Not much to report in terms of improvement on any fronts. I have been eating more bread and cold cereals the past week or so. I bought them more out of ease but then realized I had a lot so just been using them.
I had my second consultation with Pippa. Verdict is I'm constipated and my liver is slightly congested. The bread and cold cereals are not helping. Interestingly I am to have a pear a day. Every once in a while I'll eat something and it will taste really good, far better than it should normally taste. I've always taken it as a signal it is something the body needs and I usually follow the craving without question. Most recently this happened with a pear.
I'm glad to get rid of the bread and boxed cereals. I am looking forward to trying more varieties of warm cereals (I'm not big on oatmeal), and having more veggies and things like brown rice and sweet potatoes. I had been relying on bread more recently on the one part to make things easy and on the other part to not be so uptight about relying on rice and sweet potatoes (although I'd found I prefer them). My opinion on the enjoyability of the diet upping the bread intake is kind of negative. I think it deserves a minimal, sideline role, at least for me.
Boxed cereals I don't see having any preferred role. Coming back to them after years off was far less than I expected. I feel like they are for convenience only.
I'm excited to see what changes following these recommendations will bring. My experience and intuition is there will be more improvements.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday, September 18, 2011
RBTI Week 2
So I'm on my second week of RBTI. Not too much has changed from the previous week although things do seem to be improving very gradually. By that I mean almost imperceptably, although they do appear to be improving. I'm not really on the full program yet, so things may be moving along faster after that. Also, last Saturday was a stay up late party kind of evening and this one probably will be too. I don't know how much that prevents progress. It's probably highly individual.
I have finally finished the water flush and can start the lemonade. The water flush was a specific recommendation to me since sea salt and other items were shutting down my system and my ureas were really high. It felt like an awful lot of water to be getting in each day and I'm glad to be done with it. The lemonade is very similar to the Master Cleanse. Instead of spring water you use distilled and instead of maple syrup you can also use things like molasses, agave, or brown rice syrup. There is no fasting.
Body Temps
Not much change either direction here. I'm still not sure what entirely influences body temp. I had one day at 97.1 and the next at 97.9. I measure multiple times so it's not like one of them was a fluke. After a couple of measurements, you can pretty much tell what range it's hovering in. Overall temps are good, but slightly low on average.
Blood Sugar
I only measured this a couple times. Midweek was at 81 and this morning was at 91, which I really don't understand. I still prefer this to be in the low 80s, but again, perhaps I don't understand all the things that influence fasting blood sugar. I have not been measuring post-prandials.
Body Composition
Hard to say there's been much if any improvement. I still feel better wearing the skinny tees, as in less self-conscious. Fat loss appears to be very slow. I do have the desire to dump all excess belly fat, but not at the expense of my metabolism. That's why I've not consciously pursued it in the 18 months of quitting low-carb, and gaining my post-low-carb rebound weight. Muscle tone may also be decreasing. Perhaps I am not eating enough. Appetite has been low and I'm playing more into my body's queues as well now, pushing things away when I no longer feel like eating them. If this causes a severe or lasting drop in body temps, then I will force more food in, but so far it is not.
I may at some point start getting more regular exercise in. Right now it's mostly walking with the occasional push-ups or pull-ups. Basically not much exercise at all. I want the crud to continue clearing up more first and then I will spend some time figuring out what really fits with my personality.
The Crud
This seems to have gotten the most improvement in the past week. I feel like there's a base at which it's stabilized and that base is generally rising. It reminds me of something our lama said once about meditation. You can't really measure progress because life has so many hills and valleys that at any one point, it's difficult to assess past progress. Gradually, meditation fills those in and smoothes everything out and you get improvement over time. RBTI feels like it's doing something similar for the crud. And I have to say I'm feeling fairly decent lately, although the crud is still there and perceptible.
Sleep Quality
Ok, so it appears the sleep quality thing is part of adjusting to the RBTI meal patterns. Many people experience bad sleep for a week or two. I seem to be past the adjustment period and getting regular sleep now although a week ago I was not. I seem to be going to bed before 10:00 every night and waking up quite early, around 6:00 or so. This might be my natural circadian rythm, which I've suspected it to be for a long time.
I have finally finished the water flush and can start the lemonade. The water flush was a specific recommendation to me since sea salt and other items were shutting down my system and my ureas were really high. It felt like an awful lot of water to be getting in each day and I'm glad to be done with it. The lemonade is very similar to the Master Cleanse. Instead of spring water you use distilled and instead of maple syrup you can also use things like molasses, agave, or brown rice syrup. There is no fasting.
Body Temps
Not much change either direction here. I'm still not sure what entirely influences body temp. I had one day at 97.1 and the next at 97.9. I measure multiple times so it's not like one of them was a fluke. After a couple of measurements, you can pretty much tell what range it's hovering in. Overall temps are good, but slightly low on average.
Blood Sugar
I only measured this a couple times. Midweek was at 81 and this morning was at 91, which I really don't understand. I still prefer this to be in the low 80s, but again, perhaps I don't understand all the things that influence fasting blood sugar. I have not been measuring post-prandials.
Body Composition
Hard to say there's been much if any improvement. I still feel better wearing the skinny tees, as in less self-conscious. Fat loss appears to be very slow. I do have the desire to dump all excess belly fat, but not at the expense of my metabolism. That's why I've not consciously pursued it in the 18 months of quitting low-carb, and gaining my post-low-carb rebound weight. Muscle tone may also be decreasing. Perhaps I am not eating enough. Appetite has been low and I'm playing more into my body's queues as well now, pushing things away when I no longer feel like eating them. If this causes a severe or lasting drop in body temps, then I will force more food in, but so far it is not.
I may at some point start getting more regular exercise in. Right now it's mostly walking with the occasional push-ups or pull-ups. Basically not much exercise at all. I want the crud to continue clearing up more first and then I will spend some time figuring out what really fits with my personality.
The Crud
This seems to have gotten the most improvement in the past week. I feel like there's a base at which it's stabilized and that base is generally rising. It reminds me of something our lama said once about meditation. You can't really measure progress because life has so many hills and valleys that at any one point, it's difficult to assess past progress. Gradually, meditation fills those in and smoothes everything out and you get improvement over time. RBTI feels like it's doing something similar for the crud. And I have to say I'm feeling fairly decent lately, although the crud is still there and perceptible.
Sleep Quality
Ok, so it appears the sleep quality thing is part of adjusting to the RBTI meal patterns. Many people experience bad sleep for a week or two. I seem to be past the adjustment period and getting regular sleep now although a week ago I was not. I seem to be going to bed before 10:00 every night and waking up quite early, around 6:00 or so. This might be my natural circadian rythm, which I've suspected it to be for a long time.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
RBTI One Week Assessment
I have been doing RBTI for about six days now. So far this doesn't mean much. I don't have an actual set of recommendations to follow yet other than continue the water flush and then redo the tests. So there's nothing geared specifically to where my body is at. I also may still be adjusting or maybe don't have some of it down quite yet.
Body Temps
Body temp is axillary (measured under the armpit). 97.8 should be lowest. 98.0 or so should correspond to 98.6 oral. It's important to keep body temp up as that indicates everything is running correctly.
These have stayed solid. Typically I have measured around 97.5 but since starting this protocol, I have had two days at 98.0 upon waking. I also felt warmer and instinctively knew the thermometer was going to read higher.
So far I have to say this program does not affect body temp as long as you are eating the right foods and eating enough. My hunch on body temps is still that the starchy whole foods help the most: sweet potatoes, wild rice, etc.
Blood Sugar
Being measured only infrequently. I only test fasting as too many things affect post-prandial for it to be a useful measurement. My ideal is 85 or below as it shows excellent blood sugar control and energy regulation. Two separate measurements were at 86 and 83. Again my belief here is that this has more to do with how much process foods are limited and how much complex carbs in whole form are provided in the diet.
Body Composition
It seems pretty clear by this point: post RRARF* belly fat is gradually going away. I attribute this mostly to the eating pattern. It seemed to start when I originally changed to the large lunches. This was prior to initial consult and begninning of water flushes, when sea salt was supposedly shutting down my system. Since the body temps are the same or even higher, I must assume this is a true fat-burning mode and not a starvation or famine (diet) state. I am not counting calories and am eating what I feel like. I have been trying to get a lunch-time dessert every day to keep the noon meal calories up, which is something I noticed the first few days. It is easy to undereat at lunch until you become adjusted. I also noticed though after a few days my appetite was greatly diminished, so I went with that impulse, still trying to eat a bit extra at lunch. Since this did not affect my body temp, it was probably reduced appetite because my body (and not me) has decided to dump fat.
The Crud
The main condition I'm trying to overcome, described in my first RBTI post. It's difficult to describe directly, so I suggest you read that. Hard to tell how much improvement there's been. Maybe a very slight improvement, but it's compounding with effects of insomnia, so generally I still feel pretty cruddy. I'm hoping this will clear up.
Sleep Quality
Not ideal, let's put it that way. I may still be in an adjustment period, or it may be I need to wait until I get a better reading from the tests, and thus more specific recommendations. Or maybe it's the light dinners. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks.
*RRARF is a program designed by Matt Stone to help people out of the starvation mode typical to most diets. RRARF stands for Rehabilitative Rest and Aggressive Refeeding, a period where you explicitly eat more food and get more rest and less exercise. It is meant to be temporary and only done to get the metaboism fired up again and the body rebuilding its lean mass. Many people, depending on previous diet history, gain belly fat following this protocol. This is seen, based on studies like those of Ancel Keys, as a normal physiological response and possibly necessary for those in a starvation mode. The metabolism boost and lean mass gain are necessary for long term weight loss and maintanence but the body may hold on to the fat for several months. It is not known yet if there is a way to restart the metabolism without body fat gain for people that are in a severely dieted state.
Body Temps
Body temp is axillary (measured under the armpit). 97.8 should be lowest. 98.0 or so should correspond to 98.6 oral. It's important to keep body temp up as that indicates everything is running correctly.
These have stayed solid. Typically I have measured around 97.5 but since starting this protocol, I have had two days at 98.0 upon waking. I also felt warmer and instinctively knew the thermometer was going to read higher.
So far I have to say this program does not affect body temp as long as you are eating the right foods and eating enough. My hunch on body temps is still that the starchy whole foods help the most: sweet potatoes, wild rice, etc.
Blood Sugar
Being measured only infrequently. I only test fasting as too many things affect post-prandial for it to be a useful measurement. My ideal is 85 or below as it shows excellent blood sugar control and energy regulation. Two separate measurements were at 86 and 83. Again my belief here is that this has more to do with how much process foods are limited and how much complex carbs in whole form are provided in the diet.
Body Composition
It seems pretty clear by this point: post RRARF* belly fat is gradually going away. I attribute this mostly to the eating pattern. It seemed to start when I originally changed to the large lunches. This was prior to initial consult and begninning of water flushes, when sea salt was supposedly shutting down my system. Since the body temps are the same or even higher, I must assume this is a true fat-burning mode and not a starvation or famine (diet) state. I am not counting calories and am eating what I feel like. I have been trying to get a lunch-time dessert every day to keep the noon meal calories up, which is something I noticed the first few days. It is easy to undereat at lunch until you become adjusted. I also noticed though after a few days my appetite was greatly diminished, so I went with that impulse, still trying to eat a bit extra at lunch. Since this did not affect my body temp, it was probably reduced appetite because my body (and not me) has decided to dump fat.
The Crud
The main condition I'm trying to overcome, described in my first RBTI post. It's difficult to describe directly, so I suggest you read that. Hard to tell how much improvement there's been. Maybe a very slight improvement, but it's compounding with effects of insomnia, so generally I still feel pretty cruddy. I'm hoping this will clear up.
Sleep Quality
Not ideal, let's put it that way. I may still be in an adjustment period, or it may be I need to wait until I get a better reading from the tests, and thus more specific recommendations. Or maybe it's the light dinners. We'll see what happens in the next few weeks.
*RRARF is a program designed by Matt Stone to help people out of the starvation mode typical to most diets. RRARF stands for Rehabilitative Rest and Aggressive Refeeding, a period where you explicitly eat more food and get more rest and less exercise. It is meant to be temporary and only done to get the metaboism fired up again and the body rebuilding its lean mass. Many people, depending on previous diet history, gain belly fat following this protocol. This is seen, based on studies like those of Ancel Keys, as a normal physiological response and possibly necessary for those in a starvation mode. The metabolism boost and lean mass gain are necessary for long term weight loss and maintanence but the body may hold on to the fat for several months. It is not known yet if there is a way to restart the metabolism without body fat gain for people that are in a severely dieted state.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Overview of RBTI
So I felt it would be good to give Matt Stone's perspective on the RBTI. Matt and Pippa were in Roseville on Sunday Sep 4th and that's where we got our testing and initial consults. After we all had our tests and consults done, Matt sat down to give us all an overview of the program. The first eight minutes were a really excellent explanation of RBTI from his perspective. The following YouTube video is a recording of that talk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvI7MY7lptw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvI7MY7lptw
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
RBTI Initial Consult and Impressions
So yesterday I met Matt and Pippa in the flesh. It's funny how many people knock Matt on his blog. Everybody's just following guru Matt to his next obsession. We all need to get over it and just live our lives. True that, but such criticisms don't understand Matt's real goal, which is exactly that. Like myself, Matt is an information nerd more concerned about understanding things at a deep level than being right or making money. Like me, he will continue to pursue and acquire health information until he has a deep and comprehensive view... far deeper than currently exists anywhere. Although he's far more dedicated to it than I ever will be. In person, he's much like he is in his videos: slightly dorky and a bit too enthusiastic about health stuff.
The notions that Matt is trying to make money or is in some kind of ego craze are laughable. There was nothing glamorous about him and Pippa spending their labor day weekend driving six hours to meet a bunch of health nuts and WAPF groupies and play with their urine samples (granted I am spinning that as negatively as possible). Matt didn't even collect any money. Pippa collected $25 for consultation. Such is my outlay so far, and it doesn't look like the costs of this program will be increasing much anytime soon. More on that later. I asked Matt about his income sources, which are apparently non-existant at the moment. I have to believe that considering how much content he must go through to churn out all the material and answer all the blog posts he does.
The Program
I have to say overall this appears to be much more easy to follow program than I anticipated, more akin to say incorporating Weil's guidelines in "Healthy Aging" or Guiliano's in "French Women Don't Get Fat". Both have excellent information but are overly verbose and perhaps cumbersome to implement in their entirety. Or maybe Matt and Pippa have just done a good job at breaking this program down to the essentials. So let's get to that.
The No Foods
This is the biggest potential hurdle. These foods are really more about avoidance than moderation. They cause immediate disturbance to body chemistry which can last for several days, during which body healing is compromised. First on the list is pork in all its forms (including as gelatin or additives in dietary supplements). Next up are nuts and seeds, chocolate (and cocoa), shell fish and skin fish, black and green tea (but not coffee in small amounts), and finally undercooked or raw meats, such as sushi. Sea salt is a food to minimize.
My thoughts on the no foods
I find the avoidance of pork interesting, not just because it's listed in the Bible as an unclean meat. That to me indicates ancient cultures avoided for it reasons unknown (I believe it was cultural wisdom that was later attributed to the word of God). They aren't the only culture. Certain Native American cultures will not touch pork, or at least it's more likely in the older generations. I know this anecdotally through firsthand accounts due to my time on health blogs. I had thought the Okinawans ate a fair amount of pork, so I looked up Dan Buetnner's research with the Blue Zones, and it appears they ate it only occasionaly for celebrations. This jibes with RBTI as a healthy, well-mineralized body would have only a small disturbance from the no foods and would remain healthy as long as the no foods aren't being consumed consistently. There may be healthy cultures eating a lot of pork, but I just don't know enough to qualify it.
Chocolate I am already suspicious of. It never seemed to fit normally along with other foods. When I was low-carb and unhealthy, I would regularly binge on dark chocolate. Now that I'm practicing more intuitive eating, I find myself cutting it out, along with alcohol. I don't doubt it's disruptive to body chemistry, along with caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. It appears to be more disruptive than I would have anticipated though.
The sea salt guideline is drawing a lot of flak on Matt's blog but I'm willing to go with the flow on this one. Apparently it shows up in the body chemistry. I'm trying to think how we've collectively come to the conclusion that sea salt is healthy. Any references are appreciated.
The other foods are not that big a deal to me, so I don't have much comment on them.
Meal Patterns
This is the other biggie of RBTI. Have a carb heavy breakfast (oatmeal or other porridgy breakfasts are recommended), a big lunch, and a light dinner. Actually, Guiliano seems to advocate a similar pattern, except that she asserts that the big meal can be lunch or dinner. RBTI does not assert that, but since RBTI isn't overly strict, I may end up stretching the rules here and there a la Guiliano. Meats and sweets are eating at lunch and avoided at dinner. Dinner is typically made up of non-starchy vegetables and is things like soup, salad, Spanakopita, low-fat yogurt, etc.
I've been adjusting to the meal pattern over the last few days (prior to the consultation) and I have to say I already agree with the avoidance of meats and sweets after 2pm. Some of my worst nights falling asleep in the past few months were meat heavy dinners. And sweets don't just don't feel right in the evening. Don't know why, but left to myself, I don't want any. The meal pattern was a rough adjustment, but it's already beginning to feel natural.
Dairy, butter, etc.
Yes, RBTI advocates use of skim-milk, low-fat yogurt, and minimal amounts of butter. This is directly against a lot of WAPF teachings. But let's take a critical step back here. I read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration and Weston A. Price didn't restore health in kids using gobs of butter. He restored health using high-vitamin butter and freshly ground whole wheat in a single meal that was otherwise part of a very deficient diet. He acknowledged that healthy cultures recognized the importance of high-vitamin butter and organ meats, but there is nothing to say you need to go through pounds and pounds of butter, as some WAPF followers seem to believe. A couple things: fat is necessary for absorption of certain nutrients but contains no minerals itself, and high-solvency oils like those found in butter are more difficult to digest.
Weston A. Price wasn't the only researcher to study traditional diets. If we look at the research of others such as T. L. Cleave, we see healthy cultures that ate very high carbohydrate, some 80 to 90 percent. Sweet potatoes, yams, and grains are common.
Lemon Water
RBTI does require the use of distilled water if you are to truly follow it. Often this has lemon and a bit of sweetener dissolved in it, depending on where your body chemistry is at. My best understanding of this is that distilled water best matches the body's own natural pH and thus requires less work for the body to maintain it's own enviroment. Contrary to a lot of conventional wisdom, RBTI does not always advocate drinking a lot of water. It depends on your chemistry. If your salts are too low or you tend towards hypoglycemia, drinking too much water can be a major stress.
Water is generally not drunk in the late afternoon or evening, another principle I agree with. Although I used to drink lots of unsweetened lemon water (prior to becoming a health nut) I would naturally stop in the evening, as I found my system was still trying to clear out the excess after I went to bed (annoying).
My Consultation
It doesn't amount to much. Apparently I've had too much sea salt (and chocolate) and not enough water recently. My prescription is a water flush (i.e. drink plenty of water the next few days). Other than that, Pippa said I would need to retest after the flush. That's going to be a couple of weeks or so until the test kit arrives that the group of us here in Mpls ordered. Yes, we're only ordering one kit for all of us so far. This program is going to be really cheap.
The other thing she said was that their was pressure on my heart and it may have been beating louder. I had noticed that my heartbeat felt louder the past few days but had been only mildly concerned about it.
The notions that Matt is trying to make money or is in some kind of ego craze are laughable. There was nothing glamorous about him and Pippa spending their labor day weekend driving six hours to meet a bunch of health nuts and WAPF groupies and play with their urine samples (granted I am spinning that as negatively as possible). Matt didn't even collect any money. Pippa collected $25 for consultation. Such is my outlay so far, and it doesn't look like the costs of this program will be increasing much anytime soon. More on that later. I asked Matt about his income sources, which are apparently non-existant at the moment. I have to believe that considering how much content he must go through to churn out all the material and answer all the blog posts he does.
The Program
I have to say overall this appears to be much more easy to follow program than I anticipated, more akin to say incorporating Weil's guidelines in "Healthy Aging" or Guiliano's in "French Women Don't Get Fat". Both have excellent information but are overly verbose and perhaps cumbersome to implement in their entirety. Or maybe Matt and Pippa have just done a good job at breaking this program down to the essentials. So let's get to that.
The No Foods
This is the biggest potential hurdle. These foods are really more about avoidance than moderation. They cause immediate disturbance to body chemistry which can last for several days, during which body healing is compromised. First on the list is pork in all its forms (including as gelatin or additives in dietary supplements). Next up are nuts and seeds, chocolate (and cocoa), shell fish and skin fish, black and green tea (but not coffee in small amounts), and finally undercooked or raw meats, such as sushi. Sea salt is a food to minimize.
My thoughts on the no foods
I find the avoidance of pork interesting, not just because it's listed in the Bible as an unclean meat. That to me indicates ancient cultures avoided for it reasons unknown (I believe it was cultural wisdom that was later attributed to the word of God). They aren't the only culture. Certain Native American cultures will not touch pork, or at least it's more likely in the older generations. I know this anecdotally through firsthand accounts due to my time on health blogs. I had thought the Okinawans ate a fair amount of pork, so I looked up Dan Buetnner's research with the Blue Zones, and it appears they ate it only occasionaly for celebrations. This jibes with RBTI as a healthy, well-mineralized body would have only a small disturbance from the no foods and would remain healthy as long as the no foods aren't being consumed consistently. There may be healthy cultures eating a lot of pork, but I just don't know enough to qualify it.
Chocolate I am already suspicious of. It never seemed to fit normally along with other foods. When I was low-carb and unhealthy, I would regularly binge on dark chocolate. Now that I'm practicing more intuitive eating, I find myself cutting it out, along with alcohol. I don't doubt it's disruptive to body chemistry, along with caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol. It appears to be more disruptive than I would have anticipated though.
The sea salt guideline is drawing a lot of flak on Matt's blog but I'm willing to go with the flow on this one. Apparently it shows up in the body chemistry. I'm trying to think how we've collectively come to the conclusion that sea salt is healthy. Any references are appreciated.
The other foods are not that big a deal to me, so I don't have much comment on them.
Meal Patterns
This is the other biggie of RBTI. Have a carb heavy breakfast (oatmeal or other porridgy breakfasts are recommended), a big lunch, and a light dinner. Actually, Guiliano seems to advocate a similar pattern, except that she asserts that the big meal can be lunch or dinner. RBTI does not assert that, but since RBTI isn't overly strict, I may end up stretching the rules here and there a la Guiliano. Meats and sweets are eating at lunch and avoided at dinner. Dinner is typically made up of non-starchy vegetables and is things like soup, salad, Spanakopita, low-fat yogurt, etc.
I've been adjusting to the meal pattern over the last few days (prior to the consultation) and I have to say I already agree with the avoidance of meats and sweets after 2pm. Some of my worst nights falling asleep in the past few months were meat heavy dinners. And sweets don't just don't feel right in the evening. Don't know why, but left to myself, I don't want any. The meal pattern was a rough adjustment, but it's already beginning to feel natural.
Dairy, butter, etc.
Yes, RBTI advocates use of skim-milk, low-fat yogurt, and minimal amounts of butter. This is directly against a lot of WAPF teachings. But let's take a critical step back here. I read Nutrition and Physical Degeneration and Weston A. Price didn't restore health in kids using gobs of butter. He restored health using high-vitamin butter and freshly ground whole wheat in a single meal that was otherwise part of a very deficient diet. He acknowledged that healthy cultures recognized the importance of high-vitamin butter and organ meats, but there is nothing to say you need to go through pounds and pounds of butter, as some WAPF followers seem to believe. A couple things: fat is necessary for absorption of certain nutrients but contains no minerals itself, and high-solvency oils like those found in butter are more difficult to digest.
Weston A. Price wasn't the only researcher to study traditional diets. If we look at the research of others such as T. L. Cleave, we see healthy cultures that ate very high carbohydrate, some 80 to 90 percent. Sweet potatoes, yams, and grains are common.
Lemon Water
RBTI does require the use of distilled water if you are to truly follow it. Often this has lemon and a bit of sweetener dissolved in it, depending on where your body chemistry is at. My best understanding of this is that distilled water best matches the body's own natural pH and thus requires less work for the body to maintain it's own enviroment. Contrary to a lot of conventional wisdom, RBTI does not always advocate drinking a lot of water. It depends on your chemistry. If your salts are too low or you tend towards hypoglycemia, drinking too much water can be a major stress.
Water is generally not drunk in the late afternoon or evening, another principle I agree with. Although I used to drink lots of unsweetened lemon water (prior to becoming a health nut) I would naturally stop in the evening, as I found my system was still trying to clear out the excess after I went to bed (annoying).
My Consultation
It doesn't amount to much. Apparently I've had too much sea salt (and chocolate) and not enough water recently. My prescription is a water flush (i.e. drink plenty of water the next few days). Other than that, Pippa said I would need to retest after the flush. That's going to be a couple of weeks or so until the test kit arrives that the group of us here in Mpls ordered. Yes, we're only ordering one kit for all of us so far. This program is going to be really cheap.
The other thing she said was that their was pressure on my heart and it may have been beating louder. I had noticed that my heartbeat felt louder the past few days but had been only mildly concerned about it.
Why RBTI Part 2
So in the last post, I explained the general condition that I am experiencing and the couple initial forays I made into alternative medicine and my subsequent cold feet. There are a few things I see differently about RBTI that are persuading me to give it a chance. I will cover those here.
Trust
Basically this is my trust in Matt Stone of 180 Degree Health. I came across his clear and concise arguments against low-carb over a year and a half ago. I've been following his blog as he explores new ideas and cuts through dietary dogma ever since. Matt, it seems, goes out of his way to explore new off the wall ideas and not get stuck in any one paradigm. He's very well informed and answers questions directly. RBTI is the most promising thing he's seen in quite some time and he's been studying it now for the past month or so.
I don't need to explain my condition
Thank God. RBTI uses one set of tests and one set of numbers for all patients. I'll be more likely to have my conditioned explained to me, then to have to attempt to explain it to my practitioner. The tests themselves aren't all that expensive and I can buy the equipment and then test from home, so any up-front costs are one time only. Also, the consultation can be done over the phone, and most likely will be some simple rules based on my numbers along with some general RBTI guidelines. Also, if RBTI fails to help my condition, it's easier to see it as a failure of RBTI rather than some failure on my part to describe it adequately.
More dietary freedom
RBTI allows for processed foods, desserts, and the like. My understanding here is it's more about the overall context of the diet, avoiding specific disruptive foods, and following a meal pattern that allows the body to rest and heal. I still plan to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, but many of us recovering from health obsession need to learn to let go and eat a frozen pizza or scoop of ice cream.
The underlying prinicple makes a lot of sense
Ok, if you've already googled RBTI, ignore what you think it means. I'm going to give you mine (and Matt's) understanding: provide as much support balancing the body chemistry as possible while giving it an adequate mineral supply and watch its healing processes increase by an order of magnitude. This is the same principle you would apply in restoring soil health or marine health and it also works for the body. The body is also like its own ecosystem and it is self-regulating. Unfortunately, like any ecosystem, the more damaged it becomes, the more delicate it is and the more difficult it is to restore. This is exactly how RBTI sees it, and the healthier you are (according to the numbers), the more dietary freedom you have. This explains why it seems healthy people can go around eating whatever they want with immunity, while unhealthy people struggle constantly with different diets. The healthy are probably doing enough intuitively to keep things on track.
Intuitiveness
This gets me to a final thought I have about RBTI as I've been learning about it from Matt's blog and from the newly formed Facebook group. There seems to be aspects of it that align with my intuitive eating patterns of seven or eight years ago: drinking water with dissolved lemon juice throughout the day, eating a carb-heavy breakfast, eating a lighter dinner with cottage cheese or similar easily digestible protein. RBTI may end up clearing up some of the remaining dietary dogmatisms I have and I may well end up adopting some of the practices well into the future.
My expectations
My expectations are that RBTI is going to have me feeling a lot better over all. I will be trying to follow it off and on for a month or more. After September, I may try to follow it more stringnetly. My hope is that by holidays (Thanksgiving) I will be feeling very good and would plan to let go of a lot of the RBTI specific restrictions. I may incorporate many of the RBTI recommendations into my lifestyle.
I will do my best to track my numbers (test results), general feeling, and other health measures as best I can, although past experience tells me that can get overwhelming, so I'll do my best.
Trust
Basically this is my trust in Matt Stone of 180 Degree Health. I came across his clear and concise arguments against low-carb over a year and a half ago. I've been following his blog as he explores new ideas and cuts through dietary dogma ever since. Matt, it seems, goes out of his way to explore new off the wall ideas and not get stuck in any one paradigm. He's very well informed and answers questions directly. RBTI is the most promising thing he's seen in quite some time and he's been studying it now for the past month or so.
I don't need to explain my condition
Thank God. RBTI uses one set of tests and one set of numbers for all patients. I'll be more likely to have my conditioned explained to me, then to have to attempt to explain it to my practitioner. The tests themselves aren't all that expensive and I can buy the equipment and then test from home, so any up-front costs are one time only. Also, the consultation can be done over the phone, and most likely will be some simple rules based on my numbers along with some general RBTI guidelines. Also, if RBTI fails to help my condition, it's easier to see it as a failure of RBTI rather than some failure on my part to describe it adequately.
More dietary freedom
RBTI allows for processed foods, desserts, and the like. My understanding here is it's more about the overall context of the diet, avoiding specific disruptive foods, and following a meal pattern that allows the body to rest and heal. I still plan to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, but many of us recovering from health obsession need to learn to let go and eat a frozen pizza or scoop of ice cream.
The underlying prinicple makes a lot of sense
Ok, if you've already googled RBTI, ignore what you think it means. I'm going to give you mine (and Matt's) understanding: provide as much support balancing the body chemistry as possible while giving it an adequate mineral supply and watch its healing processes increase by an order of magnitude. This is the same principle you would apply in restoring soil health or marine health and it also works for the body. The body is also like its own ecosystem and it is self-regulating. Unfortunately, like any ecosystem, the more damaged it becomes, the more delicate it is and the more difficult it is to restore. This is exactly how RBTI sees it, and the healthier you are (according to the numbers), the more dietary freedom you have. This explains why it seems healthy people can go around eating whatever they want with immunity, while unhealthy people struggle constantly with different diets. The healthy are probably doing enough intuitively to keep things on track.
Intuitiveness
This gets me to a final thought I have about RBTI as I've been learning about it from Matt's blog and from the newly formed Facebook group. There seems to be aspects of it that align with my intuitive eating patterns of seven or eight years ago: drinking water with dissolved lemon juice throughout the day, eating a carb-heavy breakfast, eating a lighter dinner with cottage cheese or similar easily digestible protein. RBTI may end up clearing up some of the remaining dietary dogmatisms I have and I may well end up adopting some of the practices well into the future.
My expectations
My expectations are that RBTI is going to have me feeling a lot better over all. I will be trying to follow it off and on for a month or more. After September, I may try to follow it more stringnetly. My hope is that by holidays (Thanksgiving) I will be feeling very good and would plan to let go of a lot of the RBTI specific restrictions. I may incorporate many of the RBTI recommendations into my lifestyle.
I will do my best to track my numbers (test results), general feeling, and other health measures as best I can, although past experience tells me that can get overwhelming, so I'll do my best.
Why RBTI Part 1
As I sit here, I hold with me a 7 page intake form, an extensive list of general dietary recommendations, and a list of specific supplements I am supposed to be taking. This is from February of this year. It was from a consultation with a naturopathic doctor. I did no follow-up consultation, no lab tests, and only weakly followed the recommendations. The problem, as I saw it, was I had no guarantee that the program or the doctor in question was going to help me with the problem in question, or that she even understood it. She was not the first time I sought help.
The first was with Sean Croxton of Underground Wellness, who does his own diet and lifestyle coaching. I had a full consultation with him as well. The format was rather similar: a lot of specific questions designed to get a general set of imbalances followed by a recommended set of labs specific to my consultation. There were to be follow-up consultations and dietary recommendations.
Typcically, once you add consultations, lab tests, and supplements together, $1000 isn't a bad estimate for an initial foray into the world of alternative medicine. Unfortunately, it's a lot to ask in a world where you are on your own, and in a doctor who's efficacy you are unsure of and who you are not sure understands your condition. Such are the courses available to people who are looking for very specific, guided help beyond "get more sleep", or "eat plenty of fruits and vegetables", or "you're perfectly healthy", or "we could prescribe something". There are many people bouncing around in the blogosphere that have specific physiological complaints which are medical system seems to just sweep under the rug, or throw into catch-all categories like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Fibromyalgia.
My Condition
The condition of which I complain did not exist six or seven years ago. It's onset definitely came during my extended low-carb stint. It was a very unhealhty period of my life, characterized by excessive exercise, inadequate sleep, and reliance on chocolate and alcohol. I understand now that an obsessive mindset was pushing my body well beyond its limits. At the time, I attributed my physical malaise to insomnia and lack of sleep, which I was in turn attributing to stress. I now recognize it went beyond that and attribute it to some sort combination of the following: an accumulated nutitrtional deficiency, some imbalance in body chemistry or homones, or atrophy or down-regulation of some important glandular or hormonal system.
What it feels like
On a good day, it's barely noticable. I will go through many of my normal activities without even thinking about it. Then when I sit down to meditate, it will be apparent. On a bad day, it is difficult to ignore, and focusing on work is much more difficult. On an average day, I am aware of a sensation in the upper back, near the neck, and near the front of the head, kind of in and around the eyes. The sensation is not pleasent although I would not classify it as pain, itching, or any other common physical description. The unpleasentness depends on the severity and the more severe, the more likely it is to extend down the legs and arms. I remember back during the midst of the unhealthy period, during a very bad day, describing the sensation to a friend of mine as a "raw nerve" sort of feeling. At that level, it's difficult to even fall asleep.
Why I sought alternative help
Seeking alternative help came months after I quit eating low-carb, well after I'd been stocking up on real, whole, healing foods, long after I'd cut alcohol, chocolate, and other stimulants way down in my diet. For some reason my body just wasn't bouncing back and the variables were just too complex to sort out. This is not the sort of thing I imagine asking a general practitioner about, so I didn't even bother. The times I sought help were periods of doubting that I was actually healing, or healing fast enough. I don't doubt now that my body is recovering. It's just very slow, has large ups and downs, and so is difficult to gauge process.
How it's affected my life
The main problem with my condition is that it's made me far more anti-social than I would otherwise like to be. Rather than going out, going to parties, going to clubs, I have often closeted myself in my house simply for the idea that I need rest, or that if I didn't get enough rest or get to bed early enough, tomorrow may be a cruddy day. I went through a much more liberal month or two recently, but this may have come at the expense of a slowing or halting in my progress, so I have begun pulling back again.
In my next post I will talk about why I've chosen to experiment with RBTI and what my hopes are for it.
The first was with Sean Croxton of Underground Wellness, who does his own diet and lifestyle coaching. I had a full consultation with him as well. The format was rather similar: a lot of specific questions designed to get a general set of imbalances followed by a recommended set of labs specific to my consultation. There were to be follow-up consultations and dietary recommendations.
Typcically, once you add consultations, lab tests, and supplements together, $1000 isn't a bad estimate for an initial foray into the world of alternative medicine. Unfortunately, it's a lot to ask in a world where you are on your own, and in a doctor who's efficacy you are unsure of and who you are not sure understands your condition. Such are the courses available to people who are looking for very specific, guided help beyond "get more sleep", or "eat plenty of fruits and vegetables", or "you're perfectly healthy", or "we could prescribe something". There are many people bouncing around in the blogosphere that have specific physiological complaints which are medical system seems to just sweep under the rug, or throw into catch-all categories like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Fibromyalgia.
My Condition
The condition of which I complain did not exist six or seven years ago. It's onset definitely came during my extended low-carb stint. It was a very unhealhty period of my life, characterized by excessive exercise, inadequate sleep, and reliance on chocolate and alcohol. I understand now that an obsessive mindset was pushing my body well beyond its limits. At the time, I attributed my physical malaise to insomnia and lack of sleep, which I was in turn attributing to stress. I now recognize it went beyond that and attribute it to some sort combination of the following: an accumulated nutitrtional deficiency, some imbalance in body chemistry or homones, or atrophy or down-regulation of some important glandular or hormonal system.
What it feels like
On a good day, it's barely noticable. I will go through many of my normal activities without even thinking about it. Then when I sit down to meditate, it will be apparent. On a bad day, it is difficult to ignore, and focusing on work is much more difficult. On an average day, I am aware of a sensation in the upper back, near the neck, and near the front of the head, kind of in and around the eyes. The sensation is not pleasent although I would not classify it as pain, itching, or any other common physical description. The unpleasentness depends on the severity and the more severe, the more likely it is to extend down the legs and arms. I remember back during the midst of the unhealthy period, during a very bad day, describing the sensation to a friend of mine as a "raw nerve" sort of feeling. At that level, it's difficult to even fall asleep.
Why I sought alternative help
Seeking alternative help came months after I quit eating low-carb, well after I'd been stocking up on real, whole, healing foods, long after I'd cut alcohol, chocolate, and other stimulants way down in my diet. For some reason my body just wasn't bouncing back and the variables were just too complex to sort out. This is not the sort of thing I imagine asking a general practitioner about, so I didn't even bother. The times I sought help were periods of doubting that I was actually healing, or healing fast enough. I don't doubt now that my body is recovering. It's just very slow, has large ups and downs, and so is difficult to gauge process.
How it's affected my life
The main problem with my condition is that it's made me far more anti-social than I would otherwise like to be. Rather than going out, going to parties, going to clubs, I have often closeted myself in my house simply for the idea that I need rest, or that if I didn't get enough rest or get to bed early enough, tomorrow may be a cruddy day. I went through a much more liberal month or two recently, but this may have come at the expense of a slowing or halting in my progress, so I have begun pulling back again.
In my next post I will talk about why I've chosen to experiment with RBTI and what my hopes are for it.
Monday, March 14, 2011
HB 2490 and Nutritional Dogma
So a number of progressive groups are collecting signatures to petition the AZ state government not to pass HB 2490. Apparently, this issue is so urgent, there's not enough time to provide much detail, either from change.org or democracyinaction.org. From what I can tell, the AZ legislature (specifically the House Commerce Committee at this point) wants to prevent local and municipal governments from placing restrictions on the kinds of give-aways offered by governments.
What this means is that local governments wouldn't be able to prevent companies from McDonald's from using toys as a marketing gimmick. Thing is, I'm not sure I support this. Although I strongly oppose marketing towards children, I also strongly oppose standard nutritional dogma, which local governments, such as San Francisco, will end up enforcing. Enforcing bad nutritional dogma disturbs me more than Happy Meals do, so this is one petition I'm not signing.
Photo Credit: Colin Grey
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
"Eating Too Much"
This is an off the cuff rebuttal of the idea that we “eat too much”. It’s an idea that is deeply ingrained in our culture and sneaks into the phrasing of everyday language in ways we don’t even notice… even for people that don’t believe calorie restriction leads to weight loss.
But I’d like to really ask the question, are we eating too much? Well, usually when we say that, we mean that a person will get fat and then acquire all the health conditions that associate with obesity. Never mind the dubious assumption that the amount of adipose tissue is causal or even correlates with ill health, you have to ask yourself whether calorie consumption would even be the primary driver of fat storage. Why not of muscle growth? Why not of a faster metabolic rate? Why not of more stamina, awareness, or immunity to disease.
But the real clincher: you have to ask yourself, shouldn’t the body be able to keep track and regulate everything using hormones. The answer is most certainly yes, because if it were not, the human race (and every other species that needs to eat for that matter) would’ve been toast long before civilization ever got off the ground.
And that’s where even using phrases like “eating too much” gets tricky, because it implies such a thing is even possible, that the energy storage systems would not be working towards homeostasis over the long term. Unless of course, fat people are just not hungry and feeling stuffed all the time, but just eat anyway. Yeah, that must be it.
So if “eating too much” is what makes you fat, “eating too little” must be what makes you thin. There are certainly plenty of people trying this. The problem with this is most people attempting this seem to suffer the converse of the symptoms listed above: loss of lean tissue, slowdown in the metabolic rate, etc. It makes sense when you think about it. From an evolutionary perspective, the body has to be able to deal with widely varying amounts of calorie intakes over long periods of time, and still maintain homeostasis, just like it has to do with all nutrients.
So if “eating too little” causes these responses in people, then presumably the reverse is also true. From an evolutionary perspective, we’d expect the body to take full of advantage of a calorie and nutrient surplus. Sex drive, lean body mass, etc. should all go up. But here’s the rub for all you chronic dieters. It’s well known that the body isn’t simply going to do this coming out of a starvation state. It’s instead going to store fat for quite a while, which is an appropriate adaptive response to the conditions of chronic dieting.
Some of the more astute out there may have noticed that weight gain occurs under times of stress, but then still rationalize it with sentiments like “stress makes people want to eat more”. But shouldn’t we consider that stress itself might be a primary driver in weight gain, considering that cortisol is one of the main hormones involved in the deposition of belly fat.
And it’s interesting too that animals in captivity seem uncannily to develop obesity and all the Western diseases. And it’s not due to the amount of calories.
So we have to ask the question, if obesity does correlate with Western diseases, then why? Is it because stress causes both belly fat and illness and we are all under some form of chronic stress? Is it because modern processed foods cause hormonal disruption which causes both? Is it because calorie deprivation (i.e. dieting) puts the body in a starvation response which then causes poor health and belly fat growth (later on)?
Personally, I’ve come to the point of never trying to “eat too little”. I certainly want my body to know whatever it needs is available. I don’t want it cutting back immune function or libido just so I can be “skinny fat”. I could go on, but I’ll end here.
Further Reading:
Calorie restriction is not effective for weight loss.
But I’d like to really ask the question, are we eating too much? Well, usually when we say that, we mean that a person will get fat and then acquire all the health conditions that associate with obesity. Never mind the dubious assumption that the amount of adipose tissue is causal or even correlates with ill health, you have to ask yourself whether calorie consumption would even be the primary driver of fat storage. Why not of muscle growth? Why not of a faster metabolic rate? Why not of more stamina, awareness, or immunity to disease.
But the real clincher: you have to ask yourself, shouldn’t the body be able to keep track and regulate everything using hormones. The answer is most certainly yes, because if it were not, the human race (and every other species that needs to eat for that matter) would’ve been toast long before civilization ever got off the ground.
And that’s where even using phrases like “eating too much” gets tricky, because it implies such a thing is even possible, that the energy storage systems would not be working towards homeostasis over the long term. Unless of course, fat people are just not hungry and feeling stuffed all the time, but just eat anyway. Yeah, that must be it.
So if “eating too much” is what makes you fat, “eating too little” must be what makes you thin. There are certainly plenty of people trying this. The problem with this is most people attempting this seem to suffer the converse of the symptoms listed above: loss of lean tissue, slowdown in the metabolic rate, etc. It makes sense when you think about it. From an evolutionary perspective, the body has to be able to deal with widely varying amounts of calorie intakes over long periods of time, and still maintain homeostasis, just like it has to do with all nutrients.
So if “eating too little” causes these responses in people, then presumably the reverse is also true. From an evolutionary perspective, we’d expect the body to take full of advantage of a calorie and nutrient surplus. Sex drive, lean body mass, etc. should all go up. But here’s the rub for all you chronic dieters. It’s well known that the body isn’t simply going to do this coming out of a starvation state. It’s instead going to store fat for quite a while, which is an appropriate adaptive response to the conditions of chronic dieting.
Some of the more astute out there may have noticed that weight gain occurs under times of stress, but then still rationalize it with sentiments like “stress makes people want to eat more”. But shouldn’t we consider that stress itself might be a primary driver in weight gain, considering that cortisol is one of the main hormones involved in the deposition of belly fat.
And it’s interesting too that animals in captivity seem uncannily to develop obesity and all the Western diseases. And it’s not due to the amount of calories.
So we have to ask the question, if obesity does correlate with Western diseases, then why? Is it because stress causes both belly fat and illness and we are all under some form of chronic stress? Is it because modern processed foods cause hormonal disruption which causes both? Is it because calorie deprivation (i.e. dieting) puts the body in a starvation response which then causes poor health and belly fat growth (later on)?
Personally, I’ve come to the point of never trying to “eat too little”. I certainly want my body to know whatever it needs is available. I don’t want it cutting back immune function or libido just so I can be “skinny fat”. I could go on, but I’ll end here.
Further Reading:
Calorie restriction is not effective for weight loss.
Blog Spotlight: Chris Masterjohn
Cholesterol. That is Chris Masterjohn’s main focus. It is one of the most maligned substances and one of the most misunderstood. And it is where we get some of our worst dietary advice from the mainstream media and medical industry.
Some of us give up on modern nutritional dogma after reading too much, when we realize it is too loaded with fallacies and cognitive dissonance. Others, such as Chris Masterjohn, give up after direct negative experience.
Cholesterol, and lipid metabolism, is a complex subject. It’s not surprising it’s been broken down into such stupefyingly simple terms. But this simplification has done the common man a great disservice. It gives the impression people know all they need to know and precludes debate.
Chris has dug deep, learning all that he can. He has provided critical reviews of both Uffe Ravnskov’s The Cholesterol Myths and Daniel Steinberg’s The Cholesterol Wars. I myself have not read The Cholesterol Myths, but I have read The Cholesterol Wars and Gary Taube’s Good Calories Bad Calories.
Perhaps I like Chris because I find he has come to many of the same conclusions I have. That may be confirmation bias. Or it may simply be the fact that he has discovered a way that makes all the pieces fit, and it is similar to how I have managed to put everything together and so far I have yet to see anybody piece it all together any better.
Chris rightly labels his theories as hypothetical and clearly delineates where and what type of studies would need to be performed to validate them. He’s also careful with terminology, with derivation of causation, and with what exactly can be ascertained from any particular study.
Recently, he’s written an alternative theory to the lipid hypothesis, which is really just an old debate that was closed without proper scientific evidence. Personally, I agree with Chris that is more likely the amount of time LDL particles spend in the blood, rather than the total level, that determines their role in athersclerosis. It was one of my biggest beefs with Steinberg, who stated simply that elevated cholesterol as a single variable “proves” that hypercholesterolemia alone is causal to heart disease*. I am impressed and grateful that somebody else has also seen this flaw in Steinberg’s logic.
If you want to get a real understanding of how lipid metabolism works, and what the likely factors are that cause it to break down**, then forget what you already know about cholesterol, LDL, HDL, and dietary fat. These concepts are simplistic, backwards, and will only get in your way. Prepare yourself like a sponge and get ready to start soaking in lots of information, because you’ll need it to start forming your own understanding and making your own decisions.
*Steinberg talks from the very beginning of his book about how he's laying all the groundwork to prove the lipid hypothesis, and I kept waiting for him to provide non-circumstantial evidence, but of course it never happens.
Further Reading:
More on the Lipid Hypothesis
More on Cholesterol and Heart Disease
Example of how misconstrued evidence can turn into wild claims in the media when it supports conventional dogma
Some of us give up on modern nutritional dogma after reading too much, when we realize it is too loaded with fallacies and cognitive dissonance. Others, such as Chris Masterjohn, give up after direct negative experience.
Cholesterol, and lipid metabolism, is a complex subject. It’s not surprising it’s been broken down into such stupefyingly simple terms. But this simplification has done the common man a great disservice. It gives the impression people know all they need to know and precludes debate.
Chris has dug deep, learning all that he can. He has provided critical reviews of both Uffe Ravnskov’s The Cholesterol Myths and Daniel Steinberg’s The Cholesterol Wars. I myself have not read The Cholesterol Myths, but I have read The Cholesterol Wars and Gary Taube’s Good Calories Bad Calories.
Perhaps I like Chris because I find he has come to many of the same conclusions I have. That may be confirmation bias. Or it may simply be the fact that he has discovered a way that makes all the pieces fit, and it is similar to how I have managed to put everything together and so far I have yet to see anybody piece it all together any better.
Chris rightly labels his theories as hypothetical and clearly delineates where and what type of studies would need to be performed to validate them. He’s also careful with terminology, with derivation of causation, and with what exactly can be ascertained from any particular study.
Recently, he’s written an alternative theory to the lipid hypothesis, which is really just an old debate that was closed without proper scientific evidence. Personally, I agree with Chris that is more likely the amount of time LDL particles spend in the blood, rather than the total level, that determines their role in athersclerosis. It was one of my biggest beefs with Steinberg, who stated simply that elevated cholesterol as a single variable “proves” that hypercholesterolemia alone is causal to heart disease*. I am impressed and grateful that somebody else has also seen this flaw in Steinberg’s logic.
If you want to get a real understanding of how lipid metabolism works, and what the likely factors are that cause it to break down**, then forget what you already know about cholesterol, LDL, HDL, and dietary fat. These concepts are simplistic, backwards, and will only get in your way. Prepare yourself like a sponge and get ready to start soaking in lots of information, because you’ll need it to start forming your own understanding and making your own decisions.
*Steinberg talks from the very beginning of his book about how he's laying all the groundwork to prove the lipid hypothesis, and I kept waiting for him to provide non-circumstantial evidence, but of course it never happens.
Further Reading:
More on the Lipid Hypothesis
More on Cholesterol and Heart Disease
Example of how misconstrued evidence can turn into wild claims in the media when it supports conventional dogma
Saturday, February 26, 2011
PUFAs and Heart Disease: Where's the Beef?
I don’t like coming down for or against any macronutrient or any food, even sugar. I have a lot of rants. Just looking at the American Heart Association webpage right now is making me think of some blog posts I need to write. Ok… I’m closing the webpage.
Anyway, I felt I needed to do a post on PUFAs (poly-unsaturated fatty acids). Previously, I did a post on how saturated fats are not bad for you. I don’t care what everyone else says. I don’t care what established authorities say. I’m an ISTJ. If you can’t provide a logically consistent argument. If you can’t adequately answer all the counter-arguments. If your conclusion isn’t in sync with other studies, or even with your own data. If your research techniques leave much to be desired. Then forget it, I’m not jumping on your bandwagon.
So, like, several years ago I was researching all this saturated fat nonsense and really trying to understand the process of lipid metabolism and atherosclerosis. I mean, LDL particles are getting damaged, and a bunch of cholesterol lipids are piling up in plaques in peoples’ arteries, and this does seem to be a pretty significant nationwide problem.
Forget that from my best scientific understanding, saturated fats would actually be protective. Forget that cholesterol isn’t even the main issue. Let’s get to the main issue as I identified it in my research: oxidation and inflammation.
Daniel Steinberg alludes to oxidation in his book The Cholesterol Wars when he starts talking about the scavenger receptor on macrophages and oxidatively modified LDL. He then talks about some study in which pobucol was able to arrest the progression of lesions in rabbits by blocking endothelial cell-induced LDL oxidation and that specifically the effect was not due to probucol’s LDL-lowering effect.
Anyway, where was I? Oh right, oxidation. So here’s the thing. Atherosclerosis is all about damage to your LDL particles. Steinberg may not have followed up on these insights, but I sure as hell did. The thing is macrophages are there for cleaning up. They don’t chomp up healthy LDL. There are some slides I’d like to share, but viewing them doesn’t make the whole thing much simpler.
As I studied all this, I started to come up with my own ideas what promotes atherosclerosis. My conclusions run fairly counter to Daniel Steinberg’s. Since PUFAs contain at least two double bonds, they are highly volatile*. This means prone to oxidation and free-radical damage. It is this sort of damage that macrophages are going to detect**. A diet rich in PUFAs would seem an undue risk for oxidative stress***.
Despite the very apparent risk in using PUFAs, which come mostly from seed and nut oils, we pretty much guarantee these oils will be rancid**** in the way we prescribe their use. I.e. using them as cooking oils and providing no warning about the solvents and heating processes that are used to extract these oils.
And it’s worse than that. As I’ve learned more, I’ve come to discover the high omega-6 ratio of most seed oils may itself be an issue, throwing the O6:O3 balance in our tissues out of whack and making them more pro-inflammatory.
Anyways, suffice it to say, I really haven’t seen any evidence exonerating seed oils, so I started to wonder, is there any context in which these oils would’ve been used in a traditional manner? I.e., would traditional cooking methods ever have had any use for canola, soybean, or corn oil? As far as I can tell, not on any massive scale, and certainly not for cooking. Thing is, seed oils are not like olive oil or palm oil. They’re not that easy to extract. What would extraction look like? Here’s Catherine Shanahan’s take on it in Deep Nutrition:
So there’s the gist of it. Other than eating nuts straight up, this was about the extent to which seed oils were extracted and used in the diet. So what about expeller-pressed canola oil? Well, commercial extraction of seed oils involves hexane, followed by twenty or so additional stages of bleaching and deodorizing. Organic, expeller-pressed oil has only skipped the initial step of extraction using hexane.
So where does this lead me? It leads me to the point that I personally try to avoid all “vegetable” oils except olive oil, palm oil, or coconut oil. Note that seed oils are used in everything from “healthy” salad dressings to “unhealthy” mayo (so like, what’s the difference?). Eating out or eating processed foods or just stopping by the local deli, almost all the fats are from vegetable oils. It’s both sign and symptom of our major industrial agricultural system. There are actually very little saturated or animal fats in any of our restaurant or processed foods (unless you like French food). Show me a place that still cooks french fries in beef tallow, popcorn in coconut oil, or bakes pie crusts with lard. They exist, but they are few and far between. You can’t even buy decent lard, beef tallow, or coconut oil unless you know where to look.
No, I’m sorry, it’s not the saturated fats that are killing us. That’s just an easy scapegoat to a complex problem the heart***** of which lies with our industrial food system. But that system will not change easily. The real solution, on the individual level is to eat real foods. And I’m sorry to say it, but canola oil, soybean oil, safflower, sunflower, what have you… more often than not are part of the industrial food system.
*Compared to mono-unsaturated fats, having two places for oxygen to ineract doesn't make such interactions twice as likely for PUFAs. It makes them billions of times more likely.
**Again, macrophages are there to scavenge the junk. They will not soak up healthy LDL. Part of the whole process is that a macrophage sucks up a modified LDL, which then becomes a "foam" cell, and begins the whole atherosclerotic process.
***The body can protect PUFAs in serum for a short period, but it needs an adequate supply of anti-oxidants. If there is some disorder of your lipid metabolism and your LDL particles are spending more time in serum than they should (possibly indicated by high LDL particle count (LDL-P, not LDL-c)), then there is a much greater risk for oxidation.
****Rancidity refers to the chemical decomposition of fats, one pathway of which is oxidation.
*****No pun intended.
Anyway, I felt I needed to do a post on PUFAs (poly-unsaturated fatty acids). Previously, I did a post on how saturated fats are not bad for you. I don’t care what everyone else says. I don’t care what established authorities say. I’m an ISTJ. If you can’t provide a logically consistent argument. If you can’t adequately answer all the counter-arguments. If your conclusion isn’t in sync with other studies, or even with your own data. If your research techniques leave much to be desired. Then forget it, I’m not jumping on your bandwagon.
So, like, several years ago I was researching all this saturated fat nonsense and really trying to understand the process of lipid metabolism and atherosclerosis. I mean, LDL particles are getting damaged, and a bunch of cholesterol lipids are piling up in plaques in peoples’ arteries, and this does seem to be a pretty significant nationwide problem.
Forget that from my best scientific understanding, saturated fats would actually be protective. Forget that cholesterol isn’t even the main issue. Let’s get to the main issue as I identified it in my research: oxidation and inflammation.
Daniel Steinberg alludes to oxidation in his book The Cholesterol Wars when he starts talking about the scavenger receptor on macrophages and oxidatively modified LDL. He then talks about some study in which pobucol was able to arrest the progression of lesions in rabbits by blocking endothelial cell-induced LDL oxidation and that specifically the effect was not due to probucol’s LDL-lowering effect.
Anyway, where was I? Oh right, oxidation. So here’s the thing. Atherosclerosis is all about damage to your LDL particles. Steinberg may not have followed up on these insights, but I sure as hell did. The thing is macrophages are there for cleaning up. They don’t chomp up healthy LDL. There are some slides I’d like to share, but viewing them doesn’t make the whole thing much simpler.
As I studied all this, I started to come up with my own ideas what promotes atherosclerosis. My conclusions run fairly counter to Daniel Steinberg’s. Since PUFAs contain at least two double bonds, they are highly volatile*. This means prone to oxidation and free-radical damage. It is this sort of damage that macrophages are going to detect**. A diet rich in PUFAs would seem an undue risk for oxidative stress***.
Despite the very apparent risk in using PUFAs, which come mostly from seed and nut oils, we pretty much guarantee these oils will be rancid**** in the way we prescribe their use. I.e. using them as cooking oils and providing no warning about the solvents and heating processes that are used to extract these oils.
And it’s worse than that. As I’ve learned more, I’ve come to discover the high omega-6 ratio of most seed oils may itself be an issue, throwing the O6:O3 balance in our tissues out of whack and making them more pro-inflammatory.
Anyways, suffice it to say, I really haven’t seen any evidence exonerating seed oils, so I started to wonder, is there any context in which these oils would’ve been used in a traditional manner? I.e., would traditional cooking methods ever have had any use for canola, soybean, or corn oil? As far as I can tell, not on any massive scale, and certainly not for cooking. Thing is, seed oils are not like olive oil or palm oil. They’re not that easy to extract. What would extraction look like? Here’s Catherine Shanahan’s take on it in Deep Nutrition:
If we could somehow get canola oil out of the seed without exposing it to heat, it would be good for us, but nobody can.
Well, that’s not entirely true. In the old days, flax and rapeseed (a relative of canola) were gently extracted in the home using a small wedge press. Over the course of a day, the wedge would be tapped into the press a little further until, ever so slowly, the golden oil would start to drip, fresh and full of natural antioxidants and vitamins. These oils were not used to fry food, and therefore never exposed to damaging heat. If you aren’t up for installing a wedge press in your kitchen, a few small enterprises can provide flax, hemp, and other healthy omega-3 rich oils – none of which should ever be used for cooking.
So there’s the gist of it. Other than eating nuts straight up, this was about the extent to which seed oils were extracted and used in the diet. So what about expeller-pressed canola oil? Well, commercial extraction of seed oils involves hexane, followed by twenty or so additional stages of bleaching and deodorizing. Organic, expeller-pressed oil has only skipped the initial step of extraction using hexane.
So where does this lead me? It leads me to the point that I personally try to avoid all “vegetable” oils except olive oil, palm oil, or coconut oil. Note that seed oils are used in everything from “healthy” salad dressings to “unhealthy” mayo (so like, what’s the difference?). Eating out or eating processed foods or just stopping by the local deli, almost all the fats are from vegetable oils. It’s both sign and symptom of our major industrial agricultural system. There are actually very little saturated or animal fats in any of our restaurant or processed foods (unless you like French food). Show me a place that still cooks french fries in beef tallow, popcorn in coconut oil, or bakes pie crusts with lard. They exist, but they are few and far between. You can’t even buy decent lard, beef tallow, or coconut oil unless you know where to look.
No, I’m sorry, it’s not the saturated fats that are killing us. That’s just an easy scapegoat to a complex problem the heart***** of which lies with our industrial food system. But that system will not change easily. The real solution, on the individual level is to eat real foods. And I’m sorry to say it, but canola oil, soybean oil, safflower, sunflower, what have you… more often than not are part of the industrial food system.
*Compared to mono-unsaturated fats, having two places for oxygen to ineract doesn't make such interactions twice as likely for PUFAs. It makes them billions of times more likely.
**Again, macrophages are there to scavenge the junk. They will not soak up healthy LDL. Part of the whole process is that a macrophage sucks up a modified LDL, which then becomes a "foam" cell, and begins the whole atherosclerotic process.
***The body can protect PUFAs in serum for a short period, but it needs an adequate supply of anti-oxidants. If there is some disorder of your lipid metabolism and your LDL particles are spending more time in serum than they should (possibly indicated by high LDL particle count (LDL-P, not LDL-c)), then there is a much greater risk for oxidation.
****Rancidity refers to the chemical decomposition of fats, one pathway of which is oxidation.
*****No pun intended.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Random Thoughts
So lately I’ve started to wonder how necessary it is to get your RDA of all the vitamins and minerals every day. Or how necessary it is to get those vitamins and minerals mostly from plants. Or how important it is to get protein, fat, and carbs at every meal. Or how important it is that you always eat breakfast. Or that you don’t snack at bedtime.
Here’s my thinking on this. The body would obviously need to be able to adapt to surpluses and shortages of most nutrients, as well as daily variations in macro-nutrient intake. Maybe calcium is abundant in the summer. Maybe beta-carotene is abundant in the fall. The body obviously has storehouses. It packs excess glucose in the liver, excess calcium in the bones, and so forth. As one item becomes abundant or deficient, your taste preferences change to guide you towards what the body needs next.
So often these guidelines are based on a reductionist understanding of some hormone or chemical pathway. This is what some call Nutritionism and it is next to worthless for making statements with any certainty for a complex, dynamic system like the human body. Sometimes, there may be an epidemiological study… but often, certain questions still aren’t asked. For example, studies show correlation between skipping breakfast and long term weight gain, so what’s the cause? Are those skipping breakfast doing so because they are on a diet and the diet is the reason for the weight gain? Or are they eating in an unrestrained manner, listening to their body, yet somehow some aspect of skipping breakfast is causing weight gain? The question I have, if breakfast is so necessary, what were the hunter-gatherers chowing down on before they went out to go hunt and gather? Learn the eating patterns of actual non-industrialized groups and you’ll find the breakfast/lunch/dinner eating pattern isn’t that common.
As for eating lots of vegetables, I’ve never understood this. Isn’t the point of the human species to maximize our resource usage? So why go through all the effort of assimilating all these vegetables into our diet (which often requires a lot of preparation) when other animals have done this already? Just eat the animals… which is precisely the point of eating organ meats. They’re also more bio-available. Liver knocks the charts off any plant for any of the nutrients it provides, which is probably why some people do well getting it only once a week. And again, there’s that concept of getting nutrients over time rather than every day.
We act like phytonutrients are so super-great, but it just means nutrients from plants. And then we say get a variety of colors. Well, it’s polyphenols that are responsible largely for color, but polyphenols are often defensive compounds (what, you didn’t think plants evolved defensive strategies?). So my question is, why would you ingest something designed to interact with your body in a way to give you a selective disadvantage? Wouldn’t that imply negative health consequences? Animal defenses are more about tooth and claw than chemical compounds, which would seem to imply, ingesting nutrients from animal sources would be the optimal strategy.
None of that’s to say plants are for sure bad for you. Doing so based on an argument like the above would just be Nutritionism again. Personally, I find they add flavor, color, and texture. Plus I don’t like eating a lot of meat. I argue for the sake of argument. But things like color, flavor, and texture (assuming you are eating non-industrialized, non-processed foods) are your drivers to maximum nutrition.
Personally, what this comes down to are things I don’t think it’s healthy to worry about:
• Eating too many meals a day
• Eating too few meals a day
• Eating at the wrong time of day
• Anything else that isn’t following your own internal hunger/satiety cues.
• Eating an incorrect ratio of fats/protein/carbs
• Eating too few vegetables
• Eating too many vegetables
• Eating too much animal fat
• Eating too little animal fat
• Eating too much animal protein
• Eating too many refined (non-nutritive) calories in an otherwise nutritionally dense diet
• Anything else that isn’t following your current preferences at the moment you are eating
Here’s my thinking on this. The body would obviously need to be able to adapt to surpluses and shortages of most nutrients, as well as daily variations in macro-nutrient intake. Maybe calcium is abundant in the summer. Maybe beta-carotene is abundant in the fall. The body obviously has storehouses. It packs excess glucose in the liver, excess calcium in the bones, and so forth. As one item becomes abundant or deficient, your taste preferences change to guide you towards what the body needs next.
So often these guidelines are based on a reductionist understanding of some hormone or chemical pathway. This is what some call Nutritionism and it is next to worthless for making statements with any certainty for a complex, dynamic system like the human body. Sometimes, there may be an epidemiological study… but often, certain questions still aren’t asked. For example, studies show correlation between skipping breakfast and long term weight gain, so what’s the cause? Are those skipping breakfast doing so because they are on a diet and the diet is the reason for the weight gain? Or are they eating in an unrestrained manner, listening to their body, yet somehow some aspect of skipping breakfast is causing weight gain? The question I have, if breakfast is so necessary, what were the hunter-gatherers chowing down on before they went out to go hunt and gather? Learn the eating patterns of actual non-industrialized groups and you’ll find the breakfast/lunch/dinner eating pattern isn’t that common.
As for eating lots of vegetables, I’ve never understood this. Isn’t the point of the human species to maximize our resource usage? So why go through all the effort of assimilating all these vegetables into our diet (which often requires a lot of preparation) when other animals have done this already? Just eat the animals… which is precisely the point of eating organ meats. They’re also more bio-available. Liver knocks the charts off any plant for any of the nutrients it provides, which is probably why some people do well getting it only once a week. And again, there’s that concept of getting nutrients over time rather than every day.
We act like phytonutrients are so super-great, but it just means nutrients from plants. And then we say get a variety of colors. Well, it’s polyphenols that are responsible largely for color, but polyphenols are often defensive compounds (what, you didn’t think plants evolved defensive strategies?). So my question is, why would you ingest something designed to interact with your body in a way to give you a selective disadvantage? Wouldn’t that imply negative health consequences? Animal defenses are more about tooth and claw than chemical compounds, which would seem to imply, ingesting nutrients from animal sources would be the optimal strategy.
None of that’s to say plants are for sure bad for you. Doing so based on an argument like the above would just be Nutritionism again. Personally, I find they add flavor, color, and texture. Plus I don’t like eating a lot of meat. I argue for the sake of argument. But things like color, flavor, and texture (assuming you are eating non-industrialized, non-processed foods) are your drivers to maximum nutrition.
Personally, what this comes down to are things I don’t think it’s healthy to worry about:
• Eating too many meals a day
• Eating too few meals a day
• Eating at the wrong time of day
• Anything else that isn’t following your own internal hunger/satiety cues.
• Eating an incorrect ratio of fats/protein/carbs
• Eating too few vegetables
• Eating too many vegetables
• Eating too much animal fat
• Eating too little animal fat
• Eating too much animal protein
• Eating too many refined (non-nutritive) calories in an otherwise nutritionally dense diet
• Anything else that isn’t following your current preferences at the moment you are eating
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Health vs. Weight: Do they always correlate?
I guess I like to talk about weight more so than health because there are more misconceptions surrounding it and I’m more about dispelling bad advice than giving good advice. The wrong advice can lead you very quickly into a hole, whereas good advice is very difficult to vet. Besides, the basics of good advice are more easily summarized: eat plenty of nourishing nutrient dense foods, get adequate sleep, minimize your stress, don’t diet, and don’t stress the small stuff. Oftentimes, offering good advice is more about clearing our heads of all the junk. Nutritionism suffers from too many concepts, not too few.
Diana Schwarzbein has a saying: “You need to be healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to be healthy”. I’m sure I’ve repeated it on this blog in the past, but I’m not going to check right now. The main point I want to get across is that the direction your weight is going doesn’t always correlate with the direction you health is going.
I know I’ve brought up Health at Every Size in a previous post, and from there we know that adopting healthy lifestyle practices is enough to ensure good health whether weight comes off or not. We also know that calorie restriction (whether by reducing food intake or increasing exercise) is not an effective long-term means of improvement in health or weight. Yet, there is an intuitive part of us that says weight and health should correlate. Is that cultural conditioning? Above a certain point, probably not.
The concept I really want to go after here is that you have to lose weight to be healthy, or that if what you are gaining weight, you must be doing something wrong. This brings us into discussion of the starvation response of the body. The best study on this is almost certainly Ancel Keys semi-starvation study.
Ancel Keys performed a controlled experiment, where the caloric intake of 32 healthy young men was cut in half for a period of 24 weeks. The men suffered a wide array of negative side effects. And yes, they all experienced weight loss, but what I’m concerned about here is the hormonal changes in the body that are a response to famine.
All men, after the 24 week period was over, gained fat above and beyond their original starting point, despite not having weight or health problems before the experiment began. Moreover, the fat gain occurred before lean body mass was restored and consisted primarily of visceral (or ‘belly’) fat. This gain in visceral fat did not even begin to reverse itself until 33 weeks of eating to appetite.
I consider this a clear famine response of the body. The body needs sufficient nutrients and calories, adequate sleep, and low stress and it should be able to sort itself out. Many of us start out with what is a small weight problem and immediately start dieting. It doesn’t matter if it’s calorie restriction, fat restriction, or carbohydrate restriction. They are all forms of deprivation. Currently, I am unaware of a way for somebody in a dieted state to not go through the fat gain phase while bringing their body out of the famine response. The fat may not be permanent though, as the men in Ancel Key’s study eventually lost a lot of their rebound fat by not dieting and continuing to obey appetite.
But think about this for a moment. How many people in our society are dieting? How many people automatically assume that health is all about body weight and getting fit? The answer is a lot. And the result is that there are a lot of people actively attempting to ignore their bodies’ queues in an effort to lose weight. That’s a lot of people in a state of partial deprivation.
Now consider that every one of these people have placed their bodies at least partially into the famine response state. Consider that every one of them is suffering a lot of side effects. Consider that almost none of them will be able to carry this on indefinitely. And finally, consider that when the rebound occurs, virtually none of them will be willing to wait out the 40 to 50 weeks it would take to confirm rebound fat gain is reversing. Pretty soon a person in this position falls into guilt and self-loathing, and restarts the diet long before the body has had the opportunity to heal. This is how yo-yo dieting works, and it is a societal problem, not a personal one.
Cut Calories to Gain Fat
Good overview of Ancel Key's study.
Ancel Keys and the Biology of Human Starvation
More extensive overview with a lot of quotes pulled out of the study. Definitely worth reading if you want to know possible side effects of dieting, why it is not healthy, and why it is not maintainable.
Animal Obesity
Obesity Paradox
A couple interesting blog posts that point out how obesity isn't always about the number of calories.
Diana Schwarzbein has a saying: “You need to be healthy to lose weight, not lose weight to be healthy”. I’m sure I’ve repeated it on this blog in the past, but I’m not going to check right now. The main point I want to get across is that the direction your weight is going doesn’t always correlate with the direction you health is going.
I know I’ve brought up Health at Every Size in a previous post, and from there we know that adopting healthy lifestyle practices is enough to ensure good health whether weight comes off or not. We also know that calorie restriction (whether by reducing food intake or increasing exercise) is not an effective long-term means of improvement in health or weight. Yet, there is an intuitive part of us that says weight and health should correlate. Is that cultural conditioning? Above a certain point, probably not.
The concept I really want to go after here is that you have to lose weight to be healthy, or that if what you are gaining weight, you must be doing something wrong. This brings us into discussion of the starvation response of the body. The best study on this is almost certainly Ancel Keys semi-starvation study.
Ancel Keys performed a controlled experiment, where the caloric intake of 32 healthy young men was cut in half for a period of 24 weeks. The men suffered a wide array of negative side effects. And yes, they all experienced weight loss, but what I’m concerned about here is the hormonal changes in the body that are a response to famine.
All men, after the 24 week period was over, gained fat above and beyond their original starting point, despite not having weight or health problems before the experiment began. Moreover, the fat gain occurred before lean body mass was restored and consisted primarily of visceral (or ‘belly’) fat. This gain in visceral fat did not even begin to reverse itself until 33 weeks of eating to appetite.
I consider this a clear famine response of the body. The body needs sufficient nutrients and calories, adequate sleep, and low stress and it should be able to sort itself out. Many of us start out with what is a small weight problem and immediately start dieting. It doesn’t matter if it’s calorie restriction, fat restriction, or carbohydrate restriction. They are all forms of deprivation. Currently, I am unaware of a way for somebody in a dieted state to not go through the fat gain phase while bringing their body out of the famine response. The fat may not be permanent though, as the men in Ancel Key’s study eventually lost a lot of their rebound fat by not dieting and continuing to obey appetite.
But think about this for a moment. How many people in our society are dieting? How many people automatically assume that health is all about body weight and getting fit? The answer is a lot. And the result is that there are a lot of people actively attempting to ignore their bodies’ queues in an effort to lose weight. That’s a lot of people in a state of partial deprivation.
Now consider that every one of these people have placed their bodies at least partially into the famine response state. Consider that every one of them is suffering a lot of side effects. Consider that almost none of them will be able to carry this on indefinitely. And finally, consider that when the rebound occurs, virtually none of them will be willing to wait out the 40 to 50 weeks it would take to confirm rebound fat gain is reversing. Pretty soon a person in this position falls into guilt and self-loathing, and restarts the diet long before the body has had the opportunity to heal. This is how yo-yo dieting works, and it is a societal problem, not a personal one.
Cut Calories to Gain Fat
Good overview of Ancel Key's study.
Ancel Keys and the Biology of Human Starvation
More extensive overview with a lot of quotes pulled out of the study. Definitely worth reading if you want to know possible side effects of dieting, why it is not healthy, and why it is not maintainable.
Animal Obesity
Obesity Paradox
A couple interesting blog posts that point out how obesity isn't always about the number of calories.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Deep Nutrition on Carbohydrates
I was going to write a full review of Deep Nutrition. The book contains such important, almost unheard information in the first half, I cannot help but recommend it. But I was so deeply dismayed by chapter nine that I felt it needed its own rebuttal. This also gives me the chance to present some of my arguments on carbohydrates. As readers of Gary Taubes and some of the other popular authors know, the low-carb message is still going strong and the arguments are usually very compelling. That's why it's important to get all the science. This entry is mostly a rebuttal of Shanahan's argument in Deep Nutrition. I may at some point create a future post focusing solely on carbohydrates.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here again we have the old argument that carbohydrates cause metabolic damage. But Shanahan presents the argument in an even more dissappointing fashion than most. Part of this is deliberate obfuscation, and part is just a general lack of scientific rigor.
The deliberate obfuscation is in not making a distinction between dietary sugar intake and chronically elevated glucose levels. Most of the damage Shanahan refers to throughout chapter nine are due to chronically elevated blood glucose. Shanahan speaks throughout the chapter as though we’re referring to dietary sugar, and this viewpoint is reinforced near the beginning with a statistic on average sugar consumption (consulting the endnote confirms the statistic refers only to refined sugars).
Shanahan then does an about face at the end of the chapter, saying that to your body, all carbohydrates are sugar and goes on to recommend strict limiting of all of them. How she comes to this conclusion when the previous chapter* makes clear similar logic does not apply to other macronutrients is beyond me. She even claims that excessive carbohydrate overloads the pancreas.
Really what we are concerned about here is diabetes and pre-diabetes, as it is the elevated blood glucose that causes all the disruption discussed in chapter nine. But if we want to know how most effectively to reverse and prevent diseases such as diabetes, then we must give seroius consideration to diets with proven efficacy, such as Joel Furhman’s Nutritarian Diet (a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet with emphasis on plants and whole foods). Or, more simply, we can observe the many traditional cultures that enjoy high-carbohydrate diets, such as the Kitava and rural Zulu, yet do not suffer the maladies described in chapter nine. Since this is a book that focuses on what to eat by observing traditional cultures, omissions such as this are a great disservice.
Refined sugar is as dissimilar to sweet potatoes as corn oil is to coconut oil**, as far as your body is concerned. So anybody intuitively grasping the point of chapter eight should get this point as well. One is stripped of nutrients and has possible damaging side effects. The other is a whole food, in natural form, complete with all the nutrients available to metabolize it.
Perhaps it is the fact that the standard Western diet is so rich in refined carbohydrates, where such nutrients have been stripped, that so many people develop an inability to properly process carbohydrates. And perhaps it is why diets such as Joel Furhman’s, which would provide such nutrients in abundance***, are so successful at reversing conditions such as diabetes.
*Chapter eight focuses primarily on the distinction between traditional fats and vegetable oils and how vegetable oils are uniquely damaging while traditional fats are healthy. It is an argument I am so far in complete agreement with. Traditional fats are things like butter, lard, and coconut oil.
**I don't want to get too deep into specifics here, but food must always be taken as a whole, so any refinement is already potentially damaging. Also, there is evidence humans are primarily starch-based eaters, and long strings of glucose do not metabolize the same as glucose-fructose pairs.
***Specifically the nutrients that help the body properly metabolize carbohydrates are being provided by the dietary carbohydrates in the form of whole foods. Although this can initially cause high blood sugars in people with poor glucose metabolism, the problem typically corrects itself with very good fasting and post-prandial readings within a few days to a few weeks. See DrFurhman.com for more info.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here again we have the old argument that carbohydrates cause metabolic damage. But Shanahan presents the argument in an even more dissappointing fashion than most. Part of this is deliberate obfuscation, and part is just a general lack of scientific rigor.
The deliberate obfuscation is in not making a distinction between dietary sugar intake and chronically elevated glucose levels. Most of the damage Shanahan refers to throughout chapter nine are due to chronically elevated blood glucose. Shanahan speaks throughout the chapter as though we’re referring to dietary sugar, and this viewpoint is reinforced near the beginning with a statistic on average sugar consumption (consulting the endnote confirms the statistic refers only to refined sugars).
Shanahan then does an about face at the end of the chapter, saying that to your body, all carbohydrates are sugar and goes on to recommend strict limiting of all of them. How she comes to this conclusion when the previous chapter* makes clear similar logic does not apply to other macronutrients is beyond me. She even claims that excessive carbohydrate overloads the pancreas.
Really what we are concerned about here is diabetes and pre-diabetes, as it is the elevated blood glucose that causes all the disruption discussed in chapter nine. But if we want to know how most effectively to reverse and prevent diseases such as diabetes, then we must give seroius consideration to diets with proven efficacy, such as Joel Furhman’s Nutritarian Diet (a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet with emphasis on plants and whole foods). Or, more simply, we can observe the many traditional cultures that enjoy high-carbohydrate diets, such as the Kitava and rural Zulu, yet do not suffer the maladies described in chapter nine. Since this is a book that focuses on what to eat by observing traditional cultures, omissions such as this are a great disservice.
Refined sugar is as dissimilar to sweet potatoes as corn oil is to coconut oil**, as far as your body is concerned. So anybody intuitively grasping the point of chapter eight should get this point as well. One is stripped of nutrients and has possible damaging side effects. The other is a whole food, in natural form, complete with all the nutrients available to metabolize it.
Perhaps it is the fact that the standard Western diet is so rich in refined carbohydrates, where such nutrients have been stripped, that so many people develop an inability to properly process carbohydrates. And perhaps it is why diets such as Joel Furhman’s, which would provide such nutrients in abundance***, are so successful at reversing conditions such as diabetes.
*Chapter eight focuses primarily on the distinction between traditional fats and vegetable oils and how vegetable oils are uniquely damaging while traditional fats are healthy. It is an argument I am so far in complete agreement with. Traditional fats are things like butter, lard, and coconut oil.
**I don't want to get too deep into specifics here, but food must always be taken as a whole, so any refinement is already potentially damaging. Also, there is evidence humans are primarily starch-based eaters, and long strings of glucose do not metabolize the same as glucose-fructose pairs.
***Specifically the nutrients that help the body properly metabolize carbohydrates are being provided by the dietary carbohydrates in the form of whole foods. Although this can initially cause high blood sugars in people with poor glucose metabolism, the problem typically corrects itself with very good fasting and post-prandial readings within a few days to a few weeks. See DrFurhman.com for more info.
Health at Every Size
Most people are probably not familiar with the Health at Every Size / Fat Acceptance movement. One of the central pieces to this movement is the book Health at Every Size by nutritionist Linda Bacon. In it Bacon dispels the myths that overweight people have higher mortality and that losing weight is a simple matter of dieting that anyone can accomplish.
The book is based on solid science and I’m surprised the information within it is not more widespread. In my own limited research (using Google) to determine the long term benefits of dieting, I was unable to find any evidence that dieting led to long-term weight loss or to improved health measures.
Although I found some mixed messages and things that don’t correspond with my understanding of the science of nutrition, these inconsistencies were minor. The central message of the book is as powerful and necessary as ever. And I especially like that Bacon takes the medical community, the media, and the rest of us to task for how we really treat obesity: as a thinly veiled excuse for judgment and prejudice.
Not everyone will like the central message of this book: that you need to accept who you are right now and there’s no solid evidence dieting is effective for weight loss (or improved health) long term.
Having gone through that, I would like to add my personal statement on why nobody should be judged for being overweight. Obesity is a complex disorder and not directly related to amount of food intake. It involves factors such as stress level, emotional connectedness, nutrient quality, type of exercise (not quantity or duration), previous diet (famine) history, and others. The simple fact is that energy balance, just like water balance, internal temperature, or glucose levels, is hormonally regulated. An imbalance in any of these systems does not itself indicate the root cause of the problem. Trying to force one of these systems out of its current balance simply induces unwanted side effects and forces the body to compensate.
Most of us are not only growing up in a nutritionally depleted environment, many of the foods available to us are damaging in ways that promote poor health and obesity. On top of that, the advice we get on how to lose weight and be healthy could not be more counter-productive. At this point I could segue into several other topics, so I will end here. Below is the usual list of references and father reading.
http://www.lindabacon.org/HAESbook/
Website for the book. Also links to the HAES community.
http://www.rachelcosgrove.com/
Rachel Cosgrove coaches women on how to achieve their ideal body composition by dropping the cardio and doing the exercises that cause the adaptive changes most women desire. This is the different than simply being skinny-fat.
http://www.gabrielmethod.com/
Man that lost a massive amount of weight by giving up the diet mentality and focusing on simply nourishing his body and his mind. Although it may not work for everyone, it is definitely a first step. A lot of the messages he promotes are centered at removing our own internal judgments and getting us back in tune with our bodies so that we can listen and respond to its needs. This is from a person who had previously tried almost every diet imaginable.
http://fatfu.wordpress.com/
An almost militant attack on the poor science, perceptions, and judgment pervasive in our culture and all the pain it causes. Exposes a lot of the attitude in our culture for what it really is, just plain pure prejudice. This blog is worth a good perusal.
http://janetto.bol.ucla.edu/index_files/Mannetal2007AP.pdf
Where would I be without this gem? The result of my own short stint of Google “research”. If you want proof that dieting does not cause weight loss or improved health, look no further.
The book is based on solid science and I’m surprised the information within it is not more widespread. In my own limited research (using Google) to determine the long term benefits of dieting, I was unable to find any evidence that dieting led to long-term weight loss or to improved health measures.
Although I found some mixed messages and things that don’t correspond with my understanding of the science of nutrition, these inconsistencies were minor. The central message of the book is as powerful and necessary as ever. And I especially like that Bacon takes the medical community, the media, and the rest of us to task for how we really treat obesity: as a thinly veiled excuse for judgment and prejudice.
Not everyone will like the central message of this book: that you need to accept who you are right now and there’s no solid evidence dieting is effective for weight loss (or improved health) long term.
Having gone through that, I would like to add my personal statement on why nobody should be judged for being overweight. Obesity is a complex disorder and not directly related to amount of food intake. It involves factors such as stress level, emotional connectedness, nutrient quality, type of exercise (not quantity or duration), previous diet (famine) history, and others. The simple fact is that energy balance, just like water balance, internal temperature, or glucose levels, is hormonally regulated. An imbalance in any of these systems does not itself indicate the root cause of the problem. Trying to force one of these systems out of its current balance simply induces unwanted side effects and forces the body to compensate.
Most of us are not only growing up in a nutritionally depleted environment, many of the foods available to us are damaging in ways that promote poor health and obesity. On top of that, the advice we get on how to lose weight and be healthy could not be more counter-productive. At this point I could segue into several other topics, so I will end here. Below is the usual list of references and father reading.
http://www.lindabacon.org/HAESbook/
Website for the book. Also links to the HAES community.
http://www.rachelcosgrove.com/
Rachel Cosgrove coaches women on how to achieve their ideal body composition by dropping the cardio and doing the exercises that cause the adaptive changes most women desire. This is the different than simply being skinny-fat.
http://www.gabrielmethod.com/
Man that lost a massive amount of weight by giving up the diet mentality and focusing on simply nourishing his body and his mind. Although it may not work for everyone, it is definitely a first step. A lot of the messages he promotes are centered at removing our own internal judgments and getting us back in tune with our bodies so that we can listen and respond to its needs. This is from a person who had previously tried almost every diet imaginable.
http://fatfu.wordpress.com/
An almost militant attack on the poor science, perceptions, and judgment pervasive in our culture and all the pain it causes. Exposes a lot of the attitude in our culture for what it really is, just plain pure prejudice. This blog is worth a good perusal.
http://janetto.bol.ucla.edu/index_files/Mannetal2007AP.pdf
Where would I be without this gem? The result of my own short stint of Google “research”. If you want proof that dieting does not cause weight loss or improved health, look no further.
Off the Beaten Path
So I wanted to write an article about trust in the medical system. I’ve come to this conclusion that so much of what is going on in the blogosphere, so many low-carb and vegan diets, all happen because of a lack of faith. Once your faith in what passes as standard nutritional gospel has dissolved, you are at the whim of whatever scientific theory will sound most plausible.
It’s sad how little territory is explored off the beaten path. It’s sad how much interesting information or clear scientific evidence is just left by the wayside. It’s like this path was beaten out long ago, and now everybody just tramples along. Nobody looks up. And it takes so little critical thought, so little outside research to start poking holes in the standard nutritional dogma. You have to honestly wonder why so few are out there trying to truly map out what health is.
But nutrition is too complex to navigate without guidance. And with most traditional recipes wiped out by processed foods, modern lives, and poor science, those of us on the outskirts have to hobble together whatever we can from the little information that exists.
It’s ironic that this can lead to a much faster decline in health than simply following the conventional wisdom, but it makes sense when you think about it. If conventional wisdom leads to a decline in health across decades, or across generations, then there is no outcry, or even awareness. But if it led to a decline in health in a couple years, that would not be tolerated.
I know my own problems are largely related to my period of low-carb dieting. But I acted on the best evidence I had at the time. As they say, a little bit of information is not always a good thing. But neither would I take it back. I hate to imagine myself mindlessly following the herd when I know a lot of the information out there is wrong.
It’s sad how little territory is explored off the beaten path. It’s sad how much interesting information or clear scientific evidence is just left by the wayside. It’s like this path was beaten out long ago, and now everybody just tramples along. Nobody looks up. And it takes so little critical thought, so little outside research to start poking holes in the standard nutritional dogma. You have to honestly wonder why so few are out there trying to truly map out what health is.
But nutrition is too complex to navigate without guidance. And with most traditional recipes wiped out by processed foods, modern lives, and poor science, those of us on the outskirts have to hobble together whatever we can from the little information that exists.
It’s ironic that this can lead to a much faster decline in health than simply following the conventional wisdom, but it makes sense when you think about it. If conventional wisdom leads to a decline in health across decades, or across generations, then there is no outcry, or even awareness. But if it led to a decline in health in a couple years, that would not be tolerated.
I know my own problems are largely related to my period of low-carb dieting. But I acted on the best evidence I had at the time. As they say, a little bit of information is not always a good thing. But neither would I take it back. I hate to imagine myself mindlessly following the herd when I know a lot of the information out there is wrong.
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