Live Blogging from the Paleo Summit III: Leptin Man!

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

Ratings:

☼ ☼ ☼    Entertainment Value
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☼ ☼ ☼ ☼  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!
I'm just going to go through topic by topic with some thoughts and I'll be having a little fun with Dr. Duvet as I can't see any other reason for spending the time on this but for my own entertainment :-) ... and hopefully yours!  So pour yourself a cup of levee tea and read on.

The Intro:
Somebody from Zambia reads Jack's blog!  He has a mega thread with over 600K hits on a popular paleo forum (ahem ... Mark Sisson's ... why so coy Sean?).  I'm not sure if this is supposed to give someone some sort of cred or what, but I've poked fun at the "international notoriety" angle of internet personas before.  I get hits from all over the world so if I wanted to brag I could go on about the number of views from Siberia I get ;-)  Sean uses the term "Leptin Reset" ... that's the last you'll hear of this. 
Jack's schtick is not even a year old and already he's moving on.  All over the map apparently as you'll see.  At least if you're not going to talk about what you've become famous (or is that infamous) for, pick a single coherent topic for a full hour! 

My Knee, My Knee!  
I suppose it's not fair to poke fun at someone's injury, but since I've had bad knees most of my life, and wreaked havoc on them with my periods of obesity as well, I'm going to use that as an excuse.  Jack's "a ha" moment about obesity apparently came when he stood up at a conference and experienced excruciating pain in his knee.  He'd torn his meniscus.  From Croxton we learn Jack thought he was going to die.  It was at that moment that Jack started researching all manner of things, and realized all levees lead to leptin and he did his LR plan ... lost 77 lbs in 3 months and 133 lbs in a year.  (Why we need the breakdown repeated is beyond me).  Look folks, of course inflammation played a role here, but sometimes physics just trumps everything.  It should be no mystery why Jack blew out his knee!  He tells us inflammation caused it.  Likely played a role in weakening the joint and in the pain, but he claims it had nothing to do with trauma or movement.   (Jeeves, pass me a new BS meter please).

OK Tell me about Leptin Jack 
Leptin is made in fat cells folks, and basically the brain calculates how much leptin is in the body (along with other hormones).  The cool thing about leptin is that it's a structural analog of Interleukin-6!  (IL-6) an inflammatory cytokine ...... that's the last we hear about IL-6 ....
It's the Leptin Resistance Stupid! 
It turns out that very obese people are leptin resistant.  "Leptin resistance underpins obesity and obesity is underpinned by inflammation."  Ugh.  I'm sorry but again, I've no doubt that inflammation and obesity go hand in hand, but if by underpinning Jack is on the causal bandwagon that inflammation causes obesity I just can't hop aboard that.   I've always had pretty messed up knees at any weight going back to pretty much as long as I can remember.  If I were to stike a Grok poop squat pose, there's about a 50/50 chance these days that I can't get up because my joint will slip and lock in the bent position.  I could regale you with the history of my knees, but back to Quack, er, I mean Jack. 

"There's not a Neolithic disease that's not tied to this biological fact"
WTF exactly do you mean by that?  Asked about the CDC's definition of obesity as a disease and if he agrees, Jack says no, it's a symptom of a huge underpinning biochemical process.  Do we get an explanation of this?  No.  We're told that in most animals it starts at the intestinal brush border and their leaky guts and a "mismatch".  But not in humans because we can control our environment.  He comes back to this concept later and I'll express some agreement when we get there, but basically I guess he's saying diet → inflammation → obesity.  Can we talk about how please?  Well, sorta ...
The Three Problems of Obesity
  • Inflammation -- Gut is where diet meets immune system
  • Organs  -- differentially effected, when it gets to the brain you're effed
  • Leptin Resistance -- when you're LR you have an asteroid shower and all hell breaks loose
Again we're told all ills trace back to this basic construct but WHAT is that.  I feel like I'm trying to find out what's in Adam Kosloff's little black box here.
Video (games) Killed the Receptor Star 
So Sean moves on to childhood obesity and Jack tells us why video games lead to such but not by the stupid way the media tells us.  No, LED lights from playing video games at night has disrupted leptin patterns.  While I'm receptive to light after dark having all sorts of effects on us, I'm not aware that there was an epidemic of night time video game playing sweeping the country.  And did you know?  Video gaming leads to less eating than passive light receptoring (watching TV) so perhaps we should look into that.  Look.  Anyone who thinks that kids sitting for hours on end inside exercising their brains (good to an extent) and thumbs instead of playing outside with other real flesh and blood little humans till way past when Mom calls them in for dinner has nothing to do with childhood obesity is kidding themselves.  Even Fat Head seemed to get that in his movie.  There's no need to construct some elaborate leptin connection to everything, but if you're going to, please explain it fully. 

At least we get to the title of the talk, and one Quiltism as we learn that leptin evolved (the wording here is awkward because we tend to use that term to apply to organisms not proteins, but ...) to be "yoked" to circadian cycles -- the two important ones being light cycles and geothermal cycles.  Leptin controls both of these processes and accounts for everything in our environment.  Leptin has a massive effect when kids are bombarded by LED lights after dark and the sheet hits the fan and leptin becomes unyolked from the antimatter nutrients in the whites of their eyes scrambling their brains to one fried mess.  Before you know it something's poaching ... sorry, I ran out of egg references.  
The Intestinal Brush Border 
So tell us Dr. Kruse, how does LR start?  Well, it starts with a mismatch of our diet with our biology -- something goes awry in our guts at this "brush border".  We never get a definition of what this even is.  So a mismatch causes a flood of nasty cytokines to be released that invade your body.  When they get to the brain, you're toast, especially in those favorite parts where there's no blood brain barrier.  The area postremo (this sounds like a good name for Leptin Man's Headquarters!) correlates to the vagus nerve which connects your lips to your distal colon, but doesn't let you kiss your ass.  It's that last part that's not controlled that Jack -- in an unfortunate choice of words -- describes as the quickest, easiest way in and out.  The vagus nerve controls the brain-gut axis (hee hee, sounds like he calls it the brain-gut access the first time he pronounces it!).  Now modern medicine doesn't believe in this kids, and nobody learns this stuff in medical school, but your colon rules.  
I get tired of the "I didn't learn this in medical school" schtick.  Because most times this is an alert that someone's about to make shit up.  Also the "mainstream medicine doesn't buy this".  I'm sympathetic more to the latter ... but it's all the more reason that if you're going to break new ground you present a COHERENT discussion.  We're not yet halfway through a rather short talk and my head is already spinning with nothingness.  But here we go, the gem! 
When you start studying the neurobiology, and you start studying how we eat, and how calories are partitioned, how we account for the electrons, the hardwired data  and the biologic proof is in our anatomy and that's it's there and that's how it gains access to our brain, the easiest way.

Now I REALLY wish I had a webcam in Sean Croxton's room while he was taping this one!  He's gotta be thinking "Is this guy for real?"  Right??   So LR is due to an enematic dietary attack near as I can figure -- because when you're talking the easiest way in and colons, I can't help but "go there".  Maybe we need a Diaper to replace the Quilt.  I'm not sure exactly what's getting in or what it's attacking -- oh yeah, Leptin Man's fort Area Postrema -- but I'm sure Jack will tell us so I listen on.  Ahh but it's time for a new question.  Jack, what do you think of this whole CICO stuff?  
The Twinkie & The Pineapple 
Did you know that if you took Sean Croxton and made him eat nothing but 2000 calories of Twinkies or nothing but 2000 calories of pineapples for 15 to 18 months, that if he survived his body composition would be considerably different?  You're shittin' me Jack!  (Clean up in aisle 10 Jeeves, there's been a breach in my brain-gut access again ...)  Folks, I get really SICK of this "debunking" of the fact that calories *count*.  The fact that we can erect stupid strawman arguments about how we partition a pound of this or that is irrelevant.  We all get that the terms are not independent, that our metabolisms adapt, that energy is partitioned to different uses.  But can we get something straight for once and for all:  THERMAL ENERGY OUT IS A PERFECTLY LEGITIMATE TERM IN A SIMPLE FIRST LAW THERMO EQUATION.   Sorry to shout there.   Part of our metabolism specifically generates heat from the food we ingest.  The food is nothing but energy stored as chemical potential energy in the bonds in the compounds that make up this food.  If your body uses any of these compounds for something other than maintenance, it is "burning" them for energy or storing them for another day.  So we're talking about that storage.  We have defense mechanisms that burn off some excesses, but we don't do that forever.  [ /rant ]

Did you know that Michael Phelps has washboard abs and looks great in a Speedo but eats 18000 calories a day.  And this has *stumped* all the scientists?  Of course, those stupid scientists were mostly nutritional scientists so we all know how stupid they are.  Otherwise they would know that LR people simply can't "account for" calories like Phelps.  Jack goes on to discuss how Phelps spends 18 hrs a day training in 50 degree swimming pools (umm, most pools aren't nearly that cold, but I'll give him that the person is immersed in a cooler than "body temperature" liquid for substantial time periods).  We have uncoupling proteins in our muscles and these allow us to burn energy [sic] as "free heat".  Give me a break.  DUH!!  I would hope that they teach in medical school that the body burns carbs or fats in part to create heat to maintain body temperature.  This is nothing magical folks and you need not talk UCP's to get this simple thing.  A good part of Phelps' caloric needs go to maintaining body temperature in addition to the mechanical energy he requires to move his body through the water swimming.   
What's in a Name ... Uncoupling 
Jack goes on to tell you that using chemical fuel to produce heat is *uncoupling* your calories from your metabolism.  Bull and crap.  So if you can eat a ton of food and slide down this uncoupling rabbit hole, you can uncouple that from your metabolism and dissipate all of those calories as heat.  You need to have sensitive leptin receptors for this!    He goes on to discuss this as some complicated evolutionary adaptation, yada yada.  Please, Michael Phelps burns a lot of fuel and uses a lot of the calories to keep from dying of hypothermia.  Mystery solved.  Go take a cold shower (just don't drop the soap).  But we can't just say that, no, we need complex terms and phrases such as:
When you change the thermal coefficient of your environment, you are able to actually burn far more calories than you would if you lived at the equator and you were in constant heat. 
 
Or in plain English, when a warm blooded creature lives in a colder environment a greater proportion of your metabolic energy requirements will go towards keeping you warm. Magic I tell ya.
Brain Evolution is Killing Us 
Your brain is fighting with your genes to bring you down.  But I actually agree with Jack on this one.  He goes into why you see ads for exercise equipment in January while mountain lions are lean in winter.  So what's the difference?  We can control our environment. Our Neolithic brains have evolved faster than our paleo genes and that has created a mismatch.  Our brains have figured out ways we can eat bananas in Saskatchewan in January.  Serious biologic mismatch leading to inflammation and all else.

Agriculture Led to Mediocrity 
The mismatch mish mosh.  But the other thing is that with population growth we became stupid and made dumb choices.  Crime in the poor inner cities is due to agriculture.  I don't imagine wild animals ever get aggressive with one another when resources in their habitats become scarce.  Unh huh.  He thinks we've slowed down human evolution, Jack's kinda deep ya know, you need to eat a strict paleolithic diet to reverse this!
Where Does Inflammation Start?
It starts in our guts or a disruption in our circadian rhythms and our messed up hormonees.  We need to limit inflammation -- Rosetta stone moment! -- put on your thinking cap, look at your hormone panels and whatnot.  Or just stop eating crap.  All of our behavior leads to biologic mismatches.  That wave of incongruity is fighting against our leptin receptor and we see it in the mirror! 
High Cholesterol is Good, You're Lucky 
Everything good in our body is made up of cholesterol so high LDL is da bomb.  I agree that the mainstream is waaaay off about the meaning of cholesterol levels and high LDL is not "clogging our arteries" and all that.  But high (really high, not just over the ever lowering threshold to sell more statins) LDL IS a biomarker for something outta whack in most cases.   (And cold is what you want to feel on his leptin reset).
Gut Feelings and Leaky Guts
Yo Jeeves, cue the Morris Alpert.  Who?  "Feelings ... whoa whoa whoa feelings ...." Ya feel it in your gut.  Kruse brings it home with a bang here.  You know that term gut feeling?  Well, did you know that's really a literal term.  Because it all traces back to your gut.  That guy (or gal) you dated who you thought was "off" and turned out to be a compulsive midnight video gamer uncoupled from reality?  Yep.  Gut reaction!  But there's a part of this discussion by Jack that is actually not so humorously wrong.  Leaky gut is certainly a somewhat controversial medical topic, but the definition is not.  We are essentially human shaped "pipes" with two barriers against the "outside world" -- our skin on the outside and our gastro-intestinal tract lining on the inside.  The reason we must inject certain substances is that they either do not survive the digestive tract intact and/or they cannot be absorbed across the tract lining.  That's the way it's supposed to be.  Our intestinal cell wall is not supposed to let certain things pass through just as our skin doesn't.  Leaky gut is when that barrier has been breached (retreat to Area Postema!).  In other words, our guts "leak" into our body, we absorb too much.  Not under Jack's magic blanket.  No, there, we redefine leaky gut.  Now a leaky gut is one that does not properly absorb nutrients.  As someone who recently suffered a bout of that sort of megaleaky gut, I can assure you that it did not result in my body absorbing much of anything.  If anything, I was afraid little pieces of intestine were coming out next! 
But we are what we assimilate.  If you have a leaky gut, you can't think.  Good thinking requires good neurotransmitters and if you can't absorb the amino acids your thought processes become suboptimal and even mediocre (at least you're not an idiot).  And here's the Kruse Missile:
We all have a primal sense and that primal sense is tied to what we know is right and wrong.  For example when you hear something from somebody where you think it's total bullshit, you just know ... it's almost like before it even gets to your brain it started actually in your gut and the reason why intuition starts like that is because we can tell whether something makes sense or not because our brain is working well.  But when its not working well we cannot think correctly and that allows to more biologic mismatches and when more biologic mismatches happen.  We don't think correctly and guess what results? Inflammation and neolithic disease. 

I'm DONE
I can't take it any more. (He's almost done anyway).  My primal sense has been activated!! Think with your distal colon and you get shit.  WOW.  All I can say is that if this is the future of paleo, as it appears the movers and shakers behind AHS and PaleoFX seem to believe, duck and cover folks.  We're in for an asteroid shitstorm of epigenetic proportions.  Just use your brain and you won't be a vegetarian.
Pass the Imodium AD.  

Comments

Anonymous said…
I fear you are a bit harsh here.

You've got to separate style and substance; Kruse has terrible style.

There is something to the leptin reset/light/rhythm thing. I know my mental state changed after moving to candlelight only from 9PM onwards. Much deeper and restful sleep.

I think we are all too focused on this as as a cure for obesity. Obesity is easy -- don't eat as much. The rest of the goals, however, are extremely unclear to me.
Nigel Kinbrum said…
"Obesity is easy -- don't eat as much."
That's not easy. If it was, there wouldn't be an obesity "epidemic"!
Anonymous said…
Sigh. No. Come live in a world where there isn't enough food. You don't have fat people.

Poor people in India aren't fat. It is rich people -- who can buy enough food.

I can lock you in a closet for two week with vitamins and water. You'll lose weight - I promise. It just isn't practical -- or humane.
CarbSane said…
How about this Charlie: In 30 minutes or less, can Jack please explain how eating 50g protein within a half hour of waking up and all the rules of his LR WORKS to reset one's leptin sensitivity and by what OBJECTIVE measure one can determine if it's working? I agree that light cycle and sleep disturbances are important, there's lots of research on that too. Leptin levels follow distinct diurnal patterns -- is there ANY evidence that this is seasonal? This is supposed to be a paleo summit that presumably teaches people something. If that was about leptin circadian cycles, as the title implies, why are we talking about everything but that for a half hour? How do grains and dairy figure in to this "mismatch"? Next thing he'll be trying to explain female intuition with proper sensing across our uterine comb barriers or something. ;)
Nigel Kinbrum said…
Nobody wants to live in a world where there isn't enough food. Third & Second Worlders want to be like First Worlders.
SamAbroad said…
Evelyn, are you growing soft on us? I think you were so gentle on leptin man!

I was expecting an eviceration here, can't stand the guy, actually can't UNDERstand the guy.

I think you're mellowing from all those carbs. :P
Tonus said…
One thing I learned from this post is that the vagus nerve is what is engaged when people are talking out of their ass.
Sanjeev said…
Sounds like you're better Evelyn. missed a few days, couldn't chime in ...

(slightly offensive below)

> vagus nerve is what is engaged

to form words that way requires efferent fibers to the anus ... so mostly pudendal nerve, not vagal.

Also, speaking that way would be restrictive ... mostly cheeky[2] sibilants and plosives[1] , no dental, alveolar, postalveolar, palatal, postalveolar ...

but hey, if Jack can "change thermal coefficients"(!!!!!)[0] by spending time in cold water ... he surely does have the needed fine motor control.


[0] OF WHAT ???? the water? Phelps' muscle? skin? convective coefficients? radiative? conductive? WT fheck is he talking about? Pudendal, definitely.

I had it running in the background but could NOT continue and had to delete the file immediately, in case it changed the thermal coefficients on my hard drive.

[1] often "humid" or "moist" plosives - hope Jacks quilt is extra-moisture-absorbent

[2] voiceless bilabial/bi-bun-bous
Karen said…
Re: the swimmer in 50degree water. There is a 50-50-50 rule I found out when my friend drowned in a cold body of water. A person has only a 50% chance of swimming 50 yards in 50degrees or colder water. He may be a professional but even a professional couldnt spend hrs in 50degree water. You are absolutely correct on that assessment Evelyn. I got mightly offended when he said that.
Sue said…
There is a lot of praise over at Paleohacks - can't understand it myself! Did anyone received this email from Kruse:

We're hearing great stories around Jack's blog and social media & we would love to share your story with the world!
"Videotape a short testimonial and send it into videos@jackkruse.com or upload to youtube and email us the link. We'll be posting these testimonials online to highlight your individual success and to help motivate an entire new audience. Thanks for choosing to live an
optimized life!"
CarbSane said…
I confess. Blame it on the kavorka!
CarbSane said…
Sorry about your friend Karen. Stuff like this is unacceptable from a practicing physician.
joselyn said…
The average person is *not* Michael Phelps.
joselyn said…
So, I went looking for some solid criticism of Kruse, since mostly everywhere I look, people either love him or think his style sucks. Again, here, though, I found mostly style criticism, and then the label of 'quack' slapped on because of that.

There seems to be some substance criticism, but it mostly seems to come from not having read enough of Kruse's stuff - and admittedly, that is hard stuff to get through, and I have little patience for it myself. But I did skim enough to realize, for instance, that he does not say that high LDL is great, but that low LDL is **bad** (because you need enough to make your other hormones) and that too-high LDL usually comes from a thyroid or other problem preventing you from converting LDL to other hormones.

That's just one example. Any other substance criticisms I found were the same. I can hardly blame you. You have to read him extensively (or get lucky, as I did), to find this stuff out, and that just isn't worth it to most people. But in the end, your complaints aren't about what he's saying. It's about his sucky communication abilities.

I still have yet to find more than one or two people debating his content, who really understand what his content is. Those are the people I really want to hear from.
CarbSane said…
There's not much of his content worth debating. It's not a matter of understanding the subject matter, though it may be a matter of understanding his absurd presentation of it. Take Phelps. It's simple. The guy spends many hours in cold water (not anywhere near 50 degrees, but colder than body temp). In addition to all the calories required to swim for the many hours his body also must generate heat so he doesn't die. It's not rocket science. So I guess all fat people are just thermophiles and warm too much. If only they taught cold therapy to treat obesity in medical school, eh?
joselyn said…
It's not rocket science, BUT - most of us don't think of it on our own. I'm a trained scientist, but I never stopped to think of it. I think I've seen him say that most of what he says is not (forgive the pun) brain surgery, but there are few others pulling together these things from many different disciplines.

And it looks like there's more on this cold thing - it's not just increased calorie burning for fat loss; he's claiming it can help prevent the damage done by "mismatches" between our evolutionary biology and our modern lives. No clue if he's right, but it's interesting.

I keep searching, and the gripes I find keep being about his style. Style doesn't make you a quack, in my book, content does. Snake oil is content, substance. A brilliant guy with serious Asperger's isn't a quack, nor is an arrogant neurosurgeon who likes riddles a quack just because he's an arrogant, poor-typing, riddler.

I agree with **all** your content gripes. I think writing him off, calling him a quack, and complaining about choosing him to speak in venues because of it is ... silly. I can't tell you if I'm a fan yet or not. My jury is still out. The proof is in whether his flavor of tying the "common sense" (but completely anti-establishment) findings all together works for people.
fr said…
wim hof swam 50 yards underwater in 28 degree water (colder than freezing due to salt content) under the ice north of the arctic circle. And he regularly bathes in near freezing water. He taught the guy at becomingtheiceman.com to swim 600 meters in 50 degree water after just two days of practice. Don't know if Wim Hof spends hours in 50 degree water, but he did run a marathon barefoot in the snow, wearing nothing but shorts when it was about 0 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter in Finland. Supposedly, Wim Hof has lots of brown fat to generate heat. Michael Phelps may also have a lot of brown fat. Supposedly, many people who are regularly exposed to cold can develop brown fat deposits.
HRC said…
Seems USA needs a new war to overcome all this contained gutural bellicosity... special weapon will be angry carbers.
Come on ... would expect some more substance on criticism. But 4 that you'll need to read the guy.
Frank Burns said…
Which has nothing to do with how Phelps trains;

FINA specifications for an Olympic-size pool are as follows:
Water temperature 25–28 °C (77–82 °F)
(FINA) is the International Federation recognized by the International Olympic Committee for administering international competition in the aquatic sports.

Michael Phelps does not train in 50 degree water.

WATER TEMPERATURE EXHAUSTION SURVIVAL TIME
32.5 degrees Under 15 min Under 15 to 45 min.
32.5 to 40 15 to 30 min 30 to 90 min.
40 to 50 30 to 60 min 1 to 3 hrs.
50 to 60 1 to 2 hrs 1 to 6 hrs.
60 to 70 2 to 7 hrs 2 to 40 hrs.
70 to 80 3 to 12 hrs 3 hrs. to indefinite
Over 80 Indefinite Indefinite

Hay, this is my first post. Evelyn, I love your site and read it daily.

Cheers,
Steve.
Sue said…
The guy needs to learn to write as he doesn't make sense. Shouldn't have to try and decipher what he is saying.
CarbSane said…
Hi there, again. First, I forgot to welcome you, I do believe you are new here so let me do that first. Thanks for your input!

Jack just wrote a bazillion word manifesto on "The Holy Trinity" that he posted. http://jackkruse.com/the-holy-trinity-ct-4/
At some point quackery overtakes substance.

I have a very low threshold for the here's what I made up for what they didn't teach me in medical school bit when there's a simple explanation for some mystery. There is nothing more to Phelps case. If there are additional preventative mechanisms in living in cold environments perhaps that may be true. If he wants to investigate and write about how cold adaptation will be helpful he needs to do that separately and using correct terminology. Terminology especially counts. You can't make up your own words, and use existing terms to mean something other than what they mean (thermal coefficients) and expect to be taken seriously. You can't have common sense detatched from common knowledge.
CarbSane said…
LOL Tonus!

@Sanjeev WT fheck indeed.
CarbSane said…
Welcome ivat! I think that you raise a good point. When you eat a decent diet, the hormones and sensitivities and all that will pretty much take care of themselves. If you're very metabolically "sick" (e.g. diagnosed with T2) perhaps more drastic intervention is needed, but for the most part it's probably adding a lot of clutter to worry over leptin and insulin. At least insulin is more predictable. Leptin is not a postprandial hormone (as Rosedale claims with his carb-induced leptin spiking nonsense), in studies when it's measured, all manner of stuff happens depending on what's measured when. Your meal timing can cause a shift one day in the overnight leptin peak. Does this matter? I can't see how we evolved that it did because to envision paleo man eating the same time every day would be a joke.
CarbSane said…
Welcome Steve and thanks for those stats. More importantly, thanks for reading! I was a lifeguard and I recall learning that "rule of thumb". It does not mean some can't, it's just in general. Where I'll be going in 9 days they have a cold plunge that is supposed to be at 55 but usually was around 60 last time I was there. It literally takes my breath away to jump in, and I was always the one in the outdoor (non-heated) pools when they opened in the summers. I plan to make use of that to "burn off" some vacation indulgences. But back to my point, I'm pretty sure they teach basics of hypothermia in med school, and I'm pretty sure that Kruse has been in a pool and shouldn't make stupid gaffes like that.
CarbSane said…
I don't get it either. I think youth (which is what many there are) are looking for those outside the box thinkers.
CarbSane said…
I wonder when Rosetta Stone is coming out with a special Area Postemian dialect CD. ;)
Tonus said…
Yeah, some of the "you just don't get him" replies have me scratching my head. If someone with Evelyn's education and knowledge is unable to decipher Kruse's explanation except to find numerous egregious mistakes, errors, and plain old misinformation, of what use is his information to the layperson?
Lesley Scott said…
@Tonus You forget that, as you noted previously: "the vagus nerve is what is engaged when people are talking out of their ass." Maybe what's needed for us unwashed schlubs who "just don't get him" is one of Douglas Adams's babelfish to translate this mysterious language of *Leptinmanneurosurgeon!*
CarbSane said…
I'm torn between his delivery being intention or not. By this I mean, is he the sort who understands just enough and has just enough cred (MD) to carry off technical-term-laden theses and baffle with bullshit, or is he really totally clueless and pulling stuff from his AVCROC*. If he's got skilled surgical hands and all he's doing is repairing discs and such, I suppose it doesn't matter too much. Still, I'm glad I don't live nearby.

I'm pretty sick of the "well he has some good things to say" or his "LR worked for me so it doesn't matter that he's spreading horse manure" passes. That's the whole point when he's mangling science rather than educating people.

AVCROC = After Vagal-Controlled Region Of Colon
Sanjeev said…
> cred (MD) to carry off technical-term-laden
> theses and baffle with bullshit,

I heard an interview with some writers on Star Trek Next Generation a long time ago. When they wanted some space filled with futuristic talk they would write in a tag like [[[tech]]] and someone would fill in a couple of sentences worth of plasma chambers or anti matter engines or uber-space Laplacian sub-quark leptin transmission line coefficients of integrated thermal expansion differentials (which changed if Picard spent some time in hot water, or when his head was newly shaved).


I've forgotten if there were a couple of writers who were exceptionally good at generating this word salad[0] or if anyone revising the script filled in whatever they could.

We had a bit of a mumbo jumbo competition at our engineering school one time. This was just a little while after U of T got their Cray. The Elecs were especially good at it.

Reading Kruse gives me that kind of feel.

[0] an actual technical term in linguistics
bentleyj74 said…
"Maybe what's needed for us unwashed schlubs who "just don't get him" is one of Douglas Adams's babelfish to translate this mysterious language of *Leptinmanneurosurgeon!*"

Evelyn must have forgotten her towel. See? All these disagreements could have been prevented.
Lesley Scott said…
Oh right, her towel & her peril-sensitive sunglasses! I'm thinking DrDuvetNeurosurgeon! is the Zaphod Leptinbrox of the Paleo Galaxy.
Sue said…
"I'm pretty sick of the "well he has some good things to say"

And most of those things he says somebody already has, but in a clearer way.
Josh said…
I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard for someone with a programming background to tweak a random essay generator like this (http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/) to spurt out medical stuff instead of postmodern nonsense.
Sanjeev said…
Thanks Nigel.

I LOVED their homeopathy skit, I must have replayed that thing a thousand times over a couple of months.

Too specialized to become a "dead parrot" cultural phenomenon, but if any satire ever deserved to become that famous again, that would get my vote.
Nigel Kinbrum said…
Melissa also Tweeted the Vegetarians sketch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKTsWjbjQ8E and the Lifestyle Nutritionists sketch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SavsJYXWgm8

I'm a bit like David Mitchell IRL!
Jason Sandeman said…
Funny random story on this guy. He once told me that he would "fire" me as a patient. (As a diabetic.)

My reply? If I was dumb enough to visit a neurosurgeon to fix my diabetes, then I guess I'd be about as scared as letting a can driver represent me as a lawyer in a murder case.

I'm trying to be professional about this guy, but he just makes it so hard. Leptin reset? ORLY?

He claimed to have "cured" diabetes with diet and spinal adjustment. COUGH COUGH CRACKPOT COUGH.
Sanjeev said…
> once told me that he would "fire" me as a patient

I assumed when I first read it you meant email or some electronic forum, but I should make sure ...

was this verbally, in a consultation, or by phone?
CarbSane said…
Yeah ... I think he talks a big game about patients he's treating. Because you go to a surgeon for spinal surgery, that's pretty up the specialist chain. You are lucky to get 15 min with the surgeon him/herself discussing the procedure, etc.etc. before hand and a few minutes here and there in followup. If my spinal surgeon started yapping leptin at me or even intimated that he could help me with my weight? I'd be outta there! Oh ... and no hard feelings Jason. That's why I brought up the chick thing ;-)
Jason Sandeman said…
Ahh.. I got into it with this guy over at FTA when Steven Cooksey controversey started. I dared stand up against the Rah Rah! crowd, taking the stance that since Steven had no real background in the nuances of treating a metabolic disorder, he shouldn't be giving "individualized dietary advice."
The Kruse guy jumps in and calls me a quack - then goes on this vitrol about diabetics being hand wringing babies, etc.
Of course, I called himon it - I thought he was some weird chiropractic dude or something.
My favorite quote from him?
"2.5 million years of evolutionary RCT trumps any neolithic trial you can prop up. That study has been done and moving from a mammal under the ice to a human is pretty freaking remarkable. I do not need anyone to tell me evolutionary medicine is trumped by any published research that is tainted with blood money."

Wow. I just don't even have to answer that, because sometimes arguing with stupid is just futile...
Jason Sandeman said…
Just like Nigel said. That's why it was so comical. It's about as profound as a hairdresser telling me that she isn't going to replace my transmission. Oh, okay - I guess I'll have to suffer then!
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Ken said…
A bit late but I thought I'd ad a bit on cold water and pools. Phelps grew up and finished high school just north of Baltimore. Assuming they open their outdoor pools around Memorial Day and close them around Labor Day. Living a bit north of there, (100 mi or so) I can tell you pool temperatures have never been below 56F. Today with the cool summer it was 69F.
This pool is mostly shaded and never is completely in direct sunlight at any time. (Too many trees.)
Without ice cubes, no outside public pool, south of here would get that cold in season.

Personally I spent an hour or so in a pool at 56F, It hurt at my ankles and wrists until they numbed a bit.) As a child on a swim team we practiced in unheated pools and drank a lot of hot tea warming up during breaks. I've probably spent time in colder water. (Lake Superior) It can be done but It is not something most 30+ adults would chose to do. I don't see the claim as impossible, I just don't believe any place south of the Great Lakes could have a pool that is normally so cold.

From Wikipedia:
"Heat is lost much more quickly in water than in air. Thus, water temperatures that would be quite reasonable as outdoor air temperatures can lead to hypothermia in survivors, although
this is not usually the direct clinical cause of death for those who are not rescued. A water temperature of 10 °C (50 °F) can lead to death in as little as one hour,"

"The United States Coast Guard
promotes using life vests to protect against hypothermia through the 50/50/50 rule: If someone is in 50 °F (10 °C) water for 50 minutes, he/she has a 50 percent better chance of survival if wearing a life jacket. A heat escape lessening position can be used to increase survival in cold water."