7 Bigger-Than-Ever Challenges Everyone Should Know About Low-Carb Ketogenic Diets
Jamie Koonce Responds To Paleo Criticisms Of Ketogenic Diets (a Jimmy Moore Podcast)
I’m wondering what your thoughts are on the prevailing dogma in the Paleo community that women need more carbohydrates than men and should avoid ketosis and intermittent fasting. These claims don’t seem to be backed up by any research. (At least I’m not finding it.) After listening to a few talks from the Ancestral Health Symposium at Berkeley, I am fed up with the baseless claims and would like to respond on your podcast if you’re game.
Translation: ‘I can’t find research literature that disproves negatives, so = positive.’ Note: “negatives,” in this context = falsification of hypotheses and assertions. …I haven’t listened to any AHS presentation but for Grace’s REWILD! presentation, yet, but I’m gratified to understand that the VLC/Ketogenic are taking it in the shorts to such an extent that panties are bunching.
Probably, Chis Kresser didn’t help very much (Is a Low-Carb Diet Ruining Your Health? and 7 Things Everyone Should Know About Low-Carb Diets; exhaustive comment threads in both)
Briefly as I can, I’m going to hit on Jimmy’s 7 Lingering Myths Everyone Should Know About Low-Carb Ketogenic Diets; with dessert at the end, demonstrating why a guy like Dr. Ron Rosedale is to be dismissed. He simply refuses to learn. He already [thinks he] knows everything.
I always like to give you a metatheme, when I can. Today’s metatheme is: there’s simply no scientific or real-world basis for long-term ketogenic dieting. There’s not, and this is undeniable, apart from fantasy stuff. This is not exactly the same as saying that a long-term ketogenic diet is bad for you. Rather, it’s saying there’s just no evolutionary basis for it. Combine that with the established science that a ketogenic metabolism is absolutely a survival adaptation to starvation, and proponents are simply, a-priori, stranded in the position that modeling starvation is, most enthusiastically, ‘optimal for everyone’ or, most guardedly, ‘something you should try’ (“See if Starvation Hormonal Cascades Work For You!”).
At the same time, thousands of people are relating anecdotes about how just a bump in carbs to to a moderate 100-200g range, mostly from starches and not refined sugar (though various fruit juices, too, seem to benefit a lot of folks) works for them. And, those anecdotes have the virtue of being backed by the general experience of about 120 billion other people who’ve lived in history. Undertake a human experiment if you like, long term and not intermittent; but at least, please, not while harboring the fantasy that it’s anything but an experiment on yourself and perhaps those you love most.
This is not going to be exhaustive. I could likely write a whole post on each point. Rather, I’ll hit one thing or two in each that strikes me.
#1: ketosis leads to hypothyroidism and adrenal fatigue. “”Why this popular meme continues to find traction in the lack of any evidence that a well-formulated low-carb, moderate protein, high-fat, ketogenic diet with adequate calories is the causal factor in it is beyond me.”
Allow me to make it unbeyond you, Jimmy: ketogenic diets are, metabolically, starvation diets. This is why they work so well, initially, for fat loss. Metabolism is such that people can “hear” the voices of their fat cells melting away and they’re either not as hungry, or fully satiated.
I still remember when I was on a high-fat diet (Refs: All Diets Are High-Fat Diets and Losing Weight is Pretty Much Like Eating Lard) to the tune of 210,000 my-own-ass-fat calories (60 pounds) over about a year. I was typically unhungry enough, usually, that over time, it worked.
“That’s a very clear sign of too low calories, not a very low-carb, ketogenic diet.”
Indeed. Such a puzzle—these diet contortions evolutionarily designed to get us through when we have too low energy to thrive. So, again, just unnatural; and if you’re going to undertake it long term, then you may find yourself having to eat when you simply aren’t hungry—keep calories sufficient for thyroid; test a lot—very natural. Again, just unnatural. Look at wild animals in sufficient environments. This should be our standard.
#2: You’ll destroy your gut health eating a low-carb, high-fat diet. “But yet again, there’s a lot of hype and hysteria that accompanies these bold proclamations that are not backed by any sound scientific data proving it to be 100% accurate.”
There’s always gonna be a straw man. Nobody has said it “destroys gut health,” generally. Certainly, for some individuals, ‘destroyed guts’ are the reality they face, but the reasons are varied and a diet very low in fermentable fiber is probably only one of them. Problem is, what happens when you combine that with antibiotic use? Is it plausible that SAD dieters fair better with rounds of antibiotics because, in spite of all the crap, they still get substantially more fermentable fiber? I know everyone likes simple answers, but it’s looking more complex to me every day, so I just go with it.
[Tempted to delve into the increased Bacteroides and decreased Firmicutes study he cherry picks as a cause, when it’s merely an effect. Besides, Hadza tend to have a mix of B/F associated with obesity, and I’m big on falsification of causal phenomena. Saves time.]
“But yet again, there’s a lot of hype and hysteria that accompanies these bold proclamations that are not backed by any sound scientific data proving it to be 100% accurate.”
Translation: Falsification of fanciful notions that the natural state of humanity is a hormonal cascade modeling starvation isn’t proved to 100% accuracy. Haven’t proved the negative to 100% accuracy; an impossibility, a-priori.
Probably—just WA-guessing—you might want to eat a diet of a variety of real foods in a natural, moderate carbohydrate setting. It’s not “100% proved to be scientifically accurate;” it’s only what 99.9% of the 120 billion of your progeny did to survive and have offspring.
#3: Proponents of ketogenic diets think EVERYONE should be eating that way as a one-size-fits-all approach. “”This one is nothing more than a blatant lie intended to paint people who support ketosis with a broad brush as being overly dogmatic. But as perhaps one of the most vocal proponents of a ketogenic diet today, I cannot help but laugh at how nonsensical this myth really is. Anyone who has heard my many recent appearances on a multitude of podcasts promoting Keto Clarity in the past month, again and again you have heard me state quite clearly that a ketogenic diet is not necessarily for everyone.””
ketogenic deits are necessarily restrictive. In a moderate carb setting, you have a world of varied vegetation at your foot. Good luck, Jimmy. You deal with perhaps a few million anecdotes. I’ll deal with 120 billion anecdotes including the historical/anthropological record; and we’re still all alive, pumping out babies.
Methinks thou doth protest too much.
#4: It’s dangerous for a woman who wants to improve fertility to be in ketosis. “”One of the newer arguments being hurled at low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic diets (and it was especially exclaimed in several of the lectures given at last month’s Ancestral Health Symposium in Berkeley, California) targets women of childbearing age and issues stern threats that great harm will come to them and their baby if they even dare get anywhere close to making ketones in their body.”
Uh, all humans make ketones in their bodies, all the time… (straw man, again)
This one happens to be the very thing that got me beginning to rethink things a long time back. Being fertile or infertile is, in itself, very fucking sound scientific data in a human context. And very especially for a young woman. It’s tantamount to human-fucking-survival. So there I was, blogging in 2008, 9, 10; I was all giddy about high fat, VLC, and fasting and working out at the end of a fast…and I have woman commenters in their 20s who’ve lost their periods. Uh, sorry? Or, uh, sorry yo’r ohn yo’r o’n?
Everyone knows I’m a cunt-shaming asshole; but I will never, ever knowingly bring harm to someone and I got a sense that the way I was advocating was harming people and hey: if you’re harming 20-something girls, what in the holy mother of fuck are you doing?
Hey, sorry. I get thousands of comments and I read even single one. It’s a weird thing for me, weird like my forever position on abortion: It’s not my business. Don’t interfere, but never do harm. And, I’m not a woman. The kind of male hubris that scoffs at particular female issues is the kind of male hubris I can do without. Plus, women are an endless steam of ridiculous in other stuff, so why have to conquer everything?
I mostly trust women to be very cool, when you just back the fuck off and don’t pretend you know their physiologic experience, and especially, never make light of it. …How would you like to bleed from your cock once per month and worse: naturally freak out if it doesn’t happen?
#5: There is no harm to health produced by consuming real, whole foods that are starchy or sugary. “The argument has been made that if you opt for whole food sources of carbohydrates such as white rice, white potatoes, sweet potatoes, fruits and honey, for example, they are perfectly fine to make you into the healthy, fit, physical specimen you desire to be. If only it were true. While I’m sure the Kitavans and other traditional people groups (the ones most frequently cited by pro-carb paleo enthusiasts as their evidence) undoubtedly did perfectly fine eating upwards of 40 percent of their diet from these carbohydrate-based real, whole foods, the fact is they didn’t live in a world chock full of abundant processed, highly-refined sugary and grainy food-like products that can wreak havoc and lead to great challenges on the weight and health of the people who consume them.”
I give up. Jimmy, hopefully you can see the inanity of that paragraph, isolated. It’s just simply best left up there with no comment, so people can see it for what it is.
Even Parisians Feel Embarrassed for Their Fellows
#6: ketosis is not a normal state our hunter-gatherer ancestors would have been in on a regular basis. “How you define what “normal” is will determine whether this myth is valid or not. If you mean it’s a metabolic state our hunter-gatherer ancestors were in 100% of the time throughout their lifetime, then I don’t think that is true about a state of ketosis. But if by normal you are referring to it being a natural part of the ebb and flow of how they lived their lives between big animal kills, then ABSOLUTELY!”
So, he leads off with a hedge. Well, of course, because even Jimmy knows (see right exactly above) that a ketogenic diet in perpetuity, chronically, with people poking themselves and breathing into tubes is…well…fucktarded.
And so I must ask: If it’s not the state one is designed to be in 100% of the time, then:
- What is the number? For instance, any evidence of like, Blue Zone, longest lived peoples who never spent a day-in-life in ketosis?
- And if it’s not a required state, then why all the needless expense with meters, testing strips, and now reverse vaping? Hey: entrepreneurial idea: collect all the breath ketones from those pipes, bottle and sell it for the vaping industry as “bad breath.”
I’ll put it my way: You an HG mofo, and your wife is starving, she’s in solid ketosis. You wake up in the morning, she turns her pretty face to you, smiles, and exhales.
…You goin’ huntin’, yo, mofo!
- Disrupting Paleo: Inuit and Masai Ate Carbs and Prebiotics, Part 1
- Disrupting Paleo: Inuit and Masai Ate Carbs and Prebiotics, Part 2
- To Reiterate, Just In Case You Missed It: No Elevated Ketone Levels in the Inuit
- More Uncovering of the Inuit Myth: Stefansson and Anderson Belleview Experiement; Compromised Glucose Tolerance
- What Did Indigenous People Inhabiting the Coldest Places on Earth Really Eat?
- The New Nutritional Starvation Diet
#7: If you’re an athlete, don’t you dare eat a low-carb, high-fat diet or your performance will tank. “And finally, we come to the myth that is becoming increasingly laughable with all the growing number of especially endurance athletes who are embracing a low-carb, high-fat, ketogenic diet to ENHANCE their athletic training and performance.”
Wishful thinking. Relying on outliers when in circles comprised of competitive millionaire athletes, diet = millions $$$ profit. There is not only little, but zero confusion. In competitive athletics, rapidly digesting energy will always outcompete slow, long-haul survival approaches. This is how dumb, in failure to make distinctions.
This is really a dumb ploy in terms of VLC advocacy. But, it does signal the just-so, belief-is-power nature of it. It’s the most Dunning-Kruker aspect (too inept to recognize inept). So cocksure, they’re willing to laf, just-so, at enterprises whose billions rely opon competitiveness in diet, nutrition, and training.
Let’s have a football team win the SuperBowl in an all-ketogenic state; because in obvious fact, all super bowls have been won very carbed up, on average.
…Again, so fucktarded to go after athletes on this. Signals the very highly religious nature of VLC/Ketogenic.
Dessert, from the comments.
Listen to the podcast with Dr. Rosedale because he theorizes why your blood sugar goes down consuming resistant starch–and it’s not necessarily a good thing.
Last night when I read this and was lafing, I emailed Duck. Look: there’s more than 100 posts on this blog about resistant starch, over 10,000 comments and apparently, Rosedale already knows everything and Jimmy loves it because he’s an authority towards absolution over the same sin.
Well, lets begin with a comment Duck posted, still in moderation.
Here’s Duck’s stream of consciousness in the moment, last night:
~~~
He and Jimmy challenge the audience to go out and test their post prandial insulin after consuming RS. Never mind that researchers have already looked into this and came to opposite conclusions:
Consumption of Both Resistant Starch and ß-Glucan Improves Postprandial Plasma Glucose and Insulin in Women
Rosedale is making things up on the spot. Do Livinlavidalowcarb listeners really just have no idea how to look this stuff up?
Rosedale also recommends people get their fiber from “cellulose” to avoid glucose. Unfortunately, he’s oblivious to the fact that few humans have the gut bugs to degrade cellulose:
From: The cellulose-degrading microbial community of the human gut varies according to the presence or absence of methanogens
Attempts to elucidate the cellulose-degrading microbial community have only been partially successful as only a restricted number of individuals appear to harbour such cellulose-degrading organisms (Bétian et al., 1977; Montgomery, 1988; Wedekind et al., 1988)”
Rosedale is still clinging to the overly-simplistic idea that Candida will somehow magically disappear on a low carb diet and that it just eats glucose. Nope. The scientific literature no longer supports that obsolete recommendation. Quoting from Gestalt’s excellent post here:
The following 1st paper shows that the ketone beta-hydroxybutyrate will feed candida, and the 2nd shows that the ketone Aceoacetate is used by Candida to evade the body’s immune system. The 3rd shows that starvation makes candida grow exponentially.
The ability to neutrophils from diabetics to kill candida was inhibited by increased concentrations of glucose and beta-hydroxybutyrate, both independently and in combination.
These data indicate that although phagocytosis occurs at similar levels in diabetics and controls, killing of candida by the diabetic neutrophil is impaired under conditions of hyperglycaemia and ketosis.” (reference)
Therefore, prolonged ketosis may be a significant risk factor for candidiasis. This study was undertaken to investigate whether C. albicans itself produces a ketotic metabolite as a virulence factor which can effectively undermine host defense by neutrophils.” (source)
Starvation of yeast cells induces exponentially grown cells (and usually non-germinative) to germinate. This phenomenon is also observed in cells that are transiently treated with metabolic inhibitors. During each of these treatments (starvation, metabolic inhibition), expression of a growth regulatory gene (CGRI) increases. Candida albicans: adherence, signaling and virulence.” Calderone et al. (source)
Glucose obviously feeds candida as well however I have not seen evidence that it impairs immunity against candida such as ketones. Glucose therefore appears to be the lesser of two evils in this case when compared to ketones. From a blood point of view it’s impossible to eliminate glucose anyways. Ketogenic diets and many paleo diets therefore in the long term are counter-productive. Starch and specifically resistant starch is necessary to feed the good guys which are your primary defense against candida.
I’ve since compiled a fair amount of evidence showing that a moderate carb diet of starch works best to inactivate candida. Meanwhile, Rosedale just professes outdated and over-simplistic recommendations and his gullible listeners just eat it up.
How do people listen to such fabrications that don’t match up with the scientific literature? Any excuse to avoid exogenous glucose, I suppose.
~~~
Well, my only experience with Rosedale was being on hand for his appearance on the starch panel hosted by Jimmy at AHS11, erroneously dumbed (not a typo) “safe.” He was an embarrassment to humanity and I’m not the only one who thought that.
Rosedale is a has-been fucktard who absolutely will not face the 2014 quotidian reality. I have a half dozen commenters who would have his ass on currency of awareness of literature alone. To be clear, I’m fucktarded too, sometimes. The difference is that I know when to stop.
As for Jimmy, having a podcast as he does is a double-edged sword. One edge is edge. The other is way dull, “I’m Doktor X-Authority.” Rosedale, et al.
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The VLC zealotry is beyond me … what is its point really ? It’s like these religions and their forbidden foods, except that the anathema is on glucose. WTF!
Some of them suffer from serious mental illnesses, leading them to embrace the keto diet and accuse Richard of all sorts of foul deeds.
You can’t fix crazy.
“… they didn’t live in a world chock full of abundant processed, highly-refined sugary and grainy food-like products that can wreak havoc and lead to great challenges on the weight and health of the people who consume them.”
Jimmy Moore always brings up this nebulous metabolic dysfunction (well, he’s sort of forced to, due to the elephant in the room*), but no one ever asks him to specifically define what the hell he is talking about. Apparently it’s caused by too much junk food and is permanent.
*I’m not trying to be a bitch; that’s the appropriate idiom.
What could I forage that would knock me out of ketosis?
your mom
eeek, LOL!
I’m in a quandary. Whenever I go off of LCHF my BG goes way up. Normally on this WOE my BG is around 100 fasting and 120 or less 1 hour PP, but I actually hate eating LCHF as it gets old very quickly. Eating resistant starch, legumes, white rice, and potatoes along with fruits and vegetables. My BG has spiked to around 160 2 hours pp. morning fasting numbers in the 130’s. I thought if I fixed my gut I would heal my insulin resistance, but not going so good. I feel very rested eating legumes, phsyllium and RS. Sometimes during the day I feel tired and weak though. How many carbs should I eat a day. Do you think I should continue this experiment for a longer period or go back to LCHF.
Jeff, two questions for you:
1. How long have you been experimenting with higher carb content? (You said “whenever I go off of LCHF,” so it sounds like you’ve done this more than once. What is the longest period you have been off of it and experimenting with safe starches etc?)
2. Approximately how many carbs are you eating now, and approximately how many were you eating before on LCHF?
Some preliminary thoughts that occur to me are that (a) it might be taking you a while to adapt to the higher carb content, which is normal to a point, and (b) you might simply be eating too much pure (or nearly pure) starch without enough accompanying fiber. Tom Naughton has reported over at Fat Head that white rice tends to spike his blood sugar in ways that potatoes et al do not. In my mind, this makes sense, as white rice has had all its bran (fiber and all) removed. So it’s just pure starch. I would argue it’s not really a “whole” food the way Jimmy said above.
I’ll not expatiate any more without hearing back from you, but that’s where my initial thoughts lead me.
The VLC/KG community’s reaction to this whole gut biome/resistant starch thing has been very telling to me. I have said this many times, but it bears repeating: they are justifying advice in appreciably no different a way from how Ancel Keys justified his own. They only think it’s different because their advice itself is the polar opposite, and they debunked his methods. They don’t seem to believe they need to hold themselves to the same standard they hold him to.
The hypocrisy is astounding, as is the sheer lack of self awareness.
More bullshit double standard and absence of logic on the part of the VLC/KG folks. “You can’t prove your argument. Therefore, mine is correct/superior.”
This is where Jimmy really blurs the lines big time, and does so consistently, I might add, not just in this post/podcast. He shouts this stuff from the rooftops; he criticizes others for expressing contrary opinions; and then, when (and only when) somebody accuses him of promoting this as a one-size-fits-all for everyone, he throws out this one-liner about how people need to find what works best for them.
Well, I don’t buy it. I think he really does believe chronic ketosis is the optimal strategy for everyone to adopt, given how condescending he is toward other philosophies, as well as his penchant for creating straw men among critics.
Agreed, completely. I think men and women rarely get along because each are so closed-minded that they don’t try to communicate with the other, let alone try to see things from the other’s perspective.
Besides, today’s abundance of “progressive-minded” loudmouths insisting aggressively that men and women are the same is not helping anything. We need to acknowledge and embrace our differences and attempt to understand them, or at least respect them…not pretend they don’t exist.
What, is that not normal?
I guarantee you he doesn’t see it. If he did, he never would have posted something so embarrassing. I’ll be happy to spell it out for him.
Jimmy, read the following comment and tell me what is wrong with it. (I know Jimmy is not reading this; it’s rhetorical.)
The argument has been made that if you opt for whole food sources of fats such as butter, cream, avocado, and coconut oil, for example, they are perfectly fine to make you into the healthy, fit, physical specimen you desire to be. If only it were true. While I’m sure the Masai and other traditional people groups (the ones most frequently cited by pro-KG high-fat enthusiasts as their evidence) undoubtedly did perfectly fine eating upwards of 60 percent of their diet from these fat-based real, whole foods, the fact is they didn’t live in a world chock full of abundant processed, highly-refined vegetable and seed oil food-like products that can wreak havoc and lead to great challenges on the weight and health of the people who consume them.
That was one of the most fucktarded things you have ever read, right Jimmy? And why is that? Yes, exactly. Because industrially processed PUFA oils have absolutely nothing WHATSOEVER to do with butter, cream, olive oil, and so on. Nothing; nada; zero. You can choose to eat from one group while abstaining from the other. Saying that modern people cannot do well on whole-food sources of fat because processed fats also exist makes less sense than most of the gibberish that spills out of my one-year-old’s mouth.
Reread your original comment, Jimmy, where the focus was on carbs instead of fat, and tell me how it is any different from the italicized nonsense that I wrote above.
I would love to see a KG advocate’s retort to this. How is a strategy that requires endless, obsessive monitoring with modern technology supposed to be natural and evolution-based in any way, shape, or form? Total silliness.
(Italics above mine.) And still in moderation when I checked just now. Looks like Jimmy might have come down with a case of “I don’t want to post critical comments that I can’t refute” itis, much like Dr. Mike Eades did recently (tried to link to my own comment at that post, but can’t get it to load).
Ouch. Tell us how you really feel.
But in all seriousness, I am inclined to agree. He was decidedly unimpressive in his long online debate with Paul Jaminet (it’s pretty clear to me that Paul won that debate hands down), and he seems to have his head shoved into the sand. Just like Jimmy. Just like Nora. Just like Dr. Mike.
If you rest on your laurels and expect everyone to kiss your ass, you can’t be surprised when they turn on you. It’s not personal. We’re just calling a spade a spade. Hopefully these folks will get over their ego in time to recover their reputations.
I have stopped listening. Two years ago I was listening attentively every single week. But now I can’t stand it (sorry, I’m being honest). It’s the same stuff regurgitated over and over and over again, and there does not seem to be any willingness to tolerate the possibility of new information.
It’s like Jimmy zones in on the least intelligent criticism of his dietary lifestyle (McDougall style, for instance) and extrapolates that kind of extreme example into a representation of all of the criticism, and he thinks that is an adequate job of addressing his critics at large.
Many of the doctors he reveres and features have become dinosaurs themselves, with the same problems of closed-mindedness, confirmation bias, etc. I can only listen to so much of it before it exhausts my patience, and this has already happened. I am grateful for Jimmy’s help in the past, but the time has come to move on. Best wishes to him going forward.
“Ouch. Tell us how you really feel.”
I added this bit of temperament:
“To be clear, I’m fucktarded too, sometimes. The difference is that I know when to stop.”
Some calcium food for your thoughts:
Progressive bone mineral content loss in children with intractable epilepsy treated with the ketogenic diet.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19064531
“The ketogenic diet (KD) is a high-fat, low-carbohydrate, and protein diet that effectively treats intractable epilepsy (IE).
The purpose of this study was to measure the change in bone mineral content (BMC) in children with IE treated with the KD for 15 mo.
RESULTS: Twenty-five children (9 girls, 16 boys) with IE [age (x +/- SD): 7.3 +/- 1.9 y] participated. Growth and bone health status were suboptimal as were serum 25-OHD concentrations and dietary intake of calcium and vitamin D. Whole-body and spine BMC-for-age both declined by 0.6 z score/y and whole-body and spine BMC-for-height declined 0.7 z score/y and 0.4 z score/y, respectively. Height declined 0.5 z score/y. Body mass index (BMI; in kg/m(2)) z score, age, and ambulation were positive predictors of BMC, which declined sharply over 15 mo of KD treatment.
CONCLUSION: Bone health in children with IE was poor, particularly for younger nonambulatory children with low BMI status. The KD resulted in progressive loss of BMC. The mechanism is unclear. Further studies are needed.”
Why would that be? Serum calcium is one of the most strictly regulated factors of body homeostasis….
Free fatty acids alter calcium binding: a cause for misinterpretation of serum calcium values and hypocalcemia in critical illness.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3558721
“FFAs are bound with calcium on the albumin molecule. We hypothesized that changes in circulating FFA levels during critical illness altered calcium-albumin binding. We found that serum from both normal subjects and critically ill patients contained an ether-extractable factor which lowered ionized calcium concentrations and increased albumin-calcium binding. This factor was found in higher concentrations in serum from ill patients. Oleic acid and palmitic acid increased albumin-calcium binding from 2-28% in a dose-dependent manner when added in vitro to calcium-albumin solutions.
We also found that lipid infusions (during parenteral nutrition) lowered mean serum ionized calcium values in six critically ill patients [4.6 +/- 0.2 (+/- SEM) to 4.1 +/- 0.2 mg/dL; P less than 0.05]. These data support the concept that FFAs increase calcium binding to the albumin molecule. Alterations in FFA concentrations during critical illness may contribute to the poor correlation between corrected total serum calcium and ionized calcium concentrations in critically ill patients. In addition, acute elevations in circulating FFA concentrations may contribute to hypocalcemia in patients with defects in bone calcium mobilization.”
Oh, I almost forgot this link:
Paul Jaminet on Dangers of Zero Carb Diets, IV: Kidney Stones
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2010/11/dangers-of-zero-carb-diets-iv-kidney-stones/
“Kidney stones are a frequent occurrence on the ketogenic diet for epilepsy.
Just over half of ketogenic diet kidney stones are composed of uric acid and just under half of calcium oxalate mixed with calcium phosphate or uric acid. Among the general public, about 85% of stones are calcium oxalate mixes and about 10% are uric acid. So, roughly speaking, uric acid kidney stones are 500-fold more frequent on the ketogenic diet and calcium oxalate stones are 50-fold more frequent.
One difference between a ketogenic (or zero-carb) diet and a normal diet is the high rate of protein metabolism. If both glucose and ketones are generated from protein, then over 150 g protein per day is consumed in gluconeogenesis and ketogenesis. This releases a substantial amount of nitrogen. While urea is the main pathway for nitrogen disposal, uric acid is the excretion pathway for 1% to 3% of nitrogen. [7]
This suggests that ketogenic dieters produce an extra 1 to 3 g/day uric acid from protein metabolism. A normal person excretes about 0.6 g/day. [8]
In addition to kidney stones, excess uric acid production may lead to gout. Some Atkins and low-carb Paleo dieters have contracted gout.ů
etc.
I got my very first gout attack in 1999 after a couple weeks on Atkins Induction. I posted about it on an Atkins forum and was summarily dismissed as a troll (was that word around in 99?). Still, I toyed with Atkins (did it ALL wrong) and other VLC diets because they melted off my fat like nothing else. The trouble was, when I fell of the wagon…massive weight regain.
I also developed serious skin rashes that would only respond to steroidal creams at three times the recommended application rate. I had fungal infections between my toes and developed plantar’s warts on the bottoms of my feet. Yet, all the experts were saying there was no harm in keto diets.
I yo-yo’d for about 10 years this way, gout got worse and worse. I tried the whole-grain, lean meat approach, too. That did nothing for me.
My thinking is that when on a keto diet, your body is in starvation mode and looks, to all possible pathogens, like it’s about to become a free meal. I’m surprised buzzards weren’t circling me.
Sure, I did keto ‘wrong’. I just ate meat and fat and very little plants. But whatever I did, I was a total wreck, even though I was losing some body fat.
Very interesting, Bruno.
I too toyed with Atkins LC about ’89 – mid 90s (this is before packing on the fat, this was to keep a lean guy ready and able for hookups).
Anyway, during that time, I a few times developed weird, sweaty, itchy face rashes. Also, 2 bouts of plantar wart on my soles. I never even considered associating it and honestly, could still be coincidence.
So, anyone else?
Here you go Gemma, a little more to chew on.
Plants Bite Back
Subsection – OXALATES: CASTING STONES
“Increased calcium excretion and increased oxalic acid excretion ride tandem and have been linked to osteoporosis.”
http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/plants-bite-back/
The Role of Oxalates in Autism and Chronic Disorders
Subsection – A FUNGAL ORIGIN, …Oops, looks like it’s back to the biome again.
“An unexpected finding is the fact that oxalate crystals are produced in very high amounts by molds and fungus.”
Subsection – TREATMENT
“The most effective way to get rid of oxalates is the use of calcium citrate.”
“Some other supplements that can be very useful include probiotics and anti-fungal medication to help to control Candida. The probiotic bacteria have enzymes that break down oxalates.”
“The supplement that is most helpful is vitamin B6.”
http://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/the-role-of-oxalates-in-autism-and-chronic-disorders/
Personal note: I find that plain citric acid is very helpful. Use a straw and rinse with pinch of baking soda in water.
There’s a good comment to this post also concerning O. formiegenes control of Candida. Oops, there’s that biome again.
@Richard
Yes, seborrhoeic dermatitis – periorbital, that is around the mouth and nose as shown here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seborrheic_dermatitis and also involving the eyebrows and lower half of forehead. Also called seborrhoeic eczema.
No problems with plantar warts but amounts of fat intake had to be watched due to Xanthoma tendinosum which is caused by hyperlipidemia. Mine were attached to the ligament located between the balls of my feet and heel. Description as found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthoma. “Tumorous proportions” is no joke. I initially thought they were tumors. Don’t know if this was a result of KD because I also had biliary obstruction at the time (cholestasis, gravel, gall stones). I went KD due to Idiopathic hemosiderosis (bronze diabetes) probably a result of fatty liver. Began shedding huge amounts of iron and copper which emptied into my digestive tract affecting the intestines, liver and pancreas…kidneys too. Huge inflammatory mess. 4 doctors and a ND completely missed the diagnosis…brass colored shins, key signature symptom of bronze diabetes. Nothing else does that. But Noooooo! We have to check your ferritin which is a test for hemochromatosis (excess iron in the blood). Siderosis (excess liver iron/storage iron) can only be checked with a liver biopsy or Ferro-MRI. Fucking idiots! Left me untreated and incredibly sick during the most productive years of my career. Would have been financially comfortable in retirement but am now dead broke. Developed the cold extremities and dry eyes also but remember I already had diabetes from the inflammatory effects of iron in my pancreas so can’t claim high BG as an effect of KD.
Kyle
Also @Richard
Making Associations-
Sometimes understanding the metabolic pathways are just doggone helpful.
WAPF has numerous articles associating dysbiosis with skin abnormalities, dermosess, etc. I tried to find an article I’d read that specifically addresses this but at present haven’t been able to find it. But this will do for now:
Skin Deep
http://www.westonaprice.org/modern-diseases/acid-reflux-a-red-flag/
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that when you have mulitple groups of interlinked homeostasis seeking systems, such as in living bodies, when one unbalances one of these systems, the others become pressured also in compensation of the unbalanced one causing all kinds of upregulation of hormones, enzymes, etc. thus requiring increased substrate for the compensating systems.
Take dysbiosis as an example. One of the common primary links between dysbiosis (digestive system) and other systems is inflammation. A simple scratch will often become inflamed exhibiting inflammation yet that small scratch will not cause a global depletion of vitamin c where a dysbiotic intestinal tract can. Upregulation of cytokines, enzymes, hormones, white cells will all come into play. All of these are proteins requiring increased B6 for protein synthesis to feed that upregulation. Additionally, depletions of glutathione, sulfatases, glucoronidases and many other components of the Phase I – III detoxification systems will occur, vastly increasing the need for the substrates of these enzymes including the huge number of enzymes encompasing the P450 detoxificaiton sytem (Phase I). Many of these support each other such as vitamin C replenishing glutathione and conversely glutathione replenishing vitamin C.
Vitamin C is required for the synthesis of cartilage, giving here a definition of cartilage as all those proteoglycans, polysaccharides, collagens and in particular the extracellular matrix that gives structural support to the body. Many of these are sulfated. Not that this is the official definition for cartilage but it will do for now. Add the elastins as a component of skin. When vitamin C, B12, B6 and sulfur are depleted due to requirements of the detoxification system to dispose of increased amounts of endogneous toxins, the skin suffers because it also needs these elements for repair. Depletion of vitamin C alone will cause capillary fragility allowing, at first, blood plasma to leak into the extracellular matrix, increasing inflammation as it does so, thus increasing it’s depletion. If this continues, eventually the capillaries become so weak that whole blood will begin to leak into the matrix further increasing inflammation due to, the very least, the free iron. Thus the skin will exhibit the sacrifice of it’s homeostasis (purpurea) to that of the detoxification system. B12, B6, sulfur and many other elements are needed and each will exhibit in some form it’s lack in the skin. The same goes for hormonal systems, enzyme systems, the gamut. The extracellular matrix is also the headwaters of the lymph flow much as Lake Victoria is the headwaters of the Nile. This system holds electrolytes, minerals, vitamins for use by the various cells. What happens when it isn’t able to maintain itself due to lack of vitamin C or B12 or B6? You start having problems with your lymph glands, electrolyte problems, decreased electrolyte holding capacity, increased urinary frequency, electrolyte depletion.
What’s our friend Candida Albicans or one of it’s many cousins doing during the depletion of this extracellular matrix which makes up a good portion of the intestinal tract? Has it found it’s way through a leaky gut and into the quite large lymph system surrounding it? To do what? Cause lymphoma?
Hmmmm, making associations. I once had an associate in a club I’d joined for recreational things. We had a few similar interests. The last time I saw him he had an impressive amount of seborrhoeic eczema around his mouth, nose and in his eyebrows. Very noticeable. I hadn’t seen him in a while so I’d asked a common friend what he was up to. He’d died of cancer over the past year. I’d read once that dandruff is really caused by a fungus. So much for having excess glucose in the skin, heh? Maybe we should be making more associations.
Eating a lot of protein? Think you might need a little extra B6? Chronic inflammation? How about a big bowl of beef and bone broth soup? Better yet, French onion soup? Would you like some lemonade with that?
What causes dysbiosis? Antibiotics? Extreme diet changes that cause extreme shifts in the microbiome? Probably!
“Still, I toyed with Atkins (did it ALL wrong) and other VLC diets because they melted off my fat like nothing else. The trouble was, when I fell of the wagon…massive weight regain.”
I know someone going through the same issue now, Bruno, though only for a couple of years instead of 10. He has been VLC, and every time he “cheats,” he gains like crazy. I am going to see if I can help him through it with some better advice. I owe him that at least because he got the idea for VLC/KG from me.
If I can help him get his metabolism under control (fingers crossed), I will then in all likelihood be GTFO of the dietary advice game, at least for personal acquaintances. Too much potential for unexpected negative reactions, because there is still so much we don’t know.
Thanks Bruno.
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I got gout from eating too much sardines and liver. I could never have guessed that it was my superb paleo diet that caused me problems!! I felt a bit inflamed with mildly sore joints and mild depression. It went on for several months until I started drinking alcohol (I usually don’t drink) which led to my big toe becoming sore as well. Only then I knew what it was. All symptoms went away in a couple of days when I cut out the foods and drinks mentioned before. I’m really happy I started drinking and had more symptoms which led me to know what was wrong! =D
As for low carb, my skin was perfect when on a wlc-diet. Clear mind and good focus too. Had to stop though becouse of freezing even in the sauna and too scarce bowel movements..
I went keto last year and got some sort of itchy, burning rash on my face too–around the nose, mouth and a spot near my right ear. Wasn’t til last month that I seem to have it under control (I’m HCLF now). Edges around my nose will sometimes get a wee bit itchy, but no redness.
But it also seemed to cause heartburn now as well, eating foods that I could eat before without the burn. Still working on that one.
“…then why all the needless expense with meters, testing strips, and now reverse vaping?”
The reason I never jumped on the ketogenic bandwagon even in my LC days, quickly decided it had to be some kind of eating disorder.
You know, the problem with all these self-proclaimed nutritional experts, whether VLC or VLF (80/10/10 kinda crap), is that these are folks who were screwed up and fixed themselves up with some radical dietary change. Then they wrote the formula into stone and started a business from that template. As I was mentioning in Mark Sisson’s forums recently, even Sisson himself (the “nice guy with nuance” still selling his “carb curve” though) is caught in this. They can’t deny or betray their business formula because they have an army of customers whom they can’t tell : “ah but sorry, what I sold you is not a lifetime approach to health, just a potentially efficient temporary fix …” So they stick to their bullshit because they don’t have the balls to face the total discredit they risk by admitting they were extrapolating their own success way too much.
Have you read the last piece by Stephan Guyenet (one of the only voices of reason around!) ? He met with the McDougall crowd. Here is what he said about them among other things:
“They tend to have low muscle mass. Neal Barnard looks like he’s starving, and a number of others looked similar.
I think part of it is the low-calorie-density diet that’s lower in protein, and particularly lower in high-quality protein, and part of it is the fact that they don’t emphasize exercise. In particular, there seemed to be very little interest in strength training.”
from https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1629175743855013102&postID=4168215822943318036
comment # 33
These guys are LOCKED in their own stories because they have vested interests, and they can’t see that they look like shit because they keep repeating ad-nauseam that their solution is what human kind should embrace. Just like how the old Chinese saying goes: keep telling bullshit, eventually it becomes truth.
No thanks.
I agree by and large. Although to Mark Sisson’s credit, he tends to publish articles in support of new evidence when it comes out. He has done so with resistant starch and the gut biome. I don’t know if he does so out of a genuine sense of philanthropy or because he recognizes entrepreneurially that a disillusioned customer base is a soon to be extinct customer base–either way, I am glad he does.
Also, I do not find his carb curve to be unreasonable, especially when supplemented with his interviews and blog articles. He has said repeatedly that he will eat upward of 200 g of carbs in a day on occasion and that he is often up around 150 normally.
I’m not saying his advice is perfect or whatever, but he is much more reasonable than most of these other clowns we are talking about here. I don’t think he deserves to be lumped in with them.
IRT Sisson’s Carb Curve, I’ve said he’s been the most right all along.
Did someone miss that? He’s essentially on record as the rest of Paleo / Primal / LC is going lower and lower carbs and there it is: 150g as normal maintenance.
And incidentally, Atkins was 60-120g for maintenance (being on THE EDGE of ketosis as defined by PISS STRIPS, not blood ketones or reverse vaping).
Richard,
No, I did not miss that. I still have a contention with Sisson with his carb curve. It is a 2 dimensional correlation that happens to lack other dimensions (fat axis, protein axis, physical activity axis, sleep axis, meal timing axis, etc, etc). You can’t just make such a curve and say this is it, REGARDLESS OF ANY OTHER FACTOR (*), because you know, that’s exactly how most people see that curve.
(*) But we know Sisson is saying more than that of course.
You said you did not check any of the AHS14 presentations except that of Grace Liu.I think you’d be interested Denise Minger’s presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFfK27B_qZY
Good talk. Worth it just for the graphic that she puts up at 20:30. Funny, and sums up the whole presentation.
@LaFrite — thank you for posting the link to Minger’s video. I’m curious if those who have had difficulty transitioning from vlc to maintenance levels of carbs without weight regain might get improved results if they also simultaneously cut down (not eliminate, just reduce a bit as carb is added) the amount of dietary fat. Minger’s AHS talk mentioned how elevated ffa may inhibit carb metabolism. So I’m thinking that maybe the carbs are unfairly getting the blame when it’s really the very high dietary fat plus the carbs that are making some people’s carb tolerance appear to tank leading them to believe they can never increase their carb levels without fat regain.
Sawing off the tree branch one is standing on comes to mind….
LaFrite: any equivalent en Frncais?
No mention of Gary Taubes. Wasn’t he trying to start up some big study to back up his VLC theory? He was the ‘Sweetheart of The Hour’ a year or 2 ago. Just seems to have dropped off the radar lately. Or maybe that’s just because I no longer am VLC and don’t seek those gurus out.
There ya go. Allegedly not biased towards VLC or any other pet theory.
http://nusi.org/
I have been wondering where Gary Taubes is myself, sassy. Don’t know if he is looking into new info, seeking out funding for his NUSI visions, or what.
I am much less cynical toward Gary than most around here, for whatever reason. I see him as a critic of the scientific establishment and an advocate for further study, not a snake oil salesman.
I would like to think that when compelling new evidence surfaces, Gary would give it the time of day, because I see him as a reasonable man of science.
Hopefully he will not prove me wrong. Certainly, anything is possible.
I had a substantial email exchange with Gary a couple of weeks ago, me signalling concerns on the heal of the Science article about NuSI, particularly gut biome.
All I can say is that Bret has good instincts.
When is the next Paleo War anniversary?
Well, now the VLC crowd has another problem to sweep under the rug. This probably needs more attention.
Prurigo Pigmentosa – The Ketosis Rash Nobody Warned Me About
He also set up a website to help research it more:
TheKetoRash.com
My guess is Philip, aka The BJJ Caveman, would appreciate the exposure and have more people looking into this.
Thanks Duck.
Public Service:
https://freetheanimal.com/2014/09/service-announcement-ketosis.html
This quote from the ER Doc is choice:
“Carbs may of been the treatment, But the question is why would flooding your self with sugars be the answer?”
It is really gratifying to see this so-typical “answer” to any question about the propriety of long-term or too frequent ketosis. “Flooding yourself with sugar.”
I’m Hypothyroid and take medication for it. On a low carb diet I felt horrible and my body temperature in the morning was only 95. I also had a bad rash (monkey butt) that wouldn’t heal even with prescription meds.
I decided 7 months ago after reading all the reports on this site that I would try some safe carbs and RS.
Results were almost unbelievable. Body temperature back to normal, feel great, all rash gone (after suffering for several years!) and my cholesterol went down to 200 from 255, my LDL went from 166 to 117, HDL stayed the same at 68 and BG lower!
All from taking some potato starch and adding some potatoes and rice to my diet!
My doctor said I must have finally taken his low fat diet and exercise advice. I said “Yes, I changed my diet and exercise”. Didn’t tell him it wasn’t low fat.
My weight didn’t change (I’m not fat) but I think I am a bit stronger. I also do IF but I did that before the safe carbs and RS too.
Thanks Ron.
Socialized your comment.
Finally, Richard. FINALLY.
David:
Not the first time I’ve called out Jimmy. If you check my Twitter, he’s taking it in good stride.
I see no need to attack him personally. He does promote his deal, but he’s not completely intransigent.
Really, Richard? The whole “Good-job-but-I’m-too-busy-to-respond” thing is what people do when they don’t want to respond intelligently – or realize they can’t.
Podcast buddies are rarely called names
Hey, I had to go get the new JesusPhone 6.0.
And no, I didn’t get the new, VBJ model (Very Big Jesus).
Sassy
I don’t give a fuck what you think. Fact is, I’ve done way more to get Jimmy Moving Moore than all the others who atrack him for his personal shortcomings combined.
Shit, I hosted his podcast a few months back and he specifically requested it be on RS though he said: it’s your show, do what you want.
I wonder just what in the holy fuck people want from me in this context. I know, you want blood and heads rolling, but why?
And surely, do I not have the creds on that score? Yet, unless I go after every single person, I’m selling out.
Thanks for making me hate my readers today. And here I sit with a new shiny Jesus in my pocket.
Ron Rosedales head was rolling. Would it not have rolled if he had a podcast show and had you hosted it?
tell it to your mom.
Richard – I so appreciate you fighting this great fight… I have found that what hits me as natural is ketogenic most of the time, some days I eat a crapload of carbs with lots of RS, and lately doing a 1 day complete water and black coffee fast a week… It just feels best – I don’t feel good being keto all the time, or eating all the time, or eating tons of carbs all day every day… so thank you thank you thank you for removing the ‘nutri-guilt’ from all 3 of these and allowing me the mental headspace to do all three and end up looking the best I have looked since my wedding a few years ago
I have to second. I had lost a good 10-15 lbs on VLC, but that came to a pretty abrupt halt, and I developed the famous brain fog and noticeable lack of energy as well.
Adding starch back in, including plenty of RS via potato starch, cooled/reheated potatoes, and green bananas mainly, and doing an occasional intermittent fast disposed of the fog and laziness in the blink of an eye, and brought me to the lowest body fat composition I have had since age seven ish — currently 30 yrs old, 6′ 0″, 162 lbs, and even my extraordinarily stubborn love handles have 98% disappeared.
Big thanks to all the bloggers and commenters who have helped me find this stuff. I feel extremely fortunate not to be barking up the chronic KG tree anymore. I’m never going back.
Thanks golooraam.
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Another weird thing is that these popular high-fat diets don’t include measuring the consumed fat. After all fat is worth 9000 kcal/kg. And it usually comes in concentrated sources (unlike low-density carbs in fruit). With that it’s very easy to make errors – little too much in weight leads to overconsumption as measured in calories, little too little in grams – means starvation as measured in calories. And 100% of saturated fat is absorbed, and it can go directly to the fat tissue.
Ketogenic also means low protein – so unlike high-protein Paleo no appetite fulfilling properties of proteins are going to save from the errors in portion sizes. Fat itself is only partially satiating – it lowers the appetite, but not to the end: you can eat gobs of it and still be able to eat. Even junk food companies know it:
http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/26/salt-sugar-fat-qa-with-author-michael-moss/
”
Take sugar for example. The optimum amount of sugar in a product became known as the “bliss point.” Food inventors and scientists spend a huge amount of time formulating the perfect amount of sugar that will send us over the moon
[…]
There is almost no limit to the bliss point in fat. If there is one, it’s up in heavy cream some place. So the companies discovered they could add as much fat as they wanted to products, and unless people looked closely at the nutrition facts, they are going to totally love it more than they would without the fat.”
So it’s strange that high-fat / low-protein diets, like the ketogenic diet, advocates rarely promote strict and precise portion (weight) control of the consumed fat. Which seams to be a necessity even in the concept of a diet itself.
@Kyle
Wow.
So now we have HF keto diet excess fatty acids stealing calcium from the gut, which might lead to disruption of Ca – oxalate system in tight junction control (especially if excess oxalate degraders are decimated by antibiotics), which might help candida to grow, spread and use its creativity to build funny oxalate calcium crystals elsewhere, to eat our cartilage and perhaps even steal calcium from the bones of the poor kids placed on keto diet?
I have not read KetoClarity, but I would very much like to ask IF there are really people with certain health condition that TRULY benefit from long-term ketogenic diet.
But as I can see, Duck Dodger’s comment is still in moderation today…
Gemma,
Stealing….? –
So are you asking if this is actually occuring? Apparently the research literature says yes. Delving deeper, using your analogy, one could ask what is the method of theft. Is it fraud, burglary, robbery or armed robbery? Weston A. Price had a guiding principle on which he based his research and that dealt with the “displacing foods of commerce”. Certainly one could logically infer that if you have a preferred food for a particular cell such as butyric acid for colonocytes then you would provide the substrate for the production of butyric acid which also requires particular bugs as helpmates. Wouldn’t shifting the diet macronutrients to an extreme end of the spectrum, depriving your helpmates of substrate and thus shifting the make-up of the microbiome, have a similar effect as antibiotics? Consider that at the same time you’re displacing mineral containing foods that are needed as well with such high volumes of one particular macro-nutrient, not to mention vitamins. So in essence, you’re starving yourself. Even if it’s just one macro or micro nutrient at a time, there are consequences.
“…TRULY benefit from long-term ketogenic diet.”
Nothing in the whole of history points to starvation as a reliable long term strategy for longevity. Non sequitor.
@Kyle
I shall better not apply anthropomorphic expression to describe basic biological processes. Let’s call it USING (the chance).
At to the TRUE benefits of long term KD, you surely know it is promoted in cancer treatment etc. Are there any data?
Gemma,
“As to the TRUE benefits of long term KD, you surely know it is promoted in cancer treatment etc. Are there any data?”
Alternative medicine – No, only anecdotal personal assertions. Gerson > Kelley > Gonzales who by the way is still practicing. All of whom have or are using modified Gerson or modified, modified Gerson. Also, Day and Brandt, carrot juice and grape juice respectively. None of these BTW are long term in that animal protein restriction cannot proceed long term because of the fact that enzymes are composed of protein. Especially considering digestive enzymes, pancreatin, etc., you’ll reach a point where even if you eat animal protein, you can’t digest it for lack of digestive enzymes. Which I did. You get massive bloating and swell up like a pig for 2-3 days then blow it all out with massive diarrhea. If it weren’t for complex amino acid formulas I’d be dead now. I went from 6-0′, 160 lbs to 113 lbs. Not much fun. Kelley recommended 6 weeks max animal protein restriction due to this fact. None of this though will work for all. Kelley almost killed his wife with his program when she contracted cancer after he did. He had to include animal protein in her regimen.
From a personal perspective I can say that carrot juice does appear to have at least excellent anti-angiogenesis properties. The copper that was dumped out of my liver caused a large number of black spider angiomas from the mid-line of my sides across my back to my spine. Objectively noticeable reduction was effected by the third day on the regimen. Within 6 weeks they were gone. I initially thought I had metastasizing melanoma which is the reason I was even on the program.
A nutritionist pointed out to me that such diet restrictions also limit the things that could possibly be helpful and another noted to me that all of the people she’d known on a Gerson regimen were dead. So, I changed to a raw milk only diet with extremely high natural vitamin C (dried Camu Camu) and handfuls of cyanocobalamin. Camu Camu is the richest known source of vitamin C discovered. Seventy times that of an orange by weight. I regained back to 165lbs and felt damn good. But had later problems w/.liver, probably further dumping of iron as my intestinal tract would heal then get worse. Frustrating! I ended up getting scurvy so believe that free iron was still a problem. It took a minimum of 8 grams crystal vitamin C/day just to keep it in check.
Conventional medicine I’ve not delved into deeply as it’s basically cut, poison and burn. Except for the folate limiting aspects of methotrexate I don’t know what you mean about diet restriction. They’ll let you eat anything. My hematologist is also an oncologist and whenever I got phlegbotomies, he had other patients that were getting chemo. And eventually, as part of the program they would get intra-peritoneal vitamin shots. So nothing long term there either.
Also, realize that with conventional medicine, all the survivability statistics are pushed so that a 50% survival results. Taken individually there’s nothing that is that high except for leukemia which in many cases will resolve itself. Also realize that the chemo will destroy your intestinal tract just as quickly as it will cancers. I personally try to stay away from hospitals. A large percentage of the people that frequent these places end up with terrible illnesses or end up dead.
Kyle,
Would you mind sending me your email to the following address? ducktemp@sharklasers.com
Got something I need to discuss with you. Thx.
Back to you Duck.
@Kyle
Interesting points and personal observations.
If you were fighting candida, which might have misused your copper in order to inhibit macrophages killing, see:
Regulation of Copper Toxicity by Candida albicansGPA2
carrot juice might have helped, see:
“Carrot phytoalexin alters the membrane permeability of Candida albicans and multilamellar liposomes.”
Is it still in your liver, though?
By the way, my question was related to any data reporting positive effects of keto diet in cancer treatments. I kind of doubt there are many, if any. I have read some of the latest papers by Dr. Seyfried, most of the miracles happened only in vitro, not in vivo.
Duck. Sent a message to you last month and Richard posted one of my emails about my situation last month. I was very low carb for several years and last year began testing positive for several antibodies. I also started getting cold feet, difficulty swallowing peripheral neuropathy and finger joint pain. Fucking lovely right? Would love to chat with you. Feel free to email westcoastfemale@hotmail.com
@Spanish Caravan.
Hard man to get a hold of. I think you said you yourself have RA and encountered problems after being VLC for a while.
After a few years of vlc I am now starting to test positive for Scleroderma antibodies. 2 of them in fact. Very rare. I am female, early 40’s. 5’3, 105 lbs. SAD up until the past few years and then I switched to VLC. Let’s say practically no carb. Dropped from 140 -105. Fast as Fuck.
Healthy before switching to VLC. Last year ( after being very low carb for several yrs) I started getting very cold toes, sore finger joints, difficulty swallowing and peripheral neuropathy.
The rheumy’s I have seen have said I may never progress to an actual disease. Wait and see approach. Nice right? With that said, I am still trying to make sure I don’t progress and maybe even turn things around.
I have since added back carrots, potatoes and rice…via PHD. Several people have been instrumental in me turning things around thus far.
The very first was Steppe, my buddy from OHC in telling me to add back rice and potatoes and up my carbs. Seriously love you Steppe. And when you resurface e mail me too. Next Paul Jaminet, from PHD. So helpful. Sent him an email about my vlc problems and I got a response THE SAME DAY. Fucking impressive. Paleo Phil. You rock and you know you do. Spread the word my friend and I will do what I promised and post my story on your badass forum. ; ) Last shoutout is to Tatertot/ Tim who encouraged me from the beginning of me joining OHC to add RS to my diet. Crazy beautiful Tim.
Anyway Spanish Caravan,
I would love to chat with you and see what has helped you. Feel free to email westcoastfemale@hotmail.com or krispetix@hotmail.com
Thanks, Missy. OHC was a fun place.
@Missy
I’m curious why you stayed with basically no carbs even after you lost the desired weight and whether the symptoms you mentioned improved since adding back the PHD recommended starches? Have you noticed any weight regain since adding back starches? Since you mentioned your age as early 40s, I wonder if your hormone status may also be contributing and/or triggering some unpleasant symptoms. You lost 25% of your bodyweight in a short time which would certainly have some impact on estrogen levels etc. Plus now you are at an age where it’s not uncommon for women to start experiencing further hormonal shifts which are often unpredictable and can cause awful symptoms. Women around menopause often develop autoimmune reactions too. Anyway, I think it’s great that you are so proactive about your health. I come from a family with autoimmune issues on both sides — not fun — and I hope you feel better soon.
Yup, you bet it was Tim. Email me any motherfuckin time you want!
I notice the second email address I linked is incorrect. Just use westcoastfemale@hotmail.com
Testing for avatar pic.