Paleo Water Update

Wasn't sure where to discuss this, but I figured it might as well be on the blog.  A week or so ago, I blogged on Paleo Water.  James Fell also blogged on this atrocity that popped up in ads on Jimmy Moore's Livin la Vida Low Carb blog.  His post:  Paleo has jumped the shark.  

At that time, the Paleo Water page was green and looked like a spoof.  There was a caveman top left, Jimmy Moore's eight year old "thinker pose" photo on top right with “As recommended by Jimmy Moore of Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb” .  It then listed, along with alkalinity, all the ways paleo water was more like the water our paleolithic ancestors drank.  Free of bacteria and parasites, the water was touted as "as close as scientifically possible to the water our genetic blueprint demands – but no longer receives".  

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Aug. 22 Over the Hump Bump: Paleo Summit Flashback

I changed the title of this post entirely for obvious reasons.  

So, in T-minus 4 days the world will finally achieve Cholesterol Clarity!  Thanks to NYT Bestselling (hopeful is he) author Jimmy Moore.   The banner states that:

So I looked at the list of experts and recalled this post highlighting how one of them, Dr. Cate Shanahan, blamed carbs for being turned into LDL and then make us fat.  You can browser search to "Skip to here!" and skip the intro stuff.   You might also be interested in my notes from the full presentation, HERE.  I've also had a chance to see what she says about LDL in her book Deep Nutrition, a whole 'nother theory there, and her interview with Jimmy for the book was quite enlightening.  Beware the shaman lab tech and doctor trying to read your bloodwork tea leaves!  If you don't get hungry between meals you are a healthy fat burner ... don't worry, be happy.  

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Quantum Bullshit

I don't follow Jack Kruse's antics much any more.  Every now and then, however, he comes up in a social media or email note.  He's still at it -- though there is no longer an answer at his practice phone number, so hopefully that means he's no longer actively performing neurosurgery.  From a Krusite on FB:  

Humans are designed to eat an electron dense diet because they have a shortened gut and expanded brain that steepens their energy needs and restricts their sleep needs to 7.5- 8.5 hours. This implies that humans must have evolved around a diet high in electron density from food and their environment.

It is hard to believe Jack has been talking this electron nonsense for going on two years now.  I suppose this is what happens in a community that fails to police itself when it comes to science ... but I digress.

In any case, I have apparently missed the first however many incoherences Jack has created in his EMF series but since he's still on the radar screen, I thought I'd bump this post up.

Folks, all of your food macros contain electrons.  The macros are all converted to acetyl CoA that feeds into Krebs, or they can feed in at various parts along the way and "participate" in the exact same redox reactions in your mitochondria.  The very same.  If there is anyone who has specific questions about Kruse's latest Quantum Bullshit, feel free to ask in comments, but please provide me a Readers' Digest version and/or a short quote.  I simply cannot read this man's blogs.  

---

Original Publish Date:  3/5/12

Being a science geek, I have no clue what the average Joe really thinks when they hear the term "quantum" thrown around.  I imagine that most folks' eyes glaze over other than to think that it must be something really complicated and all that.   And like Entropy dude's blog, one can't possibly be able to understand all those Σ's and such.  I contend that when talking human physiology and metabolism, use of the word quantum is ... well ... an alert that a load of steamin' pre-coprolites is on its way.  

This may not be the most technically accurate definition of what is meant by quantum phenomenon, but it's certainly a workable one for most people.  All atoms have electrons orbiting their nuclei and these electrons can only occupy certain orbits or energy levels.  The closer to the nucleus an electron is, the lower its energy state.  In their "ground state",  electrons will be in the lowest energy level "shells" possible, only occupying a higher level when all lower ones are filled.  Under certain conditions, electrons can be excited and they "jump" up to the next shell.  All good excitement must come to an end, and in short order the electrons fall back down to the energy level from whence they came emitting a photon.    The whole area of quantum mechanics deals with describing these phenomena.  At this level, electrons sometimes behave like particles, and sometimes like waves, and discussions of the wave-particle duality is something used to torture science students through the ages.   But the good news for you and me is that none of this matters to the basics of human metabolism.  

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Quotations: Lustig on Fructose and Glucose in Nature

Glucose

Despite its absolute necessity for life (see chapter 10), dietary glucose isn’t perfect. When it exists in nature without fructose, it’s called “starch,” and it truly does supply “empty calories,” energy for either storage or burning.

Fructose

Fructose is never found alone in nature. Rather, it is always partnered with its more benign sister molecule, glucose.

Robert Lustig,   Fat Chance

p.154, 156

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Patenting Pharmaceutical Protocols and Dietary Interventions?

Around a month ago, I was alerted to Jeff Volek's involvement with a company called UCAN that markets sports drinks containing SuperStarch.    I blogged on this here.  The SS is touted as being made by a "patent pending" heat/moisture process.  So a little digging was done by Lerner and then I followed the trail, and lo and behold, Volek himself is not on the patent app for SS -- that is the Scottish company that developed it.  No, Volek's patent is (links in comments on that post):  

 "The present invention is directed to a method of controlling serum insulin levels in an individual, the method comprising the step of administering to the individual a food composition comprising heat and moisture treated starch (HMT starch)."

Now I questioned this in the comments.  What would the meaning be of such a permit?  Nobody else could administer UCAN to fat-adapted ultra-marathon runners?  It makes no sense.

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Quotations: Taubes on Pathological Science

INTERVIEWER Marc Hellerstein thought that the obesity epidemic was caused by people being sedentary?

TAUBES He believed that the key is whether you’re sedentary compared to how you used to be. When I told him about the Pima and the Sioux Indians and this 1981 study of obesity in oil field workers, he had an excuse for everything. So the Pima and the Sioux Indians, they lived on reservations, so they could be obese because they were relatively sedentary, at least more sedentary than they used to be. And the oil field workers, well, they're Mexican-American, so they have some kind of "thrifty" gene going. You know this is what pathological science is: a field in which you can find a reason to explain away all negative evidence. In pathological science, it’s no longer possible to refute the hypothesis. Remember, science is about trying to test your hypothesis and refute it, but in a field like this, if you test it and come up with a counter-example, the counter-example is just explained away with whatever comes to mind. Negative evidence never means anything. So you have an obese person who's sedentary, that's proof of my hypothesis. If you have an obese person who's very active — at least, compared to most people today — the Sioux Indians, for instance, who were so poor they had to walk down to the river to get their drinking water; who had no televisions, no cars; they had to walk outside to evacuate their bowels — those people are obese because they used to be more active than they are now.

~ Gary Taubes, January 2008

Interview with Seth Roberts 

Leaving aside Gary's example here, and focusing on his discussion of science, I contend that low carb "science" has long since passed into the realm of the pathological.

Stossel's Food Bunk I ~ Paging Dr. Attia!

Gary Taubes and Peter Attia were among the guests on a John Stossel program entitled Food Bunk a little while ago.  You may still be able to catch reruns if you so desire.   Long story short, Stossel discusses the role of government in regulating and recommending foods and nutrition.  It's worth a watch if you can find it, more for some of the other guests and information.  But thanks to Eenfeldt, I was made aware of the 8-minute appearance of the Lipidic Duo of Taubes and Attia, speaking of course on how our government is/was wrong about fats and the nutritional guidelines.  (I've decided I need a new Lego superhero look for Attia, the old one just had too much hair, please excuse the coloring on the face/head there, it was a quick job.)

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NuSI, NuSI ... What to make of NuSI

Boy Wonder Attia has called off his
war on insulin, but his character lives on

Well Gary Taubes and Peter Attia -- or, if there was ever a time to refer to them by their superhero Asylum names, Fatman and Glucagon  -- have launched their project, NuSI, the Nutritional Science Initiative.

Finally!  Some real proper science will get done, free from the stranglehold of bias inherent in the evil entanglements of government and industry -- oh, and idiot scientists operating with suboptimal intelligence..  

Why any scientist would even apply for a grant from an organization headed by a man with such disdain for them is really beyond me, but ...

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Negative Ion Therapy

Sigh ... I see Mark Sisson has addressed the concept of ion therapy in a recent post.  I had ions on the mind while constructing my last post and just had to weigh in here.  In it he makes the following statement:

Because they are either positively or negatively charged, ions are “mobile.”

Umm ... say what?  I think he's referring to dissolved ions that move within the solvent liquid (usually water).  They do this by means of diffusion in still water, or by going along for the ride in a moving liquid such as a babbling brook or your shower.  But I'm sitting here staring at a bunch of ions in my salt shaker and they're looking rather sedentary to me.   If by "mobile" he means they jump out into the air, then this an even more misleading statement.

He then says (bolded emphasis his)

Negative ions generally appear in natural settings in greater numbers than positive ions.

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A Friday JAMA-lama Ding Dong!

Well ... I wasn't really going to weigh in further past using that recent JAMA article (EDIT:  full text no longer free at JAMA, see link below) as an example of where statistics can lead us astray.  But ... as is probably expected, this study has kicked up some dust in the community.  I'm sure I'll miss a few, but here's the weighing in so far:

Stephan Guyenet

Anthony Colpo

Marion Nestle

Don Matesz

Fat Head

That's just the blog posts, not the tweets, FB postings or other social media buzz ... and I'm happy to edit in more, just drop the hint in comments.  And here's the full text of the study:  Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance

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Bad bad American Science FrUKtion

The topic of this post is a piece by the BBC in advance of blaming two American men for the obesity epidemic in the world today.  So the title comes from that.  

So Jacques Peretti weighs in with another piece on how Americans sabotaged the world with sugar  with:  What caused the obesity epidemic in the West?  Jacques is pictured at right behind a ginormous platter of food.  For a piece blaming sugar, one would think the picture would feature pastries and a Big Gulp, but no, it's bread surrounding what appears to be a bunch of dippy fatty stuffs.  Oh ... and we don't just eat too much food, right?  In this latest piece of pseudoscience journalism run amok, Peretti focuses heavily on quotes from Lustig.  I'll come back to some of the rest of that when I get to critiquing the "science" in Part III of the Skinny on Obesity series.  And let's just mention but move on from the most ridiculous statement in that article now shall we?

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Review & Critique: The Skinny on Obesity ~ Intro and Part I

Staying true to one of the founding missions of the Asylum, there's a YouTube series entitled The Skinny on Obesity, from University of California, that deserves critical attention.   If you're going to put forth science to explain obesity and associated disease, especially in the affirmative sense ("fact", "we know", "is" rather than "possibly", "probably", "evidence supports"), it should be correct to the best of current knowledge.   I've made it through five of the episodes to date, and sad to say, this series falls far short of that mark.  

Thus far, there have been three contributors:  Dr. Robert Lustig, Elissa Epel, and Barbara Laraia.  Almost everyone is familiar with Lustig, the last two listed as affiliated with The Center for Obesity Assessment and Study at UC but we learn nothing about their backgrounds.   By far the major contributor to the science is Lustig and he gets some basic things so horribly wrong they must be called out.  Lustig became an instant star in LC circles with his viral fructophobic YouTube video.  YouTube fame is one thing, but this series, put out by University of California, and media appearances like on 60 Minutes (that I did not see) are evidence that this man IS mainstream, and his Nature article and recent public statements can leave no doubt he is highly agenda driven with draconian goals.  Therefore it is important to examine the evidence he puts forth before we have another Ancel Keys on our hands!

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And the Cherry-Picking Baton has been passed.

I've been musing a bit in comments and asides lately over the low carb movement.  When I discovered the LC internet community in early 2009 those were some still heady days.  In retrospect I'm not sure how much it was really growing vs. the hype of same, but it was a thriving community with well traveled blogs and discussion boards.  The number of "big names" touting Taubes' alternate hypothesis was staggering, really, and reports of how the mainstream was finally catching on were frequent.  Looking back, it seems the year or so before were even headier times for low carb.   Fast forward and in 2011 many big names jumped ship, not to mention the readership of blogs like this one increased dramatically.  Even many who remain wedded to LC as the only superior answer to all ills no longer believe TWICHOO to be correct.   Many have retooled their message, clarified their positions, etc.etc.  This is clearly more difficult for some than others -- it's hard to shift gears when your entire persona is inextricably linked to Livin La Vida Low Carb after all.  So in a way, while it by no means excuses their behavior, those like Jimmy and Gary, Feinman and Westman, Carpender and Naughton, etc.etc. at least make sense to me.  These folks have built careers on, and their livelihoods are sustained by LC.   Most of the aforementioned are not about to do a Don Matesz any time soon, and many have reflexively dug in their heels to forge forward -- I hope they at least put blinders on their one trick pony for the sake of humane treatment.

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Bad What?: Science? -- Reporting? -- Blogging/Sharing?

Confession time.  I found out about that recent LC v. LF diet study from Andreas Eenfeldt's blog.  Andreas seems woefully misguided into thinking that obese Americans got that way listening to US Government guidelines and eating a low fat diet.  Any and every study that shows some advantage for LC is rapidly added to his list demonstrating that LCHF is superior and LF diets are nothing short of criminal at this point.  I'll have some personal things to say about all of this at the end of the post.  Gossip Mongers can skip to there if you like ;-) (scroll down to line, or browser search on "And so now")

In any case, in a blog post entitled New Study: High Fat Food is Good for Diabetics, Andreas cites this "news" article:  High-fat diet lowered blood sugar and improved blood lipids in diabetics.  Another low carb advocate, Dr. Eades, also tweeted the following:  RCT shows better glycemic control & improved lipid labs seen in diabetics on #lowcarb as compared to lowfat diets.  The tweet links to this report:  Questioning Carbohydrate Restriction in Diabetes Management.

Now this was an RCT = Randomized Controlled Trial.  The type of study generally considered to be the gold standard of trials, but we've discussed here before how not all RCT's are created equal, and as serendipity would have it, Andreas was one I called out in:  A Matter of Control.  In his short blog post, Andreas calls the current study at hand "a new high-quality Swedish study".  Does the study itself deserve that label?  After looking at it more closely the past few days, no.  If for no other reason, because the study participants didn't report eating the diets as prescribed.  The intended control is also limited to caloric intake.  I contend that when one is comparing diets of different macronutrient composition, one of the three must be controlled for -- e.g. held constant -- varying the other two, or the results will forever be tainted.  

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Leptin Man's TEDx Nashville Talk

Can't seem to imbed yet:  LINK

I haven't seen the whole thing yet so won't comment.  But thought I'd let my readers know the MRSA talk is up.

Edit - Classic Kruse-ism at the end:

Ideation without execution leads to deletion.

The Science Code

From Matt Metzgar

Scientific habits of mind, or the scientific process, can be succinctly summarized as the use of evidence and reason to arrive at conclusions. This sounds simple but it’s a demanding code: Take nothing for granted, form conclusions on the basis of careful observation and honest thinking, and be willing to modify those conclusions in the light of new experience.

Art Hobson, Professor Emeritus of Physics, University of Arkansas

I copied this here because I think this is a far better description of what science is, or should be, than the black swanning meme I keep hearing.  By that I mean I get pretty tired of hearing the various versions of the "a good scientist tries to disprove their hypothesis" nonsense.  Any research scientists in my audience believe that?  This is why I've said all along that there was never a need for an alternate hypothesis to explain the obesity epidemic, and further that the alternate hypothesis put forth anyway was never formulated based on observations.  Hobson continues:

In other words: Trust the universe, rather than tradition, emotion, authority figures, ancient texts, or popular vote. It’s a code that has worked surprisingly well for science. It might be science’s most important benefit.

I really like this part because it even takes a poke at so-called conventional wisdom.  However many seem to have taken countering conventional wisdom for countering's sake to the level of Olympic sport.   The "popular vote" rings true with me and can be seen in the comments sections of most posts by the likes of Eades circa 2008-2009.  I don't think I need bother with the appeal to authority, only to point out the double standard with which this activity is often engaged in.  Speaking of authority figures, however, the anti-establishmentarianism (is that a word?) rampant in the greater community continues to astound me.  Lastly his admonishment of trusting emotion is quite fitting.  Many seem to have way too much emotion invested when analyzing or discussing the science.  How you feel about a study, or how the results of a study make you feel, should have no bearing on your consideration of the evidence as presented.  In this regard, the whole n=1 thing is useful to finding what works for you, useful to share so that others might try it and it might work for them too, but totally irrelevant -- especially when unverified -- to discussions of science.

An elegans argument in insulin's favor

No, that's not a typo in the post title.  I'm referring to the nematode (aka worm) known as Caenorhabditis elegans, or C. elegans  for short.   More recently the topic of longevity has been introduced into discussions regarding diet and health, and when one looks into aging research, they will inevitably be inundated with studies involving these worms.  The caption of the picture at right is "adult and two juveniles".  Apparently there are some similarities between some genes in this worm and insulin receptor genes in humans.  I'm always intrigued when the "I am not a mouse (or rat)" crowd starts citing worm longevity research to support their theories on metabolism and endocrinology.  Surely they see that where there are differences in rodent and human physiology, these differences are dwarfed many times over when one tries to extrapolate worm physiology to humans!   

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Live Blogging from the Paleo Summit XI: Dr. Cate Shanahan

Link:  "Dr. Cate" Shanahan

Title:  The Paleo Diet vs. Top-Selling Drugs: Who Wins?

Ratings:

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼  Entertainment Value

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼  Content

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼  Informational Accuracy

☼ ☼ ☼  ☼ ☼ Overall

Summary:

Basically, just eat a low carb paleo diet folks and you won't get osteoporosis, schizophrenia and need cholesterol lowering drugs.  While Dr. Cate spends quite a bit of time discussing how diet can cure/prevent diseases, she goes into scant little detail as to what exactly she means by such a diet.  Shanahan's science is very poor.  If I were a parent I think I'd go nuts just worrying over my kid turning into a schizophrenic any day now after listening to Shanahan.  Just go paleo folks and skip all your meds.  Look, I'm on board with America being a WAY overmedicated society where doctors don't tend to pay enough attention to the role of diet and nutrition in our health.  But after listening to Cate for almost an hour, I'm seriously considering a trip to the walk-in this morning for some pills ... any pills!

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Live Blogging from the Paleo Summit III: Leptin Man!

Link:  Dr. Jack Kruse ... Neuuurosurgeon!
Title:  Leptin Circadian Cycles

Ratings:

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼  Entertainment Value

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼  Content

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼  Informational Accuracy

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼  Overall

Summary:

Everything you'd expect in thirty minutes with Dr. Jack Kruse, or Leptin Man as we call him in these parts.  Ah what the heck, it's my blog.  Can we put up that slide Jeeves?   Thanks.  OK.  What you won't get is what's billed.  Leptin circadian cycles account for a couple minutes at most of the talk, and although Croxton promises us that Jack "shares how he lost 133 pounds in a single year by correcting the 'biological mismatches' that were once prevalent in his life" there's nothing about the Leptin Reset that comes out of Jack's mouth in this talk.   Aside from using the words like evolutionary a few times, and exclaiming that paleo fixes all (no grains, limited dairy), this wasn't really a paleo "talk".  The only unifying theme was that there was no unifying theme.  Oh ... and leptin!

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Physician Phollies ~ III: Dr. Jack "Leptin Man" Kruse

In  light of recent posts by Melissa McEwen (Hunt Gather Love blog) and Danny Roddy, I decided to dust this one off that got lost in the draft bin.  Melissa's post especially got me to go get this out of storage -- she cites a few quotes from Jack that are rather mind-boggling.  Folks over at PaleoHacks are well familiar with Quiltisms on all manner of things.     It seems that the selection of speakers for AHS12 has caused a bit of consternation in the paleo world, and for good reason, IMO.  I had considered entering a talk on eating disorders but figured it would be dead on arrival when I heard that some presenters from last year were rebuked.  So didn't waste my time.  I'm glad to see that others are speaking up -- hopefully more will -- about this disturbing trend in the paleo community.  Especially, as Melissa put it in her comments, how Jimmy Moore has now become some paleo guru kingmaker.  This as the man has now announced that he's pushing 300 lbs despite going paleo after AHS11.  As the collective communities bemoan how the media is portraying paleo, they need to rethink who it is they support in this community.  Over on PaleoHacks Sean Croxton seemed a bit ruffled that his Paleo Summit has been met with negativity.  Jack Kruse on the docket will, no doubt, add to the behind-the-scenes groaning.  I would like to see the ancestral movement stem this tide as a return to a real foods diet will be the solution for most.  Such a diet can more than be supported by science.  But it has to be science, not the krispie sort.

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