Nice work to those who voted on Monday’s post, It’s Over! You guys are sharp cookies. The vast majority of you chose the correct answer on both of the polls.
For starters, the meal that sent my glucose levels the highest was not the uber high-carb meal in which I ate all of it without fat or meat. It was, indeed, the meal which combined it all and also contained refined sugar and starch. Surprise, surprise. I can say with absolute certainty though, that going vegan for two weeks did throw off my glucose response, but apparently only for that first meal. Despite getting my glucose up to the 176 level by stuffing myself silly ? and boy was I more full than I normally would be on a similar macronutrient and calorie load, my glucose was back down to 98 by the 2-hour postprandial reading. Thank God.
Even more promising was my evening menu. This is where Aurora and I chose to go toe to toe on a meal that combined ample amounts of all the macronutrients. I swilled two pints of Guinness, a rare event for me (and it showed, ha), and we each had an entire half of a pizza. Although most would assume that Aurora’s postprandials would register much higher, that actually wasn’t the case. She spanked me in the 1-hour test. I hit 123 mg/dl on such fare. She barely topped 100. One potential explanation to make sense of this befuddling result is her inability to digest it properly. It may be a factor, it may not be, but she crapped all night while I lay sound asleep with a big grin above my satisfied lil? belly.
It also should be no surprise to most of you that I lost weight. One factor was that Aurora has been low-carb for quite some time. This diet was not a major shift. She lost no weight at all, although she did appear to be slightly more slender ? a sign of slight muscle gain. I, on the other hand dissolved. I lost 5.5 pounds, about 3% of my bodyweight, in just 14 days. My steady consumption of over 3,000 calories while relatively inactive physically could in no way override the loss. A vegan diet is incredibly catabolic, causing me to lose both muscle and fat ? although most of the muscle loss appeared to take place in the first few days.
Don’t be fooled by any of these results though. I was really just testing restricted diets and their respective abilities to ameliorate the urgent symptoms of type 2 diabetes. For the normal person, such extreme diets are not required to maintain and improve health. One need not go to such levels to stave off obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other conditions that often befall modern man.
My real question now is how to improve the glucose/insulin response while eating a nice satisfying meal that combines ample amounts of fat, meat, and carbohydrate foods. That is the ultimate 180 achievement ? to be able to feel good, look good, and have excellent overall mental and physical health while eating a satisfying, nourishing, unrestricted (amongst unrefined food selections), and sustainable diet.
Knowing that the metabolism is the key underlying factor, being aware of the fact that it can be raised by overfeeding, acknowledging that overfeeding has provided reliable reductions in insulin and leptin resistance, and having lots of great and promising testimonials from the HED (high-everything diet) fiasco this spring ? I’m confident that this will prove to be a completely unique and revolutionary discovery.
And so, over the coming months, my plan is to see if I can eat large mixed meals while slowly and steadily pushing my 1 and 2-hour postprandial glucose tests down towards the 110 and 90 levels respectively. I would love to keep my fasting levels below 90 as well. The best way to test overall will be the A1C (glycated hemoglobin) test, which tracks the average blood sugar level over a period of 2-3 months. The closer that number is to 4% the better. That may or may not be in the cards, but the sooner I can begin keeping track of this, the more validity my conclusions will have.
Anyway, thanks to everyone who took an interest in this truly intriguing experiment.
By the way Chloe, 180 did try 80-10-10 for a day, but after two weeks of Fuhrman it was more than I could bear. I’ll do it again sometime though. It did spike my blood sugar to a modest high of only 110 mg/dl ? this being quite amazing as it took an entire pineapple and two large bananas to do it. Interestingly, at the 2-hour mark my blood glucose was still elevated at 99 mg/dl (insignificantly higher, but higher nonetheless than my 2-hour reading after the Famous Famous Dave’s incident).
And an announcement:
I’ll be going to Santa Barbara until Wednesday and won’t be anywhere near a computer until then. You guys are on your own. Sorry, I bet there are a bunch of questions after a post like this. Upon return, the next eZine and podcast will be unleashed, as well as a blog post with pictures of Aurora’s genius Halloween costume idea that involves the two of us, lots of pink clothing, and wings. It’s looking good so far.
Aurora is a girl after my own heart. Thinks up cool costume ideas and doesn't mind that you told the world that crapped all night.
She would probably mind. Hopefully she's too busy at work to read this one.
She was a trooper with that glucose meter though.
Yo, wouldn't your blood sugar gradually getting lower be a good thing – not the opposite, being way lower 2 hours later? Referring to the pineapple and banana situation, of course.
Also, I wonder if it's pushing it to say there is an exact blood sugar everyone should have (if it should always be 85 or 90 or nothing higher). Hadn't someone left a comment saying Page, I believe, said 100 mg/dl was the acceptable number? Even still, these is onlay numbers and relying on machinery and equipment (which, can contain some faults itself).
Dan Holt
You did have unheated honey with the first meal which would curb the reading. Also I wonder what your reading would have been like on meal #2 with no refined sugar, no beans or grains, with just high glycemic starches such as rice or potatoes. Maybe with some raw milk and unheated honey added to it too. Gravey would be acceptable too.
Dan Holt
I believe both Dr. Jan Kwasniewski and Barry Groves advocate that the glycemic index is meaningless. It's more to do with simple carbs that are harmful because they have a harmful effect on the blood leukocytes, don't convert directly to glucose in the blood, thus weakening your immune system harming your personal energy.
http://www.homodiet.netfirms.com is the home of Jan and try reading Barry Groves book "Trick or Treating: Why Healthy Eating is making us sick".
http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/leukocytic_index.html
Both veggies and fruits have a higher amount of simple carbs than starches.
Dan Holt
Here's an interesting article on GI index:
http://www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm
If you do choose to base your carb intake from the GI index it's most ideal to have foods high in fiber.
If you choose to both believe the GI and the blood leukocyte readings then it is best to choose foods with carbs that are almost 100% starches and very high in fiber. A sweet potatoe is almost all starch, has a high fiber content, and is medium on the GI scale. Raw milk and unheated honey are both really good choices too as their anti-insulin spike factors should off shoot the GI and blood leukocyte reading too.
Dan Holt
Matt – what do you think about this study on blood leukocytes? The study doesn't mention if the starches used were high fiber or not. This may be relevant because it may not be simple carbs, but in fact low fiber foods that cause a high insulin reading. There was no mention of vegetables in the study either which are high fiber. Refined carbs, fruits which are low in fiber, and heated honey will have a bad effect on the immune system based on both forms of logic.
How exactly are fruit harmful to blood leukocytes again? As if fat directly converts into glucose (which, the inuit use as energy)…As if there aren't tons of indigenous cultures eating fruit..
The immune system is not just white blood cells; and it is effected by thyroid (the base of what the hell we do to process energy) function, among other things.
Dan Holt
The above web-site I posted gives a list of foods that are bad for the leukocytes. It just showed the affects they had on that part of the individuals immune system.
The body will convert only 10% of the ketones into glycerol. For a healthy 150 pound male that is about 18g of ketones a day. Not very much really. After three weeks of fat adaptation your body will rely on free fatty acids instead of ketone bodies. The reason for this is that during sedentary activities your body only needs between 4-15% of it's energy as carbs. Most sedentary activities are highly aerobic meaning with air, where fat is the primary source of fuel. Glucose is only necessary under anaerobic activities meaning without air. The body doesn't react negatively to ketone bodies like it does with glucose
So the Inuit only need about 4% of their intake to be glucose, which they would get from the glycogen in meat that they eat, lactate and pyruvate, maybe glycerol too. If they were to consume a 2700 calorie diet that would be 27g of glucose, 18 of that being from glycerol, and the rest being from lactate, pyruvate, and glycogen from the meat that they eat. They may have a little bit of carb too.
For one, it doesn't talk anywhere about the health of the people performing the study.
Sorry dude, if you don't want to see that fruit is natural and the Inuit would not have been able to survive on the glucose provided by glycogen from muscle meat alone, then damn, I don't know what else to say. Except maybe, you said nothing about cultures that do eat fruit that do not have poor immune systems — Robert McCarrison's studies alone simply provided all the nutrition his wide variety of animals needed and they were extremely immune to harsh conditions they were put in. No glycemic leukocyte index involved.
But if anyone else wants to try and discuss this with you, well good luck to them.
That study showed plenty of evidence that low fiber foods had a bad effect on the immune system. It did not specify if those were low fiber or high fiber starches. It also didn't include high fiber veggies. This would have been very relevant as maybe it is not exactly the type of carb, but that is has to have a high fiber content to slow down digestion.
So the if you have high fiber carbs with low fiber carbs the low fiber carbs will be just as harmful as they digest into the blood stream too quickly.
On his website Jan K. prefers green veggies over any other source of carb….
From what I gathered most primative cultures that had a high carb intake ate mostly veggies, starches, some fruits (not much), and some had raw milk.
Fat adapted cultures like the Inuit worked at a slower more consistant pace. They had somewhere in the range of 20-30% protein and 70-80% fat. After fat adaptation the body will use 80% of it's energy during sedentary work from free fatty acids. During the beginning states of fat adaptation the body will convert 50% of dietary fat into ketone bodies, and 10% of ketone bodies get converted to glycerol. Ketone bodies aren't glucose I don't think. The sources that are glucose are from glycerol, pyruvate, and lactate, glycogen from meat, which only constitute about 4-20% of total energy used depending on the period of fat adaptation.
^Anon, re Jan K, I read that he favours starches like potatoes, root veggies over greens, as his diet is meant to be LOW-fibre. Which website says otherwise?
Besides, does anyone else think that one can become TOO obsessed with the specifics of health? It seems to me that "health" websites are frequently full of sick people (though arguably that is why they are drawn to health websites in the first place, but still, I see a lot of people chasing their tail and getting nowhere on forums like Curezone, Low Carber and even here) and the more you seek health, the more it eludes you…. it's completely paradoxical. Just thought I'd throw that out there.
I can't find his comment on potatoes again. Don't know where that was. Here's a list of his top to bottom vegetables to eat.
Asparagus got #1, potatoes got #19
http://www.homodiet.netfirms.com/products/productsvegetable.htm
He lists food with a decent amount of fiber in it.
That list is alphabetically sorted, not an order of recommendation.
"Besides, does anyone else think that one can become TOO obsessed with the specifics of health? It seems to me that "health" websites are frequently full of sick people."
D,
yup!
And/or those who feel they have recovered and then believe they know the answer to ones ails.
Ultimately, who can say though. Endless possibilites.
Even those that live past 100 are often asked the secret of their healthy long lives. And they too believe they know the answer!
Glorious uncertainty, not such a bad thing.
J
Anon, Jan Kwasniewski definitely does not favour green vegetables over potatoes and starch. Have you read his books? There is no recommendation to eat green vegetables at all. He favours potato over any other carb source.
Dan Holt
Really? Jan prefers starches with no fiber in them?
I was reading some of Jan's material on his web-site and I don't think that only 90% of carbs consumed are converted to fat. Based on what I read of ketogenic diet is that the body shifts from using glycogen as a source of fuel to using almost all fat instead.
homodiet.com is not ran by Jan k.
He does prefer the potatoe as his favorite carb source.
He prefers cruciferous veggies most if your on an anti cancer program.
troy
Matt:
Your blood glucose experience is the opposite from my own measurements. After a high fat/carb/protein-combo my blood sugar usually goes up about 20 mg above baseline while a no fat/high carb-meal will spike my blood sugar quite high. Maybe because I usually eat balanced meals und you were on the high carb-trek.
By the way: ZC could easily give you a high FBG. When I remember correctly, Lex Rooker (Raw Meat/ZC for about 4-5 years has a FBG of about 100 (according to Melvin Page the optimal score). His HBA1c came in surprisingly high at 6%. That’s with about 68% fat an 32% protein. While eating more fat and less protein his FBG dropped to about 80.
Matt, what's your stance on the H1N1 flu vaccine?
Dan Holt
It may have been the high protein intake that shot up your glucose reading Matt. I read in the Exercise Physiology book that a high protein intake has that affect on glucose levels. Pork protein digests faster too so that would make sense.
Jan K recommends maybe 70g of protein at the most for a 180 pounder, don't know the exact amount he goes by but it's not much.
Matt,
Could you provide your comments on this post:
http://www.carnivorehealth.com/main/2009/11/4/the-carnivorous-diet-your-thyroid.html
Undertow, I have some comments to make about it:
Ive seen similar research saying a low/zero carb diet can damage/lessen the function of the thyroid. I cant say 100% if this is true but through my own experiences I believe that it is. Here is my story (in short):
Prior to Aug 2007 (I was 22 then) I had acid reflux, which caused me to drink lots water to cool my chest down resulting in having to urinate every .5-1 hour. I had 2-3 bowel movements per day that were always messy and caused rawness from wiping. I had trouble sleeping, couldnt get to sleep until 1-2am, I was tired all day and had to drink caffeine to stay away and got all my non-caffeine related energy in the evening.
In Aug 2007 I started on the Primal Diet (if you dont know, thats a raw meat diet mainly consisting of raw beef/chicken [or whatever meat], raw eggs, and raw milk). It fixed all of those problems I spoke about above. I ate that way for about 6 months before adding back in some carbs (in the form of potatoes and some Ezekiel Bread). I dont know if I was somewhat hypothyroid before (I didnt know to check) but I found out the following winter (October 2008) that i was feeling cold when I didnt used to feel cold. Then I found out I had a low basal temperature (96.8-97.2) confirming thyroid/adrenal problems.
Looking back at my life I believe I have almost always had adrenal problems (which likely means some thyroid issues as well). Like I said I dont know if it was definitely caused by my meat diet, but I know that my thyroid definitely decreased in that time causing me to be cold, among other things, when I previously was fine in that regard.
The guy goes on an anti-wheat thing for a bit, of which I disagree with. I think wheat is problematic for people that dont have good digestion. I eat wheat some of the time in the form of fresh bread made at a local bakery (non-bleached non enriched flour, yeast, sea salt, honey, and water being the only ingredients) and pasta made from 100% duram wheat (non enriched/bleached) and havent noticed any problem with its digestion or any decrease in anything over time (not to say it necessarily isnt there as I could just not be observing it). The enriched/bleached shit in most of our food, I would agree is awful, but not wheat inherently.
I also drink about 1.5-2 gallons of raw milk a week (in addition to other dairy products), eat about 2 cups (dry) of white rice a week (non enriched/bleached), and eat some peanuts in the form of peanut butter a time or two a week. I dont feel any detriment to any of these which the article recommends avoiding.
He says that the in response to a surge of blood sugar the adrenals start pumping out its stuff. But he ignores that it does the same when one has eaten large quantities of protein, as is the norm on any carnivorous diet and he also ignores that you still have a pretty high blood sugar on a carnivorous diet as I think we've seen from Matt's girlfriend. He keeps talking about grains and carbs in general being bad but it seems to me he is mainly looking at SAD eaters and people consuming shitty, processed, bleached, enriched grains which arent in the same ballpark as natural ones (even wheat)
Overall a pretty informative page but he uses the same arguments that most low/zero carb people use against carbs and grains while ignoring the fact that natural grains dont function the same, as you can see here:
"Scientists feed animals high carbohydrate diets to induce vitamin and mineral deficiencies"
Same stuff we see all the time
Thanks for the comments. I definitely had low temps on a 9month VLC, that are only starting to raise slowly now, with adding back in 'whole food' carbs (potatoe, rice, quinoa, steel cut oats…) I'm avoiding gluten and dairy for now as they do mess up my digestion, I think I will try adding them back after xmas and see how it goes then.
My basal: 97.2
Daily Avg temp: 97.8
Matt:
I read your ezine and just want to add my experience with overfeeding. Before starting overfeeding I have been low carbing for about 2 1/2 years which brought me some health benefits but also a low body temp. So I added quite some carbs und a lot of fat. After about 3-4 weeks of overfeeding I had to show on the positive side: marginal increase in body temp. On the negative side: 5-6kg extra bodyfat. I felt quite sure, that overfeeding couldn’t be a bad thing because everyone returned to his/her starting weight after the feeding phase, right? Wrong. That’s really one ofthe few dietary experiments I regret because about 10 months have passed and the fat is still there.
I suspect that the kind of extra calories could be the cause of the failed metabolic boost. A lot of extra calories came from melted butter and cream. Maybe liquid calories are less active as a metabolic booster. Or is the processing the culprit? Butter and cream aren’t really natural, it’s processed food. Might the outcome have been different with really unprocessed food like, more potatoes and chunks of beef fat?
It can sometimes takes years to heal a broken metabolism, and you could also have real hypo-thyroid issues. If you believe you are eating well for a long time and not getting results or to the Schwarzbein 'transition period', which is basically a healthy metabolism and losing excess body fat. You could have your doc check hormone levels… TSH, free T3, free T4, etc… you could potentially need HRT. You say 2.5 on LC, so it may take 2.5 years to go the other way…
Sven:You gained 5-6 kilograms in 3-4 weeks? Wow. That is a really big weight gain really fast. I've never experienced one that dramatic, even coming off low carb/high intensity exercise regime. (My weight gain was about 10 pounds over 6 months, which I felt was unusually big).
What steps were you taking to heal your metabolism besides over-eating (getting enough rest, eliminating sugar, cafeine and alcohol)? What about veggie oils? Did you avoid them?
Since switching from a calorie restricted/carb restricted diet and intense exercise to a diet higher in saturated fats and with more carbs like potatoes and rice–I try to eat more balanced meals with some starch, protein and fat in every meal–I have had remarkably stable weight. I may gain and loose a pound or two of water weight every month, but I'm roughly the same. I'm still weighting for the magical weight loss and fat redistribution to muscle, but then my body temps are still struggling, especially when I falter with the sugar, alcohol and caffeine demons.
An update on my hypometabolism.
I stopped taking Metformin. It was giving me incredible urges to eat non stop. These urges had to be followed or I would get a big headache. So I figured I was not insulin resistant anymore and Metformin was simply getting me hypoglycemic.
On the Cynomel (T3), I'm doing really great. I am up to 100mcg of T3 per day and my temp in the morning is now 97.8 (up from 95.3) and during the day in between 98.5 and 98.7 (up from 96.5).
I'm going to start prednisone in the am (1.25mg per day) soon. Since my temps are still not well regulated enough and I still have some hypo symptoms. According to Valerie Taylor, I will need some adrenal support (prednisone) for a time.
Patrick
Sven,
This is why I think it stems beyond metabolism and overeating. There are different techniques and "tools" (I guess – like supplements) to use to balance hormones that stem beyond increasing metabolism with a ton of random food. Cream and butter would provide short-chain saturated fat which normally would be used as relatively easy energy in the body, and I would not say that they're the problem, but that it's more than just the fact that you didn't properly raise your metabolism or thyroid to handle a ton of food and calories.
That's just my current mode of thought on everything. Meaning, it seems most logical to me–because I am not an example yet of what I express.
I also gained weight very quickly over 3 month time frame, maybe 30 or 40 pounds, just a guess.
Glad to hear your temperature is doing better, Patrick! I'm personally skeptical over prednisone – so I'd just be careful with it.
Jennythenipper:
>What steps were you taking to heal your metabolism besides over-eating (getting enough rest, eliminating sugar, cafeine and alcohol)? What about veggie oils? Did you avoid them?
I have been avoiding veggie oils for years. Even before LC. I am getting enough sleep. I drink a cup of green tea with breakfast but that’s it caffeinewise. I mostly avoid sugar but not completely. I do drink a beer or a glass of wine occasionally.
>I try to eat more balanced meals with some starch, protein and fat in every meal
That’s what I am doing, too. Starch is usally white rice or potatoes. I avoid gluten containing stuff.
I always used to be quite weight stable in the 83-85 kg-range, now I am stable around 90 kg.
undertow:
>… and you could also have real hypo-thyroid issues.
That’s possible but I wanted to give diet a fair chance first.
>You could have your doc check hormone levels… TSH, free T3, free T4, etc…
I did get some lab results. About 6 months ago my TSH was 1,5. Two months ago I did another test and TSH was 3.5 and free T4 1,28. A pretty high TSH but it’s within the reference range, so my doc doesn’t want to anything.
I started supplementing some iodine a couple of months ago. That may be the cause of the elevated TSH.
Eating balanced meals three times a day (compared to two high fat/low carb meals a day) have raised my metabolism. Just the overfeeding phase seemed to do nothing but adding bodyfat. My basal temp used to be 35,5-35,7 Celsius. Now it’s about 36,2. I even had some 36,5-measurements.
Sven –
How tall are you? I ask because it's hard to determine whether or not a few kg of added fat is healthy or unhealthy for your frame when most people have such a perverted sense of what a healthy weight is. You won't see any 6-pack abs in Weston A. Price pics, and I know as well as anyone that going lower in body fat beyond where I am optimally healthy requires dietary restriction and/or exercise-induced starvation.
You'd probably do better with less of calories from fat and more from carbohydrates – coming off of an extended low-carb diet that is. Like and even 40%-40% mix as percentage of calories.
Hi, I'm new, I have some concerns about a bunch of stuff.
My diet mess originated from my multiple food intolerances which I am convinced are not bs; however I have not been able to develop sustainable eating patterns eating the few things I can eat. i've tried to alter my diet in various ways, sometimes successfully sometimes not, for years. I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars on fancy homeopathic doctors, which helped very slightly to overcome diet issues. I can get away with eating like a 'normal person' now, but a 'normal person eating in north america is usually not the most ideal!! It just means I don't pass out after every time I eat, and I can eat a bowl of ice cream without getting a virus!!
I have been reading through the blogs lately and I've gradually been adding more animal products in my diet. Although I was never ethically against eating animal products I had a phobia of buying meat from the grocery store, and I was allergic to milk and eggs ever since I can remember. Also I've never really had good experience digesting beef, pork and deer. I don't feel the greatest after certain types of fish either.
I 'fixed' my egg allergy for sure and I'm very proud of it: the grand secret is to make sure the eggs are fertilized. No commercial eggs in the store, no matter how organic or free-range or omegafied they are, are fertilized. Fertilizing makes them chemically different and more complete for consumption, it has to. There has to be a rooster running around to hop on the hens once in a while, and keep me happy too!
ok i'm going to have to continue on another post..im writing too much
I also think I 'fixed' my milk allergy by getting raw milk. Its only been a week so I haven't had time to fully experiment, but so far I can't detect any symptoms. I won't know for sure until I isolate it.
I am still puzzled about beef, pork, and some other meats like elk, deer, mutton. After moving from the city to a small hick town i was able to get grass fed meats and game meats, so I had no excuses for not trying it. I've tried to convince myself that I just need to get used to it. I think the fats are the problem because my reactions are more adverse when the meat is more fatty, like ribs. I've had some pretty weird stomach aches and once i ended up at the doctor's because I didn't know what the hell was wrong with me. Now I usually get constipated for a day and I feel tired. Some people are legitimately allergic to meats like fish, are they not?
I've read in this site, a few times over, that lard and tallow, but more so tallow, is a way superior fat to chicken, duck, and other animal-derived PUFAs. However, when I eat chicken or duck fat, especially in a bowl of chicken bone broth with a thick layer of fat on top, I feel totally awesomely amazing, no matter how much of it I eat. (If I bake or fry the chicken I will admit some of the fat becomes slightly rancid-tasting, but with roasting or boiling its not the case.)
Am I to presume that the ancestral genes that determine my nourishment sources are that of a bird-eater?
Which leads my thoughts to the way of diet-thinking schooled by D'Adamo, Live Right 4 Your Type. if D'Adamo is right, or partially right, that people's ideal sources of nourishment are different among individuals and it may be categorized (primitively) by blood type, than that means anything you say about specific foods based on your personal experimentation is tailored to you alone, and *possibly* to others in the same blood type group.
Back on track, about these homeo treatments I received, they went along with the belief that everyone's ideal nutritional sources are different. According to testing, red meat and pork caused adverse reactions to my body. So IF my thousands of money down the drain wasn't bs, and I can't include beef and pork as regular meats in my diet, then that sucks.
I can't really find much intelligent information on this meat allergy subject, but it intrigues me. I was very enlightened with WAPF and was almost convinced that animal products are the be all and end all of food stuffs. But things are always bound to be complicated; if meat allergies exist, then even an all-animal diet needs customization per individual. I was so ready to demonize the vegetable kingdom. It would have been easy.
So, I suppose my spiel, really, is an argument for the issue of customization of diet for the individual, not that anyone was arguing against it. If I am still unable to follow a customized diet after much trying I will be forced to believe that all nourishment is also poison and can only be more nourishing than poisonous by following a cycle of balancing acts in order to trick the body into eating and shitting on a basis regular enough to allow the body to regenerate itself faster than it is degenerating. Then, its a game!i hope i can win…
The truth is I'm just a whiner that has a list of 'dont eat' foods longer than santa's list of naughty children. And, sometimes I'm so wound up about it the only thing I can do is not eat. Or eat exactly what I'm not supposed to. And then I get myself into a mess. So I would appreciate thoughts on the subject of intolerance?
Matt, I find your ideas and your blog very interesting, had a few questions though.
Regarding the latest eZine, I haven't read all the FUDA posts, so maybe you've already covered it, but I was wondering what you think is the mechanism behind the positive effects of an extremely low-fat vegan diet on the diabetic condition and glucose tolerance?
The way Diana Schwarzbein explains it, as I recall, chronic insulin resistence is induced by your cells becoming oversaturated with glucose, which doesn't seem to jive with an extremely carbohydrate-intense diet actually improving glucose tolerance, shouldn't it just make matters worse?
Also, regarding the HED. As I understand, the idea behind how it can fix the hypometabolism syndrome draws a lot on the work of Diana Schwarzbein, but you seem to recommend a lot more carbohydrates than she does. How come?
Sven,
People usually look at the thyroid first, but if the test numbers are ok, it may be adrenal fatigue. Actually you need to repair adrenals first before the thyroid. You could try the 24hr adrenal saliva test (Cortisol levels) to rule that out as well. Matt has some good recommendations as well, scwharzbein recommends keeping the fat content low until you are healed. I guess this helps avoid the excess fat storage.
Adrenal repair can be easy, some points:
No Alcohol, caffeine, additives, refined carbs
Fat/Carb/Protein mix every 3hrs
Never skip breakfast
Sleep lots, aim for 10hrs every day
Lots pure vitamin C (ascorbic acid)
Avoid stress obviously!
Get vitamin D – natural or replacement; helps with hormorne precursors.
Test numbers don't tell you everything about thyroid, and cortisol saliva tests are not incredibly accurate at depicting adrenal function either.
M: for what it's worth I had a dog that was allergic to beef, the very expensive vet recommended that she eat $40 a bag food (available only through a vet) made with catfish and potatoes.
Dan Holt
I have this theory that people and animals aren't allergic to any type of meat perse except for certain exceptions in the animal kingdom such as pig and shellfish.
The problem is we're allergic to what the animal was fed. The antinutrients may be stuck in the animal's flesh.
I know of someone that has a hard time digesting organic pastures raw milk but they can consume the yogurt they fermented from the milk. These are pastured grassfed cows. The fact is organic pastures uses mixed rations to feed their animals that contain soy and grains. But with the yogurt the antinutrients would be fermented out of it.
I know of another farmer that says their cows are purely grass and terms organic pastures milk as "blue". They claim people won't have any problems digesting their milk.
Whatcha think?
Dan Holt
Funny fact Matt, Tombstone combination pizza is made with exactly a 40/40/20 ratio of carb, fat, and protein.
It may not have the healthiest ingredients, but for some reason they follow that ratio.
So two and a half tombstone pizzas would give me all the calories I would need in a day based on that ratio.
M –
Great post. Well-put. I think a lot of people are in your situation – wanting to eat a "healthy" diet but not being able to digest and metabolize it properly.
Because food allergies run rampant in people with a low metabolism – as noted by Mark Starr, Mary Shomon, and others, I've come to the conclusion that most food sensitivies and allergies in general result from hormonal imbalances/poor metabolism. Instead of tiptoeing around them, it's sometimes best to focus simply on the metabolism and ignore the Santa list. That plant poisons girl, if you're familiar with her, is having a lot of her sensitivities erased by desiccated thyroid last time I checked.
Ditto for me on eggs by the way – although now eggs of any kind do not bother me.
Take your morning temp (armpit temperature first thing in the morning) and you'll probably find them running low (below 97.8). This reveals much more to the story.
Some people do need glandular support from adrenal and/or thyroid extracts to heal. Many however, do not. Don't take any glandulars until you know you don't need them. Until then, eat plenty from the protein, fat, and carbohydrate groups that you tolerate well. Eat a lot. Rest well. Don't focus on short-term reactions or let them dissuade you. Buckle up to overcome them and improve upon them. That's the idea around here I suppose.
Keep us posted. We'd love to hear what does and doesn't work. And don't sweat the PUFA thing. Just don't eat vegetable oils.
Collden –
I love Schwarzbein. She, however, interpets low-carb science at face value.
First of all, insulin resistance does not come about due to cellular glucose saturation or repeated exposure to insulin. Carbohydrates have no relationship to insulin resistance whatsoever. Insulin resistance is triggered by outside factors. I believe the primary factor is a low metabolism.
When the metabolism is low, the body favors fat storage over fat burning. The problem can get out of control because intracellular fat accumulates, and that does cause cells to be resistant to insulin. I think a zero-fat diet like that I was following works because it removes fat from the scenario. The body can handle glucose better in isolation. Of course, a healthy body can handle whatever you throw at it.
A low-carb diet "treats" insulin resistance, by reducing the glucose load. But it doesn't cure or overcome insulin resistance. It is a short-term solution to a fundamental disorder, and can actually worsen things if taken to an extreme, as the presence of ketones and lack of glucose slows down the metabolism even more. Then carbohydrates become less tolerable, not more tolerable, and poeple dig themselves into a dieter's prison.
No.
Eat like Schwarzbein recommends (her latest book actually uses the phrase 'gag it down,' I love you Diana!), except disregard the carbohydrate restriction component. Just eat a regular well-balanced diet and plenty of it while following some of the basic tenets that Undertow just mentioned above. Those are actually very sound recommendations. Noice.
Interesting theory Dan. It's not out of the realm of possibility I suppose. I have heard that Organic Pastures milk isn't as great as it's believed to be. But my tongue taught me that. Their butter tastes F-U-N-K-Y.
Correction M –
Don't take glandulars until you know you DO need them.
Matt,
Fat only and (usually) meat-only/focused diets can exacerbate diabetes also because diabetes is not a disease of too much glucose in the body, it's the body's lack of glucose.
And I quote:
"The following year, Budd described another patient, a young man who had become too weak to work and who was losing weight at an extreme rate [referring to a diabetic]. Budd's prescription included 8 ounces of white sugar and 4 ounces of honey every day, and again, instead of increasing the amount of glucose in the urine, the amount decreased quickly as the patient began eating almost as much sugar as was being lost initially, and then as the loss of sugar in the urine decreased, the patient gained weight and recovered his strength.
Drs. Budd and Piorry described patients recovering from an incurable disease, and that has usually been enough to make the medical proffesion antagonistic. Even when a physician has himself diagnosed diabetes and told a patient that it would be necessary to inject insulin for the rest of his life, if that patient recovers by changing his diet, the physician will typically say that the diagnosis was wrong, because diabetes is incurable."
A couple explanations
"If diabetes means that cells can't absorb or metabolize glucose, then any cellular function that requires glucose will be impaired, despite the presence of glucose in the blood. It is intracellular absence of glucose which is problematic, rather than its extracellular excess.
Neuroglycopenia (or neuroglucopenia) or intracellular glycopenia refers to the deficit of glucose in cells. When the brain senses a lack of glucose, nerves are activated to increase the amount of glucose in the blood, to correct the problem. As long as the brain senses the need for more glucose, the regulatory systems will make the adjustments to the blood glucose level.
The antagonism between fat and sugar that Randle described can involve the suppression of sugar oxidation when the concentration of fats in the bloodstream is increased by eating fatty food, or by releasing fats from the itssues by lipolysis, but it can also involve the suppression of fat oxidation by inhibiting the release of fatty acids from the tissues, when a sufficient amount of sugar is eaten..
When a normal person, or even a "type 2 diabetic" is given a large dose of sugar, there is a suppression of lipolysis, and the concentration of free fatty acids in the bloodstream decreases, though the suppression is weaker in the diabetic. Insulin, released by the sugar, inhibits lipolysis, reducing the supply of fats to the respiring cells."
This is from the most recent newsletter from, you Guessed it!, Ray Peat. He also talks about Houssay's proper expiriments with coconut oil, sugar, and the fact that lard-based diets failed to protect the animals from poison-induced diabetes. Probably the gross lard that's mostly unsaturated because of the pig's diet.
For this, I question your laxitude towards polyunsaturated fats, and I do not understand one bit how you could say they aren't a big deal, just that vegetable oils are. There aren't any situations I can think of that separate vegetable oils from the standard American diet and the incredible increase of diabetes and obesity – two links to both low metabolism and thyroid – yet another link to allergies as you describe. The fact that it's polyunsaturated is most certainly a root – and I think it very wise to try to recommend the focus entirely on saturated over any polyunsaturated. When a person has stored so many toxic fats already, why should they be chill about eating more? I just think it's really important that someone should at least avoid them in general for rehabilitation.
Besides..you know how it goes in the medical community…"Crave sugar? Sugar and glucose must be bad for diabetics because my petri dish says so..Suck it up and leave it alone dummy!"blah blah blah
I wanted to add that I have been taking 'Betaine HCL' with every meal and snack the last two weeks (one 650mg pill – NOW brand). It has greatly improved my digestion and BM's. Def recommend it, as schwarzbein does as well.
After 9months of VLC, going full on blended fat/carb/protein, threw the bowels for a loop!
I think I will try and ween off it after a month or so. It is supposed to help by raising your stomach acid.
Matt:
I am 192 cm tall, therefore my weight gain is no big deal. But I am at a lifetime high weightwise and I can’t believe I have been underweight the whole time while eating a HED-diet most of the time.
Is a LF/HC vegan diet really healing anything? Your body adapts to handle large volumes of glucose (without fat) but doesn’t cope that well with a mixed meal. So does that diet really accomplish anything?
Dan Holt
To Sven: How much do you weight? At 6'4" there is no way you are overweight.
On average your body will metabolize about 50 percent of it's energy into fat and the other 50 percent into carbohydrate and the protein is primarily used for muscle repair. 1 gram of fat has twice as many calories as a gram of carb. The two exceptions are if you are fat adapted or if you are doing a highly anaerobic activity such as distance running.
Dan Holt
To Chloe: I think that lipolysis will take place as long as most of the calories you consume is fat. The body is used to converting 50% of it's energy into fat and carbs, but it's not efficient at converting fat into carbs, so if your meal is deficient in carbs your body will rely on lactate, pyruvate, glycerol, free fatty acids, and mostly ketone bodies if you constantly eat like this. If you aren't taking in enough carb or fat your body will use your dietary protein or your muscle protein for converting to fat and carbs.
Maybe a diabetic isn't taking in enough calories. You want to consume 13.963 calories per a pound of fat free lean body mass just to support your base metabolic rate, not including if you do other activities such as reading, walking, working, etc. On a fat adapted body it takes 3 weeks for the body to convert from relying on ketones to relying on 90% of it's energy as free fatty acids. You still have to take in quite a bit of calories, and that is a lot of fat.
Most vegetable oils are far worse than high pufa foods like eggs or pig fat because they are far higher in pufas, and the pufas are usually rancid because the vegetable oils have been sitting at room temperature. The saturated fat in the meat based high pufa fats help protect the pufas from rancidity.
Comparing PUFA's in solvent-extracted, highly-oxidized vegetable oils, which are basically liquid free radicals – to pork fat, fresh nuts and seeds, freshly-ground grain on so on is like comparing fruit to crystalline fructose. There is no comparison. It's unfair to put such things in the same category.
It's not that I ignore Peat's beliefs and research on PUFA's either. I also feel that saturates are to be stressed over polyunsaturated fats, and that replacing vegetable oils with butter, coconut oil, and animal fat is a priceless change for an individual to make.
But his conclusions simply don't fit the mold of observation. It doesn't match with T.L. Cleave, or Weston A. Price. It doesn't support the clear link between diabetes and tooth decay – and everyone knows that white sugar is the substance that's most causative of tooth decay.
Switching to saturated fats is a primary focus of this site, but it's not an evangelical obsession. Ya wanna eat pig? Do it. You'll be just fine.
BTW I'm not sure where the Melvin Page 100 mg/dl reference comes from. Everything else suggests that Page thought the optimal range to be 80-85 for fasting. Cheraskin, with a similar line of study, labeled the 75-85 mg/dl range. In general, the closer blood sugar stays to normal the better. That's when the body is strongest and most disease resistant. This also yields the lowest A1C tests, which equates to low levels of inflammation and oxidation – the dual causes of nearly all degenerative disease.
Sven –
At 90 kg and 192cm your BMI is 24.4, which is pretty light for a male. Mine is a full 2 points higher at 26.4 I know the BMI is useless, and have even posted about that elsewhere, but still. The weight you're at is not ample reason to abandon ship on eating well – especially if you feel better, have better moods, have better digestion, and have a higher body temperature – which gives you a better quality of life and immeasurably higher immunity to degenerative disease.
And yes Sven, my vegan diet accomplished nothing. It did provide insight, and added a layer of complexity to the big picture discussion.
Who is "everyone" in the case that everyone knows white sugar causes those things? Obviously not everyone knows this, or else people wouldn't be curing their diabetes with sugar. Cavities? I have not heard in depth conversing about teeth much at all, actually, and that is one of my interests currently, but I doubt I'll get answers easily. The people Price discovered who had developed cavities also had hardly any good nutrients available to them, not just sugar and white flour added in.
It's not just pig, though, that's a polyunsaturated fat. Pigs that devour soy and vegetable oil, will have that consistency to their fat. (hint hint, study that showed lard didn't protect against diabetes). I think that's what Peat means. Personally, I think if you find the good kind of pigs that are actually fed natural stuff, then yeah sure, whatever. But depending on the person, eating mostly saturated as possible may be the best choice..and I think ignoring that and not mentioning it as a big deal is skipping a really really big part of the equation.
Yeah, you can't compare vegetable oils to natural polyunsaturated fats – but that doesn't justify that they're good for us or that someone should be consuming them as they please when in a vulnerable state of health. If you have recommended that sugar in any form can be harmful to diabetics, and you saying you only eat fruit on occasion, then why is it wrong to say Peat's theory that polyunsaturated fats are bad for a sick person (or for thyroid function in general) is wrong because of the simple fact that natural polys are not like vegetable oils?
Thanks for responding. BTW some good news. my butcher gave me a HUGE bag of suet from, I'm assuming, cows, although he does butcher game meat so it could have been from moose or deer. Long story short I decided to render some of it into tallow, and then I got the bright idea of cutting up some potatoes (from our garden) into long strips and…you guessed it… i made french fries!!!! They were so f*ing good!! But, my point is, if anyone read my earlier posts I had a concern that I don't usually feel great after eating beef. I decided to try out this tallow stuff, and I feel fine eating it.. So I don't know what my problem is. In fact I felt awesome after eating these fries. I was so excited about it. Fries used to be my favourite thing when I was a kid. And, by the sounds of it, my butcher usually throws away the fat!!! That's insane.! And, this is grass-fed beef we're talking about, too.!
Don't worry I won't take any glandulars. I won't do anything crazy until I stick to a good diet for a while. I refuse to spend money on any health-related stuff that isn't food, at the moment. I think my hormonal system is pretty good but is always struggling because I'm so hard on it, switching between diets, exercising too much, barely eating enough animal prods for so many years. In fact, this month I did not do any aerobic exercise AT ALL whereas the last six months i religiously ran up a steep hill for 60mins a day. i totally burned out. I'm trying to avoid the up-and-down part of exercise because it really throws me off.
My latest hurdle has been trying to cut out nuts and seeds for the time being. They sure as hell constipate me. I've been good with avoiding sugars and grains, but i find myself spooning peanut butter into my mouth several times a day because of nervous habits. I'm sure as hell not worried about the calories but everytime i do it, it throws of my pooing for a day or two. urghhh.if only i could replace the evil with a good.
So, my current approach I've been trying to follow is as follows:
good eggs
variety of meat, despite any real or imagined issues with it,
raw milk products
potatoes
lard, tallow, butter
small amount of salad,
coconut milk on occasion
I'm kind of stuck on my carb variety. what do you people eat as carbs??
ok. i just thought of something that i wonder about sometimes.
How does sleep affect metabolism, digestion, etc?
I know when I sleep for 6-7 hours my system runs more smoothly, but since I struggle with the odd depression here and there I end up with a week of 10-hour nights now and again. Also, when I stay up all night, my digestion/metabolism really speeds up.
I did an experiment once when I was a teenager, which was an important experiment. I was very frustrated with certain problems I had acquired – acne and periods. If only I could get rid of these two things I could live freely. So, I began cutting out oils first. At the time good oils were completely unknown. Then I discovered that by not eating yogurt every day in my lunch, my two-month long cold vanished. Then, I cut candy, meat, packaged foods. I was eating tiny bits of oats, apples and bagels. And salad. I slept no more than 5 hours per night. This went on for about six months: my acne and periods went away. I was really really skinny. right now I have no flab on my stomach and i'm 135 lbs. at the time i was 89lbs. One day I looked at myself and decided I should start eating!! So I did. I ate lots and I had a good metabolism. I gained back muscle and looked healthy. My skin stayed good and my periods came back and didn't bother me this time. I could eat sugar, wheat and dairy, and lots of it, no problem.
That was a while ago. My family really criticized me for it, and I know you're not supposed to do that kind of stuff when you're young, but I think I did myself a favour. I was doing the best I could with the limited knowledge I had, and the limited food selection I could obtain.
Matt:
"BTW I'm not sure where the Melvin Page 100 mg/dl reference comes from. Everything else suggests that Page thought the optimal range to be 80-85 for fasting."
That’s easy to answer. It’s on page 31 of "Your Body is Your Best Doctor!" by Melvin Page. The question is where your 80-85 range comes from. Ok that Appleton book. Well, do you have a book by Page in which he talks about the 80-85 range?
I’d say 80-85 seems to be more reasonable than 100 but in the Page-book I read, 100 is the magical number.
Sven –
Weird. I loaned out that book, and his others I got via the library. I'll have to revisit cap'n Melvin. Appleton is an IFNH member and they are hardcore devotees of Page, so maybe they know something we don't.
Chloe –
I've seen so many massive health turnarounds with sugar exclusion minus any provisions about fat sources that it's hard for me to make that my emphasis.
Refined sugar does lack nutrients, but eating it with other foods is where the problems really arise. But even a fast with only sugar will fix hyperglycemia as long as it doesn't contain fat and animal protein with it. Since real diets contain all those things, sugar in isolation is not very signficant. But there's no doubt that a "Coca-Cola cleanse," which does exist, will produce the appearance of immediate benefits. That's why studies, in which things are looked at in isolation, are misleading and unimportant.
It has to be interpreted and held up to the candle of the Weston A. Price 'ultimate study' and others to be validated.
Plus, I had a preposterous amount of nutrients in my childhood diet (whole eggs, real butter, beef, game meats, shellfish, fish, vegetables, lots of fruit, whole milk dairy products) and I had absolutely massive tooth decay (white sugar and flour in my diet).
Like I have said, it is plausible that an accumulating of PUFA's made me hypometabolic, carbohydrate intolerant, hyperglycemic, and overrun with allergies, infection, asthma, overweight, tooth decay, and moodiness. Sugar could just be an innocent bystander.
But this, all things considered, is a very unlikely scenario seeing that all those health problems can be generated in the absence of PUFA staples, such as that in the urban Zulu that Cleave studied, or in studies done by Burkitt and Trowell.
Anonymous –
Lack of sleep = high adrenal hormone activity = high energy and hypermetabolism short-term = hypometabolism long-term once you reach burnout.
Caffeine and refined sugar stimulate the metabolism too by increasing cellular ATP usage. But this is only short-term and leads to depletion of cellular ATP , burnout, and the opposite effect. This is why paying attention to short-term results is irrelevant to the big picture. When you feel sluggish, tired, and depressed from getting more sleep – that is your body resting its adrenals. The depression, and I'm guessing increased physical pain and illness is due to beta endorphin receptor site closure that's caused by episodes of high adrenal/endorphin production.
This is why stimulants are addictive – and anything that spikes adrenal hormones and beta endorphin are addictive. Don't misinterpret your body's signals.
M-
Try corn, sweet potatoes, brown rice, quinoa, amaranth, etc.
The diet sounds pretty solid though. Eat that suet!
I believe you are only looking at the fact that you subtracted sugar. You go against what you say, which is it's what the body does with the food. Sugar, sucrose, is a food, and the body does not just get attacked every time it eats it. It's not like arsenic, that is poisonous to every human being.
To say that just because you think it was the sugar does not justify that it was.
Kids that have been growing up in America, since Price's time and probably before, have had problems. Way more problems than tribes who's mothers probably eat what is right for them. We are born with problems more likely than not, and you've said this, too, and we know it's getting worse and worse.
You can eat foods that aren't devoid of nutrients and still be nutrient deprived.
Bringing up the zulu after you mention your diet does not justify that addition of sugar and white flour alone caused problems. They replaced their food with these foods, and were eating a lot percentage of their diet as refined.
Also, I do not believe that these diabetics were fed sugar and only sugar (it's not just one study, it was a method to help people..it was not that they stayed on sugar only forever, they were cured). I think it was in addition to their diets. Like Peat's father, who simply added in brewer's yeast to what he ate, and got rid of his diabetes entirely. No quick fix then deflate and return to diabetes, no staying on nothing but raw carbohydrates forever and playing the avoidance game.
I think you're highly simplifying the principles of Peat's work. It is not just polyunsaturated fats are in place of sugar's blame. Rather, it's a multitude of things that cause different problems perhaps blamed on sugar, maybe a deficiency..maybe a hormonal balance (it's not hard to get the two effect each other, as well). Being that I've asked him if anyone he's worked with has ever been intolerant to sugar, he said whatever reaction they appeared to have had always been fixed by things he suggested, such as correcting a progesterone level, the thyroid, or other (there was more, but I'd have to dig through a lot of e-mail).
Poor reactions to sugar can definitely be fixed by repairing the metabolism. There's no doubt about that. What I question is what caused the metabolic problem in the first place, the crappy heredity, and so on. No one can say for sure, even with such revealing studies by Price, Cleave, Burkitt, etc. It totally could have been nutrient deficiencies, but nutrient deficiencies were hard to create without those refined foods. It is still the likeliest scenario that refined carbohydrates, particularly sugar, where the foods that caused humanity to zig instead of zag. I would need to be beaten over the head with some kind of incontrovertible proof to suggest otherwise, just like I would need something really significant to happen in order for me to believe that O.J. didn't kill Ronnie and his wife.
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