Nutrition Research: "Dissonant With Scientific Principles"

But by not training mentees in the basics of science and skepticism, the nutrition field has fostered the use of measures that are so profoundly dissonant with scientific principles that they will never yield a definitive conclusion. As such, we now have multiple generations of nutrition researchers who dominate federal nutrition research and the peer review of that work, but lack the critical thinking skills necessary to critique or conduct sound scientific research.

Steve McIntyre has some of the details.

"Something I've been eating is doing bad things to my body."

Adrienne Dellwo:

I'm really not loving this diet. I've been cranky, I've had headaches, and I've caught myself grinding my teeth multiple times. I have cravings that rapid-cycle from one thing to the next. The food I'm eating rarely makes me feel full and satisfied.

But there is a silver lining - my inflammation is way down. I've lost several pounds. I can wear my wedding ring without my finger going numb, and my hair isn't falling out in clumps. My pain is down, especially in my hands, where I've had nerve compression. My hip, which still aches, isn't locking up on me, and I can go down stairs without that painful catch in my knee. I've even ridden my bike a little.

What that tells me is: something I've been eating is doing bad things to my body. …

Does Dairy Cause Cystic Acne?

Cystic acne caused by dairy?

… having suffered with cystic acne all my life, I recently discovered that milk is the cause. It makes sense since I was allergic to milk as a child but didn’t think about the effects it would have in my adulthood. I’ve [quit] drinking or eating anything with dairy and haven’t had a new cyst for 4 months. Prior to the non-dairy diet, I would get a cyst every 2 weeks. Anyway, if you’ve been a long time sufferer, maybe avoiding milk will help you too.

One more:

… a few years ago I decided I’m gonna stop drinking milk, and I WAS drinking only lactose free milk for a while but I read something about milk contributing to hair loss and cysts, so just stopped drinking milk and switched to almond milk (kroger family stores has the best one, closest in consistency and flavor to real milk than any other alternative)… guess what? NO MORE THIGH CYSTS! …

A Cause of Chronic Immune System Activation

You want to know a secret? An overlooked cause of chronic immune system activation?

It's right there on your plate: Nutrition.

Forget about "gut flora disbalance" or somesuch BS. Forget about makebelieve "latent viruses" supposedly hiding somewhere in the tissue (hiding like commies during McCarthy's withhunt). If you want to know what has the potential to activate the immune system, you should look on your plate.

For decades I had acne (and other inflammation of the skin) and it only receded when I reduced dairy. When I increased dairy again, the acne came back. Over the past year  I had to learn that acne can be caused by other (ruminant) animal products like veal, lamb or sheep.

Got milk? Maybe that's the reason you got an activated immune system.

Connecting gut problems with nutrition should be easy, one thinks. So if one has known gut problems, why not think about nutritional causes? And from my experience, I can say that skin tissue (and oral mucosa) can be affected by nutrition – and the skin is probably (considering the path nutrients take through the bloodstream) the furthest away from the gut*. So it is only a small leap to consider that every tissue between the gut and the skin can be affected negatively by nutrition. Right?

There is only one way to find out: Do an elimination diet. (Almost) no doctor will help you that, no "multi-center microbiology deep-sequencing study" will help you with that, and certainly no virus-hunter (real or imaginary) will help you with that.



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* Unless of course you consider that mathematically the gut wall and the skin are part of the same surface. And that evolutionary the different epithelial tissues might be very closely related anyway.

A Sensible Elimination Diet

A sensible elimination diet:

My elimination diet started yesterday, so it's too soon to know anything. Right now, I'm getting used to the restrictions and figuring out how to handle them while still actually eating.…

Here's the list of foods I can't have for the next 30 days:

• All dairy products,
• All gluten-containing products,
• All processed foods,
• All refined sugar,
• Most sweeteners, including honey, molasses, brown sugar, and corn syrup,
• All nightshade vegetables/fruits (tomatoes, green peppers, potatoes, etc.),
• Corn and corn-containing products,
• Fatty meats, including beef, pork, and veal,
• Alcohol,
• Caffeine,
• Processed foods,
• Vinegar,
• Peanuts and pistachios,
• Eggs,
• Margarine, shortening, and refined oils,
• Strawberries and citrus.

And BTW:

My rheumatologist has been prescribing this diet for years, and she says she's seen a lot of people make remarkable progress with it. One woman with rheumatoid arthritis and fairly severe joint damage not only lowered her pain and inflammation on this diet, the doctor told me, her joints actually began to repair themselves. Another patient went from nearly bedridden to out working in the garden in just a couple of months. She mentioned several other success stories, many with the added benefit of weight loss.

Don't Trust The Casing

I have been eating pork and fish lately, no more lamb, no more poultry and what can I say, I had a relative quiet time with regards to acne. But every now and then I got very very weak acne, and now I know why: It's those darn sausages.

And the problem seams not to be what is put inside the sausage, but rather what holds the sausages together. Because, even though the Frankfurters I ate were pork sausages, the casing was sheep. And that was not declared on the ingredient list, only "natural casing" was listed – but the manufacturer confirmed it was sheep when questioned.

Darn, one can not trust those ingredient lists.

I think all animal products from Bovidae (and possibly Ruminantia) are a problem for me. I know that beef/veal/dairy is a problem for me, and I know that lamb is a problem for me. I now know that sheep is a problem as well. I will not touch deer, moose, goat and antelope any time soon, that's for sure.

If this extents to all even-toed ungulates (and therefore Suina are not good for me as well) I will see: I plan to go on a meat-free diet, with fish being the only animal product (been holding this off for months, wanted to do this for long). Let's see where that goes.

The One Where I Find Out That Sugar Is Bad For Me

Well, this episode had to come…  I previously poo-pooed the idea that sugar might be contributing to disease – well, I was wrong.

I radically removed sugar (aka "sucrose", which is half glucose and half fructose) and removed fructose from my diet for a couple of weeks now, but continued to consume dextrose (aka "glucose"). And what do you know, the some problems I had with muscle pain went away (mainly the pain during the day and evening went away – my sleep is still not refreshing, and my muscles are awful in the morning).

Now I reintroduced sugar for a short time (ate some fruits yesterday), and today my muscle problems returned. And with it came the indescribable "weird" feeling.

Huh.

As fructose (and fructose in sucrose!) is metabolised in the liver – and unlike glucose, only in the liver – this would indicate a problem with my liver. Which would tie in with the increased GPT value (aka ALT) I had after eating dairy for 10 days in March 2013.

So liver sub-clinical liver problems can manifest with muscle pain. What do you know.

(How I wish I could go back to 2010 and correct some bad decisions I made made back then in order to battle my ME/CFS. I had to find out all by myself and followed the low-carb idiots, and the Paleo beef idiots, and the ME/CFS pathogen idiots – and got seriously hurt as a reward.)

[Addendum] If I take Ibuprofen (commonly known as "Advil") for migraine/headache, then my migraine goes away, but I get both muscle pain (albeit muted) and similar "weird" feeling (even at "only" 300mg Ibuprofen) – more indication that actually I have a liver problem.

The Paleo Fallback Diet

I was thinking: If I could go back, and start all over with regards to nutrition, what would I do (with what I have learned)? I think I would do (what I would call) a "Paleo Fallback Diet", basically a Paleo based "elimination diet". I think the minimal diet would look something like that:

• Fish (but not shellfish)
• White rice (but not brown rice, nor wild rice)
• Potatoes
• Plantains
• Coconut Fat
• Greens (like green-leaf salad)
• Maybe some tubers or carrots (maybe)
• Salt
• Water

Of course, if someone has known problems with any of that, they should not eat it (and try to find something safe to replace it). But as far as I know, these foods should be "safe" for the majority of people in the world – it should be safe to fall-back to these (and only these) foods for an indefinite time. The only exception might be potatoes (darn, if I knew).

I would try to eat only from the above list, for at least a month. Prepare the foods freshly if possible, and best not to use anything that comes with a ingredient list.

And I would especially remove the following foods from my diet, for at least a month:

• Remove all dairy, beef, veal and lamb
• Remove all cereal grains
• Remove all seed oils (with the sole exception of coconut fat) and remove margarine!
• Remove eggs and chicken
• Remove all other meats and shellfish (except fish)
• Remove all sugar ("sucrose") and fructose (and remove honey, and even go so far and remove all fruits except plantains)
• Remove soy
• Remove beans/lentils/pulse and so on

After I have eaten this diet for a month, I would then go and reintroduce certain foods for a few days at a time. Eat some bread, see what it does, and then remove it again from nutrition, see what that does. Wait a few days, then reintroduce dairy for a few days, see what it does, and then remove it again. And so on. Try pork, then remove again. Then maybe try shellfish, then remove again.

This would still be not a perfect way to find out what health problem is caused by what food, but it would enormously help compared to the blind stumbling that I had to do.

Some Thoughts On Diseases (And Nutrition)

Just some thoughts I had lingering in the back of my mind and which I want to write down (rather quickly and crudely):

• If an chronic disease has no clearly determined cause, assume nutritional causes.
• To determine if your chronic disease has an nutritional cause, you need to do what is basically an elimination diet – there is no way round that. Probably the most popular such diet is the Paleo Diet, which has the advantage of having lots of recipes out there. Personally I think it is best to Remove evolutionary novel foods from nutrition (e.g. remove milk, remove dairy, remove seed oils, remove wheat, remove cereal grains) and then to see if it helps. You can start small (e.g. only remove milk, or reduce the amount of dairy), and if that helps, then you can try to make the next step (e.g. remove all dairy).
• If gluten-free grains (or lactose-free dairy) helps, consider removing all grains (or dairy) because even these "free" products can contain other substances that can make problems (like lectins in cereal grains or cow-milk protein in dairy) .
• If something helps partially, make sure to remove all foods of similar origin, and see if it helps further. E.g. if removing milk helps, then remove all dairy, and remove beef, and remove veal (consider removing lamb as well!). Or if removing wheat helps, then remove all cereal grains. Or if removing eggs helps, then remove poultry (chicken, turkey, …) as well.
• Once you have removed a food for some time (e.g. a month or two), then consider to do a challenge to see if the symptoms return (e.g. for a couple of days). Make sure you change noting else during that time!
• If you buy food: Milk and cereal grains tend to be in everything.
• With some diseases I suspect that one can get (almost) full remission. With other diseases one might only stop the active disease process and avoid further damage (which might be plenty for some disease).
• You need to test removing foods yourself! Do not trust a lab to find this for you, do not trust a doctor to know what nutritional problems you have, and actually while we are at it: do not trust anybody (not even me). You have to run these nutritional trials yourself, to see what causes the problems you have.

Anecdote: Even Gluten-Free Bread Does Cause Unwanted Symptoms

Yesterday evening, my mother made some gluten-free bread. I had not eaten any form of cereal grains in a long time and wanted to try it out. After I had eaten a nice (but not excessive) portion of this gluten-free bread, I started to get some unwanted symptoms:

• First of all within maybe 15 to 20 minutes I started to get (mildly) sweaty, without any apparent cause – it wasn't particularly warm, and I did not do any unusually demanding physical activity which would explain this
• On the same evening, I noticed a very very slight case of heartburn
• Then now, at 4 in the morning I awake (something I had not done in a long time; Now in summer I usually awake at around 7), slightly sweaty, and with a slightly stronger case of heartburn than yesterday

Needless to say, I feel – after that little sleep – more awful than usually.

So this is my interpretation:

1. Whatever the cause, it is not caused by gluten – as the bread was gluten free
2. Whatever the cause, it is not caused by carbs (or starch) – as I have been eating (lots) of potatoes and glucose in the last weeks
3. I have to assume, that the symptoms are the direct result of eating this piece of gluten-free bread

No One Can Be Told

I learned two interesting things today about nutrition – a bit of a red pill moment again.

As Morpheus said:

Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more.

The first thing I learned: no one can be told what nutritional sensitivities she/he has – they have to see it for themselves, they have to try it out. There are no reliable medical tests, and quite definitly no exhaustive knowledge about what foodstuff causes problems.

Which leads me to the second thing I learned: A food that is fine (or almost fine) for one person, can be awful (health wise) for other people. And conversely, a food that is awful for one person (health wise) can be fine (or almost fine) for other people.

So, if someone has health problems (even health problems that are not commonly associated with nutrition, like e.g. depression), and if this person wants to find out if there is a connection between their health and their nutrition, they have to run personal experiments. Remove dairy, see if it helps. Remove fruits, see if it helps. Remove soy, see if it helps. And so on. Then reintroduce, see if the problems return, and then remove the foodstuff again.

Having said that, I think there are three "main" suspects that one should check out first: 1. Seed oils and PUFA overconsumption. 2. Dairy and pasteurized milk and 3. Grains

(On a personal note: Since removing all dairy – even Ghee – and removing beef/veal, and removing some of the fruits, and further reducing my PUFA intake, I managed to loose 9 kg, about 18 pounds, since March. Initially the pounds came down fast, but now I kind of reached a plateau – I have to really watch out how much I eat.

I now increased carbs again, reduced meat, became ANAL about reducing PUFAs and lost another two to three pounds. I currently eat a diet which consists of potatoes, coconut fat, vegetables, some meat, sometimes rice and sometimes fruit. Low PUFA, normal to high SAT fat, low to normal protein, normal to low carbs. No seed oils, no dairy/milk, no beef/veal, no lamb, no grains, no soy, no eggs. I have the impression that when I eat less meat, that I feel better, so I am considering reducing meat further, maybe have some vegetarian days. Unlike "full" fasting days, this should be something I could manage.)

Atopic Dermatitis ("Neurodermitis") Caused By Dairy and Eggs?

Another chronic skin condition which is possibly caused by (pasteurized) milk and dairy: Atopic Dermatitis ("Neurodermitis").

The German weekly "Der Spiegel" had this to report in August 2011 (translation mine):

… After Nina Meier's odyssey through doctors offices and many treatments, the turn came with a few words: "Abstain from cow's milk and eggs," advised a general practitioner. "I said to myself, shit, I'll simply try it," says Meier. "It can't get any worse." For one week the symptoms got worse - but then came the turning point. "I could rub off my skin like scabs, underneath new skin came to light. After the old skin had gradually peeled off, it was fine."

Since then she has never been in treatment for their eczema again. With regards to dermatologists she is now skeptical. Nina Meier says she had trusted doctors too much and "ignored nutrition during the search for the cause, because the doctors said nutrition did not play a role". Meanwhile, she can tolerate even a little bit of cow's milk or egg. "And even if my body reacts, I won't get no stressed anymore. Because I now know the cause." …

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/gesellschaft/jahrelange-fehltherapie-gefangen-in-der-eigenen-haut-a-780722.html

The entire article in "Der Spiegel" is a truly horror story of her various treatments by "evidence based" medical industry – at least it has an happy end for her. What about the countless others who are stuck in this ordeal?

So after Acne, Aphthous Ulcers, Behçet's and Psoriasis, I can add this to my growing list. Why is it the skin, that is the "target"? What is the common mechanism here? I'm sure it will be fascinating to read the mechanism, once medical science will find it out in a couple of decades… I sure hope I live that long.

Et tu, Mutton?

So in addition to cow products (especially dairy and veal), it seems that lamb does at well cause Acne/Behçet's like symptoms for me.

Tough look.

Interesting was that veal caused much more problems than beef, and that lamb is on the same order as veal. Something is different in the meat from those young animals.

If other bovid animals are the same for me? Seems like the entire family of Bovidae might be bad for me – must be some shared protein or something…

Cochrane: No Health Benefits By Reducing Saturated Fat

Via That Paleo Guy:

There are no clear health benefits of replacing saturated fats with starchy foods (reducing the total amount of fat we eat).

Oh my.

Clearly the people at Cochrane just don't know how to look for the "proper" evidence. After all, haven't we be told for decades that Saturated Fat is THE bogey man? What's next? That they tell us that statins don't work?

Lu·di·crous No·tions: Calories In = Calories Out

lu·di·crous

(Adjective)
So foolish, unreasonable, or out of place as to be amusing.

Synonyms
ridiculous - laughable - absurd - funny - comical

no·tions

(Noun, plural of no·tion)
1. A conception of or belief about something.
2. A vague awareness or understanding of the nature of something.

Synonyms
haberdashery - dry goods

The "Calories In = Calories Out" hypothesis is based on the assumption that an healthy human body has no mechanisms for regulating energy uptake and energy expenditure.

What a ludicrous notion.

Well, for starters there is "hunger" and "satiety", which clearly regulate energy uptake.

Then there is the "the urge to go out and do something" (for lack of a better word) and "fatigue", which clearly regulate how much physical activity you do.

And these are only two of the high level manifestations of regulation mechanisms that are most "visible" therefore on the top of my mind. If you look you will certainly find mechanisms on various levels, like in the gut, or even in the cells – the neat insulin and insulin resistance thingy comes to my mind.

But this is of course only true if you use not the wrong fuel for your machine human body (wrong food = most of the evolutionary novel food), and only if those mechanisms are not broken. Once you start using the wrong fuel and things start to break down, all bets are off. Fuck up your insulin sensitivity by using the wrong fuel? Congrats, you just put yourself on the path to obesity and diabetes…

Eat beef, butter and egg, help cure TB?

Dr. Briffa on an interesting experiment:

… while I was researching this post I came across an interesting human study in which some attempt was made to assess the role of cholesterol in immunity in humans [3].

This study took 21 individuals who had confirmed infection with tuberculosis (TB). All of the individuals were treated with standard TB medication (four antibiotics taken in combination) over a period of 8 weeks.

Of the 21 participants, 10 were given a cholesterol-rich diet (800 mg of cholesterol a day – about the amount of cholesterol found in 5 medium-sized eggs). The rest of the study participants were to eat a diet which contained 250 mg of cholesterol each day.

After two weeks of treatment, 80 per cent of those eating a high-cholesterol diet were free of TB infection, compared to only 9 per cent of the others. This difference was statistically significant. The authors of the study concluded that:

“A cholesterol-rich diet accelerated the sterilization rate of sputum cultures in pulmonary tuberculosis patients, suggesting that cholesterol should be used as a complementary measure in antitubercular treatment.”

The findings support this conclusion, but it should be borne in mind that the benefits from the diet may not have come from additional dietary cholesterol per se. The cholesterol came via enrichment of the diet with foods such as butter, beef liver and egg yolk. It’s possible, therefore, that the benefits came from other nutritional elements found in these foods, say. The authors of this study acknowledge this possibility.

On Nutrition: The "Calories In = Calories Out" Fallacy

Many people who have thought deeply about nutrition, obesity (and other health problems) will proclaim that it is clearly that "Calories In = Calories Out". They mean that if you eat more ("calories in") than you spend on physical activity ("calories out"), then you gain weight. To loose weight, they proclaim to increase physical activity and decrease food consumption.

And it has some logic to it.

But it is utter bollocks, with no personal knowledge of the problem, and it is putting the cart before the horse.

Before I changed my nutrition, I had problems with hunger. Hunger, hunger, hunger. Murderous, ravenous, hunger.

After I changed my diet to Lutz/Aktins Diet (and now more to a Paleo Diet) my hunger became what it is supposed to be: Information that my body needs food.

So I can say that clearly and unequivocally the problems I had with my hunger were caused by what I ate, which in turn caused me to eat more.

My diet was making me hungry.

Now, how is someone who is hungry supposed to eat less and exercise more?

As I said, utter bollocks.

(And it was not that my change in diet curbed my appetite – the problem was too much hunger, not too much appetite. I still enjoy very much what I eat – it's just so that I eat until I'm satiated, usually twice a day. And then I don't overeat, because like I did with the foods I used to eat. Somehow it is very difficult, if not impossible to overeat on meat, potatoes and salad, versus for example pasta.)

Anecdote: Remove Dairy, Remove Brain Fog

Another one for the list:

I feel great. I actually feel as if there’s nothing wrong with me at this point in time. Nothing hurts, my brain is functioning adequately, my mood is euthymic, I’m never hungry, I have acceptable energy levels. Occasional mild anxiety/irritability but kava kava takes care of that (thank you Woo).

Was a stressful week at work. I was like “so what, let’s deal with this shit in a stepwise fashion” and handled it just fine.

This is a very unusual occurrence in the life of Sid, that nothing is hurting or broken. Is it possible I’ve been poisoning myself with dairy all these years? I haven’t felt this good since I first went VLC two years ago. In hindsight, I wasn’t eating that much dairy at the start because I wanted to lose weight as rapidly as possible and we all know cheese is stalling.

My brain works again. I don’t have horrible brain fog and the feeling that brain is functioning at 20% capacity.

(emphasis mine)

It's been only a week, so one will have to wait, I'll guess. But it looks promising.

Anecdote: Paleo helps for Fibromyalgia

Robb Wolf has the details.

On Nutrition: The "Healthy Food" Paradigm Is Wrong

We all hear and talk about (supposed) "healthy" foods versus (supposed) "unhealthy" foods. Now I think this blinds us to reality. I think talking of "healthy" foods leads to two mistakes:

1. We think that we can offset consumption of "unhealthy" foods with consumption of "healthy" foods
2. We think that the more "healthier" food we eat, that the more "healthier" we get.

Now if we define as "unhealthy" food as some food that causes disease (by containing a disease causing agent), say through interference with the immune system or intereference with the endocrine system (so practically an low-level poison) then no amount of "healthy" food will offset that disease causing mechanism.

If we define "healthy" food as an food containing essential nutrients (water, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins, and so on), and only nutrients (no disease causing agents), then we will see that overeating such "healthy" food will not make us more healthy. In fact, for most foods constituents we have a certain range that our body needs and is able to regulate. The mechanisms with which the body regulates this are hunger and taste.

For the most basic food constituent – water – we will get problems if we consume too little and get problems if consume too much water. And the same goes for everything, from salt to meat, from vegetables to tubers. A healthy individual, with foods from his/her environment of evolution, will choose those foods (and then in the "right" amount) to stay healthy. No animal needs to be fed "healthy" food to stay healthy, no animal needs to be told to not overeat, and no animal needs to be told to exercise (I just need to look at our dog to see how much he likes to run), if it is in its natural environment (or something that is close enough).

Conversly: If an food is not present in the natural environment of an animal, then it has the potential to cause disease. And the same goes for the human animal.