I didn’t want to give up on the Ray Peat topic altogether now. There is still a lot to be said. In fact, his lengthy article titled ?Glycemia, Starch, and Sugar in context? is a perfect article to deconstruct. It is full of many of Peat’s main philosophies about stress hormones, blood sugar regulation, metabolism, gelatin, polyunsaturated fat?? you name it. It’s all there in that article. And it’s the perfect article to examine because some of it is great, and some of it is downright silly. It’s a great blend. In fact, it will probably take many posts to break this single article down ? but once we are through most of you will have a pretty good idea about Ray Peat, and also will be left, hopefully, with a balanced view of him as a researcher (which is something few can claim ? most either think he is a total wacko or is like the Messiah of nutrition).
I will not put every paragraph in the article under the microscope, but we will start with a few that I have selected to discuss and keep the conversation going for a while. In so doing, hopefully we’ll get somewhere. Begin! (spoken in the tone of the original Mortal Kombat video game).
?Judging by present and past statements of the American Dietetic Association, I think some kind of institutional brain defect might account for their recommendations. Although the dietetic association now feebly acknowledges that sugars don’t raise the blood sugar more quickly than starches do, they can’t get away from their absurd old recommendations, which were never scientifically justified: ?Eat more starches, such as bread, cereal, and starchy vegetables–6 servings a day or more. Start the day with cold (dry) cereal with nonfat/skim milk or a bagel with one teaspoon of jelly/jam. Put starch center stage–pasta with tomato sauce, baked potato with chili, rice and stir-fried beef and vegetables. Add cooked black beans, corn, or garbanzo beans (chickpeas) to salads or casseroles.
Peat, in his disdain for mainstream nutrition beliefs, is poking fun at the dietary recommendation to base the diet primarily around starches and not simple sugars. Of course, these recommendations were based on widely held but later discovered-to-be-mistaken beliefs that complex carbohydrates ? like grains, potatoes, corn, and beans, digested more slowly than simple sugars comprised of less ?complex? molecules. It had been known for ages that these foods generally led to more stable blood glucose levels (measured over a 6-hour time period as opposed to just basing everything off of what happens in the first half hour), and were great preventatives against hypoglycemia unlike the foods listed by early anti-sugar author E.M. Abrahamson (1951) who gave the following prescription for those prone to hypoglycemia, ?no sugar, candy, or other sweets, no cake with icing, no pies or other pastry, no ice cream, no honey, no syrup, no grape juice or prune juice. And regrettably, our string of ?no’s? includes cocktails, wines, cordials, and beer. Finally, if you have hyperinsulinism, you must avoid caffeine as you would the pest.
Of course, there are many diseases including hereditary fructose intolerance and various glycogen storage diseases in which starch is a completely safe food to eat, but the ingestion of any of the foods listed by Abrahamson containing simple sugars can cause life-threatening bouts of hypoglycemia. This has nothing to do with the absorption rate of the carbohydrates, and in my experience the absorption rate of the carbohydrates has nothing to do with a food’s ability to trigger hypoglycemia. Quite simply, absorption rate or ?glycemic index? of foods or the insulin spike after eating rapidly-absorbed starches has nothing to do with hypoglycemia. Thinking that it does is just another pseudoscientific sasquatch.
Thinking that such recommendations were made due to some brain defect is even more offensive, as many of the mantras of mainstream nutrition are based on the pioneering work of Denis Burkitt, Hugh Trowell, T.L. Cleave, and others who spent time in Africa gathering hard data on the rates, or absence I should say, of many cancers, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, constipation, hemorrhoids, varicose veins, appendicitis, diverticulosis, and many others on diets built around starchy agricultural staples ? notably whole grains, corn, root vegetables, and the like. It’s not like these beliefs were pulled out of thin air as part of some government propaganda machine. And as Burkitt witnessed, the more food that was displaced with whole grains and tubers, the lower the fasting glucose level of the population.
“The Dietetic Association’s association with General Mills, the breakfast cereal empire, (and Kellog, Nabisco, and many other food industry giants) might have something to do with their starchy opinions. Starch-grain embolisms can cause brain damage, but major money can also make people say stupid things.”
These food companies make more money the more high-fructose corn syrup and vegetable oil they manage to squeeze into the food, as these are generally much cheaper calories than those in villainous grains or potatoes (although they are still plenty cheap). More importantly, the more fat and extra sweet HFCS in the product, the more of it consumers buy and eat because sugar ? particularly high-fructose corn syrup because it is sweeter, and fat, are more stimulating than starch, generally-speaking (although there are plenty of people that get more riled up about chips, Cheez-its, and baguettes than sugar-laden sweets). To think that such companies are behind some massive scheme to steer people towards vile corn and potatoes and away from wholesome simple sugar is comical to put it lightly.
“In an old experiment, a rat was tube-fed ten grams of corn-starch paste, and then anesthetized. Ten minutes after the massive tube feeding, the professor told the students to find how far the starch had moved along the alimentary canal. No trace of the white paste could be found, demonstrating the speed with which starch can be digested and absorbed. The very rapid rise of blood sugar stimulates massive release of insulin, and rapidly converts much of the carbohydrate into fat.”
I smell more sasquatch here. In fact, the smell is so strong the John Lithgow is outside my window shouting the name ?Harry? over and over. Jack Black and Kyle Gass are here with a bottle of aerosol Trap B Gone and are setting up a drumset as we speak. Sasquatch’s ?drumming is kickass? they tell me.
Insulin converting carbohydrate into fat? That’s not how insulin works at all. In fact, a solid debunking took place a couple months back at http://www.carbsanity.blogspot.com/ in which it was shown that the body is in negative fat balance (burning more fat than storing) during postprandial insulin spikes ? like the kind you get after having some good old corn starch. On top of that, the easiest carbohydrate to convert to fat has been shown time and time and time and time and time again to be the one that travels to the liver and is digested most slowly. It’s called fructose. Not only does the presence of fat make fat storage easier,?if fructose is converted to fat in the liver (which it can be under certain circumstances)?it increases insulin resistance, which can lead to increased fat storage (insulin lowers appetite and increases metabolic rate, so becoming unresponsive to the hormone has a tendency to increase appetite and reduce metabolic rate).
Insulin is also intricately tied to leptin, the master hormone of managing the calories in/calories out equation. Surges in insulin cause surges in leptin, which lowers appetite and increases the metabolic rate. Stating that making insulin rise leads to becoming fat is a complete misrepresentation of the bigger picture. In fact, starch-based diets usually lower appetite dramatically, and many starchy foods like potatoes and oats are known to satisfy the appetite on fewer calories than just about any foods known (higher ‘satiety index?).
Speaking of corn starch specifically, this has actually been used successfully by Francine Kauffman of the American Diabetes Association in the prevention of early morning hypoglycemia in diabetics ? more evidence that absorption rate is not the prime determinant of whether or not a particular carbohydrate goes on to trigger hypoglycemia and general blood glucose dysregulation.
Anyway, don’t get the wrong idea here. I’ve been eating simple sugars in favor of starches myself for many months now and have noticed some apparent benefits. Many seem to do better with sugars than starches for keeping hands and feet warm, producing more energy, getting better sleep ? probably due to enhanced liver glycogen storage, and so forth. Many fare better from a digestive standpoint on fruit, juice, and sugar than more complex carbohydrate molecules. Some even report a lowering of appetite on sugar vs. starches, especially with the consumption of whole fruits which, like most starchy staples, are very high satiety index foods. Fruit is also generally more nutritious and hypoallergenic.
So be open to either, or a combination of the two. It’s up to everyone to experiment for themselves to see what the relative benefits and drawbacks of the two basic types of carbohydrates are. But the point here is to shoot down Peat’s wacky and erroneous biochemical justification of the outright superiority of sugar over starch. There is not a clear cut right or wrong carbohydrate, and the mainstream belief that ?complex? carbohydrates are superior to simple sugars is not the result of a governmental or agribusiness conspiracy.
In the next episode, we will continue looking closer at Ray’s cookie-cutter and false portrayal of insulin as being a hormone that, if driven up, will drive blood sugar down and cause hypoglycemia. Don’t worry, Ray’s got some tremendous gems in this article as well, as he is one of the few that actually does have some understanding of type 2 diabetes, realizes that it is a shortage, not a surplus of glucose at the cellular level, and so on.
For more discussion on the sugar and starch issue, read this book on how to raise your metabolism.
I've also experienced a drop in appetite when adding fruit juice and honey to my diet. And increased vasodilation.
"Insulin converting carbohydrate into fat? That’s not how insulin works at all. In fact, a solid debunking took place a couple months back at http://www.carbsanity.blogspot.com/ in which it was shown that the body is in negative fat balance (burning more fat than storing) during postprandial insulin spikes"
Matt,
How do you explain that people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets, if that's not how insulin works?
I don't think that good starches like potatos or rice cause people to become fat. But I think that's only true when you mainly eat them by themselves without much protein or fat.
When I was eating a high starch diet, with normal fat and protein, I was very lean with low body fat. But I developed a nice double chin and a puffy face. I have seen lots of lean people with this kind of "starch face."
With lots of sugar in my diet, I quickly got rid of the fat and gained a few kilos of muscle mass. (without exercising, at all) Eventhough my body fat percentage migh be a few points higher now, I look considerably leaner.
Did you mean at the end you loose fat by adding simple sugar or starches ?
@Jannis:
Totally agree on your starch face theory, actually japanese people are very lean but they tend to have puffy faces, I’ve always wandered about these…it seems that some people tend to increase facial fat more easily from carbs than to sugar or fat (although for some people dairy also seems to produce puffy faces)
What is the mecanism behind facial fat accumulation???
I swear I remember Matt writing about the puffy faces of Eskimos – and of himself on low carb. Don't remember whether the 'cure' was sugar or starch, though.
Marco,
I don't know. I can just guess. The most immediate effect I noticed with more sugar was an increased sex drive and much better mood. So, it might have something to do with increased thyroid function/ steroid production (pregnelonone/testosterone)
The old medical textbooks mention that a lot of hypothyroid people are very lean and have problems gaining muscle mass. Hypothyroidism doesn't necessarily mean that you become fat. It can also go in the other direction. Peat once mentioned a very tall and skinny guy who came to him because he coudln't gain any weight, despite eating more than 4000 calories a day. When he took a thyroid supplement, he gained muscle mass very quickly.
But is there anything wrong with a puffy face, i.e. subcutaneous fat? there is a reason for the terminology "subcutaneous", that's where fat belongs. being lean is not the equivalent of being healthy, of course being morbidly obese is the other end of the spectrum. but there are so many people walking around with a lot of visceral fat without any signs of 'puffyness' at all. There fat is just distributed in a different way.
Wow Jannis, I mean you have said some really dumb shit in the past but your last few comments really take the cake."people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets" if that isn't the most fucking retarded distorted generalization comment that I've ever heard then I don't know what is. I swear you peatards never cease to amaze me with your comments.
Jannis I was just looking for that quote about the guy who ate massive amounts of food without gaining weight, yet was hypothyroid, but I thought he was referring to himself. While binging on sugar I've experienced the same thing, ie I consumed massive amounts of calories without gaining any appreciable amounts of fat, but at the same time started to get hypothyroid symptoms like low body temp and lack of drive and motivation. How is something like that even possible though?
In my experience a hypercaloric starch diet is definitely more fattening than a hypercaloric sugar diet, but at the same time a hypercaloric sugar diet made me feel more unbalanced and gave me weird problems that didnt go away even after 10 weeks on it, such as frequent headaches, late afternoon energy crashes (admittedly got much better since I increased my morning protein) and an inability to wear my contact lenses for more than a few hours without getting bloodshot eyes and aching temples. That last thing boggles me because I've never had issues with wearing contacts before this.
Collden,
I think he experienced something similar, but the guy I was talking about is someone else.
rosenfeltc
I was so sure that JT would be the first to cry "peatard"
@Matt: Thanks for the shout out!
@All: Here's a direct link to the post I think Matt is talking about:
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2010/12/fat-accumulation-taubes-v-frayn-asp-in.html
As regards facial fat and round faces, "chubby cheeks" are associated with insulin resistance. Given that high fat or high fructose consumption has been shown to induce IR, and starch actually promotes insulin sensitivity, I'm totally confused over the notion of "starch face".
I think it's also important to distinguish between shape and fattiness. Many of my Japanese friends and acquaintances over the years have had round faces but I wouldn't call them chubby, and double chin? Not so much.
In my pic you can see I have "chubby cheeks" and a little chin fat (this appears to be a bit more than I actually have b/c it's cropped from a candid group shot where I'm leaning kinda funny), but if I were to post a pic of my face at ~300 lbs when I definitely exhibited the fat distribution associated with IR, the "fat face" was quite a bit different than it is now.
FWIW :-)
Actually, there seems to be no connection whatsoever between fructose and insulin resistance.
http://www.ajcn.org/content/78/4/865S.full.pdf
"Given that high fat or high fructose consumption has been shown to induce IR", show me the hard data
@Jannis: Fructose feeding is one way they induce IR in animal models.
It is important to differentiate: I believe part of the problem is how we define IR. Fructose causes transient IR due to it's impact on non-oxidative glucose disposal – aka glycogen synthesis. Fructose, like alcohol, gets used first.
But pathological IR – aka Metabolic Syndrome -> T2 continuum – is not caused by dietary agents.
@Anonymous: I don't have the time to discuss the hard data, but per my comments above, dietary fat – a single high fat meal even – can induce a transient IR. Again, I'm not confusing that with what leads to development pathological/systemic/chronic IR. If anyone's interested, I have a crapload of entries under my Insulin Resistance label for your perusal.
"Start the day with cold (dry) cereal with nonfat/skim milk or a bagel with one teaspoon of jelly/jam."
Where did that recommendation come from? I think that it might well be due to a brain defect. I don't see the rationale behind anyone choosing to make a definite recommendation for those particular foods. There are hundreds of healthier and tastier alternatives to those garbage junk foods.
Well as for high starch causing a "chubby face" what about the people on the African continent that eat mostly starchy foods yet are lean and have muscle mass?
As regards sugar v. starch and metabolism, here's a thought. A while back I came upon a paper that discussed a Fat Futile Cycle whereby excess carb is converted to fat but that fat is oxidized within the muscle cell to liberate heat.
I blogged two versions because it's a heady one alright!
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2010/11/fat-futile-cycling-from-carb-excess.html
and the more layfriendly version:
http://carbsanity.blogspot.com/2010/11/fat-futile-cycling-from-carb-excess_11.html
Since fructose is the most lipogenic carb, perhaps this explains some of the difference some experience?
@ Jannis
"How do you explain that people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets, if that's not how insulin works?"
That really is nonsense. You can't extrapolate your personal experience on others like that. Matt said before that made the exact opposite experience. East Asians are perfect examples for being primarily starch eaters and having low obesity.
Nice! I have captured carb sane! Finally, an intelligent conversation can be had!
As far as facial puffiness, much of this is edema from hypothyroidism. Hypercortisolism is known to induce a puffy "moon face" as well, perhaps because cortisol lowers metabolism and increases edema, perhaps for other reasons – as it also causes fat to be stored on the upper back like a buffalo hump. I know that my ex-girlfriend had a face like a freakin' basketball in high school, which was caused entirely by her usage of corticosteroids for a foot issue she had. Her face is very skinny now, and was even during her pre-jaw surgery bulk up.
Of course, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, as we will examine in future Peat posts based on the same article, are predominantly caused by hypercortisolism. Talking chronic insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome. Probably due to the excessive liberation of fatty acids, which causes insulin resistance as carbsane has pointed out.
As far as body composition on starch vs. sugar, there are many variables, as well as short-term vs. long-term, which no one has established. I know personally that I seem to get quite a bit leaner on starch vs. sugar, but much of that is related to eating a lot less starch than sugar. I seem to feel crappier on high-starch vs. sugar, but again this could be related to calorie intake. It's impossible to isolate everything.
But I gaurantee for every person that claims they are leaner on sugar vs. starch, there is someone who claims to be leaner on starch vs. sugar. But what we know of lean people all over the world and bodybuilders, is that far and away the preference is starch over sugar. Sugar seems to be the preference for endurance athletes and for usage as a pre-workout supplement.
Hans,
I don't base my statement on my personell experience only, but on those of others and the studies I have seen.
Jannis,
What you really mean is the studies that you cherry pick.
Matt said "But what we know of lean people all over the world and bodybuilders, is that far and away the preference is starch over sugar" ya and we can also include almost any top level athlete but I guess they all have double chins and puffy faces. Jannis you really are retarded maybe JT was right when he said that you're lack of tryptophan is affecting your brain.
Excellent!(spoken in the tone of the original Mortal Kombat video game).
Argh, I think the sugar and fruit are going to kill me. I was doing ok RRARFing with carbs like potatoes and starch, even though I was gaining weight hand over fist.
i am morbidly obese and now even more so, but my health was slowly starting to improve along with my temp. I switched out a lot of starch for sugar (fruits etc), had some oj every day and started eating small amounts of fruit 3 times a day; oh boy has it done a number on me. After three weeks
I had to stop. Massive diarrhea (sorry tmi), gas, cold hands, cold feet, crashing temps. I am on Armour and had to have my dosage increased. I am going back to starch today and working even harder on relaxing and listening to my Jon Gabriel cd, yo. Just before I started the sugar trip I was almost ready to stop rrarfing and start easing back to see if I could lose a bit of weight. I think I am going back in that direction, no disrespect to Ray intended.
These articles are a poor introduction to Peat's work. Hopefully any curious people go directly to his articles and interviews, rather than relying on third-party interpretation.
Jannis and Matt are the only ones adding anything to the comments discussion. The rest of you don't even know how to present your ignorance. So have fun, I'm out of here.
Andrew,
That's a little harsh.
Hans, rosenfelt, etc.
Try to understand where Jannis is coming from, he has said things in the past that should clue you in. I think when he says sugar increases muscle mass he is referring to that study on the proline blog a while back.
Of course he's being a hard liner as always, but he's the only one here with the views he has. We should be welcoming to someone with a different perspective.
Welcome Andrew or should I say good bye peatard number 2?
Did you really have to insert a comment just to say that you're fed up and you're leaving? Or did you just have the urge to back-up your fellow peatard Jannis and call the rest of us ignorant?
But I guess you're right because if saying something like "How do you explain that people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets, if that's not how insulin works?" without any evidence or hard facts, really is "adding anything to the comments discussion" then I really am ignorant and would prefer to remain in this ignorant state than to have any of your peatarded "knowledge".
By the way how successful have you been following Peat's dietary recommendations/thyroid supplementation for many months? From what one could tell from your proline blog you still seem to have many problems but I guess that's not because demigod Peat is wrong but it's just because you have "ruined" your body for so many years that now it's gonna take a long time to get healthy again. I get it, I truly do, it's kinda like "detox" that vegans talk about right?
Look, I don't have a problem with fruit nor am I against it, however you peatards claiming that starch makes you fat, or puffy faced, goes against the evidence of millions of people and thousands of athletes/bodybuilders and not only that, you provide absolutely no evidence for your statements besides some personal observations that don't take into considerations thousands of other variables. By doing this, you are just as moronic as vegans that claim animal meat is poison or low carbers that claim insulin is the devil.
rosenfeltc,
you are even more amusing than JT. It doesn't even take questioning your arguments to piss you off beyond belief. I know you are very angry right now because of my bullshit, but you should atleast read it. I didn't say that starch consumption per se will have negative consequences or lead to a puffy face. I don't think a high starch diet is optimal. With good starches and little fat it is probably fine for some purposes.
I know I should follow Andrew's example and leave the discussion now but it's too good right now.
I agree with you, Andrew. It's just looking at a few passages quoted out of context without even analyzing their truth value. By the way, did you get my new email adress?
Jannis,
It's funny that you think I'm angry, If anything I'm laughing at your stupidity and yes I will keep calling you on your bullshit. I did read your entire study, funny how you not only cherry pick studies but in this case you even cherry pick things inside the study. Or am I wrong to guess that you don't agree with the researchers thoughts on saturated fat decreasing insulin sensitivity?
Besides, the only thing that study shows is that contrary to the animal evidence (which does show that sucrose/fructose decreases insulin sensitivity) "No group of researchers has yet
shown a convincing negative or positive effect of sucrose on insulin
sensitivity by using dynamic insulin sensitivity assessment" and the researchers rightly claim that more human evidence is needed. I'm sorry Jannis, I'm a little ignorant, explain to me how that study shows that sucrose is better than starch? or that starch makes people have a puffy face and skinny fat? Or that lack of evidence equals evidence that sucrose is good?
Or better yet how do any of the studies used in the research review show that humans should eat a majority of sucrose and keep starches to a minimum like Peat would recommend considering the researchers wrote, "The use of higher dietary doses of sucrose or
fructose would be unfeasible in terms of palatability in the
human population."
Even better yet, another thing that your selective reading disorder skipped over was, "We should not ignore the possibility that
sucrose may affect insulin sensitivity only with a high fat intake,
particularly given the high fat intake in the positive studies by the
Beltsville group" well I guess there goes Peat's dietary advice of milk, cheese and fruit for insulin sensitivity lol. How about you read your own damn studies before you post them?
RC,
If you have been a 180 follower for quite some time then you should know that Jannis has always attacked people for thinking that sugar was bad and always claimed that he was open minded and to show him the studies. Yet, every time a study was shown Jannis either ignored it or claimed the study was badly done (used hfcs instead of fruit/sugar) or it was done in animals. I'm not saying he is wrong to be strict on the studies indicting sucrose/fructose and I somewhat agree with him but if that's the case why should I let him makes even more absurd facts about starches with NO EVIDENCE???
Hey Matt,
Are you planning on talking about the influence that PUFAs have in how everyone seems to be hating on fructose? In most studies quoted to demonize fructose, I think some form of veggie oil is usually part of the fat in the test diet. Currently my thinking is that as long as I keep my PUFA intake low, that sugars (including the white stuff) are fine. I know Ray puts a lot of worth into keeping cortisol at bay as well, but for now I'm just focusing on the PUFAs. Thanks
I meant I'm done reading this site and its comments, but I just had to come back once more.
It would be a lot easier to read these comments if people wrote more like politely arguing academics, so we wouldn't have to sort through a lot of personal insults to understand what you're saying.
As I've written before on my blog, I'm happy with my progress using Peat's recommendations. I still have some health problems, but it's very strange to think that there won't be some healing time. Your body isn't going to start functioning perfectly immediately after finding some magic diet.
I've gained over fifty pounds on this diet and still look lean. Right now I'm wearing jeans with a 31" waist size. The more sugar I eat, the leaner I look, while my weight stays the same at 186-190lbs.
Jannis, I remember you sending it to me, but I can't find it now. Could you send it to me again sometime?
Rosi,
I did never say that this study shows that sugar is superior to starch. I just wanted to reply to CarbSane who said that fructose causes insulin resistance. Seriously, take a deep breath before you post another comment.
Every study which combines carbs with high fat will decrease insulin sensivity, and at least for some time cause insulin resistance. That always happens when free fatty acids are used for fuel.The result would have been the same with starch.
Jane,
Okay so we're exactly is your evidence for "How do you explain that people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets, if that's not how insulin works?".
Fruit really has a high satiety score? For me, eating fruit is almost worse than eating nothing in terms of satiety. It's as if it creates a hole in my belly and I crave something substantial.
http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v21/n10/pdf/0800494a.pdf
http://www.ajcn.org/content/47/3/420.full.pdf
Those are the only two studies I have seen so far, that directly compare two groups with starch or sugar diets. That's not much. But there simply isn't more. If you have more studies of that kind, please show them to me.
But the effect of sucrose on the metabolic rate is enough to predict the effects of such a diet. Every study on metabolic rates shows that sucrose increases the metabolic rate as compared to starch.
Minerva Endocrinol 1990 Oct-Dec;15(4):273-7. [Postprandial thermogenesis and obesity: effects of glucose and fructose]. [Article in Italian] Macor C, De Palo C, Vettor R, Sicolo N, De Palo E, Federspil G
Metabolism. 1996 Oct;45(10):1235-42.
Postprandial thermogenesis and substrate utilization after ingestion of different
dietary carbohydrates. Blaak EE, Saris WH. Department of Human Biology, University of Limburg, Maastricht, The Netherlands.
Acute fuel selection in response to high-sucrose and high-starch
meals in healthy men
Mark E Daly, Catherine Vale, Mark Walker, Alison Littlefield, K George, MM Alberti, and John Mathers
Comparison of thermogenic effect of fructose and glucose in normal humans. Tappy L, Randin JP, Felber JP, Chiolero R, Simonson DC, Jequier E, DeFronzo RA.
By the way how successful have you been following Peat's dietary recommendations/thyroid supplementation for many months? From what one could tell from your proline blog you still seem to have many problems but I guess that's not because demigod Peat is wrong but it's just because you have "ruined" your body for so many years that now it's gonna take a long time to get healthy again. I get it, I truly do, it's kinda like "detox" that vegans talk about right?
Look, I don't have a problem with fruit nor am I against it, however you peatards claiming that starch makes you fat, or puffy faced, goes against the evidence of millions of people and thousands of athletes/bodybuilders and not only that, you provide absolutely no evidence for your statements besides some personal observations that don't take into considerations thousands of other variables. By doing this, you are just as moronic as vegans that claim animal meat is poison or low carbers that claim insulin is the devil.
I'm thinking you're onto something. People do de-emphasize the severity of their condition, when they believe that they are recovering. In this case, people rationalize away their negative symptoms when they believe that their method is working. It's a placebo effect. Good point.
However, just because Jannis didn't brag about his improvements on a diet, that doesn't mean that Jannis didn't improve at all.
I don't think Jannis was saying that the same thing works for everyone. Just because sugar works for Jannis, Andrew, Danny Roddy, and Half Navajo, it doesn't mean that sugar would also work for rosenfeltc, Matt, DML, Jenny the Nipper, or lynn.
I don't think that good starches like potatos or rice cause people to become fat. But I think that's only true when you mainly eat them by themselves without much protein or fat.
Well, Chris Voight did a potato-only diet but lost weight. There was another study in which a guy did a zero-fat diet but lost weight:
h ttp://jn.nutrition.org/content/16/6/511
But I'm not missing your point. It may be true for fat people. They can eat more fat in the form of coconut oil and lose weight.
On top of that, the easiest carbohydrate to convert to fat has been shown time and time and time and time and time again to be the one that travels to the liver and is digested most slowly. It’s called fructose.
I don't dispute this claim.
Not only does the presence of fat make fat storage easier,
I dispute this claim. The body fat level is controlled by a series of complex interactions between a multitude of hormones and negative feedback loops, not just "fat makes fat storage easier."
if fructose is converted to fat in the liver (which it can be under certain circumstances) it increases insulin resistance,
Well, it's physiological insulin resistance, which is different from the insulin resistance caused by stress hormones.
[insulin resistance] can lead to increased fat storage (insulin lowers appetite and increases metabolic rate,
This is have proven false but an analysis by Chris Masterjohn.
h ttp://blog.cholesterol-and-health. com/2010/11/is-insulin-resistance-really-making-us. html
so becoming unresponsive to [insulin] has a tendency to increase appetite and reduce metabolic rate.)
Insulin is also intricately tied to leptin, the master hormone of managing the calories in/calories out equation. Surges in insulin cause surges in leptin, which lowers appetite and increases the metabolic rate.
Insulin and leptin are just two hormones which control appetite and metabolic rate. There are a variety of other factors which would balance out this disparity. So I reject this assertion.
But I'm not missing your point. Peat may be wrong that "sugar is superior to starch." I'm just saying that it appears that some of us are just rationalizing away the benefits of starch, by pointing out hormones involved by fructose metabolism are not experimental evidence.
rosenfeltc said…
Wow Jannis, I mean you have said some really dumb shit in the past but your last few comments really take the cake."people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets" if that isn't the most fucking retarded distorted generalization comment that I've ever heard then I don't know what is. I swear you peatards never cease to amaze me with your comments.
Hans said…
@ Jannis
"How do you explain that people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets, if that's not how insulin works?"
That really is nonsense. You can't extrapolate your personal experience on others like that. Matt said before that made the exact opposite experience. East Asians are perfect examples for being primarily starch eaters and having low obesity.
I think Jannis has evidence, it's from the flawed study La Proline in which sugar eaters had more muscle mass than starch eaters.
But even if Jannis was wrong, I don't think that was Jannis' point. Jannis was doing was replying to Matt that a few hormones don't reflect the organism as a whole. I think that was Jannis point.
Update: Jannis showed his studies.
Just because someone doesn't mention his or her sources of his or her claims, it doesn't mean that they don't have evidence backing up their claims. They may well be too lazy to bring up articles backing up their statements. People arejust too lazy.
Organism,
Why is the study I cited flawed?
Yes, I believe that the study was a bit flawed:
You can read this link and reply to it there: h ttp://forget-about-diets.blogspot. com/2011/02/matt-stones-hed-rules. html
(Remove the three spaces in the link)
Matt, it's interesting that you say that you tend to eat more calories when eating higher fruit. Is that because fruit is more 'palatable' or because you 'feel' hungrier with it? In my experience, some people find fruit very satiating, while others feel hungry all the time if they try to eat mostly fruit.
It would be interesting to know which it is with you, because if fruit turns out to be a 'palatable' food a la Kessler, we're in trouble! (I kind of think it couldn't be.) Also interesting if eating more calories helps to raise metab. whereas eating lots of fruit i.e. higher fructose can end up lowering the metab.
Ok I read that, but I have no idea how the points you mentioned are even related to this study (it's results)
That's not meant to be offensive, I just don't understand what exactely you want to say.
Organism said "Just because someone doesn't mention his or her sources of his or her claims, it doesn't mean that they don't have evidence backing up their claims."
Actually those studies do not back up the exagerated claims that Jannis made like "How do you explain that people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets, if that's not how insulin works?"
I just finished writing my response to Jannis on a word document after reading all his links. I spent over an hour and a half on this unfortunately I feel like I wasted my time since it's impossible to reason with peatards. Anyways, as I said before I don't have a problem with people eating fruit or fruit juice if they feel fine however I will not let Jannis spread bs on how starch diets are inferior to sugar and fruit etc… My detailed response follows
The study didn't mention the specific foods in which the starch and sucrose group ate. The sucrose group have well just ate healthier foods than the starch group.
The starch group may have foods which were more processed, such as alloxan-tainted white bread enriched with iron or unprepared whole grains with added vegetable oils. While the sucrose group may have foods which were relatively unprocessed like orange juice.
It doesn't prove that sucrose, in itself, is superior to starch, as it may simply be that processed foods were preventing weight loss.
You might have other studies which are more controlled, but I don't want to look at them.
Jannis,
Your first link is to the study that you already posted on the Proline blog. I have already read it and it wasn’t that impressive. The trial only lasted 14 days and the researchers were actually more impressed with the starch diet than the sucrose diet. I will however admit that the graphs did seem to show better results for the sucrose group as they seemed to lose fat and gain fat free mass. However, fat free mass does not necessarily mean muscle and secondly even the sucrose group was still eating a higher proportion of starches than sucrose which means that one cannot imply that sucrose is better than starch or that a diet of high sucrose and low/zero starch would be optimal (as Peat seems to imply in his articles and as Peat has directly told me through email).
Your second link brought me to a study done on rats, I did not read it because I think it’s only fair that if you refuse to accept all the negative evidence of sucrose/fructose decreasing insulin sensitivity in rats then that means that any positive studies done on rats should have no validity on humans either.
Your first metabolic rate link only brought me to an abstract, after reading it I wasn’t very impressed on the results for a few reasons. One, I have no clue what they were feeding the subjects, when I say I’m pro starches I mean unrefined starches like potatoes. Just like you always say that feeding High Fructose Corn Syrup isn’t the same as Sucrose or fruit, I also say that all starches aren’t created equal and a potato isn’t the same as a white flour tortilla isn’t the same as a nutrient-devoid glucose solution. The second problem, which is even more important, is that the difference between the fructose and the glucose group was only significant in the obese subjects that already suffered insulin resistance but there was no statistical significance in the control group. In fact, this even led the researchers to state ‘supports the hypothesis that reduced glucose-induced thermogenesis in obese subjects may depend on insulin resistance?
Organism said "Just because someone doesn't mention his or her sources of his or her claims, it doesn't mean that they don't have evidence backing up their claims."
Actually those studies do not back up the exagerated claims that Jannis made like "How do you explain that people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets, if that's not how insulin works?"
Jannis may be wrong, but I don't believe that wasn't Jannis' point. Jannis point might just be that it's useless to predict body composition by simply describing "insulin".
Jannis' comment emphasized the that in bold:
"How do you explain that people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets, if that's not how insulin works?"
And Jannis clarified that in a previous comment that it wasn't Jannis' intention:
Rosi,
I did never say that this study shows that sugar is superior to starch. I just wanted to reply to CarbSane who said that fructose causes insulin resistance. Seriously, take a deep breath before you post another comment.
That exaggeration was just a bad example which Jannis used to make his point.
Your second metabolic rate link seemed like a better study unfortunately I only read the abstract because I wasn’t going to spend 32 dollars to read the full article. Indeed, from the abstract it seems like the group eating the sucrose and the group eating the fructose had higher total carbohydrate oxidation and also higher exogenous carbohydrate oxidation. However, this doesn’t mean sucrose/fructose is better than glucose for two reasons: 1. As the researchers wrote in the abstract ‘there were no significant differences in the integrated nonesterified fatty acid (NEFA) response between carbohydrates?. 2. Just because sucrose/fructose temporarily increases energy expenditure or carbohydrate oxidation doesn’t mean that starch/glucose leads to obesity.
In fact, for all the energy in and energy out fanatics out there, energy expenditure is only part of the equation. It’s great that sucrose/fructose had a higher energy expenditure from the carbohydrates ingested however their effect on leptin and satiety are completely different, so even if starches have less energy expenditure it doesn’t necessarily result in obesity if there is also less energy intake which is what your first study (the one you posted on proline) shows, calorie consumption decreases on high starch diets. In fact, mathematically sucrose/fructose based diets could still theoretically cause obesity even with the higher energy expenditure if they also resulted from higher energy intake. Besides, those high sucrose/fructose diets usually come along with higher cortisol and adrenaline levels which according to Peat should be minimized.
Your third metabolic link led me to an abstract but I was able to find the full paper for free so I read it. The researchers did a pretty good job on controlling the macronutrient composition of the diets, unfortunately I still have a problem with how refined and devoid of nutrients the diets were, however since this affected both the sucrose group as well as the glucose group then It shouldn’t have any effect. Although, I do want to point out that from the table listing the food, a possible confounder variable could be gluten since only the glucose group ate the refined bread. Anyways, this study also did show that the carbohydrate oxidation rate was higher in the high sucrose group as one can see in figure 1. The researchers stated that ?The rapid metabolism of fructose may be explained in part by the fact that it bypasses one of the key regulatory enzymes in glycolysis, 6-phosphofructokinase?. I do want to point out a few things though, the sucrose group had a higher total carbohydrate oxidation however it had a high spike and ended up lower than to begin with while the starch group had a more stable carbohydrate oxidation.
Anyways, as I mentioned in the other study increased energy expenditure doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better in the prevention of obesity since it’s only part of the equation. Also, what I found fascinating is that if you look at figure 2 where it shows lipid oxidation, the starch group had a better lipid oxidation rate than the sucrose group. A few other things that surprised me was that if you look at figure 5, the high sucrose group had a higher insulin response than the glucose group and not only that but ?Pyruvate and lactate concentrations in whole blood rose more rapidly and to much higher peaks after the high-sucrose meal than after the high-starch meal? this is very interesting, especially if you are a peatard since Peat writes about the toxicity of lactate.
Your last link was another abstract and the full paper cost money so I just read the abstract. Once again the same type of pattern as the other studies, ‘the increments in carbohydrate oxidation and decrement in lipid oxidation were significantly greater than with glucose?, only thing that was interesting though was ?When the mean increment in plasma insulin concentration after fructose was reproduced using the insulin clamp technique, the increase in carbohydrate oxidation and decrement in lipid oxidation were markedly reduced compared with the fructose-ingestion study;? it seems like using different measuring techniques can have somewhat different results.
After spending quite a bit of time reading the full texts and abstracts that you linked to, I have to say that I’m not convinced that starch causes obesity or that sugar is better than starch. In fact, it seems to me that having a majority of proportion of carbohydrates in the form of starch instead of sucrose would be better, especially in terms of more stable energy, higher satiety, less stress hormones and lactate. In fact, your first research review that you used for carbsane stated ?Despite marked differences in initial postprandial insulinemia (with the freshly cooked potatoes producing greater incremental rises in insulin), the insulin curves returned to the same baseline (ie, not overshooting as with sucrose in Figures 1 and 2)? This overshooting effect was also seen in your semi-last metabolic rate study which to me seems to show that high sucrose actually leads to a short boost of energy with a subsequent crash. This could explain why many people (including myself) have trouble remaining satiated with a fruit meal, in fact if the blood sugar spike is eventually followed by a lower level of blood sugar, this will lead to hunger and also have the body release glucagon and other stress hormones to bring the blood sugar back up, which would in turn explain the higher levels of adrenaline (and possibly cortisol) in the sucrose group.
Furthermore as I explained before, bodyweight is a homeostatic regulated system that involves many hormones (some which science probably still doesn’t know about) and leptin seems to be one of the major ones. The effect that starches have on leptin that fructose doesn’t explains to me why the high starch group (of the study you wrote about on the proline blog) spontaneously lowered their calories. The energy equation is both energy expenditure and energy intake so it doesn’t really matter how much more energy expenditure sucrose has if it also involves less satiety/more hunger and thus a higher caloric intake.
Anyways, I think more research in humans is needed, also the research should be longer term (all of these were short term studies), and preferably with the use of real whole foods. Until then, I will not purposely avoid fruit but I will definitely keep eating the majority of my carbohydrates in the form of unrefined starches just like the majority of healthy tribes and cultures have done for generations without the ?diseases of civilization (including obesity)? and the majority of bodybuilders and high level athletes.
sorry for all the previous deletions, but I was trying to paste my long word article in to seperate parts in the comments section so that they all followed one another, unfortunately I still failed since organism was able to post in between my two paragraphs
That was a kick ass In Search Of. I remember watching that when I was four (1974!) with my parents at the lake. And then it was dark and I was sure Sasquatch was outside my window.
True Story Bro.
I wonder why Ray is in such denial about his beloved fructose? I mean I get that it could have some benefits, but I certainly found when I was eating a lot of it without a long low PUFA buffer that it was fat city for me.
sorry this is out of place but i found a quote you used and googled it and could only find 2 results, both of which were your links so it's a great quote and i'm wondering where the original source is from
"World's leading obesity researcher Rudy Leibel, after 40 years of research says…
"We don't think weight can consciously be regulated." "
Thanks for that elaborate response.
Fructose drastically increases carbohydrate oxidation. I think that's a very good think, since it consumes oxygen more efficiently and produces more Co2 than fat oxidation. Besides, cells function more efficiently with glucose than with fat. The decreased fat oxidation doesn't lead to any accumulation of fat. I don't know why, and the authors of the study also seemed to be puzzled by this fact.
As you know, the stress response following the high sugar diet was the thing that troubled me the most, too. I found Peat's answer to that fact very disapointing. He said "The mitochondria has to adjust, it's an adaptation process." It seems that sucrose/fructose are strongly stimulating glycolysis and the oxidative pathway at the same time.
Lactate and increased adrenaline can cause problems, like those quite a few people here reported. I experienced them myself.
But today, I think that Peat was right, afterall. The problems I talked about in my post on Andrew's blog, disappeared and I feel better than I ever have in my life. After the positive effects I had when I started to eat sugar, I quickly switched to an all sugar (juice) and milk diet, which was stupid.
But I learned from that and started eating starch whenever I wanted starch and sugar whenever I wanted sugar. This way I quickly found my best ratio. Initially, I ate much more starch than sugar. But today I eat about 90% sugar and only very little starch, and feel awesome.
I think the best way to find the best diet is to eat starch whenever you feel like eating starch, and sugar whenever you crave sugar. Once you have learned, to "read" your body, it will adjust itself and find the best diet for you (in terms of carbohdydrates)
So, I don't think that you should just start eating sugar as much as possible, but to listen to your body and eat it whenever you want it. Of course, it's best to emphasize whole foods like fruits.
That way, I think you can experience the benefits of sugar and avoid the negative effects a drastic, sudden increase can have.
I believe, this way, people will sooner or later end up with a ratio of sucrose: starch that's bigger than 1:1. That's at least my experience.
Peat sent me a few studies about three weeks ago. In which they tested the stress hormone levels of rats, which were fed high sucrose diets. They had significantly increased adrenaline levels in the beginning, but they progressivly adjusted and, and their stress hormones came back to normal.
When you say that you have trouble remaining satiated after a fruit meal, do you mean a fruit only meal, or a mixed meal. I have to leave for the moment, but will respond tomorrow.
Jannis, please do cite the studies about sucrose and stress hormones, I'd like to have a look.
In the same vein, Peat seems quite sure that sucrose is particularly good at lowering cortisol even compared to other carbohydrates, but what studies support this?
Jeffcoat R, Roberts PA, James AT. The control of lipogenesis by dietary linoleic acid and its influence on the deposition of fat.
…It was anticipated that diets supplemented with 20 % (w/w) sucrose would, through the lipogenic effect of fructose [6], result in an increase in depot fat and an increased body weight. However, on the basis of analysis by Duncan’s multiple range test, there were no significant differences between either the body weight or depot fat levels of groups of animals A and B (Table 4) although those rats fed diet B showed a 70 % increase in hepatic fatly acid synthetase activity (Fig. 3)…
…The carbohydrate content of the diet : fructose stimulates lipogenesis in the liver but represses it in the adipose tissue [7].
Conversely in the mouse and man [18], glucose is preferentially converted to lipid in the adipose tissue…
h ttp://www .ncbi.nlm.nih. gov/pubmed/42537
ROSENFELTC FOR PRESIDENT
hot damn, good responses :)
Jannis,
Here's the thing. I don't have a problem with you sharing your success with sucrose and fructose. I only have a problem when you make broad generalizations from your preconceived notions that sugar has to be better than starch. Your comment "How do you explain that people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets" was beyond absurd, you do not have any real evidence of this besides what you've observed in your daily life through your own biased view (whether subconsciously or not).
In fact, I have seen the exact opposite, people that eat a lot of fruit are extremely thin/skinny fat sometimes even looking malnourished and are the ones lifting light free weights in the gym, while many of the athletes and weight lifters I know eat higher starch and decent amount of protein (they still eat some fruit, I'm not saying that fruit is inherently bad and should be kept to zero).
However, I am not going to tell the people that are having success with high fruit low starch that they are wrong, because I simply do not know 100% and honestly I doubt there will ever be a perfectly controlled, randomized and long enough study to answer that question. So I do agree with your thoughts on everybody should experiment with listening to their bodies desire for starch and sucrose and I would also add that they should also listen to how their body responds to them.
But when you say things like the aforementioned and "I don't think that good starches like potatos or rice cause people to become fat. But I think that's only true when you mainly eat them by themselves without much protein or fat." or imply that starch eaters have puffy faces, that's just retarded because it makes it sound like everybody else that is having success with a higher ratio of starches to fruit are somehow wrong just because Peat says so.
So honestly, I think your comments would be a lot more helpful, especially for the people that love fruit and sugar but are having problems with them, to explain what you did to overcome those problems instead of trying to pose some type of Peat crusade against starches and the superiority of fruit. Because let's face it, the average person doesn't give a shit about what a study said if the results contradict what that person is experiencing.
Lol thanks Mal, see what happens when I finish al the dexter episodes? I have too much time on ny hands now lol jk
As for president, ya right lol although if I could make a chris president it would be Chris Masterjohn, now he's a great researcher.
yeah, good discussion y'all. especially appreciate the careful thoughtful response rosenfelt.
Rosenfelt, you're correct, there is a big problem with researchers being biased, cherry-pick studies, and ignore contrasting evidence. This is a big problem, and whatever anyone encounters this problem, it should be emphasized and brought up quickly. This is how science should be.
I understand, in the past, some of Jannis' comments might have seemed biased to some people, and his posts here may hinder productive and scientific debate. But in this thread, I have yet to detect any bias from Jannis. It may well be the case that Jannis' writing may be unclear, and that might impacted our perception of Jannis.
To those who accuse Jannis of generalizing his own experiences to others, I ask you to revise Jannis' comment.
Jannis said…
rosenfeltc,
you are even more amusing than JT. It doesn't even take questioning your arguments to piss you off beyond belief. I know you are very angry right now because of my bullshit, but you should atleast read it. I didn't say that starch consumption per se will have negative consequences or lead to a puffy face. I don't think a high starch diet is optimal. With good starches and little fat it is probably fine for some purposes.
I know I should follow Andrew's example and leave the discussion now but it's too good right now.
I agree with you, Andrew. It's just looking at a few passages quoted out of context without even analyzing their truth value. By the way, did you get my new email adress?
Go over and revise at the emboldened text. The text reads that Jannis wasn't implying that starch consumption, per se would lead to puffy faces. Then what Jannis was implying?
To figure what Jannis had meant, let's go back earlier, and revise an earlier comment by Jannis.
Jannis said…
[…]
I don't think that good starches like potatos or rice cause people to become fat. But I think that's only true when you mainly eat them by themselves without much protein or fat.
When I was eating a high starch diet, with normal fat and protein, I was very lean with low body fat. But I developed a nice double chin and a puffy face. I have seen lots of lean people with this kind of "starch face."
If you revise the emboldened sentence, you will recognize that Jannis was just sharing his own experiences. Jannis said that he developed a "double chin" and a "puffy face." He didn't generalize that most people would also have a "puffy face."
And I know what you are thinking. You are thinking about the sentence right after that. Well, read that sentence: "I have seen lots of lean people with this kind of 'starch face.'"
Do you think Jannis was generalizing? Jannis had said "lots of lean people." But don't draw your conclusions. Before you go on, realize what Jannis did not say. Jannis did not say that all or even most people will have a "starch face." What Jannis did say what that "I have seen lots of people with this kind of 'starch face.'"
Notice that Jannis said "I have seen…" This means that Jannis knows that he is drawing his own conclusions, and his observations may be different. And "lots of people", again, doesn't imply "all people" or even "most people."
[Continued below]
Hey, see my comment above!
I ask us to read another claim by Jannis. This was what Jannis said, in the first post in the beginning.
Jannis has quoted Matt's claim about carbsane, and he responded by writing a controversial statement.
Matt said…
Insulin converting carbohydrate into fat? That’s not how insulin works at all. In fact, a solid debunking took place a couple months back at http://www.carbsanity.blogspot.com/ in which it was shown that the body is in negative fat balance (burning more fat than storing) during postprandial insulin spikes
Jannis said…
Matt,
How do you explain that people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets, if that's not how insulin works?
For now, we will ananlyze one sentence which Jannis said. This sentence is "How do you explain that people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets […]"
If you look at the above, Jannis said that "people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets."
And this is the statement that had been controversial, to a lot people here, including Hans and Rosenfeltc.
What did they interpret Jannis' comment as? They thought Jannis had generalized that people would improve on high starch diets.
But I disagree. I don't think Jannis meant it that way. Yes, Jannis did appear to generalize, but I think Jannis was being unclear in his writing.
Jannis did write "people" as if he meant "all people." But I think Jannis was meaning "people" as "some people."
Let us rephrase his sentence:
"How do you explain that some people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets, if that's not how insulin works?"
There. It looks better now. You would now realize that Jannis didn't mean "all people" but "some people."
And, we let's look at another phrase which Jannis had written. Concentrate what Jannis had written in bold:
"How do you explain that some people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets, if that's not how insulin works?"
I bet on a thing. I bet that people would interpret Jannis' sentence out-of-context, and conclude that he really meant "most people" and not "some people."
But if you look at the emboldened text, it sas "if that's not how insulin works?"
What did he ask that question? I believe that Jannis was just proving a point, demonstrating the absurdity that if "insulin makes us skinny," then why his claim still holds for Jannis? Why isn't Jannis fat even if he eats a lot of sugar?
I believe that Jannis was just proving a point. His point was that if starch stimulates insulin more than fructose, and insulin increases your metabolism, then why Jannis' had increased body temperature and better body composition despite eating massive amounts of sugar?
That was his point. To anyone who accuses Jannis of generalizing, then you're missing the point.
Jannis clarified this in an earlier comment:
Jannis said…
Rosi,
I did never say that this study shows that sugar is superior to starch. I just wanted to reply to CarbSane who said that fructose causes insulin resistance. Seriously, take a deep breath before you post another comment.
Jannis was just proving a point. Jannis might have used a bad example to prove his point, but we should realize and understand his main point, rather than some inaccuracy irrelevant to his main point.
People do exaggerate claims to prove their points. But you shouldn't interpret their exaggerated claims in the literal sense. Rather, you should ignore all their exaggerations, and figure out the main point that they are trying to convey.
THE END
Organism,
First of all LMAO at your post, second off all, no offense but I don't need an English lesson from you. I know what Jannis said and what he implied, in fact since you like reposting little sentences you should see what i said earlier "But when you say things like the aforementioned and… or imply that starch eaters have puffy faces" See Organism, I said IMPLY, meaning that I know that Jannis wasn't saying everybody in the whole wide world that eats high starch has a puffy face.
However, I have read plenty of comments in the past from Jannis and I know what his biasis and views are and therefore there is nothing wrong with my last comment adressed to him. His intentions from the beginning were to back up Peat's unreasonable and unsupported (by millions of people), starch hatred and superiority of sucrose.
The funniest part though is this, you said "But I disagree. I don't think Jannis meant it that way. Yes, Jannis did appear to generalize, but I think Jannis was being unclear in his writing.
Jannis did write "people" as if he meant "all people." But I think Jannis was meaning "people" as "some people.""
Oh okay, I get it now, your interpretation is right and thus is factual but Hans and I's interpretation is wrong.
Actually now that I reread what Jannis said, I can see what he meant more clearly. By people he obviously meant rhesus monkeys, by starch he meant kidney beans, by body fat he must have intended cooties and muscle mass is really just German for penises and by "sugar diets" Jannis was clearly thinking of bananas.
So what Jannis really was trying to say is "How do you explain that rhesus monkeys on high kidney beans diets have more cooties and smaller penises as compared to high banana diets?
Thank you for saving the day Organism, If only I could use your interpretative talent on a daily basis cause uh, mi no hablo inglesh.
Just a quickie…
Only have my BB with me. I haven't read all the comments yet but I got couple emails checking on me. Really surprised me :-)
No worries. I've been on disaster relief assignment with the Red Cross. All I can say is it's been an amazing experience! I'm going home tonight for the weekend, but then going back Sunday night. I may hopefully get some time to catch up here while I'm home – and maybe comment if it strikes me. I know you all just can't wait, right? lol! :-)
Anyway, really, sincere thanks to peeps who were checkin up on me… made me smile :-)
Matt!
I just wanted to say: keep up the good work, maing! I found your blog about nine months ago, and since then I've drastically cut my anxiety and some other health issues, too. Also, after reading your last post, it dawned on me that I probably have an internet-porn addiction. Damnnit. It's time to knock that shit out next.
You maintain an awesome blog, and I believe you're helping people, even if they don't tell your until nine months later (like me).
And . . . that's probably enough praise for one comment.
Thanks again — And go sasquatch! (I'd totally rock out with that animal).
According to Ray, Burkitt was surprised to see doctors in the US advising patients to use oat bran fiber, as the Africans he had studied relied mostly on potatoes for fiber.
Hi everybody!
JANNIS (and other sugar-eaters):
Just curious, how do you eat a high-sugar diet? Even if I wanted to try a high-sugar diet, I don't even know how I would go about doing it.
There's fruit, okay I get that… but what else do you eat? Do you sprinkle sugar on your steaks??? Eat honey by the spoonful?
Ha! I had faith in this discussion. Andrew may have stormed out prematurely, you guys actually made a debate out of this.
I really enjoyed reading your posts here.
I will re-emphasize something.
Jannis said…
[…] I didn't say that starch consumption per se will have negative consequences or lead to a puffy face. I don't think a high starch diet is optimal. With good starches and little fat it is probably fine for some purposes. […]
Just to be clear, Rosenfelt, I'm not offended by your response; it seemed like you just disagreed with me. Thanks for taking the time reading my comments and writing such a large response.
rosenfeltc,
I still don't get what pisses you off so much. You acuse me of making broad generalizations? What's wrong with that? You do exactely the same in the other direction. We both base our generalizations on our experience and observations. The only difference is that I have atleast something to back it up.
I never said that all starch eaters have puffy faces and I don't ignore the milions of people who do pretty fine with a high starch diet. That is exactely what I said. What do all those people in Africa and Asia do? They eat a high starch diet which is very low in fat, low in protein, and low in calories. You can see the same pattern every time. As soon as they add anything to their diets, they become fat.
I have seen a lot of African or Japanes guys who came to Germany and got fat when they started adding more fat and meat to their rice diets.
So, to make it clear one more time. This is my fucking, dumb shit, retarded broad generalization: People with diets high in natural starches and low in fat and protein do fine. Starch per se doesn't lead to obesity. But what I have seen and my own experience tell me that in a normal diet, especially without any sugar, starch promotes fat accumulation and is inferior to sugar when it comes to build and preserve lean body mass.
Or, to say it with the words of your favorite researcher:
"even a high starch diet isn't necessarily incompatible with good health, but when better foods are available they should be used instead of starches"
JANNIS and ROSENFELTC-
Rosenfeltc said:
"Besides, those high sucrose/fructose diets usually come along with higher cortisol and adrenaline levels which according to Peat should be minimized."
The initial high adrenaline and cortisol, isn't that a response from a low metabolism? (Doesn't Peat share this idea, Jannis?)For example when you go from a starch based diet to a sugar based diet, your adrenals have to kick in higher gear to support your new increased metabolic rate. When you eat starch only, you get satisfied quicker, eat less calories and therefor have a lower metabolic rate so your adrenals doesn't have to do much effort to keep thyroid and adrenals balanced. When you switch to sugar, your metabolic rate increases and you adrenals have to "wake up" and produce more adrenaline, cortisol to make up for inadequate thyroid function, until thyroid hormones eventually can balance out the adrenal hormones.
Isn't that what's happening?
Yes, I think it works something like this. Sugar helps to produce adrenaline and noradrenaline. If thyroid function is low, the stress hormones help to maintain a higher metabolic rate. When the thyroid function improves, the stress hormones will adjust to a lower level.
This mechanism is also why serotonin reuptake inhibitors work for some depressed people. They increase serotonin, but that's just a bad side effect. I think the real benefit comes from activating the adrenal system, like sugar does.
I don't know who sugar effects cortisol production, but I don't think it increases it.
J Clin Psychopharmacol. 2007 Dec;27(6):602-6. Effect of single-dose sertraline on the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal system, autonomic nervous system, and platelet function. Ahrens T, Frankhauser P, Lederbogen F, Deuschle M. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health,
Mannheim, Germany.
OBJECTIVE: Pharmacological treatment with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) is thought to decrease coronary risk in patients with depressive
disorder. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor intake may (1) attenuate the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) system, (2) improve disturbances of the
autonomous nervous system, and (3) dampen the aggregability of platelets. There is only limited information about the influence of acute treatment with SSRIs on
these systems, which is especially important for the initiation of therapy in high-risk cardiac patients. We compared the reaction of these systems to physical stress with single-dose SSRI treatment (100 mg) with that of placebo treatment.
METHODS: Using a double-blind, crossover, placebo-controlled design, we assessed HPA system activity via serum cortisol and corticotropin as well as sympathetic nervous system by determining serum norepinephrine and epinephrine levels at baseline and as a response to stress. Analysis of heart rate variability (HRV) provided information on sympathetic/parasympathetic balance. Platelet activity
was measured via flow-cytometric determination of platelet surface activation markers along with the serotonin (5-HT) uptake of platelets.
RESULTS: We studied 12 healthy young men under placebo and verum conditions. We found higher HPA system activity at baseline and after physical activity under
sertraline when compared with placebo, no difference in sympathetic nervous system activity after physical exertion and only slightly heightened baseline epinephrine values after sertraline intake. No difference was seen between sertraline and placebo intake regarding platelet activity and 5-HT uptake, HRV, blood pressure, and HR.
CONCLUSIONS: Initiating sertraline treatment increases HPA system activity and epinephrine concentrations. We found no clinically relevant effect of single-dose sertraline treatment on autonomous nervous function, platelet activity, or platelet 5-HT uptake. These findings may not be extrapolated to patients with affective or cardiac disorders or to other SSRIs.
Maybe that explains why I broke out with a cold sore in the beginning of my sugar journey, That only happens when I'm stressed. Also, my period was 2 weeks late, last month. Initially I blamed it on my thyroid medication attempt but now I'm not so sure that was to blame, since this months, not being on thyroid meds, my period is late again. I was supposed to have it on the 13'th. Only thing I can relate it to is sugar, since I have now done this for 2 months.
In the beginning I was breaking out terribly! Face, chest, back. Now I can officially say sugar does NOT cause me to brake out anymore! Now that's something to think about..
Michelle-
I actually decided, after listening to the Gabriel cd for a week, that I really don't like it. I found myself going to bed every night thinking about food and my weight. I think you'll get a lot more mileage out of busying yourself with other things and other thoughts. Focus on the health improvements and try to stop thinking about food and weight as much as possible. Let food just be food and let the pounds fall where they may as a result of improving your health by taking good care of yourself. I appreciate your sugar/fruit feedback as well. There have been many circumstances in which this was my response to sugar as well. Mysteriously, I eat tons of it now and have a body temp that hovers between 99.6 and 100.6 during the day. This was not the case a year ago however.
Kirk-
Fruit is really low in calories. A nice plate full of rice, which is easy and normal to eat is the equivalent to eating several pounds of berries or like 6 apples. Whole fruit, because of its water content and fiber content is pretty filling on a calorie for calorie basis, which is why fruitarians struggle to eat sufficient calories. It is very difficult.
Mark-
Yes, PUFA will enter this conversation as we continue.
Good lord, where is a comment section for the dumb people? I want to talk about Mortal Kombat finishing moves.
Rosenfelt-
"Insulin overshooting…"
This is a fantastic term. This is precisely what was noted by Seale Harris, E.M. Abrahamson, Melvin Page, and other old-school sugar haters with sugar vs. starch. Terry Shintani, modern author of the Good Carbohydrate Revolution noted this effect as well, putting some charts in the back of his book showing greater blood glucose instability on things like fruit and cookies vs. straight starches (bread, pasta, etc.). This is also why those with glycogen storage diseases cannot eat fructose-containing foods, as this causes hypoglycemia without them being able to bring it back up again, whereas a normal person could just dump out a little glycogen and keep blood sugar levels stable.
Jannis-
If fructose does indeed increase glucose oxidation, I too would find that very interesting and would consider it very positive. It certainly seems like that's the case, as sucrose is much more of an athletic performance enhancer than starch in my experience.
That will enter the discussion later for sure, as Peat mentions the superiority of glucose oxidation vs. fat oxidation in this same article. Or you could believe Mark Sisson, Lord of our Paleolithic Blueprint, who just did an article on the supriority of fat oxidation over glucose oxidation (oops!).
Danimal Larusso-
That line was in a BBC documentary on Why Thin People Aren't Fat or something like that. It's on youtube still I think.
Johnny-
Your Mortal Kombat finishing moves conversation is best had on Facebook. Here it's all serious faces.
Speaking of serious faces, if you three masturdebators could get past the personal stuff, which you seem to be getting closer to, I think this conversation is fantastic. Truly. There are so many hidden and unexpected effects of fructose and sucrose vs. starch. At the end of the day though, all that matters is what happens when a real person with real metabolic issues implements a diet as a whole.
Jannis-
Have you tried reducing fat intake considerably while eating a very high-sugar diet? For me, this makes all the difference in the world. Note, you really have to pound it to get sufficient calories.
I suspect that the most significant thing a person could do to increase glucose oxidation is to reduce fat intake. I don't think you'll see a successful endurance athlete on earth eating a high fat diet. While fat oxidation can give someone endurance, fat oxidation is really for slow speeds. Today's marathon runners aren't running at fat oxidation pace, but glucose oxidation pace.
Sheila-
Increasing thyroid does seem to improve the output of the adrenal glands (I'm sure a hyperactive, hyperthyroid squirrel probably produces quite a bit of adrenaline) – not necessarily whipping them like caffeine or fasting, but actual improvement in production. The problem is probably a production of a lot of adrenaline in the absence of thyroid, like in starvation.
Same with most hormones. Estrogen is probably great in the presence of sufficient progesterone, but in an absence of progesterone is highly negative. Or cortisol – in the presence of testosterone it seems to just assist the process of breaking down muscle so it can be built back stronger, bigger, and harder. In the absence of testosterone you become emaciated and have your health ruined.
I don't know. Those are some thoughts.
Also everyone, I came across the best term ever the other day…
"Hyperchondriac"
Basically thinking you are healthy no matter what is wrong with you. If this isn't the best description of how someone feels when they are defending a diet/belief system I don't know what is. Thought it was funny. Great concept.
John-
Fruit juice as a water substitute seems to be the ticket for me, and snacking on dates and bananas. This gets my sugar intake very high. I drink at least a half gallon of fruit juice per day, sometimes much more if I'm exercising or sweating a lot. I probably get in 250-300 grams of sugar in juice alone, not including fruit intake.
@ Jannis
Most people who eat a high fruit diet seem to do better when they add little fat and protein… see the 80-10-10ers. I've read the advice to eat fruit solely by itself because it digests more easily so many times. On the other hand, a lot of people seem to actually do fine on a diet that is relatively high in both starch and fat.
It isn't true that all Asians eat little but high carb either. In Nepal they eat plenty of fat, for example, and I don't think they have a high obesity rate.
You can cite studies as much as you want and interpret them in your way, most other people seem to interpret them in the opposite way. Personally I care more about what happens in the real world… The personal experience of a few Peat-followers isn't much. Each diet has it's followers that seem to thrive on it and therefore think it's the best solution for everyone else, too.
I still don't get what pisses you off so much? I don’t know why you keep insinuating that I’m pissed off, if you don’t like my sarcastic, crude language responses then I’m sorry but that’s just who I am, and if you’re trying to create some kind of diversion from the real points in my arguments by accusing me of just being angry then I guess I’m just wasting my time having a conversation with you. I’m on summer break from college, I am not writing a term paper for any of my classes so I do not feel obligated to use proper language, punctuation, etc? mostly because I don’t feel that the marginal benefit of doing so is worth the marginal cost (extremely more time consuming). So, I will continue to write how I speak among my peers, if the reader feels like this makes my arguments less credibly then I guess the choice is very simple, Ignore what I’m writing.
?They eat a high starch diet which is very low in fat, low in protein, and low in calories. You can see the same pattern every time. As soon as they add anything to their diets, they become fat. Ya and most of the time that ?anything? is refined flours and your beloved white sugar. But I’m going to assume that you meant that as soon as they add more protein or fat, they get fat. Don’t really know what your evidence is for all this since it’s never as clear cut as only one variable changed, besides I’m not arguing that a diet in high refined starches are bad for you, In fact I personally chose to avoid grains as much as I can regardless of the mixed evidence associated with them. Besides, if a person eats more calories than he or she burns they will get fat regardless of whether the diet is high in starch or high in sucrose, the real question is to ask why the person is ingesting more calories or burning less calories, and I believe it has to do with a disruption of the homeostatic system of the body which you have no good evidence whatsoever that it is caused by unrefined starches, just like I don’t have any good evidence that it’s caused by unrefined fruit (and that’s why I don’t purposely avoid either). Also, I think it’s interesting that you say that adding meat and fat with a high starch diet causes problems because it seems that this is exactly what is happening with Matt while eating a high sucrose diet. Sorry to single you out Matt, and I could be wrong but I get the feeling from your last writings that if you don’t eat low fat and low/moderate protein you start to have problems again.
I have seen a lot of African or Japanes guys who came to Germany and got fat when they started adding more fat and meat to their rice diets. Ya, I’m sure those were the only variables that change, next thing you’ll say is that you even knew these guys? twin brothers who didn’t increase their fat and meat (perfect control group), sounds like you conducted a perfected double blinded properly controlled experiment.
?This is my fucking, dumb shit, retarded broad generalization: People with diets high in natural starches and low in fat and protein do fine. Starch per se doesn't lead to obesity. But what I have seen and my own experience tell me that in a normal diet, especially without any sugar, starch promotes fat accumulation and is inferior to sugar when it comes to build and preserve lean body mass. Phrased this way, I don’t have a problem with it because the reader can easily tell this is your opinion and not some factual evidence that you know about but the reader doesn’t, which is very different than ?How do you explain that people on high starch diets have more body fat and less muscle mass as compared to high sugar diets, if that's not how insulin works??
?Or, to say it with the words of your favorite researcher:
"even a high starch diet isn't necessarily incompatible with good health, but when better foods are available they should be used instead of starches"? Unfortunately Ray Peat is not my favorite researcher, I was open minded and gave his teachings and ideas a try, last November I had read all of the articles that he had up on his website, I listened to all his interviews with the Rubin’s and even some other interviews that I found linked on the proline website, and I even have ALL of his books ( I was the one that lent them to Matt Stone). I’m not as impressed or fascinated with Ray Peat as you all seem to be, I think he has some really good points (fat quality, eating the whole animal etc?) but I also have problems with many other of his arguments. Either way if a high starch diet isn’t necessarily incompatible with good health then you should stop writing in a way that is constantly insinuating the opposite, you make it sounds that it’s very unlikely to have a normal working thyroid, to stay lean, to gain muscle mass with a high starch diet.
?For example when you go from a starch based diet to a sugar based diet, your adrenals have to kick in higher gear to support your new increased metabolic rate. ?your metabolic rate increases and you adrenals have to "wake up" and produce more adrenaline, cortisol to make up for inadequate thyroid function, until thyroid hormones eventually can balance out the adrenal hormones.
Isn't that what's happening?? Maybe, and maybe not, It’s a great theory but I don’t think there is enough evidence to make it even probably, Increased carbohydrate oxidation from the sucrose ingested does not necessarily mean long term increase in metabolic rate, in fact from my own personal experience I’m inclined to believe it’s the opposite.
Here is a summary of my personal story, before trying the original Matt Stone HED (unrefined, whole foods and not the Bruce K taco bell version) I had been zerocarb for 8 months, At a height of 6?2? I weighed at the time around 165 pounds (obviously extremely skinny), body temperature was in the low 96s, had a bunch of other problems as well. Anyways, I ate high starch, high fat, medium protein for many months, I noticed many improvements in my health and I gained weight (both fat and muscle) to a high of 195 pounds and a body temperature of 98.6. I was eating around 5000 calories a day. Eventually, my taste for fat spontaneously decreased and I continued to eat the same way and my bodyweight slowly dropped to its current weight of 185 without a decrease in body temperature. I have no reason to believe that I have thyroid problems as my temperature is fine and I consume around 3500 calories a day and my weight remains fairly stable (fluctuates around 2-3 pounds up and down from 185). In fact, I am now 6?2? 185 pounds, about 10% body fat, I add 70 pounds of weight on my belt and do 5 chin-ups, and I bench press 195 for 8 reps. I do this all while eating a high starch, low-moderate fat and I don’t count any calories, the only thing I keep a mental track now is to make sure to consume 1 gram of protein per pound. Also, 90-95% of my diet is unrefined whole foods, as I don’t think I would have the same success if I kept the same macros but ate refined sources like vegetable oils, white bread etc?
Everytime that I have experimented by increasing my sucrose to high (usually with orange juice or refined sugar cause I just can’t do it with fruit only) I end up having acne problems, a drop in body temperature, gain some belly fat, hunger issues (it’s like I never truly feel satiated so eventually my mind steps in and tells me to stop eating or drinking orange juice yet my stomach feels like it could have a lot more). So basically I ate the majority of my carbs from unrefined starches and if for some reason I crave sweets or something (very rarely) then I’ll eat some fruit without really worrying about it, however I will not force myself to do it anymore because of some type of fear that I need sucrose to have a healthy thyroid, or to gain more muscle mass, if anything I’m afraid that my high sucrose experiments were just making me hyperthyroid which in my opinion (Peat obviously disagrees) hypothyroid is just as bad as hyperthyroid.
Anyways, I think everything that had to be said has been said so with this I think I’m done going back and forth with you since we are obviously not going to get anywhere with this. I have nothing against fruit and I agree with you that the evidence against sucrose in humans is scant and not very convincing at the same time though I would mention that there is even less evidence against unrefined starches and actually more positive evidence from them (high starch diets were used to reverse type 2 diabetes in the past). So I do agree with your thoughts on everybody should experiment with listening to their bodies desire for starch and sucrose and I would also add that they should also listen to how their body responds to them. However, I don’t agree with your opinion that somehow the optimal ratio would eventually be a higher sucrose to starch ratio and from the results of different 180 commentators it seems that the ratio is really dependent on the individual.
BTW Matt, I really hate commenting on your website through this stupid blogger app which forces me to copy paste one paragraph at a time otherwise if i don't it decides to ignore some of my writings or post them in a different order lol
Rosenfelt-
I don't think that testimonial of yours is going to appear on Charles Washington's site any time soon!
Hans-
I have spent a lot of time in Nepal and they do not eat a high fat diet (except perhaps in the mountain regions close to Tibet where meat and rock hard yak cheese is a staple – the stuff is so gnarly – has hairs in it and stuff). They typically eat "Dal Bhat" for every single meal, which is twice daily at 9:30 and 4:30. They eat giant mountains of it. It is very plain and consists of rice, watery lentils, and a slight amount of seasoning that wouldn't impress any westerners.
Sometimes they will eat goat, chicken, eggs, pork, dairy products… but this is not a daily practice.
They also have many varieties of potatoes.
But generally they eat rice with lentils, and sometimes lentils with rice – with a few spiced veggies on the side or something. Very plain, very simple, very carborific, and probably 80-10-10 most of the time.
The people are lean, tiny, on the verge of malnutrition, and have incredible physical endurance and agility in the mountainous regions. I'd say the typical male is 5'7" and 135 pounds or so.
One dish I saw them eat, because they couldn't afford to eat meat, was a sauce they made from charred chicken feathers and the blood they drained during execution. They made a sauce of this and put it on, you guessed it, rice and lentils.
The whities ate the meat.
It's good to be white.
Matt,
How are you able to compare you temperature now to what it was last year? Now you do a rectal reading and last year you did under the arm. Isn't the rectal at least 1-2 degrees higher?
Jannis said…
I have seen a lot of African or Japanes guys who came to Germany and got fat when they started adding more fat and meat to their rice diets.
Rosenfelt replied…
Ya, I’m sure those were the only variables that change, next thing you’ll say is that you even knew these guys? twin brothers who didn’t increase their fat and meat (perfect control group), sounds like you conducted a perfected double blinded properly controlled experiment.
Jannis probably knows that this wasn't a controlled experiment. Jannis probably knows that this is anecdotal evidence, and has flaws. Jannis wasn't intending to used this anecdotal evidence as a proof. I believe Jannis was just sharing his observations.
But let's focus on his main point. Jannis' main point was that protein and fat leads to fat gain. This was just a bad example which Jannis used, so it's best to ignore this claim.
(I personally disagree with Jannis, since there are uncontrolled variables. The Africans and Japanese people may just have ate more processed food when they moved to Germany. They may have consumed more vegetable oil and/or monosodium glutamate, for example. But Jannis might have known that this was a bad example.)
We have a large body of data that shows starch is better than sugar for decreasing fat and increasing muscle. Bodybuilders have known this for a long time! Thousands of human test subjects proving that starch is superior for body composition.
There us a reason they eat diets high in starch and low in sugar. Even when they up their carbs, they will use artificial sweetners to avoid sugar.
The claim that athletes and bodybuilders eat diets low in sugar, was just an observation, like Jannis' observation that Africans and Japanese people get fat. Yes, your observation of bodybuilders and athletes could be more controlled, since they always ate Western diets; unlike Jannis' example in which Africans and Japanese people didn't ate Western diets before they moved to Germany.
But both cases are only observations. It's not a completely controlled experiment. I know that you probably know this, and was just sharing your observations. (See my comment above.)
chiming in again…..rosenfeltc for president x 2 now. my experience pretty much mirrors his… except i am no where near that strong haha
i came from zero carb which i gave up last…february i think, also where i 'met' chris and we both decided around the same time that ZC was FUBB(fucked up beyond belief). i was 5'7 about 105.from there i went full on paleo with meat/veg/nuts/coconut stuff etc but it was a slow transition for me as my ED past it took me forever it seems to fing get past the shit science out there. anyways i eventually after about 4 months paleo started carb cycling mostly to get over my fear of potatoes and rice etc. i ended up at 125 by december eating a pretty high fat diet with occassional carb-up days.
now, when spring came and its 90 degrees everyday here i have dropped weight to around 116-118 but no control of my own. but i am now eating a basic meat and starch diet and include a big vegetable stirfry at some meal everyday. i quit lifting(was deadlifting once a week) and dairy at the same time, around lent this year so it may have impacted my drop in weight.
i now have clear skin, which is crazy i didnt think it was possible, i LOVE LOVE LOVE potatoes, especially the purple okinawan ones and golden yams. i still love meat but the big change was money problems so whatever meat i eat is whats on sale, stuck in the crockpot and added to starch/veggies all week.
one thing i do still want to work on is not any kinda eating disorder relationship with food as i dont really think i have one, i have no problem throwing back a few thousand calories a day, but the recent food reward stuff got me to thinking about how i personally feel myself react to food.
There are plenty of athletes and bodybuilders who eat high-fruit diets.
? Doug Graham looks old cos he IS OLD! lol! He is 60 next year.
? The fittest and strongest athletes in the health scene are the vegans. Mike Arnstein, Scott Spitz, Mike Mahler, Mac Danzig, Mike Tyson, Robert Cheeke, Noah Hannibal, 6pak, Jeff Eggleston etc.
? The hottest chicks in the health scene are vegan too.
?Anonymous
My main point was that the fact that a lot of athletes and bodybuilders eat low-sugar diets, was just an observation; like Jannis's claim that African and Japanese get fat when they eat a Western diet. Plenty of counterexamples exist.
But both cases are only observations. It's not a completely controlled experiment. I know that you probably know this, and was just sharing your observations. (See my comment above.)
Have I got this right? I think Peat argues that a given amount of sugar is better than the same amount of starch for avoiding fat storage because (1) it's got half the glucose, and glucose is the main driver of insulin, and (2) the fructose component of the sugar somehow inhibits the action of glucose. I thought this made sense since I've long been under the impression (perhaps mistakenly) that insulin is the main driver of all things into cells (fat, protein, sugar)? So I took this to mean that for given a meal with a certain amount of fat in it, eating sugar over starch will result in less fat storage. I also thought I'd heard at least part (1) of his argument many times before from people promoting high fructose foods ten years ago or so. Part (2) of his argument was new to me.
JT,
Maybe you should present that hugh amount of data you are talking about…
Because I personally don't care what some beefcakes do.
rosenfeltc,
Agree. Probably better to end this now. Let's just say everybody should listen to their bodies to find their perfect ratios.
When you drank a lot of orange juice, were you having it with your meals or on it's own?
Hans,
Personally, I don't care much about the studies. I feel awesome with the diet I eat, so I don't need studies to tell me that what I am doing is right.
And I totally agree with you that you should always combine fruit/sugar with other things. That's also what Peat says. I never said otherwise, if that's want you wanted to suggest.
Matt,
I have never made a special effort to reduce my fat intake. I think I eat something like 100g a day. Maybe a little more or less.
I think my ratio is approx. 350/100/100 (C/F/P)
http://www.ajcn.org/content/71/6/1516.full.pdf+html
It seems that our body prefers the fructose part of the sucrose and burns it first. They also found that the fructose has a sparing effect on the glucose part, so that the glucose from sucrose is metabolized slower than the glucose from starch.
Here is the study in which they compared CH oxidation after starch and sucrose meals.
Organism as a whole,
I read some of your articles and comments. So, I know that you read a lot of studies and know quite a bit about nutrition. Why don't you try sharing your knowledge in order to contribute something to the discussion, instead of writing endless comments about what you think other people meant?
I have no interest to contribute about nutrition. My only interest was to end the dispute.
Most of the time, my clarifications were correct. So I'm very confident in predicting what people meant by their communication.
I'm sorry, but I couldn't take it any more without commenting.
Rosenfeltc, thank you for bringing reason to the table here. Since it's NHL playoff season, I think it's only appropriate that I say the score is like 4:0 Rosenfeltc. (BTW: Go Vancouver!)
Jannis, you said:
"…starch promotes fat accumulation and is inferior to sugar when it comes to build and preserve lean body mass."
LOL. This is just plain silly. Not one word of that is based in reality. Maybe (and I don't use that word lightly here)… MAYBE that is the case in a very small percentage of the population, but that in no way makes it fact. It's no different than the few fruititarians that they're diet may actually work for, promoting it as the end-all diet for everyone. Ehhhhh… wrong.
Organism as a Whole, I wish you'd stop whatever it is you're trying to do with your "moderation". We can all think for ourselves here. We don't need you to do it for us.
Also, for the record, very few bodybuilders or athletes eat much fruit. There have been a few that have used it successfully, but talk to any bodybuilder or coach worth a shit and they almost ALL will advocate unequivocally to eat a low fruit diet. "Less than optimal" are 3 words you'll likely hear over and over.
Matt said:
"I suspect that the most significant thing a person could do to increase glucose oxidation is to reduce fat intake. I don't think you'll see a successful endurance athlete on earth eating a high fat diet. While fat oxidation can give someone endurance, fat oxidation is really for slow speeds. Today's marathon runners aren't running at fat oxidation pace, but glucose oxidation pace."
I'm not going to argue for or against a high-fat diet here, but why use endurance athletes as an example of WHAT TO DO?! They're about the unhealthiest bunch out there, doing the most unnatural athletic event possible.
Matt also said:
"It certainly seems like that's the case, as sucrose is much more of an athletic performance enhancer than starch in my experience."
Do you think you're possibly one of the few that this is true for, Matt? Or perhaps that higher adrenaline levels from all the sugar stimulation is the cause? People get many of the same benefits from caffeine before training, but it's not optimal, or sustainable.
For a short energy spike an apple or something has always been a decent recommendation when it comes to athletics. However everyone knows that the recommendation has always been a high starch diet to fuel a big event. I don't think we'll ever see many Olympic or high level athletes in any event pounding orange juice and bananas the night before an event.
They would instead focus on filling their glycogen stores by eating a ton of starch. Fruit can replace muscle glycogen, but not nearly as well as starch. That is basically the old argument for fructose causing fat gain as well, because it's not great at replenishing muscle glycogen.
People use starch because it simply works better for the purpose. I'm sure the elite coaches and athletes out there have experimented with high fruit diets over the years, and there's a reason it's never caught on in any capacity within the athletic world. Even the sports drinks are starch-based.
Jannis,
Seriously man, you have to be willing to look at the real world results. This is much more important than a few studies on rats.
The largest body of data we have concerning sugar and starch and how it effects muscle and fat is in the bodybuilding and fitness population. The experts are the high level coaches working with athletes and competitors, not guys in the lab trying to publish a few studies.
If you are not willing to consider real world results from the population that knows the most on the subject then we just cannot have a rational debate.
@AS:
Good to hear your all good girl and good on you for your RC work. Hope all goes well when you go back.
AS wrote: "I may hopefully get some time to catch up here while I'm home – and maybe comment if it strikes me. I know you all just can't wait, right? lol! :-)"
I will be waiting……. ;)
ROSENFELTC-
"Everytime that I have experimented by increasing my sucrose to high (usually with orange juice or refined sugar cause I just can’t do it with fruit only) I end up having acne problems, a drop in body temperature, gain some belly fat, hunger issues"
How long did you do it for? I don't know if you read my story but I struggled with acne BIG TIME in the beginning of my sugar journey. Now my skin doesn't have a reaction anymore, 2 months later. Also today, my temperature, for the first time, reached 36,9 degrees (starch didn't take me there ever) which initially dropped when I first started out the sugar-thing! I also gained belly fat but I believe that too will work itself out. I have also increased my muscle mass further, doing nothing but walking.
In the beginning I also had hunger issues when consuming sugar vs starch but it too have balanced out. I still eat some starch but way more sugar.
MATT-
My temps reached 36,9 degrees today!! ;-)
JT-
"The experts are the high level coaches working with athletes and competitors, not guys in the lab trying to publish a few studies."
I have been in the competitive bodybuilding industry for many years. These "hight level experts" your talking about, 90% of them have no idea what they are doing to their clients! All they think about is getting people on stage. They don't think of the metabolic issues people are left with after the comp is over. Check out Scott Abels site, he has a few things to say about it..
Basing anything from "coaches" like that is like pissing your pants to get warm -at first it helps but afterwards it leaves you colder than ever.
“Basing anything from “coaches” like that is like pissing your pants to get warm -at first it helps but afterwards it leaves you colder than ever.”
– This is an image that I’m going to take away and treasure :-)
JT,
That's exactely the answer I expected from you. I look at the real world and speak with real people. Like I said, I personally don't care much about the studies.
You claim to look at reality, but you only speak about a few beefcakes, whose only goal in life is to build as many muscle mass as possible.
With sugar you have much more glycogen and a more stable blood sugar, because of the amplified counterregulatory hormones. So, it makes much sense that sugar is better when it comes to preserving lean mass, because you have less catabolic cortisol.
Thanks Sheila.
I had the same impression when I went to the gym a few years ago. And most of the bodybuilders become pathetic figures as soon as they quit working out all the time. They have nothing to do with reality.
Jannis,
"When you drank a lot of orange juice, were you having it with your meals or on it's own?" I basically tried it both ways, eventually though it got to the point where I had to drink it every hour or less because my body was still hungry.
Michael,
"Rosenfeltc, thank you for bringing reason to the table here" Thanks, I'm glad it wasn't just a waste of time.
Sheila,
"How long did you do it for?"
I tried on three different occasions. The first two were about 2 weeks each, acne got bad, temp dropped so I decided to stop. The most recent one was my third try after the resurgence of Peat with the interviews with the Rubins. That lasted 3 and a half weeks, as the previous times I had acne, temps drop but I decided to push on but it got to the point where my feet were FREEZING ALL THE TIME and it would not let me sleep and also I started to get some migraines/headaches which scared the shit out of me cause I hadn't had them since I was a child. Anyways, I had to stop cause the freezing feet was beyond uncomfortable.
In hindsight, I only tried it cause I wanted to see if I could get more benefits, like more muscle mass etc… but It didn't work out that way for me and truth is my body temp and thyroid were fine so there really was no reason for me to push myself to doing so. Your case on the other hand, I can understand, if starch wasn't able to get you there then there was no reason for you to stay doing the same thing. I'm glad it worked out for you and like I said maybe you and Jannis' experience on how you overcame the initial struggles with sugar could help a lot of people out there that still want to give sugar and fruit a chance but seem to have problems with them.
Michael said…
"I'm not going to argue for or against a high-fat diet here, but why use endurance athletes as an example of WHAT TO DO?! They're about the unhealthiest bunch out there, doing the most unnatural athletic event possible."
A large study in finland concluded that former elite endurance athletes lived the longest and was the most healthy individuals compared to the average joe. You can dig out the study here: http://www.michelblomgren.blogspot.com
Jannis,
I'm not talking about a few people, I'm talking about thousands of people who devote their life to it. Because of this, they provide a large body of data on what works and what doesn't when it comes to building muscle and losing fat in HUMANS.
Do you know any other place where we could get so much relevant data on the subject.
Sheila,
That is why I said "high level" coaches. I know what Abel says on the subject and I agree.
Jannis,
Many bodybuilders, or beefcakes as you like to call them lol, are in it only to build as much muscle as possible — but NOT most people.
Most people who weight train are in it to look better, renew or improve their health and perform better athletically and this is the best way to do so. Plus it's a way to learn valuable life skills through pushing yourself and meet new challenges. You learn a lot about yourself. A successful weight trainer is usually successful at whatever else they put their minds to.
Maybe you should look up what real "physical culture" is. It's not about just being a beefcake lol. Not even close.
I'd put my money on the average intermediate weight trainer to have vastly superior health markers and athletic ability to just about any other sector of society. But yeah, that's not of any significance :P
BTW: How old are you Jannis? I believe you're young, like just in college? If so, how can you rule out simple hormonal signaling from puberty not being responsible for your results?
Don't underestimate it, the average guy gains roughly 40 lbs of lean mass throughout those major growth years.
Any0one catch Mark Sisson's anti-carb article over at daily apple? Crazy. I can't trust that guy because it seems obvious to me that he is on HRT. Not that I am necessarily anti HRT, since I am pro any drug anyone wants to use, but someone on supplemental hormones is not going to have as clear a picture as someone not, as far as training and diet advice goes.
Matt Stone said:
"Nice! I have captured carb sane! Finally, an intelligent conversation can be had!"
Way to call all your readers unintelligent. You really come off prickish sometimes dude.
I agree with much of what Michael said.
There is a reason why starch eating caught on and stayed on as the primary caloric source in societies everywhere. It is simply the best fuel for activity, and history was written by the most active people (except for Genghis Khan. I have a theory, that if the Mongols were made to fight on foot, they would have lost all battles, because they were running on fat, which does not fuel explosive activities. But since they relied on horses, they did not burn as many calories as they would have on foot. Also, i think they took up rice eating as they mobbed through China.)
Jannis, thanks for this link:
http://www.ajcn.org/content/71/6/1516.full.pdf+html
This study (double-blind crossover in humans no less) seems to back up what I think I heard Peat claim on blog talk radio about the fructose component of sugar inhibiting the action of glucose on raising insulin levels (although the proof is indirect since they measure CO2 not insulin).
A high insulin level, as I understand it in simplified form, opens cells up to receive fat, protein, and/or sugar that are all bound up in various transport molecules and floating around in our blood after a meal. Depending on what we eat, we'll have more or less of each and when insulin levels jack up the cells open up and in they come. On blog talk radio, I got the impression that Peat's view of sugar and starch and insulin were pretty standard. If I remember correctly, I believe he said starch promotes fat storage more so than sugar because it has more glucose which drives insulin up more than fructose. I've heard this elsewhere for years – it's why diabetics are supposed to do better with fructose, right? So it seems to follow that if you're eating a lot of fat, sugar is a better accompaniment choice than starch because there's less insulin boosting glucose, and less resulting storage of the fat. However, if you're body building, seems like you want to eat lower fat, higher protein, and higher starch to use that glucose-driven insulin boost to bring the protein into the cells sans the fat to facillitate repair after a workout. If you want to be a sumo wrestler, you eat high fat and high protein, and drive them both into the cells with a lot of starch. If you've emaciated yourself with long-term dieting and want to rebuild your fatty organ tissues as well as muscules, the sumo/HED/RRARF approach sounds good. In the broad strokes I don't see how Peat (on blog talk) was radical in his view of sugar and starch and their influence on insulin. My impression was that Peat's recommendations were geared for sedentary folks, not body builders or sumo wrestlers, but given his apparent model of insulin, I'd be surprised if he gave the same advice to all these groups. Just my 2 cents.
And now for a Riddick quote which feels appropriate for some reason …
Guv: "There are inmates and there are convicts. A convict has a certain code. And he knows to show a certain respect. An inmate, on the other hand, pulls the pin on his fellow man. Does the guards' work for them… brings shame… to the game. So, which are you gonna be?"
Riddick: "Me? I'm just passin' through. "
Not sure if I want to jump into this fray, but I eat a high-starch diet and am very thin (with good body composition and a thin face). I eat some sugar too (mostly fruit), but I like my high-starch diet and it agrees with me.
I agree with Gabriel that this is shown throughout history as being the preferred diet, And regardless, for me, at least, it's surely the most enjoyable. I'd rather eat rice and potatoes than tons of sugar. Maybe some people like a high-sugar diet, but I see no evidence that there's anything wrong with starch.
yo – i can put this little "starch or sugar" debate to rest RIGHT NOW. just look at mr "naked on the couch" in the accompanying photo. what is he dangling into his hungry maw? FRUIT! which is SUGAR! he sure as shit ain't eatin no potatoes or white rice…..case closed, starch is the winner over sugar. unless you want to look like mr. zoftig, that is….
hope y'all enjoyed the (non)rapture this evening! i am personally a little disappointed, as i was really looking forward to a good zombie apocalypse. things have been a bit dull lately.
Michael said…
Organism as a Whole, I wish you'd stop whatever it is you're trying to do with your "moderation". We can all think for ourselves here. We don't need you to do it for us.
I was offended by your comment. The reason was that I thought you were being arrogant, for asking me to refrain from posting comments in that nature.
I disagreed with you at that time. You were suggesting me not to be so confident in my predictions about people, but I believed that my confidence was justified. I have tried to let you know about this, by bragging about how I resolved heated debates on other forums, by using my clarification techniques.
But now I realized that you might have been annoyed by my lengthy comments. Specifically the two large comments in this thread clarifying Jannis' intentions. Those comments may annoy you, because they were repeating the what I said in my earlier comments about Jannis. Besides being redundant in their points, the comments were also lengthy. I now understand that those two comments may have annoyed you so much that you were willing to suggest me not to make those lengthy and repeated clarifications in the future.
So now I will give you the benefit of the doubt. I won't accuse you of silencing me because you just disagreed with me. I now realize that you might be annoyed by my lengthy comments, which were just repetitions of the exact same thing which I said before. I also would assume that you will allow such clarifications by me, if I won't be as redundant in my comments as I have did in this thread.
Jim,
The problem is fat and sugar together hyper-stimulate the reward center increasing fat setpoint. Otherwise, icecream wouldn't make you fat.
@ Matt
That's super-interesting (about the Nepalese diet.) I'm kind of doing something like that right now, but I also add a lot of other stuff like mostly raw vegetables / flax / sesame / dessicated coconut / nuts / some dried/fresh fruit / spices / what I forgot, and it seems to be working wonderfully (too early to tell though.) Do they eat vegetables? Cooked / raw, how much?
What about the famous butter tea? Is that limited to the mountain regions? I remember reading about some Nepalese guy's diet, and it was full of dairy fat. And he wasn't fat at all.
"The people are lean, tiny, on the verge of malnutrition, and have incredible physical endurance and agility in the mountainous regions. I'd say the typical male is 5'7" and 135 pounds or so."
vs.
"The whities ate the meat.
It's good to be white."
I'm not quite sure if I should agree with that! The edema in my face have gone down and it seems that inflammation is receding. I'd rather look like a stick figure and feel awesome than looking athletic and feeling crappy.
@ Jannis
"Personally, I don't care much about the studies. I feel awesome with the diet I eat, so I don't need studies to tell me that what I am doing is right."
Right now I'm doing pretty much the opposite of what Peat recommends, higher PUFA, lower sugar, lower "quality protein" I guess (mostly from grains & legumes, the occasional egg), tons of fiber and IP6, which I also supplement (also see my post above to Matt) and I've been losing weight rather than gaining any. My weight has stabilized now at what I think has always been my natural weight as an adult, I've lost a lot of water and fat, but not really a lot of muscle as far as I can tell.
I'm feeling lighter, more flexible, more alert, more relaxed, edema are gone, inflammation is reduced, my skin is great and tanning easily… It is too early to tell if this diet will be sustainable for me long-term, but right now I'm kinda blown away by the results. I'm optimistic anyway, because many people eat a similar diet for life (e.g. what Matt said.)
If I try to live on orange juice and dairy, I will feel terrible. I mean really terrible. "I want to die" terrible. So… I don't think minimizing PUFA, eating sugar over starch and chosing the "right" kind of protein is the way to go for everyone. At least not for me. My experience directly contradicts what Peat teaches.
"And I totally agree with you that you should always combine fruit/sugar with other things. That's also what Peat says. I never said otherwise, if that's want you wanted to suggest."
It seems that you misunderstood me there. You said starch is maybe ok if you don't eat much else with it. My counterargument is that a lot of people actually seem to do fine on starch + fat, while a lot of the people who eat high fruit seem not to do fine if they add anything else, like the 811ers: They seem to fail if they add too much fat to their high-calorie fruit diet. This has also been the experience of many other people in the raw-food scene.
A recommendation that is very very common is to eat fruit on its own. That's what I do, too, and I do very well with it.
You may do fine combining fruit with other foods, but it seems that many people do not if they eat a substantial amount of fruit.
MICHAEL-
"Plus it's a way to learn valuable life skills through pushing yourself and meet new challenges. You learn a lot about yourself. A successful weight trainer is usually successful at whatever else they put their minds to."
Your right, bodybuilding is about pushing yourself, sticking it out through the pain! Health on the other hand shouldn't require "willpower" or pushing yourself! After being in the bodybuilding industry for so many years, it has taken me A LONG time to unwire all the in learned "pushing" bodybuilding taught me, and I'm still not fully there 8 months after! Right now I'm re-learning how to listen to my body -like really listening and NOT just pushing through with willpower.
Your right, you can apply your bodybuilding mentality to many other aspects of your life because most of all, your training that big muscle in your head, more than anything else. Unfortunately it doesn't teach you how to "train" your health -you have to be very in tune with your body as a whole, to do that.
I'm sorry Michael but I don't believe one bit that the bodybuilding mind is the way to go. For many years, I shared the same belief as you. Strong body. Strong mind -goodbye health! Been there, done that.
@Sheila
I agree wholeheartedly. Pushing has brought me nothing but health problems and pain and brought me to the point where I had to stop (martial arts, not bodybuilding.) It's a bad attitude for life, it will cost you and / or others dearly. On the other hand, discipline is necessary to stay consistent in your actions and maybe even more in your mindset, and sometimes to keep yourself from pushing too hard.
@ Organism
h ttp://forget-about-diets.blogspot. com/2011/02/matt-stones-hed-rules. html
Do you happen to be Bruce K, too?
@ Jannis
"I think the best way to find the best diet is to eat starch whenever you feel like eating starch, and sugar whenever you crave sugar. Once you have learned, to "read" your body, it will adjust itself and find the best diet for you (in terms of carbohdydrates)
So, I don't think that you should just start eating sugar as much as possible, but to listen to your body and eat it whenever you want it. Of course, it's best to emphasize whole foods like fruits.
That way, I think you can experience the benefits of sugar and avoid the negative effects a drastic, sudden increase can have.
I believe, this way, people will sooner or later end up with a ratio of sucrose: starch that's bigger than 1:1. That's at least my experience."
That sounds like a good suggestion. However, my personal experience on the ratio is quite different. I do crave sugar sometimes, and since I've relaxed my mindset about it (partly thanks to you and Matt) I give in to the cravings now and satisfy them, mostly with dried fruit. However, thoses cravings are rather rare unless I make a habit out of eating sugar – most of the time I just become hungry, and then starchy meals seem more appealing because they promise greater satisfaction. Also those cravings happen usually when I let myself get very hungry, like when I'm under stress and my body becomes hungry before it normally would, or when I skip meals. In those cases my body may crave for quick energy in the form of sugar.
Sheila,
I think you are misinterpreting what Michael and I are are referring to as "bodybuilding". We are not talking about the freak drug culture. The physical culture movement that Jack Lalanne came from was about improving health. The bodybuilders that were around before the drug culture used resistance training and diet to build their bodies up and increase health. THis is what I am referring to. I know you were deep into the unhealthy drug subculture, but it does not mean that it is all that way. Maybe instead of throwing it all away, you could instead find the positive aspect that REAL bodybuilding was originally supposed to be.
Hans,
Are you doing the Kitcharee diet now? I have gone long periods of time on this mono diet and did OK. Are you still doing the Kriya yoga course?
The real yogis were known for pushing themselves and controlling their physcial bodies beyond all types of pain and limitations. There is a reason they developed such extreme physical practices. There are a lot of similarities with the bodybuilding culture.
On starch, I have to say that I am coming more and more convinced that MODERN humans are essentially starch eaters. Most of the humans who could not thrive on this as a staple probably died off over 10K years ago.
The most negative health effects I have experienced has been when i eliminated starch from my diet. I can do low meat, vegetables, fruit, and sugar, and I don't experience the extreme negatives. But, just because starch is essential, I don't think it is optimal to eliminate the other foods. For example, I notice that when my meat intake gets too low that my brain function and muscle mass start to decline.
JT-
I hear what your saying. Unfortunately I am not ONLY talking about the "freak drug culture" -as you call it. I'm also talking about drug-free bodybuilding. People who are supposedly in it for health reasons. People have a poor understanding for what health is really about. THAT'S what I'm talking about.
Everybody wants to be healthy but healthy is always a trim body.
HANS-
Very true, discipline is great and needed for a lot of pursues in life but disciplining your body is not really how you learn it. Mind and body work together as a whole.
JT-
Spelling check:
I was supposed to write; Everybody wants to be healthy but healthy is NOT always a trim body.
;-)
Sheila,
I think we both agree that it can be taken in a positive or a negative direction. Like anything in life, you can use it to enhance your health and life, or you can take it to extremes and have it affect you negatively.
Sheila,
Having a trim body and being physically fit probably IS essential to health for most people. It is even important for brain health.
Check out this study showing that when humans gain fat they lose brain function and tissue:
http://www.newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/more-obesity-blues-100147.aspx
You even have a higher risk of developing Alzheimers and other brain diseases.
JT-
Yes but WHY did you gain the fat? Were you stressing your body before and is the fat a symptom of that? You can't just be so black and white.
Exactely,
You are not losing brain capacity because you gain fat, but because of the underlying condition that causes you to gain fat.
JANNIS-
YES, that is exactly what I mean. Thanks.
Sheila & Jannis,
There is no reason to believe what you are saying is true. Why would you state that Jannis? Do you have any proof for what you are saying?
There is a strong correlation with physical fitness, healthy diet, and brain health. This is not controversial. You can contact any neuroscientist who studies this and ask them if this is correct.
My experience fits with the scientific findings. Whenever my diet gets worse with higher fat and sugar and less protein I gain fat and my mental function declines.
JT-
IF it was ONLY your diet we could blame on your declining mental function… Oboy…
Sorry man, couldn't help myself ;-P
"There is a strong correlation with physical fitness, healthy diet, and brain health. This is not controversial. You can contact any neuroscientist who studies this and ask them if this is correct."
Exactly!
But correlation does not equal causation. Just because they are correlated, does not mean that you can say for sure that X causes Y. So does weight gain decrease brain function or does a decrease in brain function cause weight gain? Or is the underlying reason for both something deeper, as Jannis said. If they were both caused by the same underlying reason, then of course they would be correlated as well.
So basically, that statement did nothing to refute Jannis' statement.
Maddmuh, You are right, I should have said that we have strong evidence to suggest healthy diet, and physical fitness CAUSES the brain to be more healthy.
Random Peat question, has anyone experimented with taking Aspirin daily? Peat seems to consider it one of those universal do-gooders, inhibiting estrogen, increasing mitochondrial respiration, improving thyroid function, etc. I'm curious to try it since its so easily and cheaply available compared to other things he recommends like hormone therapy.
Maybe you would like to have a look at other people's experiences in following Ray Peat eating guidelines…
Oops! Here is the link:
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php't=419742&page=1&pp=15
Collden,
Peat doesn't recommend for people who seem healthy to take aspirin.
To other who are putting down Sisson's recent post,
While I didn't think he provided good reasoning or evidence for what he said, I do think there is strong evidence in favor of fat oxidation.
The only thing you can say positive about glucose is that it leads to more CO2, except that itself is only arguably good. The fact that Peat claims it's associated with non-stress means almost nothing. Long-lived nematodes, drosophilia, methionine-deficient mice, metabolic supermice, and snell dwarf mice all have high rates of fat oxidation and slow rates of aging. Biochemistry also seems to support fat oxidation, though it hinges on theoretical ideas.
I deleted my previous comment because I get embarrassed when I rant on personal things. But I decided to say it again…
I found out I have hyperthyroidism. I would have thought it was hypo, not hyper, but I guess not. To give you an idea, a normal Thyroid Peroxidase level is below 35, mine is 333 iu/ml. I'm now prescribed a beta blocker called Metoprolol, which to be honest I am very nervous about taking. I find it hard to trust Big Pharma and their drugs. The beta blocker only is supposed to treat heart/ blood pressure problems arising from the condition, I fear this sketchy Metoprolol pill may only make things worse. I also read beta blockers can cause weight gain, something I'm not too excited about. To be honest, my main issue was fatigue, nothing to do with heart, although I've had occasional angina/palpitations, it is not that common.
I personally think the hyperthyroidism could be a symptom of something far worse, like cancer. I read that there could be a connection between the two conditions.
I admit I eat a lot of junk food regularly. But I also eat fruits and vegetables more often than most. I'll have a banana then later I'll have a donut. LOL.
That Peat crap is not for me, I think fruit juice is gross, too sugary.
I wish there was a way I could get the thyroid to normal so I wouldn't have to DESTROY my thyroid through their "treatment" of radioactive iodine which can make you permanently hypothyroid, or a thyroidectomy or whatever. I already stopped using iodized salt which I had been using because I was concerned about getting enough iodine. I'm still not sure whether I should be avoiding iodine or trying to get more of it, but I guess more iodine could contribute to the problem….
Hyperthyroid is supposed to cause weight loss, but I didn't really notice that…of course I was too tired to work out. I notice only half my eyebrows are still fully grown and bushy, the other part is thinning out. Which to add to my confusion is supposed to be the Sign of Hertoghe, a sign of HYPOthyroidism.
I've always thought I had cancer, my INSTINCTS told me this, but of course the medical establishment thinks I'm too young for that as if young 22 year old guys never get cancer, they should read about testicular cancer, Lance Armstrong was diagnosed at 25. Sometimes people think I act like a crazy hypochondriac, but the truth is, I already found out something was wrong with me, I'd rather get the worst possibility out of the way so I can focus on this thyroid bullshit. Because if I decide to let them do that ridiculous treatment where they attack my thyroid with radioactive iodine, it will have been after I have gotten the full picture of what is wrong with me, and I still don't think I want the radioactive iodine to be used on me.
I know it may seem ironic to talk about eating a banana and a donut and complaining about how fruit juice tastes too sugary. I don't think eating candy or donuts is healthy it's just unfortunately one of my vices. But I support fruit. I want to eat a healthier diet, but I feel deprived without my favorite treats. I think my health issues may give me more motivation. The worst thing about donuts could be the trans fat.
Jannis, I really like what you said about listening to your body. I have been following Peat guidelines for over 6 months and most of the time I feel very content. But about once every 2 weeks, I get a strong craving for something starchy, like pasta or scones. If I try to resist them, I feel very deprived and like I might start bingeing. I find by having that one serving of pasta or scones, I feel more relaxed and happy and am content to eat "pure Peat" for another couple of weeks.
After reading what you wrote, I will no longer feel guilty about this and will just see it as responding to something my body is telling me it wants and needs.
Stancel,
My husband used to have Graves Disease / Hyperthyroidsim a few years ago when he was in his late 20's. He went on some heavy duty medication called Carbimazole (we're in the UK so don't know if it has another name elsewhere) which thankfully worked without resorting to radioactive iodine. He was on it for quite a while and eventually weaned off it.
The relapse rate is quite high, but he has been fine since then which I attribute to dietary changes (including switching to whole food diet) and giving up smoking.
Recently we had hair mineral alalysis done for preconception and he has raised cadmium levels. Interestingly raised cadmium is linked with autoimmune disorders like Graves Disease. He also has high Iron but I don't know if there's a link there.
Good luck with your treatment.
Jane
Stancel,
They diagnosed you as hyperthyroid just because of your Thyroid Peroxidase level? Whoever you doctor is, he is a retard and you should stop listening to him immediately, if you don't want to be screwed for the rest of your life!
You complain about fatigue and don't lose weight? Think about it for a moment, it just takes a little common sense to figure out that you are definitely not hyperthyroid.
Don't let them kill your thyroid or take the betablocker just because they are too stupid to distinguish one condition from it's opposite.
Go to a specialist who does a full thyroid panel. You can even make an accurate diagnosis yourself. How are your pulse rate and temperature? Do you feel depressed or anxious? Do you have orange spots on the palm of your hands (right under the fingers)Do you feel cold sometimes? What about your sleep?
John,
"Long-lived nematodes, drosophilia, methionine-deficient mice, metabolic supermice, and snell dwarf mice all have high rates of fat oxidation and slow rates of aging."
I'm not sure what study exactely you are referring to, but in the studies I have seen, the long lived test animals had both, very high fat and carbohydrate oxidation. If you have a high metabolic rate you burn fats and carbs at a very high rate. I don't really see how that is an argument for the superiority of fat oxidation.
"Biochemistry also seems to support fat oxidation, though it hinges on theoretical ideas."
How does it support fat oxidation?
Stancel
I agree with Jannis. Get further testing and a second opinion before taking any dangerous medications.
Check out –
http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/
http://forums.realthyroidhelp.com/index.php
Also regarding the cravings for donuts etc. I recall you mentioning you drink skim milk. I think your cravings for high fat junk food is your body crying out for saturated fat. You will find if you start getting high fat dairy like butter, full fat cheese and milk also coconut oil etc you will find you won't have uncontrollable cravings for high fat junk food. Read one of Matt's articles on saturated fat if the thought of eating butter scares you.
I didn't like bottled fruit juice either until I started drinking fresh juice without added sugar. Juices made from concentrate do not taste as nice as pure juice. That might make the difference for you?
Nothing wrong with occasionally eating junk food. Feeling deprived will only make you want to binge. But I notice if I have some junk food every day I start noticing symptoms after only about a week. I mainly eat a very clean home cooked diet but recently I'd been eating a lot of chocolate (Easter eggs) and all these old symptoms started recurring one after the other in a very short space of time. It made me remember and appreciate what a difference changing my diet has made to my health.
john
"Peat doesn't recommend for people who seem healthy to take aspirin."
Do you know why? And for what people/problems does he recommend aspirin? It just seems from the way he describes how it counteracts the effects of PUFAs and estrogen and increases mitochondrial respiration, that just about anyone would benefit from it, insofar as just about everyone, even most seemingly healthy people, have more PUFA and estrogen than Peat would deem optimal.
re taking aspirin daily:
A great idea if you hate your liver and would like to do it some damage.
Jannis,
They have overall high metabolic rates per unit mass usually, but I meant in comparison to one another (higher fat vs carb); that is, their respiratory quotients are low. Plus, the drosophilia and nematodes are glucose restricted. I'll see if I can find an animal that favors carb oxidation and lives long. Guyenet mentioned a high insulin, high longevity mouse, but I haven't seen it yet, and that still doesn't imply high RQ.
…less mitochondrial free radical leakage. As I said, it sort of revolves around Nick Lane's ideas. Lucas Tarfur of Ketogenic Nutrition did a nice post/argument a couple weeks ago.
@JT
"Are you doing the Kitcharee diet now? I have gone long periods of time on this mono diet and did OK."
No, but I'm eating most of my calories as grains (mostly rice) and legumes. Mostly vegetarian with an egg on some days. What's different from the kitcharee diet is that I'm also eating raw veggies and that I'm taking lots of fiber.
" Are you still doing the Kriya yoga course?"
Yes.
"The real yogis were known for pushing themselves and controlling their physcial bodies beyond all types of pain and limitations. There is a reason they developed such extreme physical practices. There are a lot of similarities with the bodybuilding culture."
I think the "pushing" is way different in yoga. When I was doing martial arts, I was pushing myself. But in the yoga lessons, there are constant reminders of not to push. It's all about letting go, about distancing yourself from your body and your mind and to control them that way. It requires huge amounts of discipline, but not really any pushing as when you try to
All the physical stuff in yoga is just a means to an end, to prepare you to be able to sit for a long time for the most part, I guess.
Not sure if you can access this website: http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/content/religion/9780195395358/toc.html
>>Abstract: Yoga Body charts the rise of postural yoga (sana) in popular imagination and practice from the middle of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the Second World War. This period saw the forging of a postural canon that gave shape to what is today popularly accepted as the practical substance of ?yoga. Prior to these modern innovations, yoga was rarely (if ever) conceived primarily in these terms. How did this situation come about? How did yoga become the health- and fitness-oriented phenomenon we see today? This book offers explanations of the genesis, status and function of yoga in the modern world. This history has remained largely hidden in popular and scholastic accounts, but the phenomenally successful yoga forms we see in the world today simply cannot be understood without it. Drawing on rare documents from archives in India, the UK and the United States, as well as interviews with the few remaining, now very elderly actors in the 1920s and thirties postural yoga renaissance, the book investigates the predecessors of today's sana systems. It also presents fresh evidence for the origins of the twenty-first century's most popular forms, including material from two hitherto untranslated texts on sana by the ?godfather? of modern postural yoga, T. Krishnamacharya.<<
The author claims that almost all asanas we use today originate in the 19th century and were actually adopted from British gymnasts. So (if the claim is true) there is a huge connection between "yoga" and physical culture, but the original yoga has little to do with it, it's all about spirituality.
Can you show me the studies you are talking about. I'd love to see them.
Humans favor carb oxidation and have a very long life. Brain size corresponds pretty well to longevity. And low carb diets decrease brain size of human infants, as Dr. Lutz noticed. Chimpanzees and other monkeys live about 40-60 years. Some parrots live more than 80 years.
Hans
Source? Seems aspirin can actually protect from liver damage.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090126173608.htm
Hans,
Yes I am familiar with that research on modern yoga and u mostly agree. I think most of modern Hatha yoga is a foreign and modern concept and doesn't have anything to do with the original yoga.
If you look to the hardcore yogis in India that are hardcore, they push themselves to many physical extremes, but not for health reasons. They do it to overcome certain physical limitations. See Gopi Krishnas work and his thoughts on what it is really about. I think he may be one of the only modern people that had a real understanding and experience.
A modern western misconcetion is that yoga is all about relaxation and getting healthy. I do not think this is true of the real original purpose.
Collden,
I don't know–he said he recommends it "only for specific problems."
Jannis,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550413107002562
…c elegans & glucose restriction
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2267680/'tool=pubmed
…drosophila and methionine/glucose tinkering
http://www.jbc.org/content/282/48/35069.full.pdf+html
…Snell Dwarf Mice
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2491496/'tool=pmcentrez
…metabolic supermice
http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/early/2011/02/23/jc.2010-2493.abstract
…methionine restriction increases fat oxidation in humans–obviously quite a contradiction within Peat's advice
…and just extra
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/31/3/363.full.pdf
…rats and intermittent fasting
Jannis,
Regarding Lutz and brain size, do you mean when the parents are low carb? I don't like broad terms like low carb/high carb. Grilled chicken, lettuce, and mayonnaise is a terrible diet, as is fortified pasta and peanut butter [for "protein" and "healthy fats"]. That's an interesting observation though. Infant animals (including humans) seem to use lots of ketones however.
Would just like to say I have tried 6 weeks on an all starch 0 fruit diet. My blood sugar was not very stable and I always woke up with adrenaline surges in the middle of the night. I felt sluggish during the day.
I switched to an diet with almost all fruit (orange juice) and very little starch. Perfect blood sugar, very sound sleep, and busted through several training plateaus (deadlift 3rm from 500 to 600lb, vj from 31 to 34).
From my experience peats recommendations are right and it's not even close.
Would also like to say that appetite has decreased dramatically on sugar vs starch.
Eddy,
Thanks for sharing your experience. I wish I knew a logical explanation why there seems to be so much variability of success between sugar vs starch.
ROSENFELTC-
I had 2 months with lots of agony on sugar and was about to give up many times but I stuck it out and now I'm loving it and feeling way better than I did on pure starch. In the beginning I also had crazy appetite but that has subsided too.
Sheila,
I have no reason to distrust you and I believe your experience is true, however even though I would like to experiment with sugar/fruit again for a longer time period, I don't know how I would be able to handle or push through once I start getting FROZEN FEET. Unless you, Jannis or anybody else that has overcome such a problem can give me advice on this, I don't mind the temporary acne since I can just ignore it but It's really hard to ignore the feeling of your feet freezing…
John,
Thanks for the studies.
Lutz patients ate pretty much what you would consider an optimal diet. Moderate protein, low carb, and very high fat. He emphasized pretty healthy fats like eggs, butter, olive oil, animal fat like beef fat etc. Pretty much what all the paleo folks do. His patients ate between 60-70g of carbohdydrates a day.
He noticed that all the women who ate his diet had babies with much smaller heads. Of course, he presented that as a beneficial effect and said that way it is easier for the women to deliver the baby.
On aspirin,
I am also sceptical about aspirin damaging the liver. Do you have something to back that up?
Peat recommends Aspirin to cancer patients. There are studies that show that aspirin can effectively fight tumors and reduce cancer growth. It's especially helpfull to rlief the pain of patients with inflammed cancer tissues.
rosenfeltc,
I think those symptoms have something to do with endotoxin and a new balance of bacteria that grows in your intestine when you switch from high starch to sugar.
Did you notice anthing about your tongue during high sugar? White fur on your tongue?
Jannis,
I always have some sort of white fur on my tongue, it gets worse if I go to high in fat and even with too much of any type of carb. So do you think it was a new balance of good bacteria or bad bacteria? Btw I did eat the one raw carrot a day while eating high sugar (mostly orange juice)
rosenfeltc,
As you know, I had bad reactions to Peat's diet similar to yours. One way that I was able to introduce fruit juice and sugar without the bad reactions was to drink it during workouts. You may try diluted fruit juice during your workouts. You might also try combining it with an easily absorbable protein like I do with the peptopro.
Another method that I use to avoid negative reactions is to have it at night after dinner. I never get bad reactions at night, even if I consume large quantities.
Even though I can now consume sugar, I dont get the positive effects. I feel better with the starch based diet.
Jannis,
Where does Lutz mention this? I haven't read his book in about 10 years, but I dont remember anything about the small head size.
I have heard of the practice of pregnant women in africa avoiding much protein so that the babies would have smaller size/ head to prevent difficult births.
Jannis,
What about cretenism which is due to low thyroid hormone, and is caused by insufficient iodine? They have very large heads, but have low IQ.
Jannis,
I was wondering about the head thing too, because I couldn't find it searching just now, and I don't remember seeing it in the book. I feel like I may have heard that before, although it might've been from you. That's an interesting note by JT.
About the fruit juice, being from concentrate, yeah that was what I was talking about. If I had a juicer I'd be doing some juicing. Probably more so vegetable juicing than fruit juicing because I like to eat whole fruit.
Jane, thanks for the info. I am just surprised that radioactive iodine is used to treat hyperthyroidism. The treatment is becoming permanently hypothyroid because of the thyroid being destroyed. Doesn't seem like much of a treatment to me in someone like me who doesn't have severe symptoms.
Jannis,
It was based on all the thyroid hormones, he didn't judge it based on one thing I think, he said it was hyperthyroid. I just got a thing in the mail and it only showed the peroxidase antibodies, and TSI which says 34% baseline (<140 acceptable) and I'm not sure what that means. So I only mentioned the peroxidase because it's on the paper. Nothing about T3, T4, TSH whatever. I'm sure that probably shows I'm hyperthyroid…
I've always had sleeping problems. Depressed, most of the time. Tired, always. There was a long period I went through possible things that could be wrong with me. I thought , is it low T? haha. Or maybe adrenal fatigue but then I read that actually wasn't considered a real thing. And then my mind jumped to thyroid, and cancer. Like I said my main concern is that I could have two health issues at once. I'm going to make sure I can get tested some way for cancer.
I didn't mention this but I have other symptoms besides just the fatigue. I started noticing lumps on my neck (like swollen lymph nodes) and it seemed like there was some kind of an obstruction (could be tumors) in my rectum that was making it hard to pass a bowel movement without struggling to push it out (after which I would be bleeding down there, yes bleeding). This is why I do not think it is just a thyroid issue.
I was already taking the beta blocker when I posted that, but it's a smaller dose…12.5 mg, I don't feel bad right now, but I was just worried about long term effects. Like I said, I find it hard to trust any pharmaceutical drug after all I've heard about certain drugs causing serious problems for people (Avandia causing heart attacks, and now I just heard Zoloft causes birth defects). I have not been on medication before, only antibiotics for ear infections.
Ok, I found the passage. It is not exactely like I said. I have the 16th edition of his book, the original German version. Here he says on page 224 that from his long experience with carbohydrate restricted diets, he knows that women who follow his advices gain less weight during pregnancy and have much lighter babies.
Every doctor can tell you that lower birth weight is associated with lower intelligence and health problems. Peat cites a lot of studies on that topic in his articles.
He doesn't say anthing in particular about head circumference in this passage. I'm not sure if that is the only thing he says about pregnancy. I'm pretty sure that he mentions head circumference somewhere. I will see if I can find it.
Sheila, Jannis, others
What fruits do you eat? What proportions? How much, say, daily?
What other forms of sugar do you eat and how much?
Jannis,
Okay, so that's still interesting. Ha, maybe only their bodies are shrinking! I like Peat's references to birth weights and puberty ages, but their are lots of variables, and things usually follow a J or U curve. I doubt it's desirable to simply give birth to a baby as big as possible. I wonder if it's the fact that low carb people tend to just eat low calorie? Glucose and insulin should factor in though. He writes about birth weights in Generative Energy, and I'm pissed because I can't find my copy–was it certain Africans that had large babies?
Stancel,
I am 99,9% sure that you are hypotyhroid. All the things you mentioned are classical symptoms of hypothyroidism.
Hyperthyroid persons (hypertyhroidism in most of all cases is temporary) normally feel very hot all the time and report that they feel extremely good. They usually have a very high pulse rate and high temperatures.
rosenfeltc
I don't know what exactely happens, but it gets better when the stuff disappears. The tongue reflects the situation in your intestine. So, fur on your tongue is a sign of bad bacteria which can cause endotoxin to be released into the bloodstream.
What kind of fruits other than oranges are recommended?
Jannis,
Yea, I had a childhood of "periodic" of hyperthyroidism. I don't ever remember any terrible symptoms, but I sweated all the time (a main reason why I buzz my hair) and had an annoyingly large appetite (as a kid I ate tons of cereal & milk). My cholesterol was low, and my TSH went on wild swings. Everything kind of slowed down when I reached 17 or 18, and I haven't even had tests in the last 2 years.
Jannis,
Ya, I don't doubt that the white fur on my tongue is due to some sort of gut dysbiosis but I've literally tried everything with no real success.
Gabriel-
The carbsane comment was meant to tease the feuders – who are some of the most intelligent commenteros on this blog, not to denigrate all the commenters on this blog as being lesser than the almighty carbsane (but I do have a brain crush on her).
Hans-
The greatest danger with anything anybody recommends, Peat included, is the rigidity of beliefs which arise in the followers. For a while too my beliefs were getting more and more narrow as more and more foods looked "villainous." But I've gone in the other direction now.
Good point about being puny and feeling awesome. True.
Nepal is basically like two countries – India and Tibet. Most of the country is Hindu with similar ethnicity to Indians. They are darker, taller, more vegetarian. They do eat their veggies cooked BTW.
The northern mountainous part is filled with lots of villages inhabited by Tibetan refugees. The climate is totally different up there, and if you want rice you have to carry it for 5 days on your back. They have more cheese and dairy. Most of the dairy consumed by the rest of the Nepal population comes in the form of yoghurt used as a relish like in Indian cooking and in "Chia," or milk tea – basically what Westerners refer to as "Chai."
Sheila-
Smokin'!!! Yay sugar!
Stancel-
If it don't smell like hyperthyroidism, and it don't taste like hyperthyroidism, and it don't look like hyperthyroidism – it probably ain't hyperthyroidism.
That doesn't sound the least bit like hyperthyroidism to me.
John,
I have the same suspicion as you regarding the low birth weights of low carb mothers. It is probably just due to a lower calorie intake.
Jannis,
I have been thinking of the head size issue you are focusing on and I don't really think it is legit. The issue of Cretinism proves the belief that a large head always equals increased IQ is false.
We know their disease is caused by hypothyroidism and causes an increased head size. They also have low intelligence. How do you explain this?
John,
I have the same suspicion as you regarding the low birth weights of low carb mothers. It is probably just due to a lower calorie intake.
Jannis,
I have been thinking of the head size issue you are focusing on and I don't really think it is legit. The issue of Cretinism proves the belief that a large head always equals increased IQ is false.
We know their disease is caused by hypothyroidism and causes an increased head size. They also have low intelligence. How do you explain this?
John-
Why look at nematodes and drosphilia when we have high vertebrates and even mammals to investigate? Like extreme glucose oxidizing hummingbirds, who have very high longevity for their size, or bats – who have extreme longevity for their size, seemingly regardless of whether they are fruit eaters, insect eaters, nectar eaters, etc.
My guess is that there are fat oxidizers with longevity and lack of longevity, and there are glucose oxidizers with longevity and lack of longevity. Easy to cherry pick, but nothing that is truly proof of anything relevant to real people in the real world.
But I believe that you could be a fat burner and be fine. But you better revise your exercise program to 15-mile walks at a moderate pace if you wanna burn fat. All this high intensity stuff is gonna make you burn too much sugar!
JT-
Cretins are described as having large heads, but that seems mostly because the growth of their bodies is stunted, which makes their heads appear out of proportion to the large side.
But in this study supplementing iodine to prevent cretinism decreased the prevalence of a small head size (microcephaly)…
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7984194
Matt,
Birds are all over the place in terms of carbs vs fat. I also provided studies on mice and rats.
You mention hummingbirds as if there is a study comparing the effects of different glucose intakes. I posted those studies above because there are actual controlled trials. I'm not worried about "burning sugar" during exercise. First, I'm not adamant about what I said, and second, I doubt I burn much during exercise anyway. I exercises at near-max intensity with short sets and long rests.
Matt,
It doesn't matter, the proportion of head size to body is supposed to be the predictor of intelligence.
@ JT
"If you look to the hardcore yogis in India that are hardcore, they push themselves to many physical extremes, but not for health reasons. They do it to overcome certain physical limitations. See Gopi Krishnas work and his thoughts on what it is really about. I think he may be one of the only modern people that had a real understanding and experience."
I've read two books by Gopi Krishna, actually reading the first was what made me seek out the yoga and kriya course. In one of the books, Krishna writes about hardcore hatha yoga people and how he considers their practices too extreme, unhealthy, and rather pointless… (I think it was in "Secrets of Yoga.") So I'm not sure where you're coming from. In his other book that I read (not sure about the title) he says that he meditated for 3 hours daily, and the kundalini rose after 13 years. Sure, this is extreme, but it's not like he was pushing himself, rather he was calming his mind so much that he could focus on his third eye.
@ Colld?n etc. re Aspirin:
I don't have a source, I just remember reading in the news how some commonly used over-the-counter painkillers were found to liver damage quite recently. These meds have been around forever. Who knows what they'll find next. I'm not going to take any medication unless my life depends on. They all cause some kind of imbalance or other.
Hi all,
I’ve been sticking to a diet made up of mostly Sugars and fruit because every time I eat glucose I gain weight. Is this likely just temporary water weight that will go away once my body has adjusted to using glucose? If so, how long will it take?
Thanks,
JB
Ag industry doesn’t want to steer consumers towards corn, they would rather steer them towards HFCS, which is a totally different cash crop…clear thinking here…