PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Well said, Roger. Thank-you.

I'm also partial to coconut oil and macadamia nut oil. Their high smoke temperatures make them good for cooking if one doesn't have lard. I would read with interest your comments on them.

My current naive bias is to notice more the ratio of PUFA Omega 3's and 6's in my diet, and the quality of the Omega 6's especially, which are delicate, so either frequently processed (made harmful with hydrogenation) or rancid. You seem to be recommending more just reducing all PUFA's in the diet. It will likely take more evidence, more convincing, more concurring opinions and more consideration on my part before I am persuaded to just minimize all PUFA's, even the highest quality.

I am pondering the agreements and disagreements between your recommendations and those of Dr. Johanna Budwig. Hopefully you are not too offended that I would even mention her in a reply to you. She is most famous for her cottage cheese and flaxseed oil concoction. Certainly the adoring support she gets in the nutrition columns sets off my BS alarms, as well as do the testimonies "I got up from my cancer deathbed and became cancer free on this simple diet". Seldom does truth lie behind such cover.

However there are some strange (to my non-biochemist mind) similarities (avoid processed oils and refined carbs) and sharp disagreements (on meat.) I wonder how can it be that two seemingly smart people, considering the question of lipids in the human diet, come to such fractured dissent. Do you see how to separate any wheat from the chaff in Dr. Budwig's work? Or is there simply too much chaff to make such an effort worth your time?

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Well said, Roger. Thank-you.

I'm also partial to coconut oil and macadamia nut oil. Their high smoke temperatures make them good for cooking if one doesn't have lard. I would read with interest your comments on them.

My current naive bias is to notice more the ratio of PUFA Omega 3's and 6's in my diet, and the quality of the Omega 6's especially, which are delicate, so either frequently processed (made harmful with hydrogenation) or rancid. You seem to be recommending more just reducing all PUFA's in the diet. It will likely take more evidence, more convincing, more concurring opinions and more consideration on my part before I am persuaded to just minimize all PUFA's, even the highest quality.

I am pondering the agreements and disagreements between your recommendations and those of Dr. Johanna Budwig. Hopefully you are not too offended that I would even mention her in a reply to you. She is most famous for her cottage cheese and flaxseed oil concoction. Certainly the adoring support she gets in the nutrition columns sets off my BS alarms, as well as do the testimonies "I got up from my cancer deathbed and became cancer free on this simple diet". Seldom does truth lie behind such cover.

However there are some strange (to my non-biochemist mind) similarities (avoid processed oils and refined carbs) and sharp disagreements (on meat.) I wonder how can it be that two seemingly smart people, considering the question of lipids in the human diet, come to such fractured dissent. Do you see how to separate any wheat from the chaff in Dr. Budwig's work? Or is there simply too much chaff to make such an effort worth your time?

My website is great for patients and friends to follow the PaNu plan without reading through 280 + posts here.

But I still like to keep the conversation going with the critical (in a positive sense) crowd here at itulip. You guys challenge me and keep me on my toes.

Thank You!

I love coconut oil, I just glossed over it in that post, as it's kind of a health nut thing- you can't even buy it in my small town.

Have to confess I've not heard of Johanna Budwig. Cottage cheese sounds fine. Flaxseed is primarily a source of alpha-linolenic acid which is not as efficient a source of O-3s as fish oil. Of course, I don't really like to eat varnish or paint, so linseed oil doesn't seem too appealing.;)

Could be the main difference is some vegan superstition thing while trying to get a high fat diet. Like trying to stay dry while surfing if you ask me. You could surf in a dry suit but what's the point?

If her diet is super low carb to the point of being ketogenic, it could slow cancer progression.

I'll look her up.

Regarding the PUFA amount versus ratios, there is really no conflict. Almost any diet with excess PUFAs is dominated by 6s, so reducing total PUFAs in total reduces your ratio. (unless you eat zero meat or butter or cream)Look up the ratio in the biggest PUFA sources and you will see 15 or 20 to 1 ratios. Toss them out and even a grain fed steak gets you down to 3 or 4 to 1 with no supplementation. Add a small fish pill dose and you are there at 2:1

What I am arguing against is folks doing stir fry with corn oil and then taking O-3 supplements. That seems a little dumb. They are taking it like a drug. If they viewed it as a compensatory supplement, they would stop eating the industrial oils first, then supplement if still out of balance.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

What I am arguing against is folks doing stir fry with corn oil and then taking O-3 supplements. That seems a little dumb. They are taking it like a drug. If they viewed it as a compensatory supplement, they would stop eating the industrial oils first, then supplement if still out of balance.

Yup - well said. Like paying extra to put only organic lipstick on ones pig.

[Sharky]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

I'm very familiar with the Budwig diet, and actually did it myself for a short time (I have a definite dislike of the taste of ground flax seeds as a result). I think it might have some use in the extreme healing phase of certain illnesses, particularly for certain types of cancer. However, my feeling is that ground flaxseeds and flax oil are much too extreme on the omega-3 side for regular consumption.

I much prefer coconut oil or possibly palm oil or cold-pressed olive oil. Coconut oil is nice because it has lots of medium chain triglycerides, which are more readily metabolised.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

I'm very familiar with the Budwig diet, and actually did it myself for a short time (I have a definite dislike of the taste of ground flax seeds as a result).

One of my favorite snacks is a mix of cottage cheese, flaxseed oil, turmeric and cayenne pepper. I haven't died of cancer yet, so it must be working ;)! (Actually, I've never had cancer, nor has any blood relative had it, so it's not at the top of my scare list.)

[jimmygu3]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

I think the metabolic meaning of saturated fat, because it correlates with group hunting success, beginning perhaps half a million years ago, is that food is abundant, you can stop eating now.

I'm curious about this. It seems to me that when early humans made a kill, the ideal thing to do was to eat as much as possible before the meat spoiled and predators came to fight you for it. Isn't the hunters' "abundance" quite fleeting?

Jimmy

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

I'm curious about this. It seems to me that when early humans made a kill, the ideal thing to do was to eat as much as possible before the meat spoiled and predators came to fight you for it. Isn't the hunters' "abundance" quite fleeting?

Jimmy

Actually I believe the signal is both kinds of abundance. The fleeting kind would have been, simply, the most available calories at once that a paleolithic human could experience. Wild honey might have had this fleeting abundance also, so I believe the second kind of abundance - engendered by co-evolution of large mammal eating with cooperative living and hunting, is the more important abundance. The ability to eat only to satiety might have co-evolved with the organized behaviors that over time, made food more abundant generally. It would not have been adaptive to eat 6000 calories at once and waste it if humans could share the kill cooperatively, and with cooking and drying, save the food for consumption over several days.

The progression is argued to be from opportunistic scavenging beginning millions of years ago to oreganized and cooperative hunting of large mammals in the range of 4 - 800,000 years ago.

My hypothesis is that we evolved a satiety signal with saturated fat that we do not get from other calorie dense foods, particularly fructose.

Fructose seems to have a positive feedback mechanism, with the stimulation of appetite and nearly direct storage as fat. I believe this is related to historical sources being smaller and requiring more energy and much more time to exploit - no negative feedback was necessary. Great apes spend up to 5 hours a day just chewing the non-franken raw fruits they rely on in order to get enough calories. Humans spend 45 minutes to and hour a day chewing our mostly cooked food. (The Fuhrman mechanical satiety approach to weight loss, bulked-up hard to chew food that is hard to get too many calories from, would seem modeled on uncooked paleolithic carbohydrate food sources. To me, this mechanical satiety approach does not seem as optimal as the high fat hormonal satiety approach in our current environment, as there is more to health than just caloric intake or even insulin levels.)

We tend to think of both fat and sugar as calorie dense, but historically, the storage fat of animals was always the most calorie dense food on a calories consumed per hour of eating basis. Saturated fat is how we store calories in our own bodies. Our guts shrank and our brains grew largely because we co-evolved with prey animals who provide us with calories via their own storage fat

Interestingly, Chimpanzees hunt opportunistically, but don't invest more than 30 minutes or so away from their plant food sources to do so. Lacking the hunting efficiency provided by the tools and social organization of hominids, they cannot risk coming home empty handed. Wrangham, in his book Catching Fire describes a chimp that preys on infant monkeys. The chimp will kill the infant and eat only the guts, tossing away the rest of the carcass. It will kill another monkey before eating the rest of the first carcass. It is simply more efficient to eat the easy to chew and digest guts (with their mesenteric fat) than to eat the whole monkey. This behavior would fit your "eat it now and just the tasty bits" temporary abundance. I think the "Share it with the group and you will get more", a socially enabled abundance, would be more important to the satiety signal.

This is still a working hypothesis of mine.

Something must account for why saturated fat is metabolic matter to the anti-matter of fructose.

[jk]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

I think the metabolic meaning of saturated fat, because it correlates with group hunting success, beginning perhaps half a million years ago, is that food is abundant, you can stop eating now.

since i know you're writing a book, i wanted to point out that the messsage carrier you pointed to earlier was insulin, the body's own response to sugar. you didn't say the sugar carried the message. here you say the fat carries the message, instead of pointing to the metabolic response to the fat. i think your message-carrying metaphors will be stronger if you don't conflate these levels of analysis.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

since i know you're writing a book, i wanted to point out that the messsage carrier you pointed to earlier was insulin, the body's own response to sugar. you didn't say the sugar carried the message. here you say the fat carries the message, instead of pointing to the metabolic response to the fat. i think your message-carrying metaphors will be stronger if you don't conflate these levels of analysis.

Hmmm...I am not sure how the message can't be considered in terms of its larger metaphorical evolutionary meaning as well as specific biochemical/hormonal pathways. The fat does carry a satiety message that is different than fructose in particular.


More specifically, I can't simplify it to the level of insulin response because it is more complicated than that. Excess insulin response is something in general to avoid, but fructose actually gives little insulin response.

I may have used the shorthand of "insulin response" in some other posts as a reason to avoid fructose. As fructose comes roughly 1:1 with glucose, in say, an orange, there is always an insulin response to the glucose half when you eat fructose. Fructose is unhealthy in it's own way. I'll try not to confuse by simplifying like that too much.

As you probably know, gram per gram pure glucose raises your blood sugar almost twice as much as sucrose, which is half fructose and half glucose. Lower "glycemic index" than equimolar amounts of pure glucose. This is why glycemic index is a pretty useless concept. Fructose goes directly to the liver and is metabolized there. The negative effects of fructose are legion, and since gram per gram it may be worse to get fructose than pure glucose, we need to explain why we did not evolve an same "off" switch with fructose- it can't be high insulin alone as fructose has less insulin response than glucose.

I know "sugars" have been lumped together, and for heuristic purposes (trying to get people to avoid both fructose and insulin spikes from glucose)I think that is appropriate. Partly, I suppose this is a rhetorical counter to the idea that there are "good carbs and bad carbs". In a sense, there are, but the first thing patients ask me is how much fruit they can eat. Why not? It tastes great with all that ridiculously sweet fructose in evolutionarily discordant amounts in it. Then they think whole wheat bread might have less insulin response because it has "7 grains" in it. If it is mechanically processed wheat bread, it is not really any better than wonder bread with more lectins in it.

Here is more about fructose:

"Although fructose produces a very small insulin response, long-term use of fructose nevertheless induces insulin resistance, which eventually results in fructose-induced hypertension. Somewhat surprisingly, the low concentration of insulin released after fructose ingestion also means that there is a low satiety response to fructose. It is possible to consume a great deal of fructose without feeling full. Finally, fructose is 10-17 times more effective than glucose in producing Advanced Glycation Endproducts--the crosslinked matrix of proteins and sugars that accumulates in our tissues and stiffens them."

http://lowcarb4u.blogspot.com/2008/07/fructose-ii.html

The more I learn about historically available sources of fructose vs saturated fat, the more the transient vs dependable abundance argument makes sense to me, at least as an explanation for the lack of satiety with fructose/sucrose. However, experiments with other critters also show differential satiety effects so I may need to go back a few million years with the evolutionary argument. It may not be 500,000 ya but more like 50,000,000.

[Sharky]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

This is why glycemic index is a pretty useless concept.

Since GI is relatively useless, is there a better metric to use when evaluating food choices? Does that apply to glycemic load too? Maybe just total carbs would be better?

On a related subject, if you suppress carb intake, won't glucagon and gluconeogenesis kick in, and raise your blood sugar anyway? Do you know of any effective way of minimizing that effect? I would guess that reducing protein intake might be helpful, but wouldn't that encourage muscle catabolisation?

Also, as you moved from reducing carbs to increasing fat intake, what form does that fat normally take in your diet?

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Since GI is relatively useless, is there a better metric to use when evaluating food choices? Does that apply to glycemic load too? Maybe just total carbs would be better?

If you make lists of the GI of foods, you will see there are some that have a GI of zero or close to it. Just eat those. But seriously, GI and G load are articial measures that are kind of pointless when you can decrease the load or the GI the most just by eating more foods with no carbs. So yes, counting carbs is better, but just because the others are half measures. I don't have the references at hand but the few trials of using GI have little effect on BG regulation, and certainly less than total carb reduction.

One important caveat and the main reason Gi is worthless, Fructose is the unhealthiest simple sugar but generally goes straight to the liver with little glycemic response. So better GI, worse for your metabolism

So count fructose as worse than equimolar amounts of starches or glucose when you count total carbs.

If you are not diabetic, 50 -75 g/day is a good level to shoot for if you want to count carbs - If you get to step 3 of PaNu, eat whatever you want within reason, and send your food portions to fitday or some other calculating program, you will usually be in the range of 10 -20% carbs (50-100g or thereabouts) automatically. PaNu is therefore in some ways "harder" than carb counting, but the grain elimination makes it much simpler.

On a related subject, if you suppress carb intake, won't glucagon and gluconeogenesis kick in, and raise your blood sugar anyway?

Yes, once below about 50g per day - but only enough so you don't pass out and never as high as BG spiking with a carb laden meal. Glu passively diffuses into the brain in a gradient dependent fashion and the gradient needs a minimum concentration at all times. That minimum is maintained and is kept as stable as possible by creatiing glu as needed internally and not flooding the bloodstream with glu from meals.

Don't think of it as "all glucose in the blood is poison" - think of glucose levels above a certain amount glycating an amount that is above the threshhold of what we can handle or compensate for. Remember that post with mortality vs HBA1c? As I recall, there was about a 6 fold reduction in mortality with reduction of A1c from 7 to under 5. At 5 there is clearly still glycation of hemoglobin going on as the value is not down to zero, but our repair mechanisms are not yet overwhelmed.

Do you know of any effective way of minimizing that effect? I would guess that reducing protein intake might be helpful, but wouldn't that encourage muscle catabolisation?

You don't want to minimize gluconeogenesis generally, but if you go 40% protein there is a lot of excess that is wasted or converted to glu and then to fat if you are in calorie excess (not likely as its hard to eat that much protein)

You still need some glu for your brain. Your amino acids fungible like cash in a bank - they are turned over naturally and new proteins are assembled all the time in a steady state fashion - even exercise does not change it that much. If you eat enough protein, you are just providing aas to keep the balance and not have an aa deficit in your muscle. If you are short aas over many days, you will start to waste some muscle just for glu - I believe this will be minimized if you are usually in or near ketosis as even your brain requirements for glu go down with metabolic training and glu is also re-assembled from the glycerine liberated from your triglyceride stores.

You can visit Peter at hyperlipid and see that he does what you suggest - he limits protein to about 10% of calories and is 80-85% fat and 5% carbs. This requires some unnatural dietary maneuvers like tossing egg whites, but could be of benefit if a person were type II DM or close to it.

Also, as you moved from reducing carbs to increasing fat intake, what form does that fat normally take in your diet?

I prefer animal fats like butter that are about 50% SFA, 40% MUFA and maybe 10% PUFA (roughly). As discussed, I favor total PUFAs as low as possible and then making sure the ratio is 2:1 O-6: O-3. Coconut oil is good. Minimize plant oils and don't cook with anything but animal and coconut.

I made chili the other day with buffalo burger, and added a half stick of butter to add fat (Texas chili -no beans - and no noodles like at hospital cafeterias in the obese state of wisconsin)

Also, see this

http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2...ohydrates.html

and this

http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2...-and-oils.html

[Sharky]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Thanks for your response.

You still need some glu for your brain.

True, but the amount required should drop considerably after the body adapts to ketosis. The brain is capable of using ketones as fuel, too. Adaptation starts on about day 3, and can take up to 2 weeks to maximize. After that, the brain can derive 25% of its energy from ketones. I know people in long-term ketosis who have BG of 60 (or less) and feel great.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Thanks for your response.



True, but the amount required should drop considerably after the body adapts to ketosis. The brain is capable of using ketones as fuel, too. Adaptation starts on about day 3, and can take up to 2 weeks to maximize. After that, the brain can derive 25% of its energy from ketones. I know people in long-term ketosis who have BG of 60 (or less) and feel great.

Hello Sharky

True and I believe the brain should be encouraged to use ketones as well.

My point was just that, as you recognize, the BG level can only be minimized to a point, and that some glycosylation of Hemoglobin is normal and will occur even on zero carbs, 90% fat, and 10% protein.

Thanks for your interest
RM

[Spartacus]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

responding to an old post, but what the heck

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7219473.stm

soft drinks AND FRUIT cause gout

the actual study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...ubmed_RVDocSum

NOTE the scientific herd mentality, from the BBC article one of the investigators says:
"I can think of some situations, for example in severe treatment failure gout, where reducing sweet fruits, such as oranges and apples could help," he added.

so take all the toxic drugs in the world, and if they don't kill you, and your gout keeps getting worse, with uric acid crystals popping out of your joints, dripping in blood, THEN AND ONLY THEN, drop one of those incredibly healthy fruits or 2 from you diet.

I've been thinking about this line quite a bit since I read it. If I ever were to adopt Roger's PaNu diet, I'd have to cut back on fruit. I had always thought pretty much all types of fruit were good for you, and I enjoy eating it.

On the other hand, if I don't go on the diet, I'm seriously considering bumping up my consumption of Snickers bars.

Unfortunately this is an observational study, not intervention.

[jk]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

http://www.paleonu.com/get-started/