More on the hot topic of omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids later, as the review of Brian Peskin’s video series on the topic has the wheels in my brains spinning.
For now, thanks to Darya Pino of Summer Tomato where I found this truly fine assessment of obesity in America…
Hey Matt,
This Peskin guy seems pretty compelling. What do you make of him? I'm ready to toss my bottle of fish oil….
Thanks,
Mark
i studied this guys work awhile back… made me think alot more about this oil thing. I got into lengthy comments with Stephen G. about the use of Udo's oil blend over fish oils. I don't know… thats why i just stick to Saturated fats… Peskin seems to agree on that.
troy
Well, there are really 4 sides to the EFA story. The intended goal is to create the greatest inflammatory effect.
The question is, is the anti-inflammaotry effect achieved by:
1) Getting more EPA from fish oil?
2) Switching out derivatives for unadulterated "parent" EFA's like that which Peskin recommends?
3) Reducing intake of all omega 6 as proposed in my latest posts?
4) Reducing all EFA's to the point where Mead acid is produced to replace omega 3 and omega 6 – a theory of Ray Peat and a handful of others?
It is incredibly complicated, and there is no certain, unshakable "right" answer. This may be the topic of my February eZine.
I just think it makes sense not to overload on Fish Oil and just cut down on the Omega-6's but when he says cold-processed, organic polyunsaturated oils are what you need, what does he want you to take? And it sounds like he is totally on the ultra-low carb train….
The low carb train is driving me nuts.
Nobody ever mentions that protein stimulates insulin release. If insulin makes you fat, then don't eat protein either!
In one of his articles Peskin claims that lipid synthesis is inhibited without insulin, so therefore you won't get fat. Except that even if you're not synthesizing it, you can store dietary fat tremendously well with or without insulin.
Actually, what I really want to know: does anyone else here actually find that insulin makes you hungry? I used to believe it, the low carbers keep saying it, and I'll be damned if it is true in my day to day experience.
I've been experimenting on myself, and four tablespoons of brown rice syrup leaves me completely uninterested in food. It is full of maltose which is around 105 on the GI.
Gah!
My head is blowing up! Maybe I should stick to spoonbread, it's what I know.
Take a shot,
Susan
I am getting frustrated too. I have my fish oil in the fridge, but I'm not currently taking it. Couldn't we say that any extracted oil – any extracted anything – is a refined food product?
"My head is blowing up! Maybe I should stick to spoonbread, it's what I know.
Take a shot,
Susan"
Yes! Let the virtual drinking begin.
Colbert's is in top form on this one. I like Peskin's video too. Shoutout to Richard Fine-man. Physicists in the hiz-ouse!
I think I'll have some pine nuts on my salad tonight.
I have a hard time believing we have a shortage of parent omega 6 in our diet. We get it from so many sources! We may have a surplus of damaged omega 6. If so, increasing the undamaged/damaged ratio might be useful.
Data point: I have seen studies that declared that people who eat nuts are more healthy. Hmmm, a source of non-damaged omega 6?
Anyway, I guess I'll have to get his book, since he breezes past the details too fast. I need to see some harder evidence that bottled soy is that short in true omega 6. I have seen some authors mistake the removal of free fatty acids with all fatty acids. Most omega 6 is naturally in the form of triglycerides. Removing the small fraction that is free should make no nutritional difference.
I watched the rest of the video. To say he "breezes past the details" is an understatement. He talks like he's on speed. I'm disturbed that he has actually been barred from selling herbal supplements in Texas because fraud. WAPF has a pretty damning response to him on their webpage written by Mary Enig. He's either a snake oil salesman who is only selling books about making your own snake oil at home, because he can no longer make the snake oil himself or he is the greatest genius to ever have lived, which is just about the only claim for himself that he doesn't make on his website. And yet, he seems to have put quite a lot of work and research into his books. He just might be both a genius and a shameless self promoter. Definitely taking Peskin with a grain of salt.
Last week I went off the strict HED and just did the high-calorie-thing. I ditched the whole-grain stuff, had only refined bread, McDonald's menus with coke and french fries fried in vegetable oils. The only thing was: I ate a lot. While I didn't do sugar-binges, I still had cake, tiramisu, some apples and grapefruits etc.
After no real change on the HED, now my fasting glucose level is down to 83 from an initial 103. The end result of my thinking is: just eat.Follow your own body and your own appetite. Fat people live longer than skinny people. Just enjoy your life – You'll even live longer for it, but even if you don't, you've lived a life unburdened by constant intellectual interference with the most basic animalistic drive you have. Your body knows directly what it needs – and it tells you. No need for complex rules. If you crave an apple, eat it. The basic rule is: eat what you want – as much as you like.
idk felix. Put a bunch of McD's, soft drinks, and fried veg oil in me and I'll be in physical pain and mentally a very dark place. That stuff is evil.
@ Felix I like your thinking but its important to apply the "Eat the Food" principle to a fairly good standard of food. Eating McDonalds and Sugary foods will not heal your body or metabolism and will just leave you a mess… I do like your last paragraph though.
@ Matt: Thanks again for all the great posting, some really cool stuff for us nutrition geeks. I was wondering what your view is on the carbs in yoghurt and milk? How are they utilized by the body and what kind of energy do they supply. The reason I ask is that I have been drinking raw milk and the occasional yoghurt or cottage cheese.
Thanks guys!
I think as long as you keep the sugary drinks on the low side and have sweets only every now and then, you can't do much harm if you just focus on staying high-calorie. And french-fries are not that high in fat. A buttered sandwich with nothing else on it has more fat. So having some omega-6-french-fries is okay, too.
No sane person would use bland vegetable oils knowing that one can safely eat more tasty fats. so it's the health-gurus again that cause the trouble – thanks, Ancel Keys. :-)
I also think the whole-grain trail is misleading. First of all, B1 deficiency was not the cause of Beriberi. Asians throughout prefer white polished rice – simply because it tastes better. This was also true when this theory was developed. Beriberi only developed regionally and not throughout the country which it should if they all eat white rice. Also not only people who eat white rice get beriberi, also people who eat the Vitamin-B1-rich whole grain rice. Professors G. Shibayama and S. Moyamoto desclared to the japanes Beriberi-study-committee that for example the mine workers on Banka, a Sunda-island, "were fed for two years with unpolished rice", yet beriberi broke out more often that in mines where people ate polished rice. Even where high-B1 foods were eaten with the polished rice, like meat and potatoes, there were cases of beriberi. By now the cause is clear: a mold producing the neurotoxin citreoviridin. Depending on weather this type of mold attaches to the rice and grows to produce a mix of poison, which explains the different symptoms associated with beriberi. Ironically – as a student of Eijkman (the guy who got the Nobel price for his discovery of B1) – Professor H.A.Oomen stated, this was the reason Eijkman did not go to the Nobel price ceremony. He himself doubted the vitamin theory and suspected a neurotoxin. Ever since British colonists demanded quality standards for rice mills in the end of the 19th century, the beriberi disappeared with the rotten rice.
Whole-grain bread used to be fed only to poor people or slaves – a trend going back to the Egyptians.
Historically only rye bread was used as whole-grain because the fermentation process destroyed the toxin phytin present. Wheat, on the other hand, was usually refined, because the fermentation process doesn't work that well there.
In the middle ages people could always get their wheat bran separated from the white flour at the mill. Usually the bran was fed to the pigs, which is why millers usually had to pay part of their taxes in that form.
I think Matt is almost there… but there just seems to be more shit invented in the field of nutrition on an almost daily basis than one can dismiss, disprove and ignore.
I could agree that overdoing sugar can be bad, so I try to keep that moderate, but I'm not fully convinced – I never am. :-)
And cooking with vegetable oils is just plain stupid in my book. :-)
Man have I found some cool stuff on the internet the last couple of days. My head is spinning. Plus, Tom Naughton of the Fat Head blog has invited me to do a guest post. I won't let Youngblood Carl down.
Actually YB Carl, I've taken what you've said about going higher in carbs to heart. And insulin is a satiating hormone, not a hunger-triggering hormone.
Felix-
I agree and just posted something like this at Mark's Daily Apple. I mentioned that every mammal on earth at any age will never turn down a bowl full of milk. If you want to "get primal," obey your primal instincts, not the dogma of a philisophical argument about what our ancestral genetic roots are.
I still have an extremely strong hunch about usuing your instincts to choose between an unlimited array, assortment, and quantity of unadulterated foods. Neolithic, sure, but the Uber-neolithic foods – refined sugar and solvent-extracted vegetable oil… watch out!
Milk sugar behaves in much the same way as the glucose in starch.
Jenny-
I communicated with a woman who worked with Peskin for 10 years yesterday. She told me he was "a genuis, but a 'mad scientist'" type of guy. I think he's right to assume that the roots of chronic disease lie in inflammation. There is more than 1 route at reducing inflammation though, such as reducing all polyunsaturated fats to the point where you are producing some Mead acid. Peskin's protocol may work well too. Just as well. Maybe better. I'll be getting into this in the eZine and in the FatHead blog guest post big time.
It's an interesting tangent. Guess we'll have to do some theorizing here. See where it leads.
Just went to the daily apple and had a look. I really liked this reply by Bill to the "no-other-animal …" argument:
"No other animal kills a cow cuts him up and throws him on the grill, and ejoys him while watching a good college football game either, what is your point?"
Richard Wrangham would be proud. :-)
One thing that's never noted in all the talk about the (non-existent) obesity epidemic is that both overweight and obese people live longer than thin people. I think it's a big scam on par with the lipid hypothesis. If obesity is an illness and kills you, how come fat people live longer? Now we have the sick situation where the short-lived skinny people mistreat and harrass the healthier fat people based on something that seems to be nothing but a short-lived fashion fad. At least it goes straight against the scientific evidence. The skinny ones now punish the fat ones with Auschwitz-diets when it is the skinny ones who die earlier. It's yet another scary public relations campaign, nothing more. After the lipid hypothesis debacle, this will be even worse in its effects.
?Starved people cannot be taught democracy. To talk about the will of the people when you aren’t feeding them is perfect hogwash.
-Ancel Keys after the Starvation Experiment
I'll write a book about this. :-)
Okay, if the eat-anything-diet works, what's the problem?
Most people are eating-anything, and most people are fat and unhealthy.
I'm not disputing Felix's experience – just getting confoozled. But not craving Micky D's just yet.
Mr. Colbert seems to be quite an arrogant bast…. For my taste way too arrogant to be trustworthy.
Talking about arrogant, here is the "Maggie Thatcher Diet" with a proven winning track record: 28 eggs a week to loose 20 lb.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/7111052/Margaret-Thatchers-victory-diet-28-eggs-a-week.html
Helen-
I know very few obese, unhealthy people that "eat whatever they want." Most are on a strict diet unless they are in hyperphagia mode, which leads to stengthened resolve for more starvation, which leads to more hyperphagia, and the cycle continues allowing overweight people to become fiercely obese.
Felix-
Thanks for your input. It's been really solid. I will say that in America, it is true that overweight people outlive underweight people. The significantly obese do not. Plus, there are skinny people all over the world that are far healthier than Americans – skinny or fat.
I think being a non-dieter is already a big step in the right direction from a health perspective. There remain many subtle choices we can make within that calorie and macronutrient-unrestricted framework that can get us better results though. I ain't gonna quit snooping around and processing ideas just yet.
Smells like Bruce K. Is it you, Bruce? No, but seriously, I do believe many people has had the purest choice in what food to eat, and in following their instincts they killed themselves. Sugar can be a very powerful drug. Whitout sugar what would keep us returning to the crappy food of the modern world? As W.A. Price said, sadly our instincts don't give priority to the nutrition but to the easily obtained calorie. Other animals don't actually seem to be an exception. There's the case of the junk food addicted deers. Also this: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/03/superstimuli.html Sadly it is by power of reason (or rather intellectual forms of indirect or relational fear conditioning) that a man can refuse gorging on just everything that tastes superb. A donnut is better than the best glass of milk, sadly. And living on donnuts will kill you, or your grandchildrens. It is not to diet, it's to use your head and connect the dots. Something has been killing us, or destroying our healths, and it was not dieting from the start, even if dieting is a part now. Eating refined foods is a way of depriving your body of nutrients though, a more sublte way of starvation. Funny because it also makes you more stupid, less able to find the causes of your demise and so on.
Oh, but screw me, I think the Kunas are healthy and eat sugar. You go google on that Matt.
Rice Lover
In agreement Rice Crispy. Foods must be unadulterated and unrefined or they evetually will lead to depletion and a lesser degree of health. As healthy as the Kunas may be, what race of people has remained healthy eating a lot of white sugar? And is the health of the Kunas getting worse with the sugar added, or better? I have a good guess as to what the correct answer for that is.
From what I've read you need to become morbidly obese to reach the mortality rate of the svelties. But there are many ways of healthy eating. There's this study of the old man of 88 who ate 20 boiled eggs a day and then there are the different societies that Weston Price studied. We are very adaptable as long as we let our bodies pick what we eat. I think that one of the main characteristics may be love of food instead of fear. If you can eat to your heart's desire and consider it as doing yourself something good it's a world away from counting calories, points and carb or fat grams and fearing imminent death for eating the wrong type of fat on a serving of french fries.
Helen:
First, there is no obesity epidemic. Second, fat people live longer than thin people. Even the diabetes-epidemic has been fabricated by changing the limits which define diabetes. Life expectancy is constantly rising (hence the rise in "diseases of civilization" and neurodegenerative diseases). If we live longer it naturally means we have more cases of people dieing of old-age diseases – you have to die of something after all and so far nobody got around death. We should be worried if our overall longevity is threatened, but this is not the case.
I am still hesitant to say this, but in the last few weeks I have had that haunting feeling that it may well be that there is not even a problem at all. Just as there was never a problem with fat in the diet and heart disease. It could be that we are chasing unicorns, trying to solve a problem that exists only in our minds.
Still my working hypothesis is that overconsumption of refined sugar is the only culprit. At least for me it's the last remaining one after excluding most of the other allegedly "evil" foods. It may well be that sugar is simply a drug- like alcohol – and that while eating it in moderation is fine (and may even be beneficial as in the case of alcohol), overconsumption can cause some problems. This really is pretty much my last straw. If this doesn't stand the test, I'll go for an all-you-can eat diet and unleash the fury of a thousand suns on the nutrition and diet industry and embarass them even more that Gary Taubes already did.
There are two interresting studies in this regard, "GUTS" and "DONALD", which suggest that there is hardly any correlation between diet and weight in people.
GUTS:
"Two different analyses from the Growing Up Today Study (GUTS), based at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, were released last month. GUTS is a databank of questionnaires about diet, lifestyle habits and health that were gathered from more than 16,000 children, 9 to 14 years of age. Their mothers are from the Nurses Health Study, the huge database of questionnaires gathered since 1976 from over 120,000 nurses. The study has the limitations inherent in population studies, but what makes these two studies from GUTS significant is that the researchers couldn't even find a connection between soda or snack (ice cream, candy, chips, sweet baked goods, etc.) consumption and weight among these kids after 3 years. In other words, fat children weren't eating more sweets than thin children. "
DONALD:
"The results of the DONALD Study (Dortmund Nutritional Anthropometric Longitudinally Designed Study) were released from the Research Institute of Child Nutrition, Dortmund, Germany. This was a small cohort study on 228 nondieting children. The researchers themselves actually weighed the individual children and recorded their diets (the foods, amounts and eating occasions) at least ten times a year and followed them thusly for 17 years. They found that no identifiable dietary patterns during childhood or adolescence could explain their BMIs. While there were great differences in the children's diets, these differences were not related to their weights."
LOL, rice lover, no I'm not Bruce K. I am a lot less repetitive in my writing. :-)
The Kunas… I'll have a look at that, thanks.
Oh Felix. You just be gettin' silly now!
I would've died at age 6 from appendicitis if it weren't for western medicine. Without dentistry, our lives would be a living hell of dental decay and abcesses. Without glasses I wouldn't be able to see 3 feet in front of my face. We've got plenty of health improvements to make before we're actually enjoying good health, regardless of our longevity stats. Right now we're just patched up enough to barely get by. That's not good enough for me. And I do think we are undeniably getting fatter. It's not the end of the world, and the way we address it is wildly counterproductive, but it's happening nonetheless and is an ominous sign.
@Felix: I highly disagree in a few points:
"But there are many ways of healthy eating. There's this study of the old man of 88 who ate 20 boiled eggs a day and then there are the different societies that Weston Price studied. We are very adaptable as long as we let our bodies pick what we eat."
It's not just as easy as picking something to eat that tastes good to us. Especially when you talk about Weston Price, you have to acknowledge that the primitive people had years of experience and what is often called "primitive wisdom". They knew through trial and error what was good and what was necessary. For example they travelled great lengths to obtain seafood because they knew it was important. Nobody would do that today, as so many people seem to dislike seafood today.
"If we live longer it naturally means we have more cases of people dieing of old-age diseases – you have to die of something after all and so far nobody got around death."
Not true. The Kitavans got at least as old as we do, rpobably even older and still the "diseases of civilization" are unknown to them. So there pretty much is a way to be healthy even at old age.
"We should be worried if our overall longevity is threatened, but this is not the case."
I have no data to back it up, but if you were asking me, I'd say cancer is attacking people earlier and earlier.
Sure, one of the main reasons we live till old age is western medicine. Without modern medicine I wouldn't even be born. I am simply beginning to doubt the basic premise that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we eat and with our general health.
Right now, I think it's sugar that's the bad boy. At least it's most probably the cause of tooth decay. :-)
I've been low-sugar for quite some time now and have zero tooth problems.
But still, eating whatever I like made my glucose readings drop into the healthy range even with moderate sugar intake. I can't help but try to wrap my head around that.
MadMUHHH,
I would agree that if there is no food available around you so you can be healthy, then seeking it out somewhere is of course extremely helpful. But we in the western world live in an abundance of food that is beyond what anyone of these tribes would have ever wished for.
The real thing may be the diseases of civilization. My working hypothesis still is that it's the overeating of sugar that causes this. But the main reason we reach this stage so often is a high general life expectancy. Maybe we reach this stage because we don't lose all those with weak health to infections at an early age, which is one of the main causes of death among all tribes. While those who manage to live till 50 have a life expectancy of 75+, a newborn Kitavan has a life expectancy of 45.
You can find the longevity statistics showing that we all live longer here (the differences between black males and white females are staggering):
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/08/health/08stat.html
"Age-adjusted death rates decreased significantly for 8 of the 15 leading causes of death: heart disease, cancer, cerebrovascular disease, accidents, diabetes, influenza, high blood pressure and assaults.
… The drop occurred in all age groups except infants under 1 year old, where rates were unchanged."
Felix wrote:
"And french-fries are not that high in fat. A buttered sandwich with nothing else on it has more fat. So having some omega-6-french-fries is okay, too."
McD's French Fries are 44% fat, a quantity I'd hardly call not that high. To get an equivilant amount of fat on a sandwich w/ two slices of white bread you'd need just over 1.5 tablespoons of butter. Sure you could put more on and have more fat but I don't see what this proves.
Felix, we have an abundance of food, but the papayas rotting at my kitchen's counter (they were bought yesterday) tells us something about their quality. Brix readings are not going higher, the soil does not replenish itself with magic.
One thing is the life expectancy, other thing is the quality of such life. I ate how I damm well pleased and it almost killed me. That's not the ugly part, though, the ugly part is having lost everything I loved in life. And I'm damm sure I'm not the only one.
About the 2 studies: "In other words, fat children weren't eating more sweets than thin children" But certainly all children where eating sweets, and none were having optimal nutrition. The human body can go haywire in as many ways as there are people, yet it has only a narrow window in which it is healthy, homeostatic. And I'm sure no study can posibly handle all the variables. What about their polyunsaturated oil comsumption, or their nutritional status, or their toxin intake, or their genetic makeup, or their endocrine state… What about the breadth of their nostrils?
There is not one culprit, there never is. The Kuna are certainly healthier than most people and they do eat sugar. They also eat a probably extremely nutritious diet, have low levels of stress and their fat is mostly saturated and omega 3. The skimos ate tons of polyunsaturated oil, but their thyroids where fine.
That the health of those cultures was actually optimal is another deal, but that's not my point. My point is: We as a race are suffering, tremendously, and that suffering is a consequence of our lifestyle (not to say we have full control of it), in one way or another. I'm a living proof of that, every mental ward that ever existed is a proof of that, damm Africa is a proof of that, Britney Spears and Michael Jackson are proofs of that, every diabetic amputee is a proof of that, every morbidly obese puffball in the street is a proof of that, and you'll be sooner or later if you go on living on McDonalds. Or maybe not, but I had to say it cuz' it sounded damm cool.
Don Gorske suffers from OCD (one hell of a ride) and who knows what else. That things are just fine is something I'm not gulping down. Besides, watch out, because a temporal improvement in your blood glucose may be just that, a temporal improvement.
Of course, Felix,you're right about the seemingly catastrophic consequences of many of the steps the modernized world has taken in search of finishing the "disease epidemic", but I doubt you're right about none being there at the start. It's just that it has been with as for so long that most can't just see it. That's why you need control groups, not just hypothesis.
Hunter Gatherers are no panacea, but the things they have in health that we don't serve as a clue to what we can achieve, and as a incentive to stop taking the shitty health most of us suffer from as a mere fact of life.
Sorry, I did not want to accuse Stephen Colbert of being unscientifically arrogant inmy previous post. I meant Mr. Peskin.
I cannot help but feel that the reason he is talking so fast is not his brilliance but that he is trying to hide that the stuff he says does not make any sense.
About Mr. Peskin on Quackwatch:
http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/Peskin/peskin.html
Some western medicine might be necessary for some, but we totally overdo it. With the amount of western medicine Americans take we should all be living to be over a hundred. I do think there are many made up diseases or many simple things that can be cleared up by diet change, but the only thing doctors know how to do is medicate. Once you start taking meds is when you really start to do damage to your metabolism and body as a whole. It is not the diseases that kill, it is the meds you take for the diseases (just look at the whole HIV/AIDS fraud.)
Americans are getting sicker and sicker at an earlier age because we start medicating them younger now. Look at a baby still in its mother's womb, already bombarded with whatever medications, antibiotics, and vaccines the mother takes and then 12 hours after the baby is born it starts to get assaulted with vaccines and then every couple of months, another 10 vaccines, and then the child of course gets sick so much with such a compromised immune system so then the antibiotics start in and then the chronic illnesses and daily meds. All these meds are way worse than any foods. Many children today have many diseases, including diabetes, before they even start to eat actual food. Milestone charts keep getting rewritten so that parents don't see that their children are not developing as they should. It is acceptable now that a baby and child get sick 6-10 times a year.
There is something seriously wrong with the current state of health of most people in the U.S. today. It starts before we are even born.
Western medicine is great in emergency cases and some other situations, but probably about 90% of medication and surgeries are completely unnecessary. Doctors and pharmaceutical drugs are one of the leading causes of death. If medicine can kill that many people then wouldn't it also be able to make even more people sick? Everything is called some sort of disease, but it may just be drug side effects.
Along with HFCS and sugar, drugs destroy the metabolism and that is what leads to obesity. Drugs, vaccines, and sugar also destroy gut flora which leads to candida overgrowth…I have not seen candida mentioned here, anyone look into that?
There is a huge connection with candida overgrowth and diabetes, cancer, CFS, MS, and autism.
I also want to add that you can't really look at life expectancy statistics and say we are living longer now. We really are not, there are just more of us living, which naturally raises the life expectancy average. If many people die younger, then the life expectancy average would be a lot lower.
Before the 1900s or in the early 1900s many infants would die very young from being delivered in unsanitary conditions and from birth defects. If they made it, many would die from a disease since they were week. Also, there were waves of diseases (mostly because of unsanitary conditions) that would kill thousands, like cholera, TB, and malaria. Plus, there were wars that would take thousands of young people and working conditions were not safe in those days. All this lowers life expectancy average. However, for the people that did make it through that, they lived into old age without meds or low fat diets.
I don't think we have longer or better lives now. All my very old and healthy relatives from Italy are watching their American raised children die, it is very sad. Plus, I think life expectancy is actually declining.
"We really are not, there are just more of us living, which naturally raises the life expectancy average."
I don't think you know what average means. I see what you're trying to say though
Whew, I really hit a hornet's nest here. :-)
All I am saying is that the big health scares are just P.R. campaigns and backed that with the latest figures of the CDC on actual longevity statistics, which do show a steady rise across the board. If you don't like that, so be it. It surely goes against the "we-are-all-going-to-die-tomorrow-of-heart-disease-and-diabetes" stuff you hear all day, but it's still true.
On top of that there is study after study showing that fat people outlive thin people. This is also true among disease-ridden groups including heart disease. So the focus on weight-loss is besides the point if health is the actual goal. But the thin-is-healthy media campaign has been pure genius. Now you can do starvation diets, take pills, exercise yourself so much that sports accidents are now the most common reason for visiting the doctor right after the common cold, develop all sorts of eating disorders, go vegan (yay!) and claim with a smug face it's all in the name of health, instead of vanity which is the true motive with the diet industry laughing all the way to the bank.
I don't want to bash the tribes, I am sure we can learn a lot from them. I used to be scared of carbs, I am no more thanks to researching the Kitavans. Besides, if we want to orient ourself along primitive tribes, maybe we should adopt their sane definitions of beauty, where fat has been seen as a sign of status and health and thus as beautiful, instead of trying to become as thin as a coke-addicted anorexic model, which has become the new ideal.
http://www.dietingdelilah.com/most-scary-thin-celebrities/
I know it's all the rage to bash western medicine, and in cases of statins and prozac and probably many others we are clearly overdoing it big time, but the fact remains that it is the cause that we are living longer on average than any of the tribes we try to model. Natural medicine FTW, we do have a lot to learn there in terms of not focusing on symptoms and trying to aid general health before symptoms start, but when I've been in a car accident I don't want some indian herb tea, I want a trained hard-ass surgeon and that machine that makes "BEEP".
Maybe, if we want to raise our overall health, instead of focusing on remote tribes, we can look at our own population and try to find out why white women outlive black men by 10 years or more general why women live longer than men (it wasn't the case in the 50s) or white people live longer than black people and do something there.
I still have some adjustments in my diet, namely high saturatated fat intake and low sugar intake. I still find it retarded to cook with vegetable oils. The last rules I live by generally, but this is more my taste than a set of dieting rules. I've never had that much of a sweet tooth to begin with.
Sorry if this ruffled any feathers, but I fail to see anything wrong with it.
All,
The following very recent review article summarizes the issues wrt cancer and metabolism. It has a different take on Warburg's work than that of Peskin.
http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/7/1/7
It is well worth a read.
Feix,
Before you hit the sugar bowl, have a look at Dr T's latest post at Nephropal regarding the relationship, in rats, between Vitamin D3, the seasons, lactose, fructose and glucose consumption and calcium absorption – a general theory.
Felix,
From what I've read, overweight people who are not morbidly obese live longer than underweight people, and older overweight, but not obese, people live longer than "normal"-weight older folks. It's a matter of degree.
There is, however, and obesity (not just overweight) epidemic. I've looked at maps and stats, and at the people in the mall. It's exploded in the last 30 years.
People today are not in perfect health – I'm considered healthy by my doctors because I only have some "chronic" atopic problems. I think I seem healthy to them in comparison to people who are more obviously effed-up. And a lot of people are indeed more effed-up. The degree of effed-ness tends to increase as income goes down – which relates to quality of food. I don't mean low-fatness – I mean wholeness. My former job was as a community organizer on food security issues – I've seen this up close in person and documented by very good research.
We'll probably just have to agree to disagree on this point. I do think sugar is very bad, but I was unable to cast a vote in Matt's poll about what the worst of the worst is, because industrial vegetable oils, including trans fats, are pretty horrible, too.
BTW, Matt – I would have died at eight from appendicitis, too. The darn thing burst. Maybe I got it from the modern western diet, but modern western medicine bailed me out.
I would have died giving birth without modern medicine (placenta previa), so I'm not taking any throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater stance either. At least when it comes to surgery.
About longevity. Purely based on the ages of death in my family and the people I know, things are getting worse. My great-grandmother, born in the 1870s, live to 98. My g-mother lived to 96. My mother lived to 73. And here I am at 51 with chronic illness. My mother and I were never McD/crappy food fans either — I suspect for some of us it doesn't take that much bad food and toxic exposure to screw up health.
All around, friends and friends of friends, I see people younger and younger getting cancer and having strokes. It's gotten to be uncommon not to know someone with cancer, and I'm talking about age 30-50, not very old.
I do feel, quite enthusiastically, that global health is in serious decline. Obesity, mental disorders, autoimmune disease, allergies/asthma, cancer, and type 2 diabetes are ones in particular that are increasing at an alarming rate.
Western medicine is mind-bogglingly amazing when it comes to saving the life of an unhealthy person. In a twisted kind of way though, they are one of the most major contributors to why we become life-threateningly ill in the first place – via medication, vaccination, and very, very poor information about how to actually be healthy.
They are kind of like stimulants. Before you ever had them you were fine. Produced all the energy you could have ever wanted and then some. After stimulants, you became tired, but stimulants rushed to the rescue to "save you" of your low-energy problem.
The commentary above has all been quite excellent. I too think the question of fructose vs. veggie oils needs to be further investigated, primarily because I have investigated the fructose issue so much more thoroughly than the vegetable oil issue.
To answer Vida's question about candida, while also addressing asthma, allergies, autoimmune disease, etc. – it is clear that inflammation is the root problem of most health issues. The major universities are correct in saying that. In fact, the problem may not be infection or candida overgrowth, etc., but your immune system's response to it. With the rapid increase in allergic reaction, which is all irrational on the part of your body, a picture starts to emerge – one in which it's not the invader that's the problem, but the body's overreaction to it.
One of the few things that can trigger overreaction is omega 6 overload in the body.
Peskin's work is highly suspect. If it were true, it would be unlikely that anyone who regularly ate raw nuts would have heart disease or cancer. I have serious trouble believing that a handful of walnuts and flax seeds every day is enough to stave off all degenerative disease. Peskin also makes blatant and very simple errors in his presentation, which causes me to raise some eyebrows. I'm always willing to let any ideas in though, and explore them. Keep in mind the WAPF is a major target of Quackwatch too, so Brian showing up on the radar screen there is not to his discredit in my eyes. The opposite actually!
Anyway, I hope in this next eZine to show some very interesting theories linking our bodies' inflammatory response to most, if not all degenerative disease. The idea is that the problem may not the toxins, not the viruses or bacteria or candida, not the lectins, not the salicylates, not dirty air, not gluten, not cow's milk, etc. The problem may be our bodies' reaction to those things. The damage done by our own immune system, triggering a cascade of cortisol, inducing leptin resistance (lowering body temp, increasing appetite, and dimishing lipolysis/fat burning).
Should be a good one. And the chief leaders in making our body's immune system overreactive are omega 6 overload, the fructose/fat combo., which elevates triglyceride levels, inadequate nutrition, lack of sleep, overexercising, dieting, and drugs. Vaccination I'm sure has a huge role to play in making our immune systems hypervigilant.
And the greatest of these could certainly be omega 6 overload.
Felix, a question. What about the base health of a non-modernized culture like the kitavans plus antibiotics, sanitary conditions, surgery and oh-glorious internet, etc. Not the old man living to be 90, but hooked to more machines than stephen hawkins and, well, loking precisely like him. I think you get my point. Oh, besides, anorexia IS a mental(and physical) disease, one that's rising.
Terry, thanks for the link. :-)
Helen, the fat and very fat people both have a lower mortality than the normal-weight people, the morbidly obese are at the same level as the normal people and all of them have a lower mortality than the thin people.
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2009/06/even-obesity-paradoxes-cant-excuse.html
Yes, people are not in perfect health. And it may have something to do with diet. But it also may not – see the link in my response to EL66K.
EL66K,
I don't know. Just like you, I hope that such a culture would produce the holy grail of everyone living healthy till old age. But it could also be that the weaker ones we save from infections will end up being the candidates for diseases of civilization at old age. I have no way of testing it either way.
But quite many things we call disease is an adaptation to our environment, sickle cell anemia, for example, provides an advantage against malaria, and even diabetes may be a biological adaptation to starvation. The "everyone can be healthy"-promise seems to be a myth in the face of evolutionary theory:
http://hstalks.com/main/browse_talk_view.php't=126&s=126&s_id=20&c=252
Matt, I know you are anti excess exercise for healing and yet many of our grandparents and great grand parents were very active. they NEVER exercised but the gardening, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes etc was pretty energetic ie their healthy lifestyles included LOTS of movement unlike us??
I'm a huge fan of movement, spending time on your feet, outdoors, walking, etc.
I also realize that there is therapeutic benefit to rest under certain circumstances. Our grandparents didn't stay in bed and drink milk for a month straight either, but people heal doing that. I'm not trying to say what is and is not healthy for everyday life. To me, the answer to that question is very simple.
Instead, I'm looking for the best solutions for someone with a low body temperature and resulting health problems. I don't see what role exercise plays in stimulating the basal metabolism.
Matt, you truly sadden me when you jump onto the anti-vax bandwagon. I find that it casts a shaow over your other truly great research and experimentation. Please note that my view is somewhat nuanced as I never have and likely never will take a flu vaccine but the vaccines for many if not most childhood illnesses have been demonstrably effective and lifesaving.
They are quite a shock to the undeveloped immune system, and many believe that a lot of the hyperinflammatory responses being seen increasingly in our children have at least something to do with vaccines.
As for my own personal experience. The sickest I've ever been was following a hepatitis B vaccine. I was ill, had severe liver pains, underwent extensive testing at the hospital, and developed severe back pain and asthma within a year following the vaccination. I'm not saying that all this degeneration and inflammation can be positively traced to vaccination, but it makes me quick to jump on that bandwagon, especially when I feel that vaccination is unnecessary for those who take the steps to optimize their health.
Helen-
Exericse will definitely make you warmer because your adrenals kick back into gear. I recommend rest to rest the adrenals, so that they can maintain a solid temperature without needing to rely on outside stimulation. Plus, it's virtually impossible to create a metabolically-stimulating calorie surplus with a rigorous exercise routine. I find it hard enough to achieve that at rest.
Felix,just eat mcdonalds everyday for a decade and see how you fair.Your blood sugar may be stable since you say you eat limited sugar yet its not all about BS.
I really like the concept of HED but find that it errs in one area of my opinion on aging.That is that I truly believe that insulin levels determine longetivity.All people who live over 100yrs old have been tested and come out very low in insulin.
Then there is the theory that insulin causes rapid development and shows why inner city kids "mature" at a faster rate than kids brought up on low sugar diets.Kwasnieski writes about it in his books.High carbs accelerates development,reproduction and also aging.
I look at the pics of many of you here and can see that alot are early 30's.Well I am about to turn 40yrs old and heres whats happening to me.If I eat higher carb,even from just potatoes,I clearly look as if I am againg everyday.Now for past two weeks I have been eating back to very high fat/low protein low carbohydrate levels.I go out friday and saturday nights drinking(yes my poison of choice)and have been proofed on both nights.
What is that aboutI start to anti-age when I keep insulin levels very low.I am 40yrs old and never had a cavity,have 20/20 vision and am still very strong.Its the genes from my fathers side as all his relatives live past 100 and are functional into the late 90's.But I age rapidly when I just eat Mcdonalds.
Be careful……
@wolfstriked:
I admit I haven't read much about it yet, so what I'm saying is in no way backed up by science, but in my opinion blaming insulin for aging is a bit too simple. Excess insulin, perhaps. I do bring up this example a lot lately, but what about the Kitavans? What about the Hunza? (I don't know if you can add the Okinawans, too. Does their traditial diet contain bigger amounts of rice, not sure atm).
Those tribes were all known to live very long healthy lives despite eating lots of (high-glycemic) carbohydrates. The Eskimos on the other hand, not so much (Even though I admit that that's not the best example as they really had to live in unfavourable conditions). Does anyone know who old the Masai get?
I'm simply not sold on the whole insulin=aging theory, just as I'm not sold anymore on the high-glycemic carbs=diabetis theory.
But as I said, I haven't read much about it yet. I remember Stefan from wholehealthsource talk about this one time.
Wolfstriked, thanks for the warning. My diet is pretty high in saturated fats. I think that should help. I've always been a fan of meat and animal fat. Funny to learn that it's actually healthy.
The zerocarbers are convinced that insulin causes aging. You can find a lot of material supporting that theory on their forum.
The trick is to have low insulin levels on a high carbohdyrate diet. Then you get the best of both worlds. The only way you can do that is to completely eradicate insulin resistance, which definitely cannot be achieved on a very low-carb diet, which, ironically, triggers increased insulin resistance, lower body temp, etc.
Low carb diets are in no way associated with longevity. That's the sad part about the low-carb pursuit. It's a theoretical tangent based on one thing and one thing only – one single hormone. That is so dumb. By focusing on insulin alone they totally screw themselves via cortisol pathways, take in tons of omega 6, and so on. It is not the holy grail of health. Centenarians don't have low insulin levels because they don't eat carbs, but because they are not insulin resistant.
The full overfeeding version of the HED is often misunderstood. I'm not saying that health = the number of calories you eat.
I'm saying that it is a strategy to heal the metabolism. Once the metabolism is healed, hunger is lowered, food intake is lowered, and insulin is lowered. I'm satisfied on fewer calories than at any point in my life, and my body temp. is still rising despite this. It is a short-term recovery diet. I'm not saying everyone should eat 5,000 calories per day for the rest of their lives. The appetite mechanism is unlikely to permit it even if that was somehow optimal.
"I look at the pics of many of you here and can see that alot are early 30's.Well I am about to turn 40yrs old and heres whats happening to me.If I eat higher carb,even from just potatoes,I clearly look as if I am againg everyday.Now for past two weeks I have been eating back to very high fat/low protein low carbohydrate levels.I go out friday and saturday nights drinking(yes my poison of choice)and have been proofed on both nights."
This is the most hilariously silly thing I've ever heard. I'm 40. I eat carbs and I always have (except for a brief low-carb period about a year ago). Look at my picture. Do I look 40? Most people peg me as quite a bit younger in my daily life. Since I've added saturated fat back into my diet, especially coconut oil, what crows feet and wrinkles I did have have started to fade. If you are worried about looking your age, going out drinking on a regular basis probably isn't going to help. Stay home, eat carbs, sleep like a baby and look like one too.
Wow,you have some comebacks my friends.:D I hope you are on the right track and I mean that wholeheartedly.This is why I come here,to get another point of view towards what is the perfect way to eat.Keep digging!
Your making me wanna add potatoes to my burger again!!! HAha
Maria who is the Rental Agent at Sahara Palms Apts. Protected Rapist Danielle Grant, for some unknow reason.Thier relationship is unknow at this time. She was over heard laughing at how The Victim was tormented and RAPED she thought it was funny how Grant talked about victim.Ms Grant who resides at the apts. Danielle Grant 23, of Las Vegas is a RAPIST, she and another man used a date rape drug on Victim at Sahara Palms Apartments 2900 El Camino ave. apt 170, Danielle L Grant sodomized the victim with a plunger. She is lite skinned 4'6 to 4'7 and she drives a Black Ford Focus, She works as an dental assistant during day. STOP her please. Victim is too ashamed to tell Police. Memory just now coming back. Danielle L Grant MUST BE STOPED. She is a drug addict and dealer ( Lortab and Meth,weed ) sometimes works as a Vegas Escort/Prostitute when she needs money. If you have information on her criminal activities Please contact the Las Vegas Police Dept.