That Paleo Study ...

Random bump because this is making the rounds again due to being published in the IJES this month: 

Unrestricted Paleolithic Diet is Associated with Unfavorable Changes to Blood Lipids in Healthy Subjects

---

Original Publish Date:  5/14/2013

A student, Eric Trexler, at Ohio State did a study on the paleo "lifestyle" for what appears to be an undergraduate honors thesis towards his degree in Exercise Science.  Here is the link to the full text:  Paleolithic Diet is Associated With Unfavorable Changes to Blood Lipids in Healthy Subjects.  So I thought I'd put up a quick blog with some thoughts, because a tweet is just a tweet and I've seen a few comments reading into my supposed motivations for tweeting this.  So ... let's discuss a bit and include some criticisms I've seen elsewhere on the web.

1.  It's not a peer reviewed article or a graduate thesis.  This is true so it hasn't undergone rigorous scrutiny, that shouldn't stop you or I from reviewing it ourselves and seeing if it provides any worthwhile information.

2.  The study is confounded with participation in CrossFit, yet results are attributed to the diet only ... at least this is what the title implies.   Since there is at least a sizeable subset for whom CrossFit and Paleo are synonymous with "being paleo" I might suggest that the "Paleolithic Diet" be replaced with "Popular Paleo Lifestyle".

Jimmy Moore ~ Low Carb Asset or Liability?

image link

Ahh Jimmy Moore.  

Nobody's going to say it, so I might as well start the conversation on the fact that Jimmy's "nutritional ketosis" regime has stopped working for him.   His appearance at PaleoFX New Age CONference and MLM Expo was surely shocking to some.  It shouldn't have been.  This is Jimmy Moore we're talking about and this is nothing new.  More on that in a bit, but first, how about that picture there on the right.  So proud is Jimmy that he made this his profile picture on Twitter and Facebook.  

My own personal ketogenic rehabilitation plan: 5 local pastured eggs cooked in salted Kerrygold grassfed butter with garlic spices and a whole stick of unsalted Kerrygold grassfed butter.

After returning from last week's Paleo(f)x conference travel from South Carolina to Austin, Texas, my ketones and blood sugar have been going wacky on me. So to help get things back in line again, this is a great go-to meal to push ketone levels higher, blood sugar levels lower. If you're ever struggling with ketone production, try this and see how you do.

Random comments

OK folks, this is the best I can do about the conversations I felt didn't belong in my book review.  Here is a PDF of them "printed out".  Please feel free to continue the discussion here.  Thanks!

Oh Rats!! II: Usefulness of Rat Studies & Unmotivated Fat Rats

An important result was that motivation to lever press was impairednot only in food-restricted rats working for food reinforcement (sucrose), but also in water-restricted rats working for water reinforcement.  The non-specificity of the impairment suggests that the REF diet affected general mechanisms of motivation rather than those specific to the feeding behavioral system. Taken together, these findings lend support to the hypothesis raised by scientists [28,29] and journalists [30] that obesity may not be the result of impaired motivation (lethargy).  Rather, an obesogenic diet, such as that consisting of highly processed, refined foods, may induce obesity and disrupt motivational mechanisms of the central nervous system.  This hypothesis awaits further empirical scrutiny and does not necessarily rule out the lack of will power as a contributing factor to obesity.

Three guesses who/what reference 30 is, and the first two don't count.  Oh my.

---

image link

In Oh Rats!! I, I discussed some rat research on sugar addiction (so-called).  A major player in this area in the peer review literature is Dr. Nicole Avena who has taken the leap to mass-media diet guru -- and I mean guru in the worst sense of the word.  Avena is a bit different from many of the fellow gurus, when she goes on TV and such, she has an impressive bio and research background following her, so I'm going to hold her to a higher standard.  There are two problems with her book, the first being the definitiveness with which she places blame on sugar and by extension carbs, to the exclusion of fat and/or the sugar/fat combination.  This is unquestionably in conflict with her own research findings.  The second being that she characterizes rats as "very good models of humans because we have similar brain systems and neural circuitry."   This implies that research in rats is easily translated and applicable to humans.  

Oh Rats!! I: Usefulness of Rat Studies & Sugar Addiction

Over the past several months I have fallen down more PubMed rabbit holes than I care to admit to ... and that's just for the Restriction Addiction book (which, by the way, I'm putting the finishing touches on for republishing the updated and expanded version). Research for that book was overwhelming at times because of the sheer volume of studies out there on food addiction, dopamine, food reward, obesity, eating disorders, etc.etc. A ton of them in rats. No ... my book is not a lengthy compendium with 1000 references. There are a few seminal reviews that illustrate key points.

One of these is the following from Nicole Avena PhD. :  Evidence for sugar addiction: Behavioral and neurochemical effects of intermittent, excessive sugar intake.  The PDF for this is more like a mini-book, complete with sections and content navigation.  So when I was perusing the schedule for the upcoming New Age Paleo CONference and MLM Expo (aka PaleoFX) and saw her name among the speakers I was like ... finally, they bring some cred up on the stage.  

That sentiment was short-lived, because apparently Avena was bitten by a Lustigvirus-carrying Wistar before it was sacrificed for its brain analysis.  That is to say, she has fallen prey to the low carb "science" and militant anti-sugar craze and joined the activist ranks as a hyperbole-laced-fad-diet-book author.  Yes, she teamed up with a Gary Taubes fanman (who lost weight with low carb and dedicated his contribution to the book to Taubes) and wrote a book:  Why Diets Fail (Because You're Addicted to Sugar). The subtitle implies that SCIENCE EXPLAINS all of this.

The 2005 Biochemistry of Obesity, Marks' Basic Medical Biochemistry

A short "image park" in my ongoing effort to document the state of the textbook science of fat storage, obesity and adipocyte function circa the writing of a three PhD thesis worthy tome.   This from Marks' Basic Medical Biochemistry, 2nd Edition, 2005. 

Thus, although activation of hormone-sensitive lipase during fasting results in the release of fatty acids from adipocytes, the release is carefully modulated through glyceroneogenesis and re-synthesis of triglycerides.

Book Review: Talking Back to Gurus by Mike Howard

Talking Back to Health Gurus:
An Un-revolutionary and Un-sexy Guide to Fat Loss     by Mike Howard

---

Note: This might look/sound familiar, because Mike's book was in the Superhero bundle my book was a part of. I hope several others will become available individually as well for those that weren't interested in a bigger investment. 

Talking Back to Diet Gurus:
An Un-Revolutionary and Un-Sexy Guide to Fat Loss

Cancer and Insulin

A lot of the metabolism-focused cancer talk seems to coalesce around insulin and its cousin IGF-1  (see for example colon cancer , breast cancer, or do any Google Scholar search on the topic).   Moreso than glucose lowering or ketone producing, the keto for cancer folks seem to be trying to reduce insulin (see this recent blog post).  

So yesterday when I relistened (because sometimes I just torture myself) to Gary Taubes' walk back his G3P argument, something else caught my ear at the end, especially in light of the earlier convo in the podcast about protein and insulin.  Have a listen [I cropped together just 4 minutes for you :-) ]

Jonathan Bailor Fact Check

Jonathan Bailor has earned himself a high dishonor of his own blog post linking to the bad science in his books.  He earned this because he has perpetuated past 2010 the flawed alpha glycerol phosphate aka glycerol 3 phosphate aka G3P part of Gary Taubes' fairy tales on obesity.  

Better Starch Digestion = Lower Weight?

This paper was posted by Denise Minger on Facebook last night:

Low copy number of the salivary amylase gene predisposes to obesity

It has been known for some time that humans carry different numbers of copies of the genes responsible for producing amylase.  Amylase is the enzyme in human saliva that begins the breakdown of starches in the mouth.   Obligate carnivores, such as cats, lack salivary amylase.   The copy number of the AMY1 gene in humans range from 2 to 12 in this study (on FB, Denise states that it can vary from 1 to 15).  Want more information on this, try Chris Masterjohn's presentation from AHS12.  The amylase part is pretty near the beginning.