Comments on: Last gasp of the dark ages of nutrition

By: Anthony

Anthony — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 18:33:11 +0000

Mike, if you wrote a book reflecting the way you write here on the blog, it would be huge!

And you and maybe three or four others would read it. Or at least that’s how publishers see the situation. It’s difficult to sell a book about serious nutritional issues to a publisher because most publishers think general readers are stupid.

By: Meg

Meg — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:09:24 +0000

By the way, all this does help explain how my mother got into such terrible health by her early 60’s (lifeong messages that carbs are good, fats are bad) but also why she is remarkably slim, strong, erect-standing, and how the heck she managed to clear her clogged arteries despite continuing to smoke, even with poorly managed diabetes and CHF. They wanted her on statins, Vioxx for her arthritis (luckily we researched that one after the cardiologist declared it safe, and politely refused), etc etc. Instead of accepting standard medical advice out-of-hand, she takes Bromelain and Co-Enzyme Q-10, and amazed cardiologists when she reduced her arterial plaque buildup from 50% to less than 20% in the space of months, despite smoking and still eating the occasional junky sweet roll, and practically living on cheap high-fat hamburger meat and fatty sausage. I still wish she would quit smoking and give up the sweets, but she’s doing amazingly better than docs would believe based on her dismissing their drugs and dietary advice, and taking “weird” supplements instead.

By: Meg

Meg — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:17:30 +0000

I would like to reply to the Russian native who commented on how Russians eat so much meat and potatoes, fried foods and vodka, and yet are not fat… My personal hypothesis to this is, if you put those same Russians in houses, apartments, and offices where it’s still kept at 70 to 72 degrees F or warmer all through the winter… and they never walk miles through the cold daily to get from place to place, but instead sit in a heated vehicle, whether car or bus or train… they too would become obese.

The more cold a person is exposed to, the more calories he or she burns to exist and stay warm. That’s why comparisons used to be made between a pound of wool on the back being worth a pound of butter, or some such. And typically, people whose ancestors adapted to extreme cold (and ate a traditional diet high in calories and fat in order to deal effectively with that cold) are the ones who balloon into the most extreme cases of obesity when they are plunged into year-round tropical temperature control, especially when physical activities are reduced to American levels. The Inuit, the Quebecois, and many other people whose ancestors adapted very well to cold climate living, can be seen as disproportionately obese compared to other Americans, when they live the typical American life.

That’s my suspicion as to why cold-climate people such as German and Russian Europeans, often bemoan “ballooning up” if they come to live in America for a long period of time, even if they don’t live on junk or fast food. There is simply too much heated indoor environments and too little provisions in cities for walking or bicycling. Many places, you must drive even if the place you want to get to is but a mile away, and many Americans are accustomed to thinking of a mile as a long distance to have to walk.

By: JenJen

JenJen — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:13:40 +0000

They are trying to say that meat is unhealthy and bad for the environment:
http://health.yahoo.com/news/ap/med_diet_meat_mortality.html

By: Alicia

Alicia — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:33:51 +0000

Sometimes the “a calorie is a calorie” thing is just the first half of a two-part argument. As in “A calorie is just a calorie, and each gram of fat has more than twice the calories of a gram of protein or carbohydrate, so avoiding fat will help keep your calories low.” Sigh.

Anyway, I appreciate the post and your logic about why these studies are flawed.

By: Pam Maltzman

Pam Maltzman — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 10:25:24 +0000

Regarding gastric bypass, Dr. Eades, tonight I transcribed a report for a woman who had gastric bypass and then about six more abdominal surgeries. At this point she no longer even has a stomach! Yikes.

By: Andrea

Andrea — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 22:22:16 +0000

The whole gastric bypass thing baffles me. Why not just eat as if you had had the operation – wouldn’t the results be the same?

Actually, that has possibilities: how about a study where one group has the bypass, and the other a placebo operation? Double blind, of course….I bet both groups would show similar rates of weight loss, but the control group would have fewer surgical complications.

There actually has been such a study. And the finding was that subjects who ate the same as those who underwent the bypass had the same results as those who underwent the bypass.

By: nonegiven

nonegiven — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:01:57 +0000

My guess is some of the carbs in vinegar have been converted to acetic acid? The same way some of the carbs in yogurt is converted to lactic acid. How many calories does acetic acid have?

I don’t think very many, but I haven’t checked.

By: Andrea L.

Andrea L. — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:57:52 +0000

Hmmm, that comment “If it has a label, it’s not food!” seems like a very good rule of thumb. I am puzzled and troubled by the number of labels I have read recently that are just plain WRONG! as in internally inconsistent, even allowing for rounding error. I picked up a bottle of pomegranate vinegar which claimed to have 2g carbohydrate and 2 calories. Doesn’t add up no matter how you pour it.

By: Trinkwasser

Trinkwasser — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 16:38:05 +0000

To Andrea L, our doctors may be related. I had my lipids down to trigs 39 HDL 47 LDL 105 with which she was quite pleased. She told me she was “not supposed” to recommend other than the “Heart Healthy” diet but since low carbing was working so well to keep it up.

When I went back with trigs 62 HDL 55 and LDL 94 she wanted to know how I’d achieved the reversal. When I told her by eating saturated fats she freaked out.

I don’t like to hit 120 at 1 hour postprandial, those lipids will tell you why. Also that appears to be the level where my insulin resistance starts to increase, I begin to feel a distinct lack of energy which is noticeable at 150 and horrendous at 200: obviously as my meter tells me the glucose is in my bloodstream but the muscles stop uptaking it properly, and this effect lingers for a few hours after a postprandial spike before the GLUT-4 transporters wake up again.

More to be found here

http://www.bloodsugar101.com/

including links to various papers