Yesterday we addressed appetite, metabolism, lipolysis, and some goodies like that as it relates to carbohydrate consumption.
I would go into far more detail today, but I’m having some trouble sleeping on this all-meat diet! Dream recall is the best of my life; however, but for the last decade the majority of my dreams involve either urinating or defecating or both, and not being able to stop, so I can’t say the dream recall really thrills me. I go through at least 20 times the quantity of toilet paper in my dreams as I do in reality.
Actually, my sleep has felt pretty good, and my energy levels are very stable and lasting. Still, the dark coloration under my eyes ain’t lookin? so pretty. Energized perhaps, but a friend of mine saw me today and said, ?you look tired. Well, I may not be tired, but I look it. And looks tell a story of their own. Anyway?
One of the dangers of going zero carb is not being able to eat enough food. If you eat too little food, the thyroid gland slows down, cortisol rises, sex hormones decline as does libido, and as pointed out yesterday, when the thyroid is low, lipolysis, or fat burning is suppressed. That only works to dig your hole deeper.
Low thyroid secretion is also associated with a very long list of disease. That’s because of all the things that accompany hypothyroidism. It’s not all the thyroid’s fault, but the connections are endless. Broda Barnes, a Colorado thyroid specialist was truly on the cutting edge of thyroid science, having noted that a vast majority of the population suffers from this condition, somewhere in the neighborhood of 50%.
Barnes, instead of fully grasping why the thyroid gland was underperforming, looked at it as a flaw that should be medicated, and he gave tiny amounts of natural thyroid extract to most of his patients with fantastic results, including, but not limited to, a 90-something percent reduction in the incidence of heart disease amongst his patients. Low thyroid hormone may somehow directly be involved with arterial-scarring and cholesterol blockage. Personally, in all I’ve come across, it seems most likely that low thyroid secretion parallels or causes the body’s immune system to become more vulnerable, allowing systemic pathogens to overcome the body, infecting arteries, causing damage, forming lesions, triggering overproduction of cholesterol, which heals lesions, and over the long-term, causes blockages, ruptures, and all that good stuff. In other words, just as, when the body is not healthy as a result of eating processed foods, especially sugar, pathogens can overtake the teeth and cause decay as Weston A. Price observed ? or ruin the digestion as McCarrison and Burkitt observed when refined foods began to substitute for traditional staples.
I do believe, like Harvard is now suggesting, that chronic conditions are inflammatory in nature, and I believe the inflammation is in response to infection, in turn resulting in big outpourings of cortisol. Cortisol also triggers insulin resistance, raising insulin levels, and thus, the high insulin, high cortisol, low-thyroid state is perpetuated. From there, one can convict shortage or surplus of any one of these hormones of causing any disease, but it doesn’t get to the root of why those are elevated in the first place. Losing the battle with infection can be due to insufficient nutrition, too much dietary stress, staying up past your bedtime, drinking heavily, eating sugar, and many more.
Broda Barnes helped me come to this realization ? that infection is the root cause, and the reason we are surviving to have degenerative disease is only because we have the meds and resources to survive through many infections to get old enough to get them. What Barnes didn’t know; however, is that infection is not inevitable. Like Price found in his travels, or McCarrison in his laboratory with his animal subjects, a level of health could be obtained from a great diet that could grant relative immunity to even the most virulent diseases, such as Tuberculosis.
And note, avoiding infection cannot happen by living a sanitary lifestyle and avoiding contact with germs. The only way to do it is to follow healthy practices and consume nutritious foodstuffs, that you digest correctly, with the exclusion of foods that do not fit that description.
Late last night: 4 ounces grilled steak with 1T butter
Breakfast: 4 scrambled eggs and 1T butter; 2 ounces roasted duck, duck heart and duck liver cooked in 1T mac nut oil
Lunch: ? roasted duck with lots of fat and skin
Snack: 4 hardboiled eggs with 2T butter
Dinner: 8-10 ounces of some kind of grassfed beef dish, probably pan-fried hamburger-steak, with 1-2T butter (I don’t know yet, I haven’t eaten it)
When I first went low carb a year ago my ability to get a decent night’s sleep went to hell. A concurrent issue was also job stress at the time. My sleep got so bad I went to my doctor to get sleeping pills. The doctor chalked it up to stress. A year later I am still very low carb and my sleep has gotten better as the job stress has gone away but it is not what is was before I went low carb. On the low carb boards everyone raves that they sleep better on low carb. Not me. I slept great on vacation so maybe it is/was stress but I am not so sure.
You are so right about perhaps not eating enough on zero carb. I went and got some extra beef fat this past weekend to add to my meat so as to up the fat. I had 5 extra ounces of beef fat and 12 oz of t-bone on Saturday and I almost felt sick all day as I felt more than stuffed. I believe the fat more so than the protein is anorexic. I was rereading GCBC and Donaldson used 3 parts lean to 1 part fat for his patients. I did that today and that seems like a much better ratio. This morning I could tell I needed to eat as I was really grouchy but my stomach was not telling me to eat. Yes zero carb sends some weird signals as far as hunger.
I concur doctor, I concur…
My sleep quality is pretty good. It’s just that I go to bed at 10:30 and the next thing I know it’s 5 am and I feel like flying out of bed and singing kind of like Bruce Almighty (the movie with Jim Carrey, not the hero of AV Skeptics lore). If it weren’t for the discoloration under my eyes I would be under the impression that this was a blessing. Indeed, that’s what I did feel the first time I reduced carbohydrates and got the same response. I went for months on 6 hours of sleep per night, felt awesome, and was like an uppity Jack Lalanne, Jr.
But it did wear off over time.
I do feel like if I stuck with it long enough my body would readjust and I’d be able to sleep fine.
Talk all you want about eating 80% fat calories on a diet like this, but fat is getting grosser by the day. It’s just hard to get excited about it. When carbs get to a certain low, fat no longer tastes good.
It’s like Yudkin and Gregory Ellis talk about – just because you eat a large percentage of your calories as fat, doesn’t mean that your diet has any more fat than the the typical diet, which has more fat and carbohydrates and overall calories.
This wasn’t true when I ate some carbs but is certainly true now.
The question remains, “is it better to eat fewer calories, or is there great danger in doing so?”
Of course there’s a whole school of thought that eating less is advantageous. I totally see the argument on that, yet, many uber-low carbers that I’ve known personally ran into hypothyroid symptoms down the line. Anyway, that’s yet another big question in need of definitive answer. I’m workin’ on it, I’m workin’ on it…
Matt it would be great if you could write a lot more about this experiment that are you are doing. I wish you’d include more details.
Like when you list what you ate for the day, could you list if the things you ate were organic, raw?
How’s the energy for fitness? Do you think this diet is better for bodybuilding than anaerobic endurance sports? Or do you think it is possible to do both at the same level? Same power as a carb eating athelethe or a bodybuilder in bulking fase who is adding muscle (and fat) by uppin carbs and then cutting them out later so only the muscle remains?. ARE carbs NECESSARY for muscle gain or good performance in endurance sports – and HOW important in your opinion?
Whenever I go very low carb I always have extremely vivid dreams which I recall the next day very well. I don’t know why it is like that. I Googled “low carb dreams” and some Atkins forums came up where people were reporting night mares as they were transitioning into low carb. What excatly is going on.. do you know?
As a last point, I feel a little worried about the hypothyroid thing you mention.. I’m right now on a low carb diet and I experience some of the same things you mention (rapid heart beat, adrenalin rush feelings, less need for sleep, dark spots under the eyes) and you said that many low carbers you know of have run into hypothyroidism.. Now that really stresses me out, since I’m on this diet to get in BETTER health, to lose my bloated stomach and to gain more muscle, I don’t want it to wreck my thyroid for life. Because that’s what hypothyroidism is, right? A thyroid that is wrecked FOR LIFE (requiring medication). Have to say that really surprises me. Do you think a raw vegan diet, if it were just as low in calories, would be a greater risk factor than a low carb diet high in animal fat (same calories) for hypothyroidism?
I remember when I went vegan and my circulation got so bad that if I only lay down in bed for some time I wouldn’t be able to feel my legs! That has be be a bad sign of circulation. Not to talk about when I stood up from sitting down a prolonged period of time I would get white spots on my vision. These two things don’t happen on Low carb so I see it as an improvement in metabolism/thyroid function. Maybe it’s not though. I have no idea how to tell thyroid health.
(How much meat do you stay at on an average ZC day, 2-3 pounds?
for day 12 did you really eat 1/2 a duck plus all those other thing in one day?)
I concur fully with your sentiments regarding low carb and sleep. I have done very low-carb diets (VLCD) repeatedly in the past (and again in the present) and always felt the impact on my sleep.
The first thing I notice is that the sleep seems “shallow” and have a hard time with dream recall, except for perhaps the very last dream of the night. I also find it difficult to sleep in. After 6-7 hours, that’s all I’m getting.
Regarding fat, in addition to appetite, I also find that VLCD (or NCD, in your cases) make it difficult, as a practical matter, to consume fat. A mashed potato or slice of whole-grain sourdough provides a nice vehicle to transport blobs of butter into your face. Eating fat with a steak or piece of chicken is hard(er).
The other alternative would be to drink your fat, perhaps by making a little “pudding” of cream and egg yolks, but without some sweetness, I suspect it would be less than ideal.
Yo anonymous,
My details are a plenty. I’m crazy busy with other things right now, so extra details are pretty slim.
I would assume the food is not organic unless otherwise noted. Much of it is local (Maui) and not raised using the standard grain-feeding of the mainland. The pigs raised here are probaby given tons of taro root and coconut vs. grain feeding. Organic though, not quite.
I have specified raw vs. cooked.
It’s too early to make any conclusions about endurance and muscle-building or any of that. In fact, still being in the induction phase exercise is pretty draining. If you’re interested in muscle-building, eat like a sumo wrestler. They have the most muscle mass of any human beings. Throw in more meal frequency if you don’t want to get fat like them. Eat 5 times a day versus twice.
And hypothyroidism can be monitored by taking your body temperature first thing in the morning day after day after day. If in the 96-97 degree range consistently, you’ve probably got some issues. Read work of Broda Barnes for more info. You can get his books used on Amazon for super cheap. Most cases are temporary and are simply a result of the metabolism slowing down in response to stress: physical, mental, hormonal, caloric deprivation, etc. Many are suspicious that going below 50grams of carbs per day can lower metabolism. It is most likely reversible in all but the rarest of cases. It’s just something I’m wary of and watching out for.
Low carb and low hunger is really an issue. I have the same problem. After I started low carb about 2 1/2 years ago hunger disappeared. So I gravitated to a 2 meals a day schedule. That’s pretty convenient and because I read so much positive about intermittent fasting (and caloric restriction) I thought that do be a nice side effect.
But the ghost of hypothyroidism has come to haunt me. After I read Broda Barnes I took my morning temperature and it was pretty low, consistently. Because I showed no other symptoms (besides tendency for cold hands/feet during winter) I pretty much ignored it until now.
Probably I fell too low caloriewise. As first step I took up lunch again. I am not hungry but I eat lunch now nevertheless. The problem with cold hands/feets has improved. I am not sure if I should just up my calories (e.g. fat) or my carb intake also. If I increase my carb-intake that often has a gasous effect unfortunately. Maybe because I am not really very very low fiber. Probably I have to test what is best thyroid-/temperaturewise.
Recently I read an interview with a russian doctor who treats Tuberculosis-patients. He said that he eats meat every day because that ensures he doen’t contract Tuberculosis.
Matt: Regarding your dark coloration under your eyes, I just noticed Charles seems to have the same issue. I don’t know how his eyes looked like before going zero carb. Is that a common occurrance among zero carbers?
Sven,
Good commentary and questions. I don’t know much about other zero carbers, but I do know that a few people have personally sought me out for guidance who had gone really low carb for an extended period of time and ran into pretty obvious signs of hypothyroidism.
The big question boils down to this: Does going really low in carbs cause too much of an elevation in adrenal hormones (which is what makes me sleep less, have less energy, and develop dark circles under my eyes even though I feel awesome), in turn suppressing thyroid hormone (which is what any kind of adrenal-stressor will lead to)? Is that the cause of hypothyroidism in low carbers, and thus the blame resides on the lack of carbs?
Or is the problem, like you’ve experienced, lack of calories due to the pronounced anorectic effect of the diet? In other words, insufficient calories or insufficient carbs? What causes some people to struggle with this on VLCD’s?
The only other potential scenario is that the body, when fat reserves are reduced by a large enough amount, the body goes into a protective hibernation mode. Some people have suggested that the body will resist losing its fat supplies, and dropping thyroid levels is the way it does this (promoting lipogenesis and suppressing lipolysis). This I would even expect to see once fat reserves get extremely low.
As for you Sven, if you up your calories and notice a disappearance of coldness, low body temp, fatigue, dry skin, or whatever hypothyroid symptoms you may slightly be noticing, then there may be no need to reintroduce carbs.
But for anyone else, if you are zero carb, having acute hypothyroid symptoms, up your food intake as much as you can, and not noticing any change in a matter of weeks, then you better get off that horse as if it’s headed for a cliff.