http://www.threebrothershealth.com/2009/07/006-health-food-diet-dr-weil.html

the site has some interesting articles that you could spin ideas off of…

What can I say? He has simply moved the grains up a notch in the pyramid. Still not what I would condider a great diet even with the fruits and vegetables on the bottom.

Slow Burn – Is there any benefit from the return stroke being slow as well? (hoping to reduce the amount of time even more!)

I think I’m correct in saying that High Carb + High Sat Fat is bad – Above what level of carbs does this apply?

It’s better to have a blow out once per week than to have one daily. Better yet to have one every two weeks. But, better to not have one at all.

The high-carb + high-sat fat diet is bad, but only because of the carbs. I would suspect that the sat fats are actually somewhat protective. It’s the carbs that do the damage, not the fat.

-Flax? Are the phytoestrogens a concern? I avoid soy but do use flax sometimes for LC baked goods. But then I cringe about whether this is a good idea. Perhaps you could address soy isoflavones, etc. as well for those who do use soy.

-More on PCOS…d-chiro-inositol? Interplay of vitamin D (there have been some studies showing upping vitamin D helped restore cycles), calcium and magnesium? A cluster of different “syndromes” related to fertility but all under the blanket of PCOS? I’m not overweight, not too many external pcos symptoms. Acquired genetically in utero? My parents do have symptoms of IR (are now LCing though). Xenobiotics exposure in utero? What supplements for PCOS? I’m thinking of adding bioidentical progesterone for half my cycle. I’m on metformin currently (2000mg). I low carb but don’t really need to lose weight, but obviously believe it is important for my health. I”m working on upping my vitamin D intake (have done CLO in the past but am now wondering about some stuff I’ve read about vitamin A competing for binding sites? I use a CLO that isn’t super high in A though). ALA? D-chiro-inositol?
I have two children, one conceived through infertility treatments, one “surprise” while on metformin. I still don’t have regular cycles and am stumped on what else I can do (besides metformin + diet + maybe upping D…maybe adding d-chiro and magnesium?)

-cut out dairy for PCOS?

-My mom has been LCing for a year. Tris have dropped to well under 100. She went off her statins about the same time. Her total cholesterol is still hovering close to 300. Her HDL isn’t super high but I think around 60ish. Just genetic predisposition? SHe was using south beach initially (despite my urging to not go low fat) and her cholesterol was lower during that time…but she had only recently come off her statins at that point. She switched over to a more high fat way of eating, and added in coconut oil. Her cholesterol went up. We thought maybe it was the coconut oil but even w/ cutting that out, it has still been high, and she’s now been LCing for a year or so. SHe is down about 30 lbs though to about 140ish at 5′3″ and maintaining okay.

Could you discuss meeting this increased need through non-traditional food sources such as Omega-3 enriched eggs? As an example, we have eggs available which claim to contain 660 mg of Omega-3 per egg.

The cost premium over regular eggs is minimal and intuitively, the bioavailibility seems like it would be good.

Thanks
Jim Gray
Michigan

My GP retired last year (he wasn’t pro-low-carb but I did have a long history with him). I am yet to find a new one that I feel comfortable with. I went to a new doctor for a check up and part of that was the usual cholesterol test. My LDL came in high (175) but my trigs (53) and HDL (117) were fantastic (as were all the other standard test results). The doctor was fixated on the LDL and not at all interested in the other values. I was quite upset when I left her office after being told to go “low-fat” and decided not to return.

This is my question: “should I lie to my doctor about the way I eat?”

If I have any health issues in the future (last time I was sick was 2001 with the flu), I’m worried that based on the doctor’s knowledge of my LC diet, they’ll fixate on IT rather than look at the real problem.

……also what happens in the event that someone who is well adapted to a VLC diet (6 years for me) ends up in hospital on a drip? Aren’t those things glucose? Could it be dangerous?

You should definitely be straight with your doctor about your diet – if you can’t without a lot of hassle, then you need to find another doctor. Any doctor fixated on an elevated LDL level in the face of a 117 HDL level should have his/her lipid treatment privileges suspended.

The glucose drip – should you ever need one – shouldn’t cause a problem. I doubt that you would get one, however, unless you were unable to eat. Typically doctors put patients on a normal saline drip (a salt solution that is similar to the salt level in blood0.

Actually, it’s been shown that repeated frying at high temperatures doesn’t create trans fats. Trans fat creation requires heat, pressure and a nickel catalyst. What repeated frying does is oxidizes the oils, if they are unsaturated oils to begin with, which most are now days.

I wouldn’t worry too much about breaking a yolk every now and then. I don’t think the occasional dose of oxidized cholesterol is all that harmful.

What has changed in your thinking since the book was released (in addition to exercise)?

On another topic……Like all organisms, the human body’s biggest concern is survival. It adapts itself to great changes from our Paleolithic wiring. The setpoint point theory is quite interesting to me. One of your past blogs dealt with fasting and timing of meals to try to “fool” the body into positive changes. Your conclusion was that the effort was just not worth it. Would the PP diet, if rotated or modified every once in a while (i.e. 1X per week/month/etc.), ensure that the body’s systems never becomes complacent. For instance, what would happen if we stayed strict to the PP plan but purposely pigged out on a boatload of carbs every 10 days (as an example) and then returned to a strict PP protocol the day after?

Have you looking at this and other food intake variations (i.e. new ketogenic diets) for weight loss or muscle development? Anything look promising?

Again thanks for all of your selfless health information!

And, I have to tell you that I’ve tried your NSAID replacement (2 Pro-Omega, 2 Krill and 1 Curcumin) and have to THANK you. With moderate fibromyalgia, I’ve been off of Tylenol and Ibuprophen for two weeks now using your mix. It gives noticeable relief from the leg and back pain! I only use it once per day – in mid morning usually, but tried it once at night and it helped then, too. Google search didn’t tell me if it would be safe to take two doses of the combination in one day, i.e. 4, 4, 2. Sure would like to know.

Another topic… clarification on percentages of protein, fat, carbs. I’m recording my food consumption (I know I don’t HAVE to, but want to get a sense of things), and it seems I’m ending up every day with under 10% carbs,, 20-30% protein, and 50-60% fat. I know what you say about fat, but want to be reassured that that’s not too high for a post-menopausal gal. I also note that I am fully satisfied and not hungry, (was snarfing down every carb in site this past fall!), and eat well, but calorie intake is only about 900Kcal per day. I’m fine with it (recovering from foot surgery, so not very active right now), but it seems low on paper.

My son would like to see information on low-carbing for men who recreationally body build. So many of the bodybuilding sites promote very high carb, and say that he’ll burn muscle without high carbs, and develop kidney problems, so he’d like the Dr. Eade’s opinion on this. How does the protein, fat and carb balance work with this???

Finally, could you discuss any updated information that has come out after your Low-Carb Comfort Cookbook re: Soy protein. I have a Soy protein shake 3-4 times per week because I don’t prefer whey; however, you mentioned in the preface to the cookbook that some research was suggesting that the manufacturing process for soy protein isolates might make it harmful.

It appears from all of these comments that you may have several years’ worth of bloggin to do! See how needed and appreciated you are!

Thanks so much

Thanks, Dr. Eades.

I maintain a very high quality low carb diet! well, cough cough, except for over the holidays… anyway, doc says my symptoms (lumpy finger joints-the ones closest to the fingernail, and a really sore toe joint, which appeared outta nowhere) dont look like gout. He thinks it’s garden variety arthritis. Blood tests and xrays on the way…

thanks for the info on gout/low carb, I think I’ll pass it on to someone I know who really does have gout. Of course he blames high fat foods…

Keep me posted. I didn’t think it was gout.