What kind of diet are you following?

[Trick]

There’s quite a lot of reporting in the Swedish news on what is good and bad for us to eat and how what we eat is better or badder for the planet. One article today talk about why Swedes are so prone to follow and experiment with different diets, as the “expert” explain is that Swedes since the early 80’s has become one of if not the most secular people’s and “followers” of self-actualization. While in regions where religion, family and clan is the way to follow diets is not as varied………Maybe one can refer it to “social economic wealth”, the greater it is the bigger amount of junk we can chose among………………Also in the same news they warn people’s from eating too much rice since it has been fond to contain high amount of Arsenic, especially rice produced in Southeast Asia such as in Vietnam, it’s the soil in that part of the world that contain high amounts of arsenic. Especially “ecologicaly” grown whole grain rice is supposed to be the dangerous one

[everything]

It's so hard to track safety issues. Here in the USA, there was a scare about oatmeal and other oats containing products.

Not sure what happened with rice grown in California.

Edit: a few years old but:
https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/mag ... /index.htm

basically eat a smaller amount of sushi or basmati rice from California. Avoid brown rice. Maybe consider switching to quinoa, millet, buckwheat as substitutes.

[everything]

oats article
http://winewaterwatch.org/2018/08/fyi-m ... -residues/

are grains bad:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... our-health

[D_Glenn]

Peacedog, on page 1 you mentioned ‘endocrine downregulation’, could you elaborate?
There’s a lchf podcast where the actions of insulin and glucagon are thought to be improved, since the insulin is only shuttling proteins and is anabolic (rather than just shuttling sugar for energy), and the catabolic aspect of glucagon is cleaning up incomplete proteins in the tissues and supporting healthy autophagy.

[Peacedog]

Endocrine downregulation is an observed phenomena in people who follow a low carbohydrate diet for long periods of time. Oddly, this does not appear to happen in people following a ketogenic diet for long periods of time.

No good studies exist on this either to my knowledge, but it is an anecdotally observed phenomena that has happened often enough that it appears to be an issue. Also keep in mind this does not happen with everyone. Which is why bloodwork is really important and without it you are shooting in the dark. Also keep in mind that some people, usually in the realm of 3-5%, respond really badly to this kind of diet and bloodwork could keep you from killing them.

When a low carbohydrate diet is followed exclusively for a long period of time, usually in excess of six months, thyroid and testosterone levels tend to drop. Usually by about 25-35%. My guess is it is the body's response to long term calorie restriction in an effort to conserve energy, because it thinks it is starving. Also keep in mind that barring the use of some very dangerous thermogenics, and/or surgery, that you can only deplete fat cells, not destroy them, and that fat cells also have an endocrine system function manufacturing certain hormones like leptin, etc. It's why once someone gets fat, they tend to stay that way without a significant intervention.

The work around for this is to have a cheat day one day per week where the body carboloads and burns it off over the next 2-3 days. People have experimented with this and for some as little as one cheat meal per week seems to stave the effect off. Of course, this is where discipline comes in. And usually where the diet goes straight to hell.

And this is where if you have bodyfat level management problems you start to enter the "damned if you do and damned if you don't" territory.

The long term effects of obeseity are well known: cardiovascular disease, stroke, certain forms of cancer, diabetes, etc.

Having depressed hormone levels isn't fun. Craving carbohydrates all the time is not either. But both appear to be better than being obese in the long run. So, until we figure out the binome vis-a-vis carbohydrate metabolism or find a safe way to systemically destory fat cells in the body, we are stuck with work arounds like diet.

As I always remind people, once you have a bodyfat problem nothing we currently have solves the problem. It is also why I want to sucker punch every asshole who claims "diet solves everything/diet is the ultimate form of medicine." Everything is a bandaid dependent upon compliance. If you stop doing it, all of the problems come back/are frequently worse. Diet is not a reparative therapy. It is a management strategy.

And yes, there are tradeoffs. But generally speaking, all of them are better than being obese.

[D_Glenn]

Interesting. That’s the first I’ve heard of lowering thyroid and T. Firstly is that KetoDiet is not a calorie restriction diet.
Leptin levels should increase on keto, and then once you become Fat-Adapted the cravings for carbohydrates significantly decreases since your body will start storing glycogen again. I would garner that whatever research you came across wasn’t studying fat-adapted subjects.

[D_Glenn]

I’m just a newb at keto. Considering that a friend of mine has been doing lchf/ keto for almost 18 years and my cousin is going on 3 years of paleo keto. Cardiovascular and neurological health are my biggest motivators for doing it, weight loss is just a pleasant side effect.

[everything]

are there some (non-big food-funded) studies on health implications of keto? or just weight loss studies? I didn't know it was a "thing" for 18 years already. the longitudinal anecdotal data on Japanese and Mediterranean diets seem pretty overwhelmingly positive vs the "Western" diet, but that doesn't mean there won't be new findings.

[edededed]

Hey Peacedog - if I may ask, what is bloodwork?

[everything]

bloodwork is having a lab take a blood sample and testing for various levels of whatever

[Peacedog]

D_Glenn,

It's one of those things that can happen, but doesn't always. The reality is our knowledge of the human body regarding what dictates its composition is pretty limited. People can react in unpredictable ways. Studies are largely about populations and large groups. So the benefit/cost ratio is described in those terms. This is of no help if your particular biology is an outlier. Which is why I stress labs and bloodwork.

For example, I've known a couple of people, both of Caribbean heritage, that went on vegan diets that were pretty close to raw food diets and their cholesterol panels shot through the roof. When they added beans and rice back into their diets along with plenty of fish these returned to normal parameters. FYI, they both felt like crap on the vegan diet. Without testing everything comes back to subjective observations and those can be pretty misleading.

Edededed,

For labs I'd recommend a hormone panel pre-diet and every 90 days thereafter for a year plus a cholesterol panel for starters. Tests for Vitamin D, certain B vitamins and the MTHFR gene mutation aren't a bad idea either. Heavy metal level testing is a good idea too if someone is/has been an industrial worker. If there is suspected pathology/autoimmune problems/weird ass allergies (Hashimoto's thyroiditis, etc.) then the applicable tests need doing as well.


Doing this intelligently can be a little expensive at the start, but it depends upon the motivation. If someone is simply doing a cut for an event (wedding, holiday, sporting event) and it is not going to be a long term lifestyle modifcation, barring any overriding health issue, then the labs aren't really necesary. If this is being done in the name of a long term lifestyle modification, then it is a really good idea.

[Peacedog]

Everything,

The problem with any of the studies claiming "health" benefits is that they are all bullshit. Health has no meaningful definition past "a lack of pathology." And people tend to lie about what they eat when filling out surveys. So you end up with observation level studies or studies done over a fairly short time period. All of which have huge confounding factors.

So you can find some decent studies regarding ketogenic diets and uncontrolled epilepsy as an example. But not much outside of using a diet to address a specific problem. Even then you have to watch out for other reasons.

My favorite ones are about how good being a vegetarian is for people with cardiovascular disease and how the diet "cured" them. Its bullshit. 100% propaganda. The reality is that when people switch to that kind of diet it is almost always calorie restricted in comparison to their old diet. They stop eating most processed foods. Their cholesterol levels stabilize due to changes in insulin response and decreased carbohydrates. If the disease isn't too advanced sometimes some of the plaque gets cleaned up. And they lose a lot of weight, which makes them feel better as their compromised heart no longer have to pump as hard.

They were "cured" because they lost weight and stopped eating large amount of insulin releasing processed foods. It had nothing to do with the lack of animal protein in the diet.

And that is the other problem with most dietary related research. The motivation of the people conducting the study. If you can't make money at something, then the motivation to do the study has nothing to do with profit motive. Which means the motivation for doing the study is almost always ideological. And fanatics lie. They lie a lot.

[everything]

that's exactly why the anecdotal data on large populations (like Okinawans) is much better data. No bullshit in the study. No bullshit in the funding. Probably as good as it will get. Not necessarily as interesting in a super, super, super narrow scientific type of knowledge that can isolate some tiny relationship. Or maybe a lot more interesting!!

[edededed]

Peacedog - thanks! I understand now - good to know in the future if I plan to try vegetarianism.

Everything - even studies in Japan are probably biased - the government is of course very keen on "proving" how "Japanese diets" are the most healthy. (Same with Korea's desire to prove how healthy kimchi is.) On the other hand, something in these diets causes the highest gastro-intestinal cancers worldwide, but no one ever wants to talk about that...

[klonk]

On the subject of wrongly attributed cause and effect, my conjecture is that many (though not all) of the people who think they need to avoid gluten--and who do so, and feel better for it--are actually benefitting from a reduction in net carbs. They would feel bad again if they filled in for the missing wheat and rye and so on with equal amounts of carbs from other sources. Gluten becomes a scapegoat because of its implication in certain fairly rare serious diseases. Can't prove it, but the reason I am thinking it is that the actual conditions that make gluten a specific problem are blessedly rare. If it were not so, Western culture would have died out centuries ago.

I do think we in that culture are seeing an upsurge in carb sensitivity, but that can be explained by widespread over-consumption of foods that boost glucose, which are tasty, satisfying and affordable. They are satisfying because they boost our glucose. The circle goes round and round.