It’s a little overdue, but every year I post the list of books I’ve read over the past year. Books of particular relevance, integrity, and interest are highlighted in RED.
Not as long as I had hoped the list would be, but considering I only had 7 months to read (had to work beyond full-time over the summer for some extra green), I feel pretty good about it.
View the 2007 list HERE
View the 2008 list HERE
Changing the Course of Autism Bryan Jepson
*Hypothyroidism type II Mark Starr
Hope for Hypoglycemia Broda Barnes
Mummies, Disease, and Ancient Cultures Adrian Cockburn
The Physiology of Taste J.A. Brillat-Savarin
The Saccharine Disease T.L. Cleave
*Health vs. Disease Melvin Page
*Diabetes, Coronary Thrombosis, and the Saccharine Disease? T.L. Cleave et al
Biochemical Individuality Roger J. Williams
Real Food Nina Planck
*Hypothyroidism: The Unsuspecting Illness Broda Barnes
The Thyroid Diet Mary Shomon
Healing Our Children Ramiel Nagel
Dietary Fibre, Fibre-Depleted Foods, and Disease Trowell/Burkitt et. al.
*Body, Mind, and Sugar E.M. Abrahamson
Food is Your Best Medicine Henry Bieler
The Cure for All Diseases Hulda Clark
The First Year: Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis Jill Sklar
The Yeast Connection William Crook
What to Eat Marion Nestle
Autism Spectrum Disorders Chantal Sicile-Kira
Rethinking Thin Gina Kolata
The Glycemic Index Diet Rick Gallop
Your Body’s Many Cries for Water F. Batmanghelidj
Every Woman’s Guide to Diabetes Stephanie Eisenstat
Dr. Neal Barnard’s Program for Reversing Diabetes Neal Barnard
Eat to Live Joel Fuhrman
Diabetes: The New Type 2 Virginia Valentine
Mayo Clinic on Managing Diabetes Maria Collazo-Clavell
Real-Life Guide to Diabetes Hope Warshaw and Joy Pape
Freedom from Obesity and Sugar Addiction Martha L. Pekarek
Maximum Metabolism Robert M. Giller
Suicide By Sugar Nancy Appleton
Stop Prediabetes Now Jack Challem
Sugar Shock Connie Bennett
Victory Over Diabetes William H. Philpott
The Sugar Addict’s Total Recovery Program Kathleen DesMaisons
*Milk Diet Charles Sanford Porter
*The Miracle of Milk Bernarr MacFadden
Reversing Diabetes Julian Whitaker
Primal Body ? Primal Mind Nora Gedgaudas
The Primal Blueprint Mark Sisson
The Slow Burn Frederick Hahn
The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods Michael Murry
The Vegetarian Myth Lierre Keith
Sugar? Stop the Addiction Kelly Genzlinger
The Paleo Diet Loren Cordain
You can safely skip "What to Eat." Nothing new or exciting there. Typical calories-in, calories out, sat fat bad, etc…
Scott
i am surprised to see Eat to Live here, it's vegan dogma as far as I can tell. Good suggestions otherwise in my opinion.
In response to the forum which will be created soon:
A forum sounds like a great idea but Im talking about you just having a page on your website that shows what each person has said that is eating the HED way as well as time stamps for their comments. This way it would be in one concise location rather than someone having to go through gobs of comments or even forum posts to find how one specific person has been doing. Perhaps even having the person write a short background so others can relate.
As for the forum, why not get it now? There are tons of free forums out there that are very easy to use and free. Why not just start now instead of waiting until later this year? It would take you all of a couple hours, maybe, to set up.
-Drew
Thanks, Matt.
It is interesting what catches our attention. I think you are the first person I have read who didn't think Lierre Keith's book was one of the most important books of at least the last 12 months.
I haven't read it yet so I really can't comment.
I don't know what quite to make of McFadden and the Milk Diet. He strikes me as an outlier because of the way he died and the fact he preferred skim milk (which makes the milk diet potentially much more aggressive) over full fat milk.
I'm not dismissing it by any stretch of the imagination (Dr. Reams was also a big proponent of skimmed milk though not in a "milk cure" context) but it strikes me as unnecessary.
It seems to me there is simply no need to restrict a nutrient in milk to accomplish phenomenal things with healing and health (or "beautification" purposes if you are not sick as noted by Dr. Crewe). I haven't read Porter yet but for the moment I sticking with Dr. Crewe (one of the founders of the Mayo Clinic) and his use of the Milk Diet in all its full fat glory.
I notice you read Your Body’s Many Cries for Water by F. Batmanghelidj. It is has been a long time. Is that book still in print? In fact there are quite a few you have there that I thought had been relegated to the dustbin of nutritional history!
You plan on reviewing all the books you have read or just a select few as you have already been doing?
By the way, why are these titles not hyperlinked to Amazon? You could have made some money off me just now. :-)
Drew. I'll work on it soon. Very soon. If you have a preffered forum format provider you just pass that along good buddy.
Emily, these are not suggestions, just books that I read. I'm interested in what everyone has to say, not just reading more supportive materials for how I already believe. In fact, Eat to Live was one of the most influential books I read this year. Overall, as wrong as fondling a 3rd grader, but not without its important points.
Marion Nestle's book was one of the worst books I read in 2009. Agree with Scott.
Michael-
Keith is a femi-nazi carb-hatin' twit. It has interesting points, but overall was really poorly thought out and blind to the fact that she's making the same moral mistakes that she made in the past with her new tangents. Yes, vegan diets suck and will cause degeneration in nearly everyone if given sufficient incubation time. But it's a big leap to hate men because in some cultures they hoard food from women. This is especially ironic in a book about overpopulation. The fact that everyone is raving about that book shows just how intellectually crippled our society really is :). Read it for yourself. Overall it's about a 7 out of 10 with a 6 point deduction for erroneous, illogical, and aggravating side tangents.
As for the milk diet, I happen to think that both of the highlighted books are at least bringing forth a very interesting and potentially healing on a deep level concept.
The only books I truly endorse as unique and interesting reads, and that had a significant impact on "the big picture" were the ones in red.
About the skim part of the milk diet; (raw) goat memiailk may be a good alternative. For a couple reasons: lower fat, more easily digestible to the lactose intolerant or those allergic to the proteins found in cow milk. If I were to do it again I'd use raw goat milk. Another book suggestion: "The Fat-Burning Diet Made Easy" by Jay Robb. He mentions basal temperature, hypoglycemia, carb cycling. I'd be curious what you think of it…
Hi Matt,
I just wanted to chime in on Drew's idea of having a page where people that are doing HED can give regular updates on their progress. I would love to share my progress and also see how other people are doing.
Anyway, I'm very excited as my temps have been in the low 97's the last few days and I even hit 97.6 yesterday! I've experienced a 7 pound weight gain in just the last week after having been stable at the same weight for about the last month. Since my clothes aren't any tighter than they've been getting I'm assuming it's the good kind of weight gain (bone, organ, muscle).
BTW, I'm a different Emily than the one above. Just to avoid confusion!
Emily2,
Awesome. Sounds like your hormones are ramping back up to optimal feel good levels, and your body is exiting starvation mode. You'll probably see steady weight for a while and then start losing a little body fat if you haven't already. You'll probaby have less of an appetite soon too. Congrats in following through to the point that you have. Fun isn't it?
Ingrid-
Did read Robb's book this year. Guess I should've included it. It's not bad. We'll be tossing around several ideas this year to achieve what we're trying to achieve more quickly and without and fat gain. Carb cycling may have an application. Calorie cycling may have an application. And the leptin effect may be achieved faster with less fat or less protein. I'll be playing around with it in search of some insights.
Thanks, Matt. This is pretty fun. However, I could have done without the initial gain in fat weight. I was overweight to begin with (5'3", 150lbs.). Perhaps I overdid it with the carbs in the beginning. I gotta say I do stress a little about whether or not I'm overdoing it on the carbs. My general rule is to have some protein, some carbs and even more fat with every meal. Should I try lowering my carbs a bit? As hard as I'm trying not be, I am afraid of gaining more weight.
My appetite has started to lessen. Do I go ahead and start eating less and not concentrate so much on overfeeding? Or should I wait until my temps have reached/stabalized in the 97.8-98.2 range?
My general mantra is to press through as hard as you can until your temps have come all the way up and are stable. At this point of metabolic high-gear, you can start worrying more about the weight. But getting the temps up is step 1.
Actually, I think you might fare better with more carbs and less fat. Play with it. See what it does for you.
Hey Matt,
If someone chooses to drink alcohol, what would you recomend? Do you think straight distilled liquor like scotch is alright?
Also what is your opinion on salt and should someone go out of their way to avoid it?
thanks playa, ur blog be trippin bitches.
Z
Re: More carbs, less fat
In the last three weeks or so, the best I've felt was when I dropped fat to around 10% of calories and replaced the rest with high glycemic index carbs. These were the same meals that took me from a fasting blood sugar level of 115mg/dL to a 1 hour postprandial of 89mg/dL.
Anecdotally, these meals would make me hyper, very warm, and very enthusiastic / happy. I didn't notice any particular sugar crash, and while I didn't necessarily feel full, I wasn't interested in food. As usual there was no sugar involved, just tubers and plain white sourdough toast.
Have we decided that insulin and leptin track each other? My armchair hypothesis is that spiking your insulin can spike leptin.
Another thought I had recently: I'm firmly in the fat is healthy camp. But if a person has a lot of body fat, why would they need to get it from a dietary source? The inspiration for this came from Free the Animal, where Richard pointed out that if you start tapping into body fat for calories, you're basically on a high fat diet. Ie, no such thing as a low fat diet (until you're actually dying of starvation).
It seems like even at calorie maintenance or surplus, your body would tap into its stores for structural fatty acids if they weren't available in the diet.
Thoughts everyone?
Best,
Carl
Oh also, regarding my last comment. WAPF points out that many cultures processed their grains via fermentation, grinding, etc.
Is an unrecognized benefit of that processing a higher glycemic index?
My mind is blown. =)
Carl, the body can convert carbs to structural fatty acids
A forum, and the support it would give, would be great.
I recently found 180 and devoured the blog and all the e-books.
I am underweight and started my own version of the HED to fix me up. Been about a week. It's amazing really. Lots of binging going on, weird moods, etc etc. Headaches are annoying.
At the moment I feel like a lazy glutton, or a zombie that just eats constantly. I'm scared of turning into a ball of jelly.
When will the rebound appetite cool off? Soon I hope!
I'm not entirely sure about the 180 approach to losing weight, but it sure is a good way of curing eating disorders.
Looking forward to food not ruling my life,
Rob
Zoltar-
I'm not a huge advocate of alcohol consumption, but I would think straight alcohol would be a better option. Typically less impurities and you don't consume all the other junk with it – like, say, Margarita mix.
Carl-
I have similar suspicions. I'm looking to get the most metabolic bang per calorie. Thanks for your insights. A lower-fat version will be what I'm toying with in the coming weeks. Insulin and leptin do pattern each other. That's why fructose, which doesn't raise leptin or insulin, gives us so much less metabolic bang per calorie, or satiation per calorie.
Rob-
Welcome aboard. Don't worry, you won't be a bowl of jelly. If you are, you can worry about that after your metabolism has peaked and the corresponding anabolic hormones are firing on all cylinders. It may be a while before your appetite subsides. Don't fight it. Schwarzbein is right on when she says that gaining weight is your body "attempting to heal itself."
Hmmm, fat.
I definitely overdid it with the fats a bit the last one or two weeks, but in general I thought like 50-60% of the calories from fat may be okay. That may be a lot, but I thought as long as you get your minimum of protein and at least 200g of carbs which seems pretty reasonalble for someone like me, who weighs 51kg you would be fine.
On the other hand I don't really count calories, or do it just sporadically, so I can not really say how much calories I'm getting and in which percentage. Generally I cook everything that I prepare in a pan, which are most meals, with some fats and ussually add up to one tablespoon of butter or coconut oil after cooking, plus I use quite some coconut milk? Is this too much? I don't necessarily think so, but would love to hear what your guys experiences are with fat?
Would love to know more about what you thought of The Miracle of Milk. In a past blog you talked about the hypoglycemic effect of drinking even raw milk. Is raw milk and colostrum really the healing elixir some people believe it is?
For someone that's underweight like yourself, I would think eating more fat would be preferable. 50% of calories is roughly what human milk's composition is, so I refuse to believe that such a macronutrient breakdown could be harmful. My only question is "what are the optimal ratios, if there are any, to achieve what we're trying to achieve most efficiently?"
Lisa-
I'm going to do a raw milk diet later in the year. I refer to the raw milk diet as being the high-everything diet on steroids.
My hypoglycemic response to milk on an empty stomach was most likely caused by being hypometabolic. I was in the throes of doing a lot of intense exercise on a fairly low-carb diet during that time. I don't seem to suffer from such things anymore.
I won't call raw dairy a magical healing elixir. I will say that it has a lot of promise for achieving certain things in certain people – such as optimizing the metabolism when consumed as part of a "milk diet."
As a person with a slower metabolism, still, I find that if I go too low in fat, my blood glucose goes higher. I'll wake up with a much higher fasting BG if I have a lower fat dinner than if I have one high in saturated fat.
The reason for this, if I understand it correctly, is because my body, needing fatty acids, is burning my own body fat. But when you burn triglycerides via lipolysis, you liberate glycerol in the process. (In every triglyceride, there are 3 fatty acid molecules and 1 glycerol molecule). The glycerol winds up in the blood as BG. If your metabolism is still low and you're not burning that BG quickly, (or if you're sleeping and not using a lot of glucose, but mainly fat) then that's where you end up with a higher fasting BG.
It all gets very scientific, which isn't really my thing, but it's good to understand what's going on when your BG goes high in the a.m., despite not eating sugar.
The key is to raise your metabolism with lots of fat in the diet, then you're start burning more, which will allow you more freedom, in terms of fat content of the diet.
Sorry, I meant "then YOU start burning more," in the last paragraph. :)
Thx for the comments. So I guess I'm gonna stick with my current habits.
And btw, I finally got some iodine and I'm reading up about it a bit more right now and will probably start using it tomorrow. From what I've read so far, if Iodine is really going to help me, I'll probably notice the effects quite soon, so I'll keep you people posted.
Sadly, I bought the Jack Challam book before your review of it in your newsletter. The only good thing about the book was the few pages on optimal test results. There seems to be nobody that can offer advice to someone like me. All the diabetes advice seems to be geared towards people who eat junk and lots of refined carbs. I don't eat like that at all, so his book was a total waste of money for me.
I have been low carbing for seven years. I reached my optimal weight in 2002, but regained it all after a very traumatic experience in 2005. I have done every variation of LC since. I now eat moderate carb but have even gone into carnivore land in the past. I have Hashimotos and am a decent dose of desiccated thyroid. I am much better also since discovering that I have Celiac disease. However, despite all these improvements, my BG is still not optimal and my insulin levels are still very high.
I have lost faith in the whole carb deal really and feel as though I am heading towards diabetes no matter what I do. How can someone who has low carbed for seven years have an insulin level of 17.9 when optimal is less than 10! I know without watching my carbs I would be diabetic by now, BUT I want to heal and not just watch carbs for the rest of my life. I eat moderate carbs so I do consume potatoes and such, but if I do eat a LOT of carbs my BG goes up a lot. As I said, I fear diabetes so when I eat something that has me at 150 2 hours post meal, I don’t want to eat it again! Do others not have these BG problems when they eat a lot of even good carbs? I wonder are unrefined carbs good normally, but once one becomes IR something changes and they will never be able to eat large amounts of even good carbs?
I am also still overweight and the scale only began to move when I eliminated gluten and got on thyroid. I am currently 5'5" at 157lbs. 173 was my top weight. 140 is a healthy weight for me. I want to continue to lose, but MORE IMPROTANLY I want my glucose to go down.
Lynn-
Your situation is something I go into great detail about in my diabetes eBook. Have you read it?
Low carb is a dead end, as you've discovered. The real root of the problem, especially for someone with high fasting insulin, is insulin resistance. I think my book addresses all the potential avenues one can take in attempting to overcome the core issue.
Madmuhh-
Definitely keep us posted as to your temp changes on iodine.
Haven't read your book yet nope. Any chance you will be bringing it out in book format as I hate e-books – LOL.
It seems like a choice between the HED or a vegan diet. I am not actually diabetic yet, but insulin resistant. Challam does talk about many whose numbers were similar to mine, but when they lose even 20lbs their numbers normalised. I am wondering if I continue down my whole food, moderate carb (about Schwarzbein’s levels), and gluten free WOE will my levels normalise like his case studies did?
I do not want to gain any more weight as I am already overweight.
RE: Carl & More Carbs, Lower Fat
I too have found that if I eat a High Carb High Calorie diet I lose body fat fairly easily. I eat similar to a Kitavan diet macros but a little more protein. Mostly white potatoes, white rice, green leaf vegetables, lean beef and a little coconut oil. I found a lot of information very interesting on this site( http://veganmaster.blogspot.com/ ) in regards to high starch low sugar. I ignore the vegan propaganda though
What do you all think of this study? It was with rats, but they were overfed (carbs were in the form of starch and not fructose) and results were NOT good. IR got worse in fact!
http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/50/12/2786.full
Thanks Riles.
Thanks for the link Lynn. It's hard to draw much significance from a 7-day study on very particular genetic strains of mice using highly-refined, fiber and nutrient-free starch. The diet was still 3.5% sucrose.
My experiences have been largely the opposite, having dropped my fasting and postprandial BG levels dramatically by overfeeding. I don't think I'm a metabolic anomaly by any means.
I'm confused. I am very overweight, so should I be attempting to reign in my fats or my carbs or neither? I'm breastfeeding right now too, so I don't know if that makes a difference.
Wow, what a list. I confess I'm a terrible reader when it comes to non-fiction.
But one title caught my eye on your list:
"Mummies, Disease, and Ancient Cultures Adrian Cockburn"
OMG, that sounds awesome! Also the author must encounter continuous Butthead style sniggering whenever his name called over a PA.
"I notice you read Your Body’s Many Cries for Water by F. Batmanghelidj. It is has been a long time. Is that book still in print? In fact there are quite a few you have there that I thought had been relegated to the dustbin of nutritional history!"
OMG, no. Weight Watchers brings this book up all the time. It's still being used as a source by all kinds of nutritional gurus. Also a friend of mine told me her Doctor recommended it to her. I guess her body was crying for water. Unfortunately her solution has been to drink water with very watered down fruit juice. So really it's like her body's many cries for fructose (and given her condition as a prediabetic I'm guessing she needs a copy of your ebook for her Birthday.)
April-
I'm currently open to new ideas on how we can bring the metabolism up more efficiently. But if you are overweight, before you can go forward I think it is really prudent to take the steps necessary to bring your metabolism up and top off nutritional reserves. I wouldn't restrict any macronutrient. It's not a certainty that doing a high-calorie, very low-fructose diet will cause you to gain more. In fact, I think the more overweight someone is, the more likely they will be to trigger weight loss in a short amount of time by eating really well.
Jenny-
I was so excited about "huh, huh, huh… Cockburn." The book was largely uninformative though. Big disappointment. Struggled through it actually.
Matt:
Would you recommend restricting fruit and part of a very low fructose diet, or just cutting out HFCS?
I think it helps to restrict fruit for a while. Like a few months. Lose your sweet tooth completely. Then come back to fruit once you're tastes and cravings are readjusted.
Cockburn looks a lot funnier than it sounds… it's pronounced "Coburn"… thankfully.
Not that that's much better. It's like saying your last name is Fuckface and saying it's pronounced "fook-FAH-chay".
"Not that that's much better. It's like saying your last name is Fuckface and saying it's pronounced "fook-FAH-chay".
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