Virgin Leptinade Poisoning! Last Glass of the Stuff!!

This will probably be the last post, other than perhaps dumping articles over in the library, regarding "leptin spikes".  And I don't normally link to and discuss abstracts, but in this case the abstract says it all.   Over on Mercola's hatchet job on starch, as discussed in my previous post, Ron Rosedale MD provided that science he's supposedly bridging over into medicine to support his contention that carbs "spike" leptin.  Here was the first comment addressing yours truly:

Because you do not know the science, does not mean that it doesn't exist. This is over 10 years old.  There are many articles subsequently that support and verify this. "Evidence That Glucose Metabolism Regulates Leptin Secretion from Cultured Rat Adipocytes" www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../9449624 Endocrinology,1998 Feb;139(2):551-8 "We conclude that glucose transport and metabolism are important factors in the regulation of leptin expression and secretion."

His repetition of the citation later in comments is illustrative of Rosedale's debate tactics.  The strategy is to (a) allude to a wealth of research supporting one's opinion, (b) cite one study that appears to support one's contention but not really, and (c) repeat as often as necessary using the same one cite, and apparently (d) hoping nobody will notice that the "many articles" and "robust evidence" has never materialized.  I've called him on the in vitro  study previously, and it is amazing the ease with which one can assemble a landslide of research that demolishes his claim.  I'm going to leave you with this last one:

A Glass of Extra Virgin Unspiked Lepitinade Please!

Why do some of these things land in my lap when life gets so busy?  Over on Mercola's site, I've been tangling up a bit with Ron "Spiked Leptinade with my Science Krispies" Rosedale.   Now I don't expect Rosedale to start following my blog or anything, but I did post links to certain posts over there to support my contention that carbs do NOT spike leptin.  By any definition, they do not.  Instead of recognizing this and backing off (and hoping nobody notices, a la Taubes), Rosedale has doubled down on his assertion that carbs spike leptin.  In support of his contention, the science he offers up is ... drumroll please ... a more than decade old study on isolated cultured rat adipocytes.  This wouldn't drip so with irony were it not for the fact that Rosedale shoves his massive clinical experience with live humans in yo' face every chance he gets.  You see, I don't possess his vast clinical experience so I must be in error interpreting the whole blood v. plasma blood glucose level data in a 45+ year old study (more on that to come!!)  Yet, when presented with a sampling of human data from clinical studies ... then Rosedale turns a blind eye.  It gets worse.  I called him on relying on this study to advance his point.  His response?  More of the same about how I don't know the science.  Here's what he said:

Taubes' Rat Problem

No ... rats have not infested Taubes' batcave replica of the AHS lecture hall.  Rather, Gary steps in it yet again with his discussion of the Cafeteria rat study in one of his lame attempts to debunk Stephan Guyenet's works on food reward.   The Cafeteria rat study he was referring to is, in my opinion, the most relevant animal study on the etiology of the modern obesity epidemic in Westernized countries.   Let's revisit the study with a post of mine:  Why We Get Fat ... Lessons from a Cafeteria Rat.  In short, you can get "normal" rats to become fat by replacing their usual chow with a high fat chow and/or a high sugar-containing chow.  But how do you get them to become really really fat?  Feed them modern American junk foods.  I'll repost some pertinent graphics from that post here.  The so-called "cafeteria rats" were provided ad libitum standard chow along with a rotating selection of three items from the list below:

L. Ron Rosedale's Church of Scikrispology

L*. Ron Rosedale's Church of Scikrispology

Creating a chasm between science and medicine.

Jimmy's original data dump "debate" over safe starches seems to have taken on a little life of its own of late.  For many of us it merely served to further draw the curtain back to reveal the lack of critical thinking in LLVLClue land.  But it also seems to have ignited a resurgence of another LC guru:  Dr. Ron Rosedale.  Rosedale hogged the most "cyber ink" in Jimmy's post, and also posted advanced snippets on his Facebook page.

If the Taubesian-led LLVLC circle seems cultish, you really gotta get a load of Rosedale.  After all, Taubes may surely be enjoying his supreme guru status, but he didn't cultivate it as a populist movement (although he does have delusions of grandeur thinking if only all these idjuts in research and medicine would just listen to him). Rosedale, on the other hand, sees himself as a visionary leader of a  movement.  I had heard of Rosedale, and knew something about him and leptin.  There was a thread or two about him and his book on Jimmy's forum but not much of a following even there.   When I went to Rosedale's FB page, the first thing that struck me was the imagery.  What's with the televangelist schtick?  Or is that just me noticing this?  

I'm on Twitter ... Sort of

Hi Gang!

Some have already noticed the new "What I'm Reading & Tweeting" widget over on the right hand side bar.  I got the idea to do this from Chris over at Conditioning Research.   He used to have a scrolling "What I'm Reading" box on his blog, that apparently was a widget from Blogger/Google that let him share selections from his reader.  Apparently that feature is no longer available through Google ... bummer as I was looking for something a little different than a blogroll and such.  So he told his readers that for now to follow on Twitter.  I have noticed many blogs with Recent Tweets widgets.  Lightbulb ... head ...

So, I decided to get on Twitter and put that widget here.  My intent at this point is to share with my blog readers those things around the web that I'm reading and find interesting and worth sharing.  I would like to keep the outgoing tweets "clean" in this regard.  A one-way street if you will.  Not to be antisocial, but I prefer to keep conversations to comments & the discussion board here and email ... I think I'd go nuts trying to do that with Twitter too.  (I already get backlogged with emails and the disco board).  So for now please don't expect replies on Twitter.  If I ever get into that action, I'll probably set up separate accounts for the Asylum and personal communication.  Hope you all understand.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING ALL!!

Is MightyMeta Mouse Relevant to Real Humans?

In my last post, I discussed a study demonstrating that mice on a ketogenic diet ate the same number of calories as both mice on standard chow and the obesogenic high fat+sucrose diet, but lost body weight comparable to that seen in mice constricted to eating 66% of the standard chow calories.  I dubbed this a metabolic Mighty Mouse of sorts, MightyMeta Mouse.  I don't think we'll have enough installments of this to warrant an acronym -{grin} - I'll just use short nicks when I tire of typing it out.  

In any case, this study seems to validate some of the magical metabolic claims made by those who are able to eat thousands of calories on VLC diets while having been unable to lose or in some cases even maintain weight eating stand CRD level calories.  Well, I did the math in the prior post, and although Mighty does seem to manifest a metabolic advantage of sorts, this would not translate to much for the humans in question.  A couple of hundred calories a day tops.  

Mighty Metabolism Mouse?

HERE I COME TO SAVE
THE DAY (for TWICHOO)!!

Thanks to Amber for bringing the following study to my attention: A high-fat, ketogenic diet induces a unique metabolic state in mice.   Does it appear that MightyMeta Mouse is on his way??  Perhaps ...  for mice anyway.  The KD fed mice attained the same reduced body mass as the calorie restricted (to 66% ad libitum of control chow fed) mice.  A fourth group were fed the usual high fat + sucrose diet to induce obesity.  Anthony Colpo ... pay up!?*

More on Magic Metabolisms ~ Super What?

As predicted, when I posted my challenge a few days ago, the anecdotal magic metabolism or two came out to play.   There is certainly a cadre out there who believes:

VLC → lower insulin → faster fat burning metabolism

Some version of this is the purported Metabolic Advantage championed most prominently by Dr. Mike Eades.  The nutshell version of this is that when you are low carb, excess fat consumed will be "blown off" through futile cycling and uncoupling.  Despite admitting to eating a "starvation calorie level" diet himself, Eades perpetuates this myth of low carb magic.  

What sparked this post, was a very well referenced post by Ambimorph over on PaleoHacks:  Is lowered T3 resulting from a low carb diet problematic?  She, along with another respondent on the thread, provides a long list of studies that show VLC lowers T3.   Dr. Ron Rosedale (of Science Krispie Leptinade fame here at the Asylum)  weighed in.  He believes that this lowered T3 is a longevity-promoting benefit of VLC diets.  Make no mistake, Rosedale advocates what Atkins referred to as a "biologically zero" carb diet - non-dairy protein and leafy greens.  Lower T3 dials down your metabolic rate.  This is seen as a good thing as stated by Andre Chimene in his answer:  "having a fast metabolism is like idling your car at high RPMs... for your life."  Additional comments bring up a good point:  "You don't want your car idling roughly or stalling either."   So this claim is:

VLC → lower insulin → slower efficient metabolism

Gary Debunks Taubes ~ It's the Fructose Stupid!

The Marquee:  

Gary Debunks Taubes ~ It's the Fructose Stupid!

Starring Gary Taubes

Special guest appearance by Stephan Guyenet

The Scene:

Curtain rises

Gary Taubes, clad in grey corduroy pajamas and bunny slippers is in the basement of his home, that he has fastidiously transformed into an exact replica of the lecture hall where he infamously confronted Stephan Guyenet, PhD.  At the lectern stands a life-sized voodoo doll bearing a striking resemblence to Stephan.  While poking imaginary pins into the doll ...

Ladies & Gentlemen, Now playing in the Asylum Theater: Gary Debunks Taubes

Narrated by CarbSane
Starring Gary Taubes as himself

"A delightful drama about the journey from amateur boxer, to physics major turned journalist, to renowned 'expert' on obesity and human metabolism.  The protagonist is befallen by a nasty case of egomonomaniacalis dunshütinfüt but ignores his obesity-researcher-turned-MD's advice when he prescribes digaholedypur arrestin.   This disease is a silent killer of reputations, and left unchecked might do just that.   Will Gary survive the disease?  Or will Gary debunk Taubes?"       or maybe Leptin Man will save the day?

---

It's really rather amusing when a new Taubes blog post lands in my feed reader, and apparently since he promises a lengthy five part series of posts every few days, I'm guessing there will be no end to my amusement any time soon.  This has inspired another series of posts that from hereon will be dubbed Gary Debunks Taubes.  

What?  Another series?  Yep.  My other GT-inspired series (like the GCBC Reference Checks) have focused on how Taubes cherry picks from. and flat out misrepresents the science contained in many of the references in his book.  Other posts are dedicated to debunking the various facets of TWICHOO.  But in the past few days, between reading his first blog post in a while, composing my latest installment in that series -- GCBC Reference Check ~ Part VII of ? ~ Julius Bauer's Lipophilia Hypothesis, feeling especially self-torturous and listening to a 2007 lecture on YouTube, and finally making it through blog post number two in less than that many months, it dawned on me.  Taubes actually does quite a fine job of debunking himself, and in this regard he does a bang-up job of finding studies that dismantle his hypothesis.

So in the preview, we had Gary citing Julius Bauer stating that nervous centers (some call that the brain) regulate and dominate the metabolism of fat tissue.  Coming up, more quotes from GCBC, but first I'll have at those blog posts.

---

Each show a different play!  Playing indefinitely in the Theater here at the Asylum.
Admission is free, but please consider a donation towards finding a cure for ED.  
Conflict Disclosure:  The Theater at the Asylum is really sponsored by Carbsaneuticals Inc., makers of digaholedypur arrestin.

The Brain Rules ~ But Which Part?

The fact that the brain, or centralized neural complexes, even exists in multicellular higher organisms is indicative of it's over-arching governing function.  Sure, we have feedback loops in our bodies that seem to have little if any mediation by centrally produced signals, but ultimately our organs, including our fat tissue, ultimately relay information to our brains.  Our brains then send out signals back to the organ, and to other organs.  Renowned endocrinologist Julius Bauer -- heralded originally by Gary Taubes in GCBC, and now in a recent blog post -- said as much.  

I've been reading a lot of truly nasty commentary about the web ever since Stephan began rolling out the food reward series.  Apparently a lot of people have hurt feelings and think that Stephan is now yet just another young skinny male just looking to blame fat chicks for their obesity, by -- gasp! -- discussing how leptin alters appetite and food intake in the brain.  Ya know, I do share the sentiment regarding the seeming dominance of the field of all nature of obesity experts tending to be lean males, trying to figure it all out in a population dominated more by females.  But that impacts my views on advice given and such ... I cannot let it cloud my judgment as regards what the science actually says.  This is the crux of this matter of obesity research and such.  Anyone can fashion a hypothesis that makes sense to them.  But if it is not consistent with the actual results observed in carefully controlled experiments, it's just wrong!  Conversely, I don't care if Stephan were actually Homer Simpson if the science he's conveying to his audience is sound.   And yet, sadly, I think most obese are beyond "repair" in terms of ever experiencing that nirvana of subconscious homeostasis of a lean body weight.  That doesn't mean it's not attainable, just that it will take some conscious effort.  Before I discuss that a bit, I just can't help but highlight a comment Taubes made recently on his blog:  

In Search of the Magic Metabolism ~ A Challenge

It's comical.  Every time Taubes comes out with something new, somehow folks with magic metabolisms come out of the woodwork as well.  You know the type.  They could not lose weight eating a starvation diet of 1000 cal/day for weeks on end doing hours of cardio a week.  Some even claim to gain weight on such regimes!  Worse yet they were hungry all the time.  But then they read GCBC and went low carb and stopped exercising!  Suddenly, they were never hungry, but managed to wolf down 2000 cal/day of fat and protein and lost 20,30,100 or more pounds effortlessly in a week/month/whatever unbelievably short timeframe.

This is utter nonsense.  Even Taubes acknowledges ultimately that if someone gains fat mass they are in caloric surplus and if someone loses fat mass they are in caloric deficit.  He just claims that you are eating more because your fat cells have gone rogue and hog your energy, and if you're losing weight, you are eating less because the fat cells are releasing their stores so you don't need to eat.  Whatever.

Bloggo Science ~ LIRKO Wars Edition

Well, a little back and forth is going on these days over the LIRKO mouse.  What's a LIRKO mouse?  Well, the acronym says it all, LIRKO = Liver Insulin Receptor Knock Out.  This mouse's liver doesn't see insulin.

So back in May, Peter/Hyperlipid posted about the LIRKO mouse,  LIRKO mice (1).   This post referenced this study:  Loss of Insulin Signaling in Hepatocytes Leads to Severe Insulin Resistance and Progressive Hepatic Dysfunction.  Almost simultaneously he posted  LIRKO mice (2) which dealt with this study:  High Circulating Leptin Receptors with Normal Leptin Sensitivity in Liver-specific Insulin Receptor Knock-out (LIRKO) Mice.    (A peeve:  The full texts of both of the studies referenced in these posts are available free online.  Why not link directly to the full text?)

About a week or so ago, continuing with his own dismantling of TWICHOO, Stephan Guyenet posted Does High Circulating Insulin Drive Body Fat Accumulation? Answers from Genetically Modified Mice.  Single line smackdown:  A lot of hyperinsulinemic mice out there aren't accumulating fat tissue as a result.  One of the gen mod mice Stephan mentions just so happened to be Peter's friend LIRKO.  

GCBC Reference Check ~ Part VII of ? ~ Julius Bauer's Lipophilia Hypothesis

The following is a quote from Good Calories Bad Calories:

Bergmann and Julius Bauer, the “noted Vienna authority on internal diseases,” as the New York Times called him, were the two most prominent proponents of the lipophilia hypothesis, but only Bauer wrote about the hypothesis in English, attempting to influence how obesity would be perceived by physicians in the United States. Bauer’s expertise was in the application of genetics and endocrinology to clinical medicine, a field he arguably pioneered in a 1917 monograph entitled Constitution and Disease. Bauer had taken case histories from 275 obese patients and reported that nearly 75 percent had one or both parents who were also obese. He considered this compelling evidence that the condition had a genetic component, which in turn implied the existence of genetically determined hormonal and metabolic factors that would bestow a constitutional disposition to put on excessive fat.  “The genes responsible for obesity,” Bauer wrote, “act upon the local tendency of the adipose tissue to accumulate fat (lipophilia) as well as upon the endocrine glands and those nervous centers which regulate lipophilia and dominate metabolic functions and the general feelings ruling the intake of food and the expenditure of energy. Only a broader conception such as this can satisfactorily explain the facts.”

And now let's see what Gary writes in his latest blog post, shall we?  In giving us his 20¢ on the "Body Rules" concept:

Thanks for Reading!

It's been a wild and wonderful ride.

Is a New Hypothesis in the Works?

I have to admit, my eyes glaze over reading most of what Gary Taubes has to offer these days.  His latest seemed so much more of the same old same old.  Old paradigm, new paradigm ... research will never move forward until they embrace the new paradigm.  Thousands of scientists can't be right when Gary Taubes knows they're wrong.  

But Taubes tucked something new into his latest post that I missed on the first read:

In this paradigm, meals stimulate hormonal responses—insulin, in particular, either in the short term (glucose) or the long term (fructose)— and this in turn directly influences both the storage of fat and the oxidation of fatty acids elsewhere in the body.

In recent lectures Gary has been turning his ire towards fructose/sugar as the ultimate cause of obesity.   He has in the past tried to explain the Japanese away by claiming they eat very little sugar.  I suppose compared to the SAD this is true, but they do eat sugar (and they don't eat brown rice either, but can't we cut Taubes some slack when he makes stuff up?  Swallow one for the cause!)   Myself and others have pointed out the problem with this and  TWICHOO -- that being that fructose does not stimulate an insulin response.  Therefore it does not fit into TWICHOO as stated in  GCBC or  WWGF .   Is he about to change his tune a bit by introducing some long term influence of fructose on insulin behavior?  His toothpick of a fork tine is bent so badly at this point he's gotta fashion something to do his cherry picking with.  Only to do that, he'll have to do some more cherry picking.  

He's Alive! Gary Taubes posts ...

Catching up , yada yada

I see the website has been reformatted a bit.  Priorities, priorities.

Eh ... is there much to say about this one?  Not really.  Except to highlight this:

A caveat here: I’m willing to be convinced that this hypothesis is not an energy balance hypothesis, and so not a brain-rules-and-the-fat-passively-follows notion, but so far I haven’t seen an argument that’s convincing. I confess, though, that I find the hypothesis surprisingly difficult to understand, which suggests that either I’m losing my intellectual facilities in my dotage — always possible — or that I’m so blinded by my love of my own hypothesis that I refuse to understand it—at least equally likely — or maybe, just maybe, that Dr. Guyenet and other proponents of the hypothesis don’t really understand it either.

Bingo Mr. Taubes.  Rather than several more parts trying to unravel Stephan's work, perhaps just one that actually addresses the problems he (and others, like yours truly) have raised with yours is in order.   Take your time, there's a ton to deal with there, but if you have the time for this sort of random rambling, surely you have the time and passion to address the SCIENCE and your so-called hypothesis.

Is HCG the "Dirty Little Secret" of Low Carbers?

There's a popular diet plan out there that is supposed to melt the pounds off of you.  Inject yourself with HCG a hormone produced by the placenta of pregnant women.  This has been around since the 1950's when Dr. Simeon devised the original program.  Perhaps spurred by Kevin Trudeau's 2007 book on the diet, it seems to have experienced a resurgence in recent years.  The diet itself lasts for several weeks where someone eats 500 calories/day in two meals.  Here's Simeon's original plan:

• 125 I.U. of HCG daily (except during menstruation) until 40 injections have been given.
• Until 3rd injection forced feeding.
• After 3rd injection, 500 Calorie diet to be continued until 72 hours after the last injection.
• For the following 3 weeks, all foods allowed except starch and sugar in any form (careful with very sweet fruit).
• After 3 weeks, very gradually add starch in small quantities, always controlled by morning weighing.

This amounts to 3 days of overfeeding, almost 6 weeks of 500 cal/day, followed by 3 weeks of ad libitum VLC (e.g. Atkins Induction).  After that you get to add starches in as the bathroom scale permits.  Is it any wonder most struggle with that last phase?   And here's a sample menu:  

Un-Sanie Ideas?

Yes, as 2011 comes to a close, like other bloggers I look back on what has transpired this year. So, what's a blog like the Asylum if not to have a little fun, eh?  And so I'm announcing today that some time in December I'll be announcing the awarding of my first annual Un-Sanies.   I'm not really sure yet if I'll choose a top 5,10,whatever format or have categories (e.g. most Un-Sane book, blog post, quotation, etc.).  I.'m not even sure I've settled on the Un-Sanies (In-Sanies were another option).  But I'd like to identify some of the most outrageous statements -- in print or otherwise on the net -- made in the promotion of or defense of radical carbohydrate restriction.  Off the top of my head Wheat Belly's battery acid, Eades' just totally "eew creepy" reference to moisture and young ladies, and more recently the reference of Joel Osteen impersonator Ron Rosedale to all of us as some degree of diabetic are worthy of consideration.  And yeah!  I didn't even tap the wealth of material from Taubes yet.  Oh ... and yes ... who can forget  at AHS.  Perhaps I need to award some Sanies too?!

So ... if you have anything in mind you think I should consider or may have missed or forgotten, chime in here with your comments.  If you'd prefer to remain anonymous, shoot me an email with suggestions through my profile.  

I'm hoping we can have some good old Sane-Asylum fun with this here!

Fat Tissue Regulation ~ Part VI: Journey & Fate of Dietary Fat

Regulation of fatty acid transport and storage: influence of acylation-stimulating protein

Katherine Cianflone and Sabina Paglialunga, 2006

Commonly, the dietary sources of fat exceed the actual needs and the tissues are faced with dealing with the excess. Under these circumstances, the removal process of dietary triglycerides and fatty acids becomes overloaded, resulting in excessive postprandial lipemia and accumulation of chylomicrons, remnant particles and non-esterified fatty acids. These particles are associated with disruptions in lipoprotein metabolism and changes in inflammatory factors, thus their association with cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and diabetes is not surprising. Dietary factors, not just fat, influence postprandial fluxes. This leads to the question: do we need a standardized fat tolerance test?

I've been reading a lot of studies lately dealing with postprandial clearance of fats from the blood and it certainly seems to me that these are coalescing to a hypothesis that the fat tissue fails first.  Oh but CarbSane, you've been saying this for over a year now  This is news?  Well, yes, in a way.  Gratuitous third person self referencing aside, it does still appear that a breakdown in fat tissue regulation is the precipitating factor in the metabolic dysfunction cascade in the majority of cases.  However this initial breakdown appears to occur on the uptake side of the adipocyte.  Impaired fatty acid uptake by adipose tissue leads to elevated postprandial circulating NEFA that are:

1. Excessive in the postprandial phase when they should be low, and/or 
2. Different in composition, reflecting dietary intake, from the types of fatty acids released from stored body fat.

I'm officially old ... and find this so sad.

I overheard a student the other day discussing her, apparently mandatory, meal card.  I remember that well.  All freshmen living in dorms at almost every college/university must participate.  My first semester I rarely ate in the cafeteria because the food sickened me.

So one of my students was saying that she had over $1000 on her meal card.  WOW!  I can't help but think what that amount of money can buy.  I find this so very sad.

Why do I feel so old?  Well, because I can't help but think about the costs of things.  In my day most rented those little cubicle dorm fridges for like $50/year or semester even.  Now?  You can buy a small fridge/freezer that is separate for not much more!!  There were no Home Depots, Lowes, WalMarts, Costcos, Sam's Club, BJ's back then. And yet with all that they have available, *kids* these days are (a) on the one hand still forced into ridiculous mealplans and such , and (b) on the other hand so absolutely clueless that they cannot fend for themselves and realize how cheap that can really be!  All this not to mention your mega supermarkets.

With food so cheap, I cringe at all meals provided by educational establishments.  Even back in my day we had community kitchens in the dorms.  I can get no hot pots and such for safety reasons, but a micro?  Between this there should be no reason to require meal plans.

My student was lamenting not being able to spend those $ on clothes.  I concur.  But all of this "in my day" stuff, and being older than most of my students' parents is making me feel awfully OLD :(

The LoBAG Diets for treatment of Type II Diabetes and IGF-I: Updated & Expanded

Another Bumpity Bump Bump from yesteryear when my blog had one tenth the readership it has today.  Why am I bumping this one?  Well, for one, Paul Jaminet cited one of these studies in his excellent, as always, rebuttal to Rosedale in the whole safe starch debate.  It is worth noting that Dr. Mary Gannon is also a darling of Feinman's Nutrition & Metabolism society, see, for example, here.  I'm going to add some comments on that paper at the end of this post.  So Gannon & Nuttal have been advocating for some carbs for some time.  They are for lowering carbs, but not to levels that the strident low carbers advocate.  These researchers also unabashedly identify their diets as high protein.  Not that it's super relevant, but I guess one could describe my diet these days as a higher protein (thus lower fat) PHD, which probably works out to LoBAG25.   So, first the original article (I've tidied the formatting but not altered content in any significant manner) and blogging:

Glycine Power?!

One of the things I've been doing regularly for the past year or so is making carcass broths and bone broths and making stews and soups with it.  I make the distinction of carcass v. bone because I mostly make two versions:  (1) pork from pork shoulder bones my amazing pork guy provides me free by the bagful (so I don't have to save up bones in the freezer which is a huge bonus!) and (2) chicken from the whole carcass from chickens or everything from the parts -- e.g. a fair amount of skin and cartilage and "stuff".  

There was a question about pork rinds and satiety the other day on PaleoHacks that reminded me of a few things.  One was that whenever I would hear of the health bennies of gelatin protein, I always remembered reading that it was not a good major protein source because it is not a complete protein.  Well, the protein from such broths may not be complete, but it is special indeed.  I'm not one for anecdotes but my less-than-perfect-diet hubby is prone to getting bronchitis or worse at least a couple of times every winter and he's had issues with prolonged bouts that turn into one long episode.  Last winter?  One short cold!  I tend to think that's no coinky dink.  

Is Glycemia a Continuum?

Something has been "egging me" since I wrote my last two blog posts (Some Spiked Leptinade with My Science Krispies Please! and Keep the Leptinade flowing! I'm going to die from my glucose anyway ...) on two of the studies Dr. Rosedale cited in support of his starch-is-never-safe stance.  Put another way, in his own words, 

...there is really no totally safe level of blood sugar that will not cause non-enzymatic glycation or damage. The thresholds for diagnosing diabetes are arbitrary numbers. As such, I consider most everybody to have diabetes; just different degrees.

I'm a little confused over Rosedale's stance, but I can't really get bogged down because, frankly, he's not talking straight.  He seems to be saying hyperglycemia is not diabetes it's the underlying hormonal imbalance, insulin and leptin resistance specifically.  He seems to be under the mistaken notion that 

When one is relatively young or pre-diabetic, the secretion of insulin and leptin when one eats non fiber carbohydrates can compensate for the moderate intake of starch and other sugars, but it does so at the expense of greater and greater insulin and leptin resistance accumulated over months and years.