By Andrew Kim?
Introduction
As the research evolves, the matter of diet and nutrition is being forced to be recognized as not only the most poorly understood of all the sciences but also one of the most complex, outranking all the others.
Weight loss is a recurrent theme on this site and this should be expected, as obesity is the most common ?disease? in the United States.1 But herein lies a wrinkle that adds to the complexity of this matter: What constitutes a healthy weight is not an objective, uniformly agreed upon standard.
Suffice it to say here, we know that having excess body fat is strongly linked to cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, diabetes, and hypertension. It also aggravates arthritis, gout, gallbladder disease, and blood lipid disorders. And, it appears to aggravate certain cancers.2?
The interplay among the fat tissue, organs, muscles, and immune system is, to me, highly complex ? even after drawing out all the ways in which they do in great detail. However, up until doing researching for this post, I hadn’t fully appreciated the dimension added to this interplay by the intestinal flora and biome.
In light of the extreme claims made on behalf of (expensive) probiotic and prebiotic supplements, such as in the video below…
…my inaugural post for this site will present, in my estimation, the most important experiments that have added clarity about the connection among intestinal flora, metabolism, and weight loss. What will be clear is that:
- There are observed differences between the intestinal flora of lean and the intestinal flora of obese individuals.
- ”?The interaction between the host and the intestinal flora is intricate and entails changes in the host gene expression involved in nutrient ? particularly carbohydrate ? processing and appetite regulation, which are not fully understood.
- ”?High-fat diets promote the passage of a bacterial poison called endotoxin into the body, potentially leading to endotoxemia (arbitrarily defined as when endotoxin levels rise by 2- to 3-fold above normal levels).
- ”Weight loss is probably the great equalizer in that weight loss, in and of itself, reverts the intestinal flora and biome of obese individuals to that of lean individuals.
OBESITY AND THE INTESTINAL FLORA
Obesity changes the gut flora, and these changes have been directly correlated with a host of metabolic imbalances and diseases in animals. This fact should not be a surprise anymore, as the intestinal flora is now known to play an indispensable role in the nutrient metabolism ? particularly carbohydrate metabolism ? of its host. It was shown, for instance, that in the rectum, over 100 genes are regulated differentially by intestinal flora; and in the jejunum, over 200 genes.3
But test tube studies like the one described above are obviously limited in what we can take away from them. Luckily, many of the assumptions and hypotheses about the intestinal flora are testable in living organisms.
In one now classic experiment, despite eating 30 percent less food than germ-free mice, normal mice were 40 percent fatter than germ-free mice. In a follow up experiment, upon inoculating germ-free mice with the flora from normal mice, the germ-free mice became about 60 percent fatter and developed insulin resistance after 2 weeks, despite eating less food than normal.4 Leptin levels increased, too, and though the authors merely correlated the increase in leptin to the increase in fatness, it was probably also driving the insulin resistance that had developed.
Since living in a germ-free environment isn’t possible and since wiping out the flora in our intestines entirely would lead to serious deficiencies and malnutrition, we could, next, investigate dietary interventions that alter the microbial biome in a way that matches that of healthy and lean individuals.
Generally, mice fed on high-fat diets have a significant increase in endotoxin levels ? indicating either a greater ratio of gram-negative bacteria to gram-positive bacteria in the intestines, as only gram-negative bacteria have coats that bear endotoxin. Endotoxin is quite toxic to the human body5 and large exposures to it can be quickly life threatening and fatal.
In short, endotoxin creates a state of shock in the human body ? known as septic shock. Lucky for us, to get to this point, very large bacterial invasions into the body are needed by way of breaks in the skin ? including the ‘skin? of the intestines.
However, at relatively lower, chronic doses, endotoxin:
- Favors wide spread blood clotting
- Leads to fatty liver conditions
- Promotes oxidative stress and metabolic disorders (including glucose intolerance and insulin resistance)
- Initiates an immune response (however, I’m open to the possibility that this effect, though the mechanisms are less clear to me, may actually serve the host favorably in the big picture)5
Further, mice fed on high-fat diets, compared to high-carbohydrate diets, have reduced concentrations of Bifidobacterium species ? a major type of gram-positive bacteria normally present in the intestines of mammals. A lower concentration of Bifidobacterium species creates a vacuum in which more virulent, endotoxin-bearing gram-negative bacteria could seed and proliferate. (Because of the presence of endotoxin in their coats, gram-negative bacteria are not only more virulent than gram-positive bacteria, but they are also more resistant to antibiotics, as antibiotics have difficulty penetrating this outer coat.)? In fact, Bifidobacterium species reduce the intestinal endotoxin load, and at the same time, strengthens the intestinal barrier.6
I mention this fact to point out how a simple dietary change could, by altering the intestinal biome, bring about marked changes in a person’s metabolism and health ? regardless of the amount of calories consumed.
Further, the introduction of Bifidobacterium species has been shown to reduce the intestinal endotoxin load, improve the barrier functioning of the intestinal wall, and protect against obesity and endotoxemia brought about by a high-fat diet.7
Although the majority of studies showing an increase an endotoxin levels caused by high-fat diets were performed in rodents, I think, considering the major way in which endotoxin moves into the body, it’s reasonable to assume that the same result would be seen in humans.
Endotoxin is continuously generated and released into the intestines by bacteria upon their destruction or death. From there, endotoxin is transported into the capillaries, which surround the intestines, via newly made lipoproteins called chylomicrons, whose formation is stimulated by the presence of dietary fat. So following a high-fat meal, a rise, albeit a usually modest rise, of endotoxin would be seen in the blood.
Before I leave this train of thought and move cautiously along to my recommendations, we need to consider one additional seminal experiment, which was carried out in humans. In said experiment, weight loss ? via a low-fat diet or a calorie restricted low-carbohydrate diet ? resulted in a shift in the intestinal microbial ecology in obese subjects, more closely matching that of lean controls.4 In other words, weight loss, in and of itself, altered the intestinal microbial biome favorably.
RECOMMENDATIONS
I’ve always been skeptical about the use of probiotics and prebiotics, and up until doing research for this post saw little evidence to justify their use for any condition ? the evidence was so thin.
However, evidence from clinical trials in humans is emerging on the use of prebiotics and probiotics ? particularly for the reduction in heart disease risk.
But whether an altered intestinal biome through the use of probiotics or prebiotics could accelerate fat lass and eradicate obesity in humans is unclear to me at this point and I seriously have my doubts about the effectiveness of orally administered probiotic and prebiotic supplements and foods.
From my own experiments and observations, I have been an advocate for, foremost, maximizing and expanding the capacity of oxidative energy generation to promote weight loss and health at the same time ? clich? as this is. (At least until fecal probiotic transplants are properly tested for safely reducing body fat and become easily available to us all). Fundamentally, this entails the following:
- Increasing oxygen delivery to cells.
- Supplying adequate amounts of B vitamins, as many of the coenzymes and carrier molecules that operate (as cardinal adsorbents) in the mitochondrial respiratory chain are made from thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, etc. Ubiquinone, also known as CoQ10, is also important, and the more cholesterol we produce, the more ubiquinone will be made in the amounts needed by cells. Sucrose, namely its fructose half, is a potent stimulator of cholesterol synthesis.8
- Maintaining the optimal rate of secretion, blood levels, and conversion of thyroid hormone, as thyroid hormone is the main regulator of a person’s metabolic rate and stimulates all reactions in the mitochondria involved in oxidative metabolism.
Regarding the first point, suffice it to say here, putting a brake on the excessive release and oxidation of fatty acids enhances the delivery of oxygen to cells and prevents tissue hypoxia. ?Ditching high-fat low-carbohydrate diets serve this purpose. In addition, ?fast-moving? blood is essential, so platelet aggregation and fibrin production must be kept under control.
Because absorbed endotoxin stimulates fibrin production (and interferes with oxidative metabolism), its entry into the body must be minimized (or its removal from the body must be cranked up).
Vitamins K1 and K2, for instance, by enhancing the activity of an intestinal enzyme, minimizes the errant passage of endotoxin (and other harmful substances) into the body. Vitamin K can be gotten from green vegetables and smaller amounts from fermented dairy and soy products.
Salicylates block the production of a certain prostaglandin that causes platelets to clump and blood vessels to constrict. Aspirin and other non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are end products of salicylates, which occur abundantly in plants ? especially in fruits. Gotten from plants ? namely fruits ? salicylates are delivered to the body at a safer rate and concentration than drugs. Salicylates also happen to prevent some of the inflammatory responses initiated by endotoxin.
Stress should be kept as low as possible. Space does not permit me to go further into what I mean here except to say that cravings ? namely for salt, sugar, and more food ? should not be ignored or suppressed. This act of defiance imposes undue stress on the body, further enhancing fibrin production. Listen closely to your body, not diet gurus or Jenny Craig, please.
Of obvious note yet still worth bringing to your attention, one should avoid smoking and excessive alcohol consumption to promote efficient oxidative metabolism because smoking increases the exposure to carbon monoxide, a metabolic poison, and alcohol increases the permeability of the intestinal barrier.
And finally, although the research and evidence for this last recommendation is relatively scant, I would try to eat smaller meals spaced equally throughout the day, instead of large, infrequent meals. Compared to large meals, I think small meals place less burden on the liver, keep blood sugar levels more steady, reduce endotoxin levels, and decrease the likelihood of storing the food you eat as fat, rather than to generate energy.
Andrew Kim is a graduate of the University of Maryland with degrees in Microbiology and Japanese. His blog has garnered much attention since its release earlier this year. Read more of Kim’s work at www.andrewkimblog.com
?REFERENCES
- Overweight and Obesity. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2013). at http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html
- Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation, and Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults–The Evidence Report. National Institutes of Health. Obesity research 6 Suppl 2, 51S?209S (1998).
- Mutch, D. M. et al. Impact of commensal microbiota on murine gastrointestinal tract gene ontologies. Physiological genomics 19, 22?31 (2004).
- Ley, R. E. et al. Obesity alters gut microbial ecology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102, 11070?5 (2005).
- Rang, H. P., Dale, M. M., Ritter, J. M., Flower, R. J. & Henderson, G. Rang & Dale’s Pharmacology. 792 (2011).
- Griffiths, E. A. et al. In vivo effects of bifidobacteria and lactoferrin on gut endotoxin concentration and mucosal immunity in Balb/c mice. Digestive diseases and sciences 49, 579?89 (2004).
- Cani, P. D. et al. Selective increases of bifidobacteria in gut microflora improve high-fat-diet-induced diabetes in mice through a mechanism associated with endotoxaemia. Diabetologia 50, 2374?83 (2007).
- Silbernagel, G. et al. Cholesterol synthesis is associated with hepatic lipid content and dependent on fructose/glucose intake in healthy humans. Experimental diabetes research 2012, 361863 (2012).
First!!!!
Andrew, thanks so much for this. It was really helpful. I am finding a lower fat, higher protein and carb plan works great for me.
Wish there was a magic probiotic pill that would make us all lean.. and not thanks to the fecal transplants. Yuk.
Deb
But Karen Pendergrass LOVES her fecal transplants! Right, Debbie?
LOL
She can have all the fecal she can take. ;-) xo Gina! love deb/hag
That’s great to hear Debbie. I say save your money and ditch the probiotic supplements.
taking zero point zero supplements Mr. Kim ;-) Although your Vitamin K made my shopping hand quiver a little.. ;-)
Hey me too! I’ve found that the effects of diet/lifestyle so overwhelm any effect I’ve ever gotten from a supplement that I don’t use much at all these days.
Dang this was awesome! Sorry to nitpick, but in your research did fiber not come up as an important factor? Perhaps could fiber react with out biome harmfully depending on the amount and type of fat in our diets? In this case, would recommendations to arbitrarily increase fiber intake have unpredictable results? Thanks for this
Rory, I have definitely seen studies suggesting that fiber can cause problems in the Standard American Diet (SAD) with 10% of its calories from soybean oil (PUFAs) and loaded with HFCS and processed corn/soy in almost everything. The problem with studies, generally, is that they don’t use dietary self-selection. Feeding rats a chow diet (homogenized food mixture) isn’t the same as dietary self-selection, even with the same foods in the chow (typically lard or corn oil, casein, sugar, cornstarch). If you give group dietary self-selection and you give matched controls a chow diet of the same macronutrients and calories, the animals with self-selection will be MUCH leaner and healthier, according to a huge stack of studies. Seth Roberts and others talk about this, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend his blog because of its biases, the same biases as Whole Health Source, that blames obesity on high-reward foods and palatability essentially. I disagree with Andrew about frequent meals being the healthiest or least stressful way to eat, but I also disagree with Chief Rok saying it is the best way to eat. Going by evidence, self-selection beats mixtures of food. I don’t want to eat single foods one at a time necessarily, and it may not be ideal to do so. I don’t think “high-reward” foods cause obesity, in and of themselves. I think like Matt that you can’t explain obesity with one word or idea.
Interesting about the rats on chow versus self selection being leaner. I guess I was more curious if PUFA “reacts” with fiber AND the wall of the intestine or not. I tend to do better on a lower fiber diet as my n = 1. Andrew has mentioned low reward diets working for a friend in one of his comments section. I too,tend to NOT subscribe to high palatability being the be all end all for obesity, as it seems that my “healthy” friends can eat SAD foods and stay relatively lean. Amen on not trying to narrow the problem down to one thing. But I must admit the afformentioned gut biome correlation is juicy!
Oh nevermind Andrew, I think I found the answer to my question in your article on the Mani study on your blog. Haha
Interesting, especially the part about intestinal flora impacting gene expression…
Love the article. How much fat is considered high fat? Do I need to count the mono-sat fat in my coconut milk & oil? If I have a hamburger patty and some potatoes fried in coconut oil, is that too much fat?
I would like to know exactly what kinds of fats make up this high fat diet that you warn against. Fats all act completely different in the body and we certainly know that GMO soybean oil or canola oil are not equal to butter or cream from grass fed cows or avocado. Were these reactions to trans fatty acids, rancid oil, fried chicken or the ridiculously high amounts of omega 6 fatty acids found in the typical American diet? I do a significant amount of reading on the topic of fats and over the past three years all of the sources that I consider the most reliable have come to the same conclusion, just as Weston A. Price did by studying traditional cultures that were untouched by the West, that good fats should make up a large portion of the diet. Not all fats are created equally- what fats were studied in these mice and how close are the dietary fat needs of mice to humans? I have never seen mice churn butter or peel an avocado or eat whale blubber in the wild!
I was going to ask the same thing, since I’ve seen countless experiments on mice and other rodents that eat hydrogenated coconut oil, and which then conclude that all fat is bad. Agh.
I am so GLAD you asked this question, as I had the exact same one! This article does not differentiate between harmful trans fats and healthy saturated fats at all, leading the reader to believe all fats are bad. In my opinion, all that is happening here is a parroting of current nutritional advice promoted by the USDA, smothered by a lot of scientific words.
My other thought is who funded this research? The answer to that question is critical, as much of the research done over the last fifty years has been geared toward obtaining results desirable to whoever funds the research and is not independent.
USDA recommendations are based on plenty of scientific research. The data points that Kim is discussing are just more support for the orthodox position about high fat diets.
It’s true that research must be funded, so there is always the possibility of bias, but that would be true even for researchers in the alternative health community. Everybody who publishes their work has a monetary interest. If you don’t trust well-regulated bodies like the USDA, with strict credentialing and peer review processes, then who can you trust? In my opinion, both orthodox and alternative sources have something to offer.
I went to a naturopathic doctor once, and he confided in me (with a conspiratorial whisper) that I couldn’t trust the drug companies because they’re just trying to make money. I think he even rubbed his thumb and middle finger together while he said it. I wanted to ask him if he was providing his services for free, since he was so concerned about the nefarious power of the profit motive. Instead I just nodded my head and thought, “Whatever.” It seemed to me like that was just part of his sales pitch.
The USDA still supports the position that saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease. They suggest replacing saturated fat with pufa. lol, sounds legit
A “lol” is not the same a refutation. If you take a serious, unbiased look at the published literature on saturated fats, I think you would at least acknowledge that there is a lot of merit to the USDA position. I love reading the work of guys like Ray Peat, who present strongly reasoned arguments against the mainstream view, but the universities and mainstream scientists who have done work on lipid metabolism are not idiots. I don’t think it’s wise to dismiss them out of hand.
ha, sorry I didn’t mean for that comment to read like I was trying to be an asshole. I have looked at the research, I don’t think their is any argument against saturated fat as long as it doesn’t replacement protein and carbs in the diet.
It’s cool. By the way, I like how you expressed the caveat at the end of your comment: “as long as it doesn’t replace protein and carbs in the diet.” That’s a reasonable way to say that saturated fats are healthful in moderation, which is a point I would agree with.
You do need to be aware of researcher biases and pressures, however. I work with a lot of research in my job, and researchers will be the first ones to tell you (though often not publicly) that there is a lot of pressure to conform to current beliefs. If someone comes up with research that really turns “what we know” on its head, they are likely to be shunned. It’s more popular, and you are more likely to be published, when you come up with important findings that build upon “what we know.” And researchers need to be published to be successful. It’s unfortunate, but it’s how the world works. All research, in all fields, should be carefully read and taken with a grain of salt for this reason.
The USDA is also under a lot of pressure from industry interests. I don’t think they’re out to get us, and I think there is merit to the food pyramid, but there are some conflicts of interest for sure.
I see this in my own field as well. I think you’re right that pressure to conform is a factor in what gets published, but I think in the long run it only delays advancements, rather than stops them completely. As old “thought leaders” retire, new researchers can make their names by stimulating paradigm shifts in the field. The scientific process isn’t perfect–and in some ways is surprisingly conservative about change–but it’s the best method we have for generating reliable knowledge.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” -Max Planck
David, thank you for being a voice of sanity here! Alt med people think that doctors and ‘big Pharma’ are out trying to scam them, when at the same time they’re paying their naturopath or Chinese healer or whatever tons of money out of pocket for bogus crap that has never been proven to do anything beneficial.
Not my experience………..so wrong.
What kind of fat in the diet would cause the negative effects? I imagine coconut or mct oil in high amounts would be ok. Also, if high carb (mostly well boiled white potatoes and well cooked oatmeal) results in a worsening of small intestine bacterial overgrowth symptoms then it probably isn’t helping. This my experience.
jess, you are not isolating your variables. Oatmeal is high in fiber. White potatoes are very low (unless you eat its skin – I wouldn’t). I believe sugars are better than starches and so does Ray Peat and Danny Roddy and Andrew Kim, IIRC. I eat all kinds of sugars, but little or no HFCS – unrefined zulka cane sugar, unheated honey, grade A/B maple syrup, chocolate milk, sugar sodas (sierra mist, pepsi throwback, reed’s ginger brews, snapple green & black tea, san pellegrino sodas), fresh / pasteurized fruit and vegetable juices, ice cream, 60% dark chocolate, butter cookies, desserts like tiramisu and cheesecake, simply lemonade or fresh lemonade, etc.
So when you speak of high-fat diets, what kind of fats are we talking about here? Do you mean PUFA, trans or all fats in general?
Orange juice eaten with a high fat meal seems to reduce endotoxin in your blood :)
Interesting article however, “High fat diet” is extremely vague and borderline manipulative.
Agreed.
So… the autointoxication story is true after all?
From a relatively recent post – I was under the impression that leaky gut had little to do with health problems. ?.
“This act of defiance imposes undue stress on the body, further enhancing fibrin production.”
Haha. Nice post.
Post summary:
high endotoxin -> blood clotting, oxidative stress, fatty liver.
high fat diet -> high endotoxin
high fat diet -> blood clotting, oxidative stress, fatty liver.
OR
chronic stress -> high fat metabolism -> blood clotting, oxidative stress, fatty liver, etc.
Defining a high fat diet is key here to demystifying this over simplified view; perhaps the metabolism of chronic stress is actually the high fat diet. Consuming abundant amounts of fat in the absence of chronic stress may not have any of these effects.
Caution needs to be used with the term “high-fat.”
I think you may have a point here –
Under high stress conditions, where cortisol levels rise, a protein (HES1) in your liver elevates, which turns off your liver’s ability to break down fat – contributes to fatty liver and abdominal weight gain.
As much as I have developed a general skepticism for most science, such as the type presented in this article, I do believe enough of it can answer key questions to human health: here’s a related article saturated fat’s effects on gram +/- bacteria.
http://suppversity.blogspot.com/2013/01/saturated-fat-postprandial-endotoxemia.html
You state that in your research you’ve seen evidence on pre and probiotics emerging. I’m unclear on what you mean in your statement, in light of the fact that in the next paragraph you say you have serious doubts about the “effectiveness of orally administered probiotic and prebiotic supplements and foods.”
I can’t answer for Andrew, but I remember a doctor telling me that much of the probiotics people consume rarely survive digestion which is why the evidence is not conclusive on probiotics.
Hulda,
One thing I am concerned about is possible harm probiotics may do. Ray Peat has said that they may contribute to problems like SIBO, which I’m still unsure whether I have. Any thoughts on that?
And my main point was, how were they administered in the reearch, if that is the type of research we are talking about, if not orally?
Yes, I am confused about this as well. If food is not effective in getting to where it can help, then why could it harm?
I am thinking about what Peat said about yogurt and lactic acid/acidophilus in the gut being harmful, despite widespread opinion based on traditional foods in many cultures being the opposite.
Personally, I love yougurt and prefer to eat it with fruit instead of ice cream.
I would put a lot more faith in what cultures around the world have been doing for millenia vs. what one researcher says. Unless you notice negative effects from the food on your body, and then by all means, listen to your body.
This article contains so many errors in the first few paragraphs, it’s hard to know where to begin. First of all, simply losing weight DOES NOT give you the gut bacteria, metabolism, appetite and energy of a “naturally lean person.” That has been proved abundantly, whether rat studies which use CHOW diets say differently is irrelevant because animals are leaner when they have “dietary self-selection,” as MANY studies show. Chow diets make animals fatter, even when the calories & macronutrients are matched to animals with self-selection. Plus, the food in the chow diets are typically full of PUFAs (like corn oil or lard or safflower oil) and casein (which causes cancer), as well as corn-starch (which can cause problems as can HFCS). So, the readers would be well-advised to take what Andrew says with a liberal grain of salt. Here is an article that cobbles together many studies and links to give a better picture of obesity, IMO.
http://fon2.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/why-what-chiefs-doing-is-important/
Also the smoking bit seems strange and very one sided.
Guignard, R., Truong, T., Rougier, Y., Baron-Dubourdieu, D., & Gu?nel, P. (2007). Alcohol drinking, tobacco smoking, and anthropometric characteristics as risk factors for thyroid cancer: a countrywide case-control study in New Caledonia. American journal of epidemiology, 166(10), 1140?9. doi:10.1093/aje/kwm204
Exceptionally high incidence rates of thyroid cancer are observed in New Caledonia, particularly in Melanesian women. To investigate further the etiology of thyroid cancer and to clarify the reasons of this elevated incidence, the authors conducted a countrywide population-based case-control study in this multiethnic population. The study included 332 cases with histologically verified papillary or follicular carcinoma (293 women and 39 men) diagnosed in 1993-1999 and 412 population controls (354 women and 58 men) frequency matched by gender and 5-year age group. THYROID CANCER WAS NEGATIVELY ASSOCIATED with tobacco smoking
The kitavan “paradox” might not be a paradox…
Nicotine does seem to have some interesting health benefits, and I would consider it the perfect drug if it weren’t so addictive, and if it didn’t have so many negatives associated with it. However, most of the negatives aren’t an issue if the nicotine is consumed in a pure form, such as in nicotine gum, patches, or lozenges. The tobacco smoke itself, with all the tar and carbon monoxide, is the real killer. Unfortunately, there do remain some nasty side effects even to pure nicotine, such as increased blood pressure and insulin resistance.
But on the plus side, it helps with weight control, improves concentration and memory, heightens mood, stimulates the mind while paradoxically inducing relaxation, protects against Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and a few other diseases, and it just makes you feel great.
Do you use nicotine, or are you just interested in it theoretically. I only take a lozenge from time to time during periods of heightened stress. It’s nice, but I fear I would get addicted if I used it on a regular basis.
“Do you use nicotine, or are you just interested in it theoretically”
I smoke hand rolled organic cigarettes. I’m not worried about it, given that the overwhelming majority of supercentenarians smoke heavily. I’m also interested in it theoretically though. I think that the most interesting effects are the aromatase inhibiting properties:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2098524
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8313352
Interesting. It looks like those would be benefits of tobacco that aren’t attributable to nicotine, which would mean the lozenges wouldn’t help.
I can respect your choice to smoke, and I certainly appreciate the pleasures of a cigarette. Personally, I’m still concerned about cancer and emphysema, et al., but we all have to make our choices with imperfect information. I hope you end up one of those supercentenarians.
Most of the so called benefits of nicotine are those of raised cortisol. Nicotine is highly toxic.
Not really. In fact, nicotine’s effects are often the direct opposite of cortisol. To name just a couple of examples, cortisol promotes visceral fat, while nicotine burns it. Nicotine is also neuroprotective and has an anti-depressant effect, while cortisol is the opposite.
Did you get your info out of Schwartzbein? She presents a highly simplified picture of the effects of sugar, nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol.
David, thanks for your comment regarding nicotine. It reminded me of a blog I had read (but fogotten) on John Keifer’s website (Carb Back Loading) where he mentions he chews small pieces of nicotine gum a day because he claims nicotine helps burn body fat.
The modern obesity epidemic was delayed, no doubt, by the high rates of tobacco use in the last century. We started eating more and becoming more sedentary, but smoking helped stave off obesity. Now that we’re not smoking as much (which is a good thing!) the effect of the modern lifestyle is really nailing us.
who???????????
https://www.google.com.au/#q=nicotine%20cortisol%20production
Okay. But my comment remains accurate. If you’ve ever taken hydrocortisone pills and smoked a cigarette, you will realize immediately that the cigarette’s effects are drastically different. As just one example, high levels of cortisol lead to belly fat and lower muscle mass, but nicotine burns belly fat without affecting muscle mass. I acknowledge that nicotine raises cortisol, but it is flat-out wrong, as you said, that “Most of the so called benefits of nicotine are those of raised cortisol.” Nicotine has dramatic effects on multiple neurotransmitters, and it is protective existence certain neural diseases. I’m not advocating anyone use nicotine just for the health benefits, but you are drastically oversimplifying how the drug works.
*protective against
I think that you are the one drastically oversimplifying how nicotine works.
You have asserted many things without anything to back up your claims and when challenged attempted to straw-man me, or perhaps I should say staw-woman? You claim without any evidence that nicotine is neuroprotective, yet there are also studies that show the reverse. Cherry picking? I could look for studies to refute you, but the onus of proof is on you.
I could claim that taking speed stops abdominal fat gain, but so what?
As to my second point, can we both agree that nicotine is toxic? It makes an excellent natural insecticide
Pink,
Before this last post, your only contribution to this conversation was about three sentences. You have stated that the benefits of nicotine are mainly mediated by increasing cortisol (which is untrue) and that it is toxic because it kills insects. Yes, you are oversimplifying.
How did I straw man you? You made a false claim about cortisol, and I pointed out that many of the benefits of nicotine are the opposite of the what you would experience if you took hydrocortisone (cortisol). The examples are endless. Here’s another: cortisol stimulates appetite, nicotine dulls it.
You can easily find an explanation for how nicotine works on the brain and nervous system, but I have done a pubmed search for you for articles about nicotine’s therapeutic qualities. These studies show benefits in Parkison’s Disease, ulcerative colitis, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, body composition (visceral fat), cognitive impairment, attention, and schizophrenia.
I don’t smoke and I don’t recommend that others smoke, but nicotine has a lot of powerful benefits that accompany its negatives. These issues don’t have to be entirely black & white. I feel that “toxic” is a loaded word that attempts to shutdown conversation rather than stimulate it. Yes, I agree nicotine has many negative effects, and these negatives currently outweigh the positives for me. But I might change my mind if I got Parkinson’s or ulcerative colitis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22693036
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23072629
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18421928
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23933227
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22138237
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23958867
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23696955
David,
The number of sentences I wrote is irrelevent to my point about the very well known effects it has on cortisol in the body and the equally well known toxic effects of nicotine. Presenting these simple statements as oversimplifying I think is disengenuous.
Your straw man was in asking if I got my information from a source which you then stated was vastly oversimplified.
It is too bad you take issue with me calling nicotine a toxin, because not only can it be classified as a toxin, but also a neurotoxin, depending on the context in which it is spoken of.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002510.htm
The papers you have provided to back up your claims show it as
1. potentially neuroprotective for Parkinson’s based on epidemiological studies
2. Its therapeutic application in ulcerative colitis had limited application
3. It seems to improve cognitive functions in schizophrenics.
4. It may protect against Parkinson’s Disease
5. That nicotine reduced weight gain in mice, especially those fed a high fat diet with less visceral fat.
6. Nicotine may help those more prone to developing Alzeimer’s Disease.
7. It may help with Multiple Sclerosis.
The only relevent paper was number 5. Unfortunately, it was for mice and there are plenty of studies that show the opposite for humans. Here are just 2:
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=376466
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16432539?dopt=Abstract
I am finding it harder to believe you are arguing in good faith, and not just being contrary. If you can’t (won’t?) understand how each of those studies is relevant to the conversation, then I doubt you will listen to any point I could make. I see nicotine as a interesting drug that has negative effects as well as some therapeutic applications. You don’t. I guess we can agree to disagree.
I brought up Schwarbein because I couldn’t figure out why you thought that the positive effects of nicotine were mainly mediated by increased cortisol levels. She’s the only author I’ve read who talks about nicotine purely in terms of cortisol. I apologize if you felt insulted by the identification, but your point wasn’t clear, and that’s why it’s significant that you wrote so little.
Thank you for posting those links. They do call into question the applicability of the rat study I posted, and I’m happy to modify my view on the effects of nicotine on visceral fat in humans. I already knew that nicotine was correlated with insulin resistance and other elements of “metabolic syndrome,” and this piece of information is consistent with that.
Also, what exactly is chief doing? Anyone figure it out? Is he just fasting and feasting? Like a lean-gains type plan?
Chief had a near death encounter with a moose, he is on the mend, go read his blog, he will be back in action soon. ;-)
Thanks Andrew/Matt.
Andrew:
“…we need to consider one additional seminal experiment, which was carried out in humans. In said experiment, weight loss ? via a low-fat diet or a calorie restricted low-carbohydrate diet ? resulted in a shift in the intestinal microbial ecology in obese subjects, more closely matching that of lean controls.4 In other words, weight loss, in and of itself, altered the intestinal microbial biome favorably.”
This doesn’t prove anything and it’s probably a temporary effect (the honeymoon phase, let’s say). What happens long-term according to the Weight Loss Registry and other sourcies is the formerly overweight or obese person has to struggle to maintain their weight even if they’re fanatical about diet and exercise, while naturally lean people do so effortlessly and eat all the food they want, never count anything or limit anything consciously. See the link above for all kinds of articles and studies related to this point. Losing weight by conscious effort is a stupid idea, IMO.
You say high-fat diets increase endotoxin. I think you mean high-fat diets with more than 10% PUFAs by fat (like lard and most vegetable oil). “Because absorbed endotoxin stimulates fibrin production (and interferes with oxidative metabolism), its entry into the body must be minimized (or its removal from the body must be cranked up).”
The WAPF did a study, admittedly small, which showed that fresh pork increased fibrin levels, while fresh lamb didn’t. When the pork was “uncured” or marinated for 24 hours in raw apple cider vinegar, the fibrin levels were still elevated, showing that pork is not the same as lamb and probably beef, buffalo, and other meats from ruminant animals. Here is the link for that study, followed by several other links about the problems with pork and how some might be reduced by using traditional methods of food preparation (but not all).
http://www.westonaprice.org/cardiovascular-disease/how-does-pork-prepared-in-various-ways-affect-the-blood
http://www.foodrenegade.com/pork-bad-for-you/
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2012/02/pork-did-leviticus-117-have-it-right/
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2012/02/the-trouble-with-pork-part-2/
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2012/02/the-trouble-with-pork-part-3-pathogens/
Thanks for the great article Andrew.
I found the endtoxin/fat issue most interesting:
“High-fat diets promote the passage of a bacterial poison called endotoxin into the body, potentially leading to endotoxemia (arbitrarily defined as when endotoxin levels rise by 2- to 3-fold above normal levels).”
It’s interesting, for me, because over the last few months, I’ve ditched a lot of the fat in my diet (including the highly praised “saturated” variety) and raised my carb consumption dramatically. After years of trying pretty much everything – including the “high everything” approach, as well as keeping saturated fat and carbs high, it wasn’t until I ditched most of the fat in general that my energy and health turned around dramatically. This is probably not something that everyone would experience, so I am not in the least promoting this (my GF does quite fine on a low carb/high fat diet — a disaster for me), but it made a tremendous difference to me.
In the end, I had to let go of my “beliefs” and the dogmas that coconut oil/butter are so damned important and healthy – they may be for “some” people, but again, dropping them and upping the starch factor made a half dozen chronic health issues evaporate in a manner of weeks.
Today, it’s – I know, scary times – high starch (!!) and fruits and vegetables and some legumes for me. Not popular on the blogosphere or in cherry-picked ‘science’ land, but seems to work for me (not to mention a helluva lot of indigenous cultures)! Anyhow, the carbohydrate – something I have shunned for years – is now my best friend, in all of its myriad forms….
Great comment. I’ve also learned that I do better with carbohydrates than fats, and like you, this required undoing some of my paleo/wapf-style indoctrination. I hated to admit that maybe mainstream is right, but it seems to be the case. The main exception to my “return to orthodoxy” is that I greatly prefer refined starches and sugars to the whole food varieties.
I find that even a small dose of WAPF/Paleo leads one to believe that fats have a special medicinal property. And, depending on how big of an overachiever one is, leads to consuming very large amounts of lard, poultry skin, coconut oil, bacon, and butter. It doesn’t take much extra concentrated fat like this for the diet to start deriving a larger percentage of its total energy from fats than carbohydrates, and that’s when many of the “metabolic disadvantages” set in. One doesn’t have to eat fat free cardboard, but getting considerably more calories from carbs than fats is usually preferable from a metabolic standpoint when it comes to real, living, breathing individuals putting it into practice.
I agree with this completely. Nourishing Traditions makes pure fat sound as wholesome as mother’s milk (neglecting, of course, that mother’s milk is actually really high in sugar… but I’m stretching the analogy.) From what I’ve read, Sally Fallon herself eats a high-fat, low-carb diet, kind of like Jimmy Moore these days, and it doesn’t seem to be working out so well for either of them.
I discovered WAPF about a decade ago, after I had just given up a near-vegan diet, which was loaded with fruits and vegetables. At first all those fats were amazing (because of my previous self-deprivation), but I pushed it too far and started buttering my ribeyes and eating whole pints of Haagen-Daz at a time, like so many other people do. Moderation has become much easier for me now that I’m in my 30s.
The sweet spot for me seems to be about 20-25% fat, though I don’t usually measure it exactly, and occasionally I’ll still have a fat feast if I’m in the mood. At 20-25% I don’t crave more fatty foods, and I still have room for 50-60% carbs, which I find is great for fueling work-outs and overall well-being.
Sally isn’t exactly a poster child for the super healthy by the looks of her. Do like her cookbook though!
Yep. I believe she’s honest and practices what she preaches, but I don’t think that diet is healthy in the long term. There are some cool ideas in the cookbook, and I like that I can make stock, and ferment a bunch of stuff, and cook several other old-timey foods.
wow just google imaged her. That’s the face of metabolic carnage :-(
Ha! Yes, I am also recovering from daily pints of Haagen Dazs! That will be missed….
I don’t really understand why people are so enamored by the WAPF? Maybe because it gives them a reason to eat more bacon and butter?
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/holisticdent.html
Well, I’m not totally in love with everything the WAPF stands for, but Quackwatch doesn’t exactly qualify as a high quality source of unbiased information either. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Matt earn a place in their pages.
Also, I’ve actually read Price, and I can say that quackwatch does not accurately portray his work, which I think still has some value, even if some of his conclusions are wrong. Maybe malnutrition isn’t a direct cause of malocclusion but I definitely no longer believe the orthodox dental establishment when they tisk and pronounce the problem genetic.
I agree that quackwatch may not be the most qualified source, I just wanted to pose another way of looking at WAPF because so many are enamored with his ideas and seem to take them a little far.
Quackwatch is one guy sitting in his mom’s basement, by the way. He had some credentials (cant remember what) and had them stripped. He’s the quack.
Totally agree, Matt. And yes, I did get the “fat love” from WAPF and then the Paleo crowd. I would smother everything in butter and coconut oil, and did so for years. Cranking up the starchy carbs and dropping the fat down to a modest amount (I am an extremist, so moderation is kind of an unknown), has done wonders for my mental clarity, energy, sleep, peace of mind, etc.
It is funny though, like I said in my comment above, that my GF does really well on a higher fat/meat diet. I’ve tried that for years; then added carbs; and finally dropped the high meat/high fat part. It just goes to show that one really needs to stop listening to experts, dispel dogmas, and really find something that works for them regardless of what anyone says….
…then again, my mom’s maiden name is Mangiapane (she’s Italian), which means “eat bread,” so I guess I probably should have figured this out a little bit earlier…
Great stuff, Sean. I don’t have a last name to back up my starch preference (!), but I always loved starches and sugars when I was growing up, and I was always naturally skinny. My story’s very complicated after that, but just like with you, a high-fat, low-carb diet definitely made me sick, and then a high-fat, high-carb diet made me gain lots of weight. I like some fat, but I get in trouble with I have too much (like over 20-30% of calories).
I also struggle with moderation. I appreciated your comment about finding your own path. Experimenting and discovering your body’s real preferences is much more likely to be effective than just following someone else’s system. Often in the past when I thought I was finding my own way, I was really just trying out other people’s theories.
I think women need a bit more fat than men. These days, I just aim for eating like my grandparents did (which is to say normally!). I add butter to my toast and baked potatoes and cook things with fat, have some cheese, etc. but aim for moderation and not too much fat unless I’m craving it. Seems to work well. I think moderation and listening to your body are the best things.
Agreed. The thought of a baked potato without butter and salt is nauseating, and I don’t think our taste buds are deceiving us. No doubt our bodies need a bit of fat with our starches, which is why they’re usually paired in traditional cooking: pasta and cheese, pork fried rice, bread and butter, oatmeal and cream, etc. I just imagine our ancestors didn’t have access to the same amounts of cheap fat that we do. Butter was valued, but the staples were the grains and other starchy foods.
According to the paper linked below, in the early 1800s bread contributed more protein to our diet than meat. It was only in the late-nineteenth century that meat and fat consumption started increasing, while before that, starches made up at least 2/3 of our daily calories. The WAPF notion of high fat traditional diets seems distorted and focused on only a brief window of time in our recent history. During most of recorded human history, fats just weren’t affordable enough to eat huge quantities.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305748885700187
Merely eating more carbohydrate and less fat can short circuit all lot of the things I mentioned in this post. I don’t think butter, lard, or whatever other fat that’s popular now is absolutely critical either. WAP in his book, series of observational studies by the way just like the Campbell’s China Study, alludes to butter a million times but the diets to which he added butter to were so egregiously deficient to begin with and so many changes were introduced that it’s hard to say that it was the butter or the fat in the diet that improved the health of the kids in his diet program.
It’s disappointing, especially when you realize Weston A. Price himself didn’t push high fat diets the way the eponymous foundation does. He stressed the importance of fat soluble vitamins, as well as minerals such as calcium. His recommended diet included plenty of carbohydrates (he seemed fond of lentils, in particular).
I still don’t think anyone will refute the crux of his work- replacing a nutrient-rich diet with a nutrient-poor diet will result in health problems, especially long-term and across generations.
Yes, and when you look the the meals he served kids to restore them to health, they weren’t even really high-fat! They were just well-rounded and nutrient-rich.
Thanks Andrew, good points!
This is an interesting subject. It’s ironic that the more saturated the fat consumed the greater the endotoxin exposure. It’s strange in that endotoxin’s effects on the liver also seem to be blunted by the saturated fats. Perhaps this owes itself to the constitution of lipoproteins formed in a diet with adequate saturated fat, “fluffier” lipoproteins. Lipoproteins are one’s first defense of sorts against endotoxin, an important fact. There is also the issue of modifying the diet to promote a less pathologic microbiome. This is where my view regarding fiber and resistant starch may differ from some on this blog. Fiber from fruits and vegetables is beneficial but resistant starch also leads to the production of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs). These SCFAs have been shown to heal the gut barrier and protect folks like heavy drinkers. So, this interplay among the gut lining, microbes, lipoproteins, etc. is interesting and complex. I can definitely see both sides of the coin where diet conspires against the body causing undue stress as well as stress being an initiator of degenerative metabolism as well. It’s all circumstantial though I would tend toward the side of general stress being more causative of this faulty metabolism. That being said, I’m glad salycilates were granted a mention. So, it is my view that the microbiome may only be marginally beneficial when healthy, but can be very disruptive when not, a concave property. In my opinion, a fair mix of fruit and vegetable fiber along with some resistant starch would suffice to provide a “healthier” environment for the gut and whatever benefits which may be derived from it.
After a decade of low-carb dieting (actually, more like 15 years), I’m finding relief higher carb/low fat also. It’s hard to believe coconut oil isn’t good, especially with all the positive weight-loss related anecdotes online.
I take the recommended supps (aspirin, vit K, B and also calcium) and have noted positive changes in my bowels and possibly body composition. It’s really weird actually.
Coconut oil is a good fat but the idea that eating coconut oil or MCT oil leads to more weight loss compared to other fats or that it leads to greater weight loss maintenance long term is simply untrue, last time I checked. It seems to me groups like WAPF promote eating extra fat just for the sake of eating fat. There’s plenty of fat to be had from so many foods without deliberating adding it to your diet. Medium chain saturated fats, when free in the blood, actually turn on the same inflammatory pathways that endotoxin does — more potently than PUFA and MUFA do.
“Medium chain saturated fats, when free in the blood, actually turn on the same inflammatory pathways that endotoxin does ? more potently than PUFA and MUFA do.”
Are you referring to the Mani study?
Thank you for this comment and for the original post. As Matt alluded to in a comment above, it’s a mistake to think of any particular food as a medicine, even if it’s a wholesome food like coconut oil. Compulsive overconsumption, as if more of a food is always better, seems to me like a fast track to weight gain and health problems.
Also, fats and oils are about the most refined, nutrient-poor foods you can buy, yet they’re advocated by groups (wapf and paleo) that generally advocate a whole foods approach to nutrition. I don’t mind eating processed food, but that seems like a contradiction to me.
Very interesting.
Ray Peat claims that coconut oil stimulates the thyroid and supports weight loss.
I find when taking a purely scientific approach to diet, it’s impossible to keep all of positives and negatives straight, as there is an infinite amount of good and bad information about seemingly everything. Like I’ve said in the past, I feel like I could make a strong case for or against just about any ingestible substance. What I like about Andrew is that he is smart enough to use words like “hesitant” and “tentative” when stating conclusions, knowing fully that he could encounter future information or experience that could sway his thinking on any particular topic. I find it unbearable to read health information that is written with absolute certainty these days. It comes off as sounding arrogant and immature, like I once did.
Totally agree about making a strong positive or negative case on practically anything based on “studies” – I’ve joked for some times now that the only food I could probably find that was “safe” from all perspectives was perhaps blueberries, but have too many and Dr. Lustig and George Ohsawa might be after you!
“Ray Peat claims that coconut oil stimulates the thyroid and supports weight loss.”
I think he is only referring to coconut oil replacing other fats in the diet, not coconut oil added to the diet as an additional fat source.
I’m assuming that sat fat free in the blood is not the same as metabolising fat for energy, as I have been told we do when at rest. Also, when one is losing fat, does this raise the likelihood of this?
I enjoyed your article Andrew, thanx
on the ‘high fat’ diet, I reckon Andrew is talking from Keto ( see Jimmy Moore) to Atkins ( low carb, moderate protein) and so on.. I think keeping fat at about 20-30% max is a good guideline to follow for most peeps.
Just my two pennies.
deb
Interesting information, but I’m confused as to whether the endotoxin issue is a problem related to obesity alone (regardless of fat consumption), or to high-saturated fat diets, or only to obese people eating a high-fat, paleo style diet. And if an obese person adopts a high-carb, lower-fat diet, will gut bacteria change whether they loose weight or not? Or only if they also manage to loose weight? Or is this recommendation directed towards already lean people and the only way an obese person can change their bacteria profile is by loosing weight? I get lost in what seems to be the conflating of obesity with a high-fat diet, esp in light of the fact that there are obese people on various points on the macro nutrient ratio spectrum.
In regards to large amounts of saturated fats contributing to gut flora imbalances, what to make of cultures who consumed a fair amount of dairy and animal fats, say Scandinavia and in certain northern American Indian tribes, and even France where duck and goose fat is regularly consumed in western areas (where carbs were abundant as well, as opposed to places like the Arctic)? It’s all very interesting what happens in a controlled study, but it’s nice to put it into a real world perspective too. Any thoughts?
I was thinking the same thing about the people in cultures that eat high fat diets and seem to be healthy.
Maybe it is time to just eat, drink and be merry and stop expending mental energy and creating stress worrying about all this stuff. The healthiest people I know eat what they want and don’t know anything about nutrition blogs.
In the end, how many years will a perfect diet add to our quality and length of life? Is there such a thing as a perfect diet? For every person who says high carb is the answer, you can find another person who thrives on a high fat diet. Some people say starch is fattening, while others find it helps them lose weight. One minute fat is good, next minute it is bad and feeds endotoxin. Andrew did a post on his site saying too much protein hindered weight loss. I think we are actually subtracting years from our lives with all the stress created trying to analyze contradictory information and applying it to ourselves.
I think for many people (including myself) it is not about a long life, but a quality life.
“The healthiest people I know eat what they want and don’t know anything about nutrition blogs. ”
Really? Do you live in the US? Just curious
Yes I do live in the US.
But when I say they eat what they want, I don’t mean they live on junk food.
Healthy people have no desire to live on junk food nor do they they gravitate toward “diets” like paleo, vegan, peat style etc. Healthy people just seem to know instinctively what to eat and how much. People have been eating food long before there was scientific research, the internet and blogs.
I personally don’t know any healthy people who obsess about food and exclude any category of food that they like and are not allergic to. My mother, for example, is much healthier than I and she knows nothing about the science of nutrition, nor does she know what percentage of her diet is fat, carb or protein. She does not even know what a blog is because she uses the internet only for email and Facebook. She is too busy enjoying life to waste precious time reading contradictory nutrition blogs and scientific research articles. On the other hand, all the people I know who read nutrition books and blogs and are very knowledgeable about health and nutrition don’t feel so great.
Of course quality of life is important, but how many people are actually improving their quality of life with the overload of information they get from so many different sources? Many people are reading several blogs, non of which agree on anything. Changing one’s diet because of new information is stressful. Mental health is an important part of quality of life and if a person is constantly searching for the right diet, obsessing over macro-nutrient percentage or micro-nutrient density of food etc, it has to negatively affect their mental health, even if they don’t realize it.
I agree with much of what you say, however, many of these healthy people who are not obsessed with health were probably blessed with great genes and those that are not are the ones that get obsessed, which unfortunately often makes them more unhealthy. I know this is the case for me. I am in my late 40s, I grew up on a farm and seldom ate fast food though did eat school lunches like nearly all the other kids did. I wasn’t overweight as a child but I was always one of the last children to finish the crossing line or be picked for a team. When I went through puberty, I got fairly bad acne, worse than most kids and when I got a job and could afford to eat out and buy junk food, I gained 20lbs and it didn’t just go to the areas that supposed to go to be considered an attractive female. Even though I ate more when I got more money, I don’t think I ate more than other the teenagers around me because at that age, everyone was eating out more, etc…but they didn’t gain weight like me. Some people are lucky and can handle the typical foods that are prolific, some can’t. Some people even when at a normal weight are so still so unathletic that they try to compensate by exercising more, etc… I have received so much more stress form other kids not picking me to be on their team more than I ever got from not eating a certain food even.
Okay, I see your point. I think I misunderstood your original comment.
“Healthy people have no desire to live on junk food nor do they they gravitate toward ?diets? like paleo, vegan, peat style etc. Healthy people just seem to know instinctively what to eat and how much. ”
I agree with this. But, I would say that these people never had to think about nutrition because they are already healthy. Not that they are healthy because they never think about nutrition. I never thought about my health either until I lost it.
If a person has very poor health, they are forced to think about nutrition and lifestyle or suffer poor health or go to a doctor and get a pill.
“Many people are reading several blogs, non of which agree on anything. Changing one’s diet because of new information is stressful. Mental health is an important part of quality of life and if a person is constantly searching for the right diet, obsessing over macro-nutrient percentage or micro-nutrient density of food etc, it has to negatively affect their mental health, even if they don’t realize it.”
I think these people you are talking about never actually experienced bad health, and are just obsessive for no reason. There is some degree of diminishing returns when it comes to nutrition that is true.
Ann, that was the best comment I’ve ever read on this entire site since its inception! We could all use a reality check. I’ve been perusing health and nutrition blogs less and less recently because of similar reasons written in your post.
Amen!
The more I read this blog, the more I believe that most of the contributors/posters and moderators are, at the root of it, very normal. Extremely normal genes, had extremely normal parents, etc… You refuse to accept people that are outside of normal – and by that, I mean people who were born with what most would consider a “mental disorder”.
Here, it’s all just about patting yourselves on the back, trying to win a point and not really helping those that need it most.
While I don’t believe in the genetic determinism that you are promoting Wendy, I do understand your point. However, my understanding is that this blog is mostly for people that made themselves sick on restrictive diets, it is not really for people that were sick on a “normal” diet/lifestyle. Some of us do need more specific help than Matt provides, but that is okay. There are plenty of other blogs for that.
Yes, this blog gathered most of its followers from people who found that paleo and low-carb failed them, and then picked up people with other restrictive eating issues as well. It was basically diet recovery. I don’t think Matt has made too many claims about helping alter inborn issues. In fact, I think he’s said he doesn’t think you can totally fix a lot of them.
The methods here can definitely help people who are starving, over-dieted, over-exercised, over-stressed, etc., but they are no match for problems created by genetic disorders, medication effects, illegal drugs, etc. Some people have expectations that they will overcome these issues, but I think that is very wishful thinking.
I contribute to this blog from time to time, and I don’t fit what you are describing. I developed chronic, life-constricting health problems while eating a perfectly normal diet. I never would have given one thought to what I put into my mouth (beyond what tastes good) if I hadn’t developed chronic pain and fatigue at the age of 20. In fact, I was actively hostile to the idea that nutrition could affect health. I still think a lot of discussions in the health food world are silly and pointless, but I’m also eccentric and worry about stuff that “normal” people might consider crazy.
The only reason I became obsessed with diet was as a way to solve my own health problems, and I tried a lot of things that didn’t work. The kind of diet and lifestyle I argue for here is one that has worked for me. It hasn’t wiped out my health problems completely, but I can live a pretty normal life.
I do understand your point, though. This is an eclectic forum, with people who have come here for many different reasons. That’s part of why I like it, but it also means that there’s no accepted point of view, and people have drastically different issues they’re trying to work out.
Some people also says that carbs causes grain-brain. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17333302-grain-brain
“A high-fat meal induces low-grade endotoxemia: evidence of a novel mechanism of postprandial inflammation.”
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/5/1286.long
“Moreover, it has been shown very recently in mice that high-fat diet?induced vascular inflammation and insulin resistance are reversed completely by genetic deletion of the endotoxin receptor Toll-like receptor 4.
…
In conclusion, we presented both direct and indirect evidence of increased circulating plasma endotoxin after a high-fat meal in healthy subjects. Increased postprandial LPS may contribute to the development of the postprandial inflammatory state, endothelial cell activation, and early events of atherosclerosis. As such, therapeutic approaches aimed at reducing the translocation of endotoxin from the gut to the circulation may prove of worth with regard to possible treatments in the prevention of atherosclerosis.”
I’m reminded of a Ray Peat quote that goes something along the lines of estrogen being meant to intensely but briefly stimulate the cells. Vascular inflammation and insulin resistance are appropriate responses to immediate threats, but obviously as chronic conditions they contribute to all kinds of degenerative diseases.
We aren’t going to get rid of endotoxin, and that isn’t the goal; so it’s implied that it does serve a purpose, or at the very least, that our bodies have adapted to its existence and are equipped to deal with it to an extent. The question is how exactly endotoxins get into circulation in the body, how much of that is inevitable, and how much diet can influence that.
http://www.nutrition.org/asn-blog/2013/01/the-french-paradox-was-it-really-the-wine/
As far as the “French Paradox” goes, it’s interesting to consider saturated fat consumption in the context of endotoxins, and the balancing effects that dietary antioxidants can have.
I’m also reminded of a program I watched about the history of beer where someone mentioned finding very high levels of tetracycline in African mummies that was a result of consuming large amounts of ancient-style brewed beer.
http://news.discovery.com/history/ancient-egypt/antibiotic-beer-nubia.htm
That was really interesting. Thanks Kim. Seems to be fairly easy to try to add more carbs, fruits and vegetables and some regular supplements, and reduce fat, and never go hungry. I’ll try it tomorrow and report back in a few weeks if my waits got any slimmer. :)
There may not be any hard statistical proof, but I can’t totally dismiss the fact that low-fat, plant-based health promoters are usually much more trim than their low-carb counterparts.
http://www.vegsource.com/news/2013/01/fake-obesity-experts-video.html
Anecdotal evidence tells me that there is a honeymoon for high fat diets. That is, for the first year or two you will see benefits and weight loss, but then the thyroid catches up to what you are doing and everything goes to hell.
Yes, and the even bigger problem is that when they honeymoon ends and someone tries to add back carbs it really induces weight gain, so it’s a trap.
Yes, that would be me you’re talking about. In a nutshell.
I had a slight touch of anorexia nervosa almost 2 years back. I was eating about 300 calories a day thinking it would make me super healthy and save me from all those lifestyle diseases. I almost became insane.
Then, after coaxing from friends and family, I started to eat again. Lo and behold, I was eating the same amount of food pre-starvation, yet I ballooned out and gained 25 kg from my pre-starvation mode. Only recently I have been able to get it slowly down through a Peatarian diet(which means I try to get a lot of calories and mostly from carbs with moderate protein).
Thanks for the post Andrew. I’m doing all of this already and some desiccated thyroid but no results. I’ve been adding a bit more moderate exercise which feels good in some ways but I’m also getting lower metabolism symptoms from it – worse sleep, constipation. I’m at a loss.
Yeah, cause desiccated thyroid sucks, too much T3, which actually elevates nasties like cortisol and adrenaline. If you actually have true hypothyroidism then I recommended this site highly http://tiredthyroid.com/ and this book http://www.amazon.com/Functional-Approach-Hypothyroidism-Traditional-Alternative/dp/1578263875/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1383234450&sr=8-2&keywords=kenneth+blanchard, otherwise stay off the thyroid supplements. By the way I have really, real hypothyroidism and dietary interventions made not one lick of difference, scratch that, overeating destroyed my health. If your thyroid can’t spit out the juice, then there simply is no substitute for an actual perscription, that said most of what popular alternative web sites promote as far as dosing and t3 intake just give people adrenal fatigue.
Thank you christal I’ll follow up those links.
I agree, T3 gave me terrible problems even on a very low dose. A lot of people promote T3 as the answer to all thyroid issues and maybe it is for some, but it is very powerful and should be taken with a lot of care. I lost about half my hair which still has not come back 2 years later. And I had some kind of mental breakdown, maybe just because I couldn’t sleep, and I ended up on 3 psych meds. Fun times. Thanks a lot, STTM.
Yeah, same here, STTM is really effing up this whole thyroid thing, which is sad. I suffered for years with terrible symptoms because my TSH was in normal range, and I really felt like they were advocating for people like me. Unfortunately, it ended up being a huge rabbit hole, of overpriced “holistic dr. appt.” insomnia, testing, supplements, heart palpitations, anxiety… I could go on and on, then I switched to a completely mainstream Dr., I was put to 100mcg of synthroid, pronounced normal despite having raving symptoms of hyperthyroidism (guess what, mainstream docs don’t treat borderline cases of hypo because they don’t know how, although they’ll never admit that, but really they don’t know what they’re doing any better than anyone else) Oh, uh, where was I, oh, yeah then I was diagnosed with Lupus, despite having completely negative anti-body tests etc. etc. I really feel like the advice in Kenneth Blanchard’s book turned my health around although it was a slow recovery, he has some interesting thoughts on TSH and T4 conversion rates that really helped me get it right, but was it worth it? I don’t know? I endured two years of misery, I won’t even go into what over-feeding did to me, that screwed me up just as bad as being on too much thyroid, although that’s probably a story Matt needs to hear at some point. I guess my point here is that thyroid problems suck, probably contribute to all sorts of negative health outcomes, but that getting treatment has risks too, especially if your Dr. is a knob, which sorry to say is most of them.
Yep, I wasted sooooo much money on holistic Drs, supplements, testing etc. I HAD a really nice, open-minded Endo before all that, but STTM had me convinced that all Endos are terrible. I finally went back to him and my nice $30 co-pay. I think what I needed was just a stable dose of Synthroid and to quit messing with it all the time.
the T3 (and dessicated) was just a nightmare. The only positive was I lost weight.
thank god I never got into the whole Iodine thing. I think it probably works for some people but it’s just a crap shoot.
Sorry for your troubles. It sucks. I will check out that book, never heard of it before.
I appreciate the article. I agree that studies, alone, can’t paint the whole pictures. There is lot of evidence that some saturated fat is protective for health. The key question is how much.
I have experimented with myself and others with high fats diets as recommended by Weston A Price folks. Ultimately, I found that my body didn’t want it as much. Others that I have advised found the same thing.
What traditional cultures ate in temperate zones where the majority of populations live seem to support this. Most of the saturated fat was eaten either in foods or in cold climates and India as butter. The idea promoted by Matt and Peat about some saturated fats countering stress is right on the money according to myself and lots of people that I spoken with….but no need to become a fat head……too bad no sports picture here.
Thanks for some new food for thought, Andrew.
does anyone have any definitve lists of gram positive and gram negative bacteria? im trying to figure out whats in my multi-strain probiotic ive been taking…
Several small studies examine the relationship between the presence of beneficial bacteria in the gut and maintaining a healthy weight. Researchers have found out that the gut flora of obese and overweight individuals is different from the one of people having a healthy weight.
Individuals that lost some weight during the course of the experiment immediately benefited from a reduction in the levels of pathogens and an increase in the number of beneficial bacteria.