than ours) is a lot different from knowing _why._ It’s also different from knowing how to heal from chronic or acute illness.
A relative of mine, who is married to someone from Nepal and has spent much time there, told me that in Nepal, they always soak their rice before cooking. This was years ago, before I learned anything about traditional foods, and I remember telling her: Well, it doesn’t do anything good that I can see, and it takes the same amount of time to cook unsoaked rice, so I’m not planning to soak mine. Which is part of how these traditions get lost, I think – doing is not actually the same as understanding…
> The probiotic is called Probiotic 3. Richard has a link on this site to
> Amazon where you can purchase it. The particular bug is Clostridium
> Butyricum. Why did I want that particular bug??? Because it produces
> butyric acid. Butyric acid is an anti-fungal. It’s pretty effective
> against Candida yeast even when in it’s hyphal form. And most fungi are
> quite capable of producing polysaccharides….biofilms.
>
> All the microbiome articles here have been very, very interesting in
> relation to the ‘picture’ I’ve developed over the last five years
> concerning causes of illness. It filled in holes in that picture in ways
> that I’d never anticipated.
Yes, I totally agree. Action steps for those dealing with continuing chronic illness, however, can be so much more complicated than taking a pill and swallowing some starch. I’ve been experimenting with various forms of resistant starch for over six months, and various types of probiotics for years (for six months, I’ve included the AOR-3 in my repertoire, and had been using Prescript Assist and Primal Defense for a long time before that) – and while both of these things seem to be able to have profound effects…I am not anywhere close to having figured out exactly what is going on inside me, my son, my husband, or our other kids!
Am definitely still experimenting, though. My crapping is MUCH better than it was. Never let it be said that Sarabeth gives up easily. 🙂
> If you take anything away from what I’ve written here today take this
> one thing as a beginning. I forget whether it was Pliny or Soccrates or
> Hippocrates who said, “All illness comes from the gut.” Not sure about
> the exact phrasing…could have been ‘all disease’. But keep that always
> in your mind on your journey.
> Those with dysregulated sugar metabolisms. Take a culture sample from
> the skin of any of them and you’ll find an elevated presence of yeasts
> and fungi in relation to the cultures of healthy people. The same can be
> said of those with cancer. One thing feeds on another. Constant, chronic
> nflammation interferes with the normal immune defenses…sugar causes
> inflammation.
Definitely, I’m pretty sure I agree on both counts. But I haven’t eaten refined sugar is well over four years, and I ate a “whole foods diet”, very low in added sugars, for my entire life before that. I’ve been trying to heal my and my family’s guts for a long time…
Sometimes my husband sums it up: “I wish there was something left for me to quit!” Meaning: we get really envious when we hear about someone cutting out gluten or sugar or dairy and experiencing huge, profound improvements…
I’d LOVE to stop the inflammatory cycle, that is for goddamn sure.
> If you had bugs in your gut that fed you energy in the form of easily
> assimilated fatty acids, you wouldn’t feel the need for high quantities
> of carbohydrates….such as sugar. There’s no hunger for it, no desire.
> Hence no inflammation, no fungus.
I’m definitely up for that – sounds great!
–S
@Sarabeth
>Ah, I concur, and therefore also have not found much help in that realm. I was wondering what your experience was, since you suggested a GAPS-literate pediatrician, which is a type of person I have not encountered during the last four years of my son’s illness (nor during his first six years of life, for that matter).
Well, I don’t know your history so the shotgun approach looked valid. My experience? I went to Campbell-McBride’s site where she lists the elements of her protocol. I’m at a point where I can’t be throwing money at every little suggestion. But then I’m a little more cautious when a youngster is involved so hence the recommendation for a GAPS acquainted pediatrician. It’s been out for a while and they may have progressed in their methods more than we currently know. You may have to travel to a larger city to find suitable treatment.
>I’ve been experimenting with various forms of resistant starch for over six months, and various types of probiotics for years (for six months, I’ve included the AOR-3 in my repertoire, and had been using Prescript Assist and Primal Defense for a long time before that) – and while both of these things seem to be able to have profound effects…I am not anywhere close to having figured out exactly what is going on inside me, my son, my husband, or our other kids!
Again, don’t know your history and had I known this we could have saved some time. I don’t know how much the microbiome tests cost that Dr. BG at AnimalPharm does, but, you might investigate that to see if it’s an option just to put the final nail in the probiotic coffin.
>But I haven’t eaten refined sugar is well over four years, and I ate a “whole foods diet”, very low in added sugars, for my entire life before that. I’ve been trying to heal my and my family’s guts for a long time…
Note that once sugar metabolism becomes dysregulated you don’t have to have an actual sugar intake to have high blood sugar.
Exactly how long have you been experiencing these problems? You speak of the gut much but are there any allergy symptoms? Did you try the Benadryl to test for the possibility of an allergic condition?
I’m going to ask some questions but do understand that this is in no way indicative of my trying to diagnose you, I’m not a doctor. It’s just a way for you to get an idea of possible problems that you can further discuss with your health care professional.
Question 1: Did you use type 3 resistant starches in conjunction with the type 2 potato starch?
Question 2: Do you have symptoms commonly associated with allergies?
Questions 3: Is your stool well formed or somewhat sludgy, sticks to the side of the bowl or is somewhat grey or light at times? Does it change depending on your food intake? Have you ever had dark chocolate colored stools?
Question 4: Have you ever experienced pain or discomfort about the middle of the left side rotating from front to back?
Question 5: Have you ever experienced pain or discomfort in the upper right quadrant consistently in one area or rotating from front to back on a line just below the breast to the point of the right shoulder blade?
Question 6: Have you every experienced heartburn type pain leading from the upper right breast to about the area just below the sternum?
Question 7: Do you eat eggs?
I’d like to know also if you’ve tried Vitamin C with your son to see if it improves his moods?
One thing that struck me about your first post was that the whole family has problems. That indicates a common factor. However, it might be diet, or not. Given that you’ve tried the pre/post-biotics, it does bring that somewhat into question.
Even with common problems there is often enough a member in a family that seems immune to everything. So whatever it is, it appears to be pervasive, i.e., no one in your family is resistant.
You may want to also put on your environmental investigator/epidemiologist hats. How clean is your water supply? Is it disinfected with chlorine or chloramine? What industries are near to where you live? Chemical, petroleum, nuclear, paper processing, large hog farms, dairies, etc? Do you live downwind from old nuclear testing sites? What is the industrial history of the area in which you live? Land-fill sites? Have you ever discussed your health problems with a neighbor you trust, compared symptoms? Are there common neighborhood health problems? Is your area associated with the late oil/gas exploration and fracking industries? Have you noticed abatement of your family’s symptoms when leaving the area, for example while on vacation? How long have you lived in the area? Did you notice the symptoms beginning after you’ve moved to it? If you’ve lived there all your life, did you notice symptoms beginning with anything new to the area? Do you have friends that work in the medical professions such as nurse, nurses aid, etc or associated with hospital staff, even hospital office staff? Is there a large hospital in the area? What is the nature of the sanitary treatment for your area? Central plant via sewer? Cesspool? Cesstank? How close are you to frequently flooded areas, polluted rivers, streams or lakes? Are you aware of any sites of source-point pollution in the area?
Yes, it can be quite perplexing. Many, many factors in our modern age.
Kyle
[…] – Duck Dodgers, Disrupting Paleo: Inuit and Masai Ate Carbs and Prebiotics – Part 1, Mar 5, 2014, Disrupting Paleo: Inuit and Masai Ate Carbs and Prebiotics, Part 2 | Free The Animal>> "Eat a whole sardine and some of the ligaments, tendons, bones, and cartilage will […]
Great!
Just one thing, I guess no one noticed this or am I just crazy:
“Around 500 auks are put into the seal skin intact, including beaks, feet and feathers, before as much air as possible is removed from the seal skin, which is then sewn up and sealed with grease, with a large rock placed on top to keep the air content low. Over the course of seven months, the birds ferment, and are then eaten during the Greenlandic winter”
Seal? Don’t you mean “Penguin”?
Seals aren’t birds….