Hof, Wim-ania and a Pair of Dimes

Yeah, I know, I know, I tried to move past this whole Kruse Missile Krisis, but as it turns out Richard Nickoley has some inside info on Jack he shared when he weighed in on the latest escapades of Jack Kruse NEUROSURGEON, and I kinda got sucked in to the discussions there ;-)  (WARNING:  Apparently "Angry Dick" is back and he drops the "c"-bomb twice in response to female commenters and defends it no less.  His comments on the God thing at the beginning are extremely offensive as well.  So if you're not into that, you might want to skip the first couple of paragraphs to "...Jack lost" and avoid the comments all together.)

But two things keep coming up over and over (and over) in discussions about the burgeoning KMK in the paleo world.  It boils down to well, maybe he's crazy, but maybe he's also on to something.  And what's the community* as a whole to do with Dude, I'm a Neurosurgeon!  After all, owing to some perfect storm of a compelling personal story, a disarming personality, letters after his name and sciencey protocols, Jack IS the main "paradigm shifter" of the moment.  The "paleo" label has been pretty much used up in terms of there being anything new under the sun there.  *By community, I'm going to drop the whole paleo/ancestral/whole real foods/LC thing.  You know what I mean by this at this point.


There's definitely an anti-establishment streak that runs wide in the community, but it threatens to run amok if it hasn't done so already.  So eager for paradigm shifting are many that they can't even seem to fathom that maybe, just maybe, some of what is referred to as "conventional wisdom" or "mainstream knowledge" might just be correct.  I mean really, I'm waiting for someone to try to convince me that the sun really does orbit the earth and I should reject everything I've learned since the establishment drilled their version of the solar system into my mush-mind in grammar school.  I think if I hear "paradigm shift" one more time, I'm gonna hurl.  Sisson started the "pair of dimes" thing last May:      
There’s a good reason so many people (mostly the sugar-burners, whose disparate group includes fruitarians, veg*ans, HEDers, body-builders, most MDs, the USDA and virtually every RD program in the country) can’t seem to grasp why a lower carb, Primal approach to eating is a better choice for health and fitness: their fundamental paradigm – the core theory that underpins everything else in that belief system – is flawed. They remain slaves to the antiquated notion that glucose is the king of fuels, so they live their lives in a fear of running low. The truth is, fat is the preferred fuel of human metabolism and has been for most of human evolution. Under normal human circumstances, we actually require only minimal amounts of glucose, most or all of which can be supplied by the liver as needed on a daily basis. The simple SAD fact that carbs/glucose are so readily available and cheap today doesn’t mean that we should depend on them as a primary source of fuel or revere them so highly. In fact, it is this blind allegiance to the “Carb Paradigm” that has driven so many of us to experience the vast array of metabolic problems that threaten to overwhelm our health care system.
Of course Taubes has been beating this drum vis a vis obesity for over a decade now.  I'm a relative new comer to all of this -- not just as a blogger but as a participant/reader.  Many of the movers and shakers had been blogging and such for years and certainly there was a surge circa the release of GCBC.  If I end up with my foot in my mouth because I haven't filled in all the history here properly, I guess that's a risk I have to take.  And hopefully I don't misrepresent anyone I name specifically.  I think the KMK is due in part to the virtual vacuum Kurt Harris left when he sorta stepped away from the community.  That's a lot to put on one person, and NO!  Kurt is not to blame here ...   But he used to talk more about changing his profession from within, we don't seem to hear as much of that from him of late (something Jack laments and sees fit to attack Kurt for on Facebook), and folks have been hearing a lot less from him lately in general.  In his classic Paleo 2.0 post of around a year ago Kurt attempted to redefine, if you will, "paleo" to equal "archaic".  It's an excellent post if you've never read it, particularly if you're reading this as a newbie to the community in these strange times.  It ended with the following:
Some will criticize my proposal as threatening to collapse a big tent.
I prefer to think of it as leaving the tent to erect a proper building.
Someone recently pointed out (over at PaleoHacks I think) that folks like Chris Masterjohn, Stephan Guyenet, and Paul Jaminet do not even identify themselves with the "paleo" label.   The latter two have found themselves embroiled in the Insulin Wars, whether they wanted to be or not.  And thanks to the popularity of Mark Sisson's primal empire, there is a steadfast faction of paleos who are low carb, period.  Mark's infamous carbohydrate curve, the one where over 150g/day will lead to insidious weight gain, was part of his Pair-of-Dimes manifesto and it rallied the troops even as some headway was being made to turn back the tide of TWICHOO.  

In any case, when PaNu morphed to Archevore, as the Ancestral Health folks included such luminaries as Tom "Fat Head" Naughton and Gary Taubes on the speaker list of AHS11 -- neither of which, especially the latter, had done anything worthy of "ancestral" cred -- it didn't seem to sit well with a lot of people, even if one could only infer that from an occasional comment or tweet.  Speaking of tweets ... it used to be enough to keep track of what folks are thinking by reading their blogs.  Now it's not just the comments on them (heck, I have trouble keeping up with my own rather meager comments by comparison at times) but the twitter feed and the Facebook page (and sometimes pages!).  I don't know how anyone keeps up with it all!  Anyways ... The whole Taubes/Guyenet dust up splintered the movement along the carbohydrate fault at the 50g meridian, leading many low carb paleos to essentially ostracize, or at least attempt to, Stephan from "their" movement.  So who do we have leading the paleo movement?  Movements need leaders after all.  Well, for all his personal charisma, and his biology degree, Mark Sisson does lack the credentialed gravitas.  I also believe he is irrevocably tainted by his commercialism/supplements/etc.   The Grok stuff may draw followers but it won't play to mainstream acceptance of PB.  Bottom line, he's not someone in a position to be the leader of a paradigm shift.  Loren Cordain seems to have fallen a bit from favor, Robb Wolf has the goods to build his own "empire", but not to shift paradigms.  I could name more names, feel free to add in the comments, but I hope I've conveyed my point.  

Enter Jack Kruse, MD, DDS.  Jack is so almost the complete package it's not even funny, as they say.  He has personal charisma, a compelling story of weight loss.  Dude, he's a neurosurgeon!  Oh ... and he was a dentist too.  And he dumped a lot, no, a TON of content on the paleo community for free.  FREE!   Jack is a much better speaker than writer (massive understatement there), and he plays to the rebel in the community.  He talks science using big words and technical terms and I do believe he could sell ice to an Inuit in the dead of arctic winter.  Unless, my friends, that Inuit had a background/education in the topics about which he speaks.  Then said Inuit would file a complaint with the Saskatchewan BBB for starters.    If you wade through the comments over at FTA you will find many Jack defenders who will try to convince you that Jack speaks enough nuggets of truth worth listening to, you should just write off the rest as eccentricity.

Wim Hof, Wim Hof, Wim Hof!!  I admit I had never heard of him before though I had inadvertently caught his act on Fox and Friends recently.  Although I've read at Todd Becker's Getting Stronger blog, and he and I have had our exchanges on our respective blogs, I did not read his Iceman post.   According to Wikipedia, with the picture shown here, Hof holds the ice immersion record of just under two hours.  Folks on FTA and all over the internet are talking about Hof and saying that he's proof humans can survive for longer than has been generally agreed upon (on average) and we've all been brainwashed to believe our bass ackwards training vis a vis hypothermia.  Folks, look at those ice cubes, realize that if I were trying to set a record I would be tensing up and protruding my belly like no get-out while the ice was being filled so that once it melted just a bit I could contract back and have less direct contact with the ice.  But the ice schtick is an illusion of sorts anyway, because we think "colder than water" therefore more harsh.  But indeed it's not, in a way it's a wash -- ice has about twice the thermal conductivity of water, but roughly half the heat capacity.  What this means to you is that ice, at say, -10C may conduct heat faster than cold water, but it takes twice as much ice to absorb an equivalent amount of heat from a warmer body than it does water.  Water is a heat sucker folks! Because the combined thermal conductivity of ice and interstitial air space is far less than that of water which will contact you pretty much over every little bit of your body.  When it comes to thermal conduction, this, and the heat capacity of water compared to ice (about double is what makes cooler-than-your-body water exposure so insidious.  So deep runs the anti-authority streak in some they are arguing with Kurt that no, a human immersed in ice water wouldn't be dead after several hours.   I'm amazed that some seem to think that Wim could survive falling through the ice that much longer than anyone else.  Yes, it has apparently been documented that he can use meditation to ramp up his autonomic nervous system, but there are limits to this too, and that's why we probably don't have Hof performing this stunt in ice-WATER.  Nickoley says because he has gone 15 minutes in a 40 degree cold plunge somehow he believes Jack when he, sounding like he was lying in a puddle of his own blood, claims he had just undergone surgery and was well into hours of lying in an ice bath intending, apparently, to stay in the cold for a long while.  Oh but don't worry -- he was being supervised ...  Lots of ice bathers over at FTA who can last up to an hour in 45ish degree water.  Well, whether or not I believe these folks is besides the point, nobody seems to be interested in the fact that these times don't come close to the 2 hours MINIMUM in icewater as Jack claims.  No ... apparently we have to not only interpret Leptinmanese (my Rosetta Stone CD is on backorder), we're also expected to leave open the hypothetical possibility that Jack is Wim on Leptinroids or something.  It's fuzzy, but I keep hearing Hof also did the MRSA thing -- I went looking but no love.  Anyone have a link?  Was this entire stunt to scam off this??

So ...

The new leader has been born amidst the perfect storm.  Only he's not going to be able to lead to, nor does he seem particularly interested in leading to the paradigm shift most seem united in wanting.  I'd even jump aboard the train to revise dietary recommendations to properly address the sources of nutrition so long as Fat Head and his merry band of VLC'ers doesn't get too much say in drafting the new ones.  But this is not where the Kruser is headed, and not where he wants to take you .... if you let him.  And he's telling you this, but his defenders aren't even listening it would appear.   You see, some have swallowed the BAB and jumped into the ice baths in desperation, and some have seen benefits so all is forgiven if Jack stretched the truth to get you on board his magical mystery tour.  

Ultimately, where is he taking you though?  At TEDx in Nashville he dropped the Kruse Missile.  If he's to be believed, Jack intentionally injected MRSA virus and underwent abdominal surgery (to remove intentionally gained fat) to test/prove that his CT would be effective in (a) preventing the infection from taking hold, and (b) managing post-op pain without drugs.  Now, I ask you this.  What does such an as-yet undocumented n=1 experiment do for ANYONE?  Nothing.  I can guarantee you that cold therapy has been studied until the grassfed cows come home for injury (which surgery ultimately is) recovery.  I've only ever had oral surgery but it was pretty involved and most take a lot more post-op pain killers than I ever required.  And I used ... ice!  LOL.  Really folks.  But as my detractors, especially, are quick to point out, my ice packs didn't kill off the adipose tissue about my jaw!  Now he claims on his Facebook page to be treating intractable MRSA in a patient with CT.   Leaving aside the veracity of the claim, what does Jack's experiment do to forward the progress of medicine?  Do you think nobody else is looking into ways to  prevent the spread of infection which has become an increasing threat with surgery as things like MRSA have come to be?  I remain indignant over Jack's claims of having purposefully exposed himself to this, let alone his surgeon, and whatever medical personnel were involved in this super-elective tummy tuck.   I don't wish mental illness on anyone, but I hope for everyone's sake he is mentally ill and just thinks he's done what he says he has. ... and that someone close to Jack will move to intervene for his sake, and the sake of his beautiful wife and two children.  Really, despite efforts, there is no favorable light in which to cast the TEDx claims.  Either he's delusional, a flat out liar, or a danger to himself and society with his deliberate acts.

Which brings me full circle to the whole paradigm shifting upsetting the apple cart movement.  Modern medicine is rife with problems.  Doctors are not perfect, but I'm trying to envision how sanctioning such experimentations and revolutionary thinkers improves the system.  Emily Deans, a practicing psychiatrist wrote an excellent post relating to this a while back:  The Glorious Cause .  I imagine it was not an easy post for her to write and hit the publish button on, but I think it is an important read and I encourage those of you who have not read it to do so.  I don't believe that conventional Western medicine is so all wrong.  But there certainly is a right and a wrong way for Jack to set in motion the changes he envisions.  Everyone has dreams ... some of us are bigger dreamers than others.  Who knows, most of the great geniuses were thought to be crazy in their own times.  So this fuels the dreamers to suppose "what if that's Jack Kruse" now and all of his critics will end up wiping egg off their faces when he reveals Factor X.

I submit the following as to why Jack is not the next paradigm shifter.  First, he's fighting a system, however ill-defined, not fashioning novel scientific hypotheses.  This is important.  He is not putting forth original speculations to explain a phenomenon (obesity, immunity, longevity, whatever).  Everything, and I mean pretty much everything he's suggesting has been studied (perhaps not with RCT's but tried and/or written about) He's not saying the earth orbits the sun when conventional wisdom is the opposite.  This has been what Taubes tried, only it turns out TWICHOO came about once the evidence was already overwhelming that the earth orbits the sun and he tried to convince us otherwise.  Jack is not attempting paradigm shifting with novel ideas.  No.  He is claiming that the evidence has been there all along for his protocols.  The leptin reset, the cold therapy, it's all been there, complete with rewriting the evolutionary history of humans.  The difference between Jack and the revolutionary paradigm shifters of years' past is that the hard core, irrefutable evidence countering Jack's often incoherent claims is right there.  There's nothing he points to that says ... gee, maybe they're wrong about that.  It's not just the admittedly unimportant claim that Phelps trains in 50 degree waters 18 hours a day, it's the fact that humans die with the kind of cold exposure he claims to have subjected himself to.  We all know that fat cells don't die absent tissue damage unless the type of cold exposure he's advocating leads to frost bite.  

The most telling thing to me about this wannabe paradigm shifter is that there's no evidence he made any effort to work within the system for change.  There is a ton of literature researching cold therapy etc.  Heck, for her last surgery, the nurse informed us that the OR would be cold and my mother would have a special warm air inflated "blanket" of sorts to keep her warm (though presumably not the leg being operated on).  See?  Folks have thought of how to use temperature to prevent infections already.  If Jack is interested in cold for surgery recovery, why doesn't Jack Kruse NeuroSURGEON apply his talents in a research facility investigating just that??  Here is where his stunt is that epic FAIL.  He claims on FB he'll be releasing patient videos.  How about the video of Subject Numero Uno dude?   It won't change a thing because not a single one of you will be able to opt for cold therapy or whatever based on what Jack claims he did.  Not a one.  I'm eternally grateful to my mother's most recent pain management doctor.  She had very little pain and no, she wasn't drugged drooling either.  Honestly I can't imagine her recovery managed any better than it was or even wanting any sort of paradigm shift there.  Maybe I'm too blinded by personal experience now here, but I don't think so.  How many of Jack's true believers even know what paradigm he's trying to change here anyway.  If he wants to pioneer surgeries or non-surgical interventions there's plenty of room for that in the proper venues.

In the end, there's a reason for the safeguards we have in the system.  And however imperfect, they are better than the alternative where desperate folks will be drained of financial resources and risk life and limb for unproven and ineffective medical procedures.  Is that what we want?  I'll even sacrifice having a doctor who thinks dietary cholesterol clogs my arteries if when the time comes that I need surgery, they'll advise and perform that which has been effective and life improving for hundreds of human patients before me.  I guess when push comes to shove, I'm less worried about paradigms and all that, and more that my doctor is educated and informed to treat me the best way he/she knows how.  It would be nice for alternatives to be more readily available as well, but I'm not sure that a world where a neurosurgeon can obtain and culture MRSA to inject himself in a whacky self-experiment is one I'd prefer to the status quo.

I was all set to publish this when someone on the FTA post mentioned that there was a new interview up of Jack and Abel James.  It's here.  So now he's like Einstein, only he's nothing like Einstein.  It sounds like Factor X is going to be a vagal nerve stimulator.  He discusses how this is used for epileptics to control seizures but they lose weight.  Abel seems mesmerized by Jack's personality and utterly incapable of grasping why it is that Jack's critics are so many and increasingly vocal.   Jack ridicules "mental masturbation" over peer review studies while claiming that polar bears hibernate and emerge from the ice "shredded".  Yeah, real critical thinking going on there on Abel's part not to even check if this is true.  Turns out polar bears don't even hibernate.  I think Neal Matheson summed it up best why this matters -- it makes everyone look bad.  I've been saying since day one of this blog that if we're going to use science to counter supposed "bad science" it had damn well be right.   That low carbers insisted on touting some metabolic advantage and denouncing calories, not to mention this increasing movement towards zero carb, very high fat,  has ultimately hurt the progress of mainstream acceptance for an effective treatment for obesity and diabetes.  It is the insistence that it be the long term lifestyle suited to everyone that relegates the lifestyle time and again to the fringe.  I realize the various conference and pow wow organizers are in a tough spot.  They need the name draws to build an audience.  Surely a conference headlined by a bunch of academics nobody ever heard of, or even folks like Lustig who is hardly a dynamic speaker is not what they want at this time.  But promoting Jack Kruse is going to backfire because if there are so many within the community protesting (and increasingly vocally at that), what do you think those looking in from the outside are thinking??  Seriously, dudes!!


So I guess I'll just do it by saying I sincerely hope for an end to the Kruse Missile Krisis.  I'll even retire my Leptin Man if this is the last we hear of this stuff in the mainstream community.   I do think there is enough foundation here for eating real, whole animal and vegetable foods (as one desires) that it's time for the community to shed it's rebel & martyr complex and recognize this.  There are enough folks on board to sustain a credible and sizeable niche in the larger mainstream.   So I'm all for letting Jack be Jack so long as he's not hurting anyone else.  However I must say that it sounds like he didn't even let his family in on what he was up to until after the surgery.  I know if I did that to my husband or vice versa, and there aren't even children involved in our case, there'd be some serious discussions going on involving someone in Emily Deans' profession and/or attorneys.  Let his website go viral and whatnot.  Many attempt to marginalize his critics by claiming personal animus, or that he's not hurting anyone, or that his ideas are too visionary for us mere mortals to grasp.  There's a new brand of rebellion out there that the "old guard" of paleo is just turning to sour grapes or they've sold out by working within guidelines established in their fields.  They've lost their own inner Jack and feel threatened by his genius and are jealous of his meteoric rise.  I'm baffled by it and I think it speaks to the gullibility and desperation of people out there more than anything that can be said about Jack.

I go back and forth as to what's going on here.  He seems off his rocker yet comes off in command of his faculties in interviews and such.  This can be deceiving because how many times to we have to see a friend, neighbor, even sibling or parent interviewed on TV after their loved one has committed an act of horrific proportion before we realize that appearances can, indeed, be deceiving.  I'm not sure how long this photo has been on his Twitter page, but does the composition look familiar?  All he needs is the outstretched hand and a different background and Ron Rosedale is seeing come serious competition on the televangelist front!!  In any case, I know for my part who I'd like to meet at AHS12.  I could care less about meeting Jack, it's his wife Sandy I'd like to meet.  Has anyone ever met her?  In his Abel James podcast he speaks of meeting Abel's significant other at PaleoFX.   Does Jack bring his wife along ever?  Will she be on the LC Cruise?  I mean, I can see not going along to boring conferences, but surely she'll enjoy a week in the Caribbean.  And I put forth this challenge on FTA -- I'll buy the 80 lbs of ice if Jack will just put all the rumors to rest and get in his hotel room tub on Sunday morning while a bunch of us watch.

But that gets me to why I think Jack's probably not crazy, he's just playing the community for all it's worth.  He loves to give sneak previews and swear his friends to secrecy.  Why ... when will he reveal Factor X?  I suppose when folks grow tired of CT.  Think about this.  He did CT all along -- indeed he said in the interview that his LR diet wasn't fully paleo at first.  So what did Dr. Helping-people reveal first?  His LR.  Why not the whole thing?  And I'm willing to bet whatever Factor X turns out to be, he's been using that all along too.  Just think how many LR failures who gave up on him might have benefited knowing the whole thing, right?  As for Factor X, he's revealed it to Richard Nickoley.  Why is there so much controversy over his Jan 9 Bio hack?  Because there's doubt and that doubt would vaporize in an instant had he documented it.  Jack doesn't want to set the record straight, he wants the criticism.  Heck, he baited it on FB according to his interview with Abel.  So I suppose posts like this one only serve to help his cause ... that is, unless, this juggernaut of insanity can be stopped before it destroys the community Jack USED to whatever end he's using it.  Or ... he is crazy and needs help.  I go back and forth on what's going on here ....

I'll leave you with this quote from Richard, complete with his italicized emphasis:
"I like Jack.  I like the idea of Jack."
Whether or not folks like him as an individual, I think many more like the *idea* of him.  That perhaps we're witnessing genius in our time with the answer to all our ills.  And I also believe that even those who don't like the idea of Jack per se, perhaps (myself included?) *want* to like the idea of him, if that makes any sense.  I want to believe that there are great thinkers out there (there are) and that one day they'll solve the various problems.  But folks, Jack Kruse ain't that guy.  And I'm willing to bet half my telomere length on that statement!

Comments

Lesley Scott said…
"I submit the following as to why Jack is not the next paradigm shifter. First, he's fighting a system, however ill-defined, not fashioning novel scientific hypotheses. This is important. He is not putting forth original speculations to explain a phenomenon (obesity, immunity, longevity, whatever). Everything, and I mean pretty much everything he's suggesting has been studied (perhaps not with RCT's but tried and/or written about) He's not saying the earth orbits the sun when conventional wisdom is the opposite."

Such a good point that tends to get lost in the lightning-rod buzz surrounding Kruse. Schtick does work, which is why people do it & capitalize on it. I also liked Emily's post that not all conventional wisdom is wrong; tilted in the direction of various special interests, perhaps, but not entirely wrong on all accounts. However, it's fun in a sort of a Beavis & Butthead teenage-boy kind of way to flout authority, I guess, which the sandbox-fistfighting in the comments section of that "What to do about Jack Kruse" post on Free the Animal reminded me of. I get a kick out of Richard's - er Angry Dick's - in your face vulgarity, he at least does it with flair and tongue firmly in cheek. But I can't say the same about the minions that make up the "movement", leave comments that read as truly vulgar and blindly defend Kruse; many just strike me as lost souls that are grasping at something, anything, that feels anti-establishment because it feels more "authentic".
ProudDaddy said…
My telomeres aren't as long as yours, but I'd be willing to bet a sizeable portion that the fact that the emperor has no clothes will soon be recognized. And you can believe me because Dude, I'm a Rational Person!
Lerner said…
really quick note, I thought I'd posted this yesterday:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRsNh0eB-Io

Hof did suppression of innate immune reaction to LPS endotoxin (not super immunity to MRSA)

got to run, my PASTA is cooking :)
Wow. Where to begin? First, let's just say I was disappointed that Angry Dick was put on the AHS12 program even before his recent tirade. What offended me wasn't so much the actual c-word but the implication behind the use ... he wanted to offend or hurt. I don't think that's the kind of person we need to hear from given limited speaking slots. Ah well, can't wait to attend the session opposite AD!

Re cold, while you're right about the ice cube thing (my Thermopen came with instructions on how to *precisely* add enough water to ice to calibrate 32 degrees), I think there's more to it. Jack's lately been tweeting all sorts of stories of people being able to tolerate cold water for longish periods of time ... though certainly not hours.

Re factor X and the vagus nerve, interesting that. I recall reading quite a while back that there was a theory going around regarding why some WLS was successful and some wasn't. The idea was that some surgeons inadvertently cut the VN and in those patients, the desire to eat as they had pre-surgery did not return and they thus maintained their loss.

As far as the timing of factor X, isn't he revealing it on the low-carb cruise? Oh, and speaking carbs, interesting that the recent paleo survey showed that while nearly half of the respondents were LC, more than half weren't. I hope that helps with the paleo and LC are synonymous idea.

Finally, I'm optimistic that the leadership of an ancestral health movement is coalescing behind the scenes. I'm curious about the AH journal that Kruse outed in one of his posts a while back that it sounds like Aaron Blaisdell and Paul Jaminet have been discussing with others.

I think folks like Paul, Chris Masterjohn and Stephan Guyenet would find themselves open to an ancestral health label/frame. As Chris said after AHS11:

"I like this better than paleo for two basic reasons. First, reverence for ancestors is a popular theme throughout the cultures of the world and is thus clearly intuitive to humans, whereas the Paleolithic period is a modern scientific term with more limited appeal. Second, paleo in the sense of the Paleolithic period implies something static about our past, as if we need to look to one specific period of time to understand ourselves rather than to focus on our continuous history and our emerging future. Ancestral, by contrast, allows us to put as much of an importance on our grandparents as on our (great)345-grandparents, and to trace the emergence of genomic, microbiomic, cultural, and technological evolution that has occurred continuously through our history."

All I can say is if AHS11 was good (and it was), AHS12 should be even more interesting!
Lerner said…
"It's fuzzy, but I keep hearing Hof also did the MRSA thing -- I went looking but no love. Anyone have a link? Was this entire stunt to scam off this??"

Evelyn, I posted that explanation yesterday, it was suppression of innate immune reaction (likely via endogenous cortisol) to LPS (not super immunity to MRSA).

Here is his video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRsNh0eB-Io
Wright Mind said…
I always tape $0.20 to my gear box so that, when I drive, I can frequently shift my pair o' dimes. :-)

(Hat tip: Callahan's Crosstime Saloon, by Spider Robinson)
Unknown said…
Very funny article on "Paleo", and some raw food thrown in.
http://jezebel.com/5899319/stop-using-cavemen-as-an-excuse-for-your-fad-diet
Just some fun,
Unknown said…
Jack is not so genius that we can't understand him. I can't comment on his mental health in a public forum, due to ethical and legal limitations. I find his actions to be perfectly understandable in context once one knows where he is coming from (about which I cannot comment). Will he lead the doctors to a new paradigm and a destruction of conventional wisdom? No, absolutely not. I don't think he will derail evolutionary health, as he is too busy with his own concerns.
Chris Kresser said…
I use "Paleo", but only as a term of convenience. Let's face it, "ancestral health" or "evolutionary health" are a mouthful and not all that catchy.

I'm not too worried about it. I trust at this point that most people in the Paleo world understand that there are many interpretations of that term, and that it's more of a sign post than a literal description.

I tried (and obviously failed) to come up with a better term for the diet I'm recommending before I released the Personal Paleo Code. But in the end it doesn't matter much, because what I suggest is that people figure out what their own optimal diet is anyhow.
J-Sant said…
"WARNING: Apparently "Angry Dick" is back and he drops the "c"-bomb twice in response to female commenters and defends it no less."

Did Mr A Dick ever leave, really?
Alex said…
Kruse reminds me of that alkalarian diet quackmeister, who takes biology to a "ho 'nuva level" with gems like this:

http://articlesofhealth.blogspot.com/2007/05/truth-about-stomach.html

It's like simple, well-understood scientific reality just isn't interesting enough, so they make edgy alternative paradigms out of whole cloth.
Unknown said…
I've got the telomere of a porn star
Lerner said…
From the one interview of Kruse that I'd listened to, I didn't see anything that evokes the word 'genius'.

But... I did see a bit of comic genius in this exchange at Nikoley's:

Nikoley: Emily, Who did Kruse inject with bacteria?

Emily: An idiot
Lerner said…
I did ask Kruse yesterday what documentation he has for his experiment. His answer now makes me think he has zero credibility. I also doubt he had any MRSA at all.

Comments 100 & 101 here:
http://jackkruse.com/tedx-nashville-3312012-press-release/#comments


Now, does that mean that in the respected series of TED talks that a person can get away with zero proof?

Answer: It's not a TED Talk. It's TEDx, which is independent and local. It's not a talk made for TED, that happens to be in Nashville. I wouldn't be surprised to see UFO kidnap victims on stage there next.
Woodey said…
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Josh said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Woodey said…
I'm done with the low carb/Paleo community. I don't want to be associated with any movement or group. I'm tired of the bickering and quackery that plagues it. Its so damaging for people like myself who don't know a lot about the science behind nutrition to be led around by quacks like Kruse. Let these weirdos sit in ice tanks or inject themselves with whatever, I will only laugh when I read about them in the obituaries.
Sanjeev said…
It used to be that you knew you were addicted to porn if you knew the name of any male porn star.

Now we're talking porn star telomere length ...

What can I say? My telomeres are shorter, but thicker ... and mine rotate. No, I don't know what that means. Just sounded funny.
Sue said…
Re online consultations, Kruse has just announced 1 hr consultation for $299 followed by monthly 30 mins at $149.
Josh said…
i'm no psychiatrist but i'm guessing he sufferers from some delusions of the grandoise variety. if this is correct please give no sign ;)
KD said…
I think a big part of the seductiveness of a guy like Kruse is that he gives a great shortcut. I'm not a scientist and I find these things interesting, but metabolism, biochem and nutrition textbooks are really tough going! It's much easier to find a doctor (like Kruse) who tells you that it's all corrupt BS anyway. Then you can safely ignore the hassle of spending years learning the basics and jump right into making wise and snarky remarks online. It's much more fun than trying to memorize metabolic pathways!

Along the same lines, the fact that actual MD don't really understand him either is a feature not a bug!
Kamal said…
Here's a tip. Go to Jack's website. On the right hand side there is a dropdown menu in orange that says "I need help with..."

Maybe you need help with "apoptosis", "stem cell depots", or "quantum biology".

But this is the best part, by far. For all those who need help with "PPAR is the confluent gate", that is an option in the drop-down menu! It's not even a noun or a verb, like "leptin" or "exercising". It's a freaking complete sentence of PPAR-related imagery! Genius.
CarbSane said…
That's too funny Kamal! Yes Lerner, if there are some internet awards for comment genius that gets my vote.

A lot of people listen to Jack and think he sounds normal so ...
CarbSane said…
Good point. Paleo has that ring to it and isn't as off putting as some may find the whole caveman thing.
CarbSane said…
Before his Mod carb posts I think I'd only read a handful of his posts and most of those not all the way through. Those mod carb posts were good and he even said folks were calling him "nice". It's funny, the language doesn't bother me, though too much dilutes the message. Richard seems to go out of his way to be offensive and abusive with his language.
CarbSane said…
As regards Richard, yeah, as I commented below, it's not the language per se, it's his deliberate abusiveness. I mean I get that he doesn't like religion too, but was THAT really necessary in the first para either??

I'm looking forward to AHS12. I, too, shall take a pass on Angry's talk. Yeah, ancestral is a better word, but as Chris commented, it's just not as catchy as paleo. It just seems that for a lot of us, the solution for this modern epidemic doesn't have to be from >10K years ago!

The VN stuff is interesting for sure. In his AbelJ interview did we finally get an explanation of how his LR worked (or was supposed to?) -- he seemed to be claiming that the BAB and whatnot tricked his brain into rewiring itself similar to vagal stimulation?

A journal? Yeah, I saw that. I'm not optimistic about that for various reasons.

Factor X unveiling: He was supposed to I thought, it was the title of his presentation. I got the feeling from his AbelJ interview that he might not do it there -- he says he's not sure how many LC'ers follow his blog.
Lesley Scott said…
@evelyn "some internet awards for comment genius" hey, what about a post with awards for the most science'y-sounding nonsense being used to pass off nutritional woo? that could be fun. :)
J-Sant said…
I've never seen a change in him. It'll take more than a few posts where he tones himself down and makes a few claims. There's plenty of examples where people come across as nice as a result of presented change, but the eventual habits return. He is habitually offensive, and quite self-righteous about it.
Abel James said…
"Paleo" does sound better than "Caveman." As you mentioned in one of your posts a while back, Chris, moving from a "paleo diet" to a "paleo template" is appropriate. What it means to be paleo has... evolved... rapidly. When I first encountered Cordain's "Paleo Diet," I certainly wasn't convinced (especially given the saturated fat issue). It is refreshing - if problematic - that now paleo seems to encompass a more nuanced theory of nutrition based upon the principles of evolutionary health.
CarbSane said…
Yeah, I don't know that he "changed" ... but those posts were uncharacteristic and folks did comment apparently. I've no desire to look back, but I'd like to think that calling women CU-Next-Tuesdays in comments hasn't been a regular practice. Please tell me at least that much is true?
CarbSane said…
Welcome to the Asylum Abel! I like the "template" approach too, except it sounds a bit geekie which is why I actually like the concept of the plate, just everything and proportions of what's on it.

BTW, if you're ever interested in interviewing a mental masturbator for your podcast with an inspiring 100 lb/4 yrs maintained weight loss, I'm available ;-)
Unknown said…
I happen to live in an area with a lot of Scientologists and this thing with the quantum biology and whatnot reminds me a lot of Scientology with the invented technical parlance.
bentleyj74 said…
It's characteristics and people always comment, he more or less lost my readership while romantically reminiscing about his glory days as a "backdoor man" sneaking in for sex with married women while their husbands are away. [thumbs up]
bentleyj74 said…
Characteristics? Bah!
Nigel Kinbrum said…
He's just messin' with ya! It seems to work, as the Kruse post is now up to 891 Comments at the time of writing this.

I got my thick skin from surfing Lyle McDonald's "Nasty Forum" on the Island of Simians. I won't repeat some of the names that I got called there, as you may swoon!
bentleyj74 said…
I read some of those comments and briefly considered contributing but the woman[?] arguing with Evelyn said something along the lines of "People who lose weight eating paleo foods instead of ordinary foods [presumably not thrice blessed by Tibetan monks] have magically different outcomes" and no one called bullsh*t. 800+ comments from people supposedly interested in distinguishing fact from belief and not one of them challenged that statement. I've got better ways to waste my time :)
Abel James said…
Thanks. Ha, we're all mental masturbators to some degree, aren't we? I'll put you on the list of podcast interviewees - might be interesting to talk about your experience low-carbing.
CarbSane said…
@Nige: Nobody is messing with me. If this is his way of getting a lot of comments ... But I'm not a prude and I'm not easily offended. That word is used -- DIRECTED specifically at a woman -- to abuse. Period.
Nigel Kinbrum said…
In the UK, c*nt means really nasty or really funny when aimed at both sexes. I know which I am ;-p

In the US, c*nt means really nasty when aimed at women and really wimpy/p*ssyfied when aimed at men. Both are abusive.

Richard abuses everybody that he feels deserves it, as it's his blog and commenters are free to stay or leave. He abused me after I was respectfully insolent to him over his political beliefs. I blogged about my political beliefs and now we agree to disagree.
CarbSane said…
I think his defense of using the word was more telling. I suspect a goodly number of his readers are scraping the bottom of the barrel for entertainment. They certainly don't seem interested in the science. Why do I say that? In response to Leigh, I linked to four of the blog posts on Jack. I think I got two hits from FTA that day. Even Jimmy's fans are more curious than that! And even when Peter was telling his commenters not to engage me, I got significant traffic from there which tells me that at least his readers are interested in more than just name calling twaddle.
CarbSane said…
Yes, Mr. I draw a zillion bloods all the time and constantly modify my diet to my epigenetic switches didn't have the foresight to do a hormone panel before his epic biohack? LOL.

So he's collecting patient testimonials now. I await the videos -- that's if the TN medical board hasn't gotten sufficient wind of this and he's around much longer.
Yeah, he's certainly entitled to abuse whoever he wants on his blog. But do men who needlessly abuse people on their blog deserve speaking roles at ancestral health events? I'm not sure they do.

But what I did enjoy was the suck-up phone call to KGH ;).
CarbSane said…
Although women in chem and bio programs (and new MD's according to many stats) have made great strides in numbers, often exceeding male enrollment by considerable amounts, in my generation this wasn't the case. Couple that with going to an engineering school, and pretty much my whole professional life has been male dominated. Affirmative action backfired on many of my female peers -- there was always this need to prove yourself because it was assumed you got to your level through AA. I've never been much of a feminist, but I've been around this sort of thing to know it when I "see it". Even before the paleos came the pure LC men who display subtle sexist and often outright misogynistic tendencies proudly on their sleeves. Having been "one of the boys" in many a social situation, I've seen and heard it all wrt to how men view/interact with women (which probably made me far more paranoid of any excess weight than needed to have been). Still, although they would often be crude in my presence, I would have walked away if they were directly abusive. By that I mean they might have said something nasty about someone between them, but if they ever insulted them to their fact with intent to hurt their feelings, that's a brighter line to draw. So when the "bitches" complain, you see, and just don't "get it" ... Sigh is all I can say. AHS12 could do better with their speaking slots than this -- after all Rich doesn't have any other claim to fame besides being a popular blogger. It's not like they are looking past bad behavior like this from (God forbid) the likes of Stephan.

It does also make me shake my head over the response folks had to my delivery here on this blog. I mean a couple of $ in names, the word plays on Shai, etc., you'd think I was the most mean spirited bitch to ever occupy the web. Ahh well.
bentleyj74 said…
"It does also make me shake my head over the response folks had to my delivery here on this blog. I mean a couple of $ in names, the word plays on Shai, etc., you'd think I was the most mean spirited bitch to ever occupy the web. Ahh well."

Something smells funny about women objecting to the tone or style of other women on a blog page where women in general are being openly referred to as c*nts and b*tches as a means of discrediting their position. Gaslighting much? No, it's not dark in here...you're just crazy. This isn't hard to understand...you're just a stupid c*nt. Maybe Angry Dick didn't manage to shed quite as much of the culture he abhors as he'd like to hope.
CarbSane said…
Richard's back patting himself in his later post about allowing all these great voices an unmoderated and open venue to air their opinions. While that may be true, I think many voices won't bother b/c of the offensiveness so what does that say of the supposed diversity of opinions he says he hoped to foster? When I asked if this is what he's about, I got basically yes,9 years, 3000 posts, I know what I'm doing.

And now in the comments of that next post he seems to have thrown Jack under the bus a bit pointing out that Jack hasn't come to his blog to defend himself whilst Ray Cronise came around to play.
bentleyj74 said…
Yes...I saw that and couldn't help the smirk which accompanied the newsflash...Swimming Might Be Good For You!

More shocking still... [!] ... Are you ready for this one? Defibrillators all charged up?

It Might Be Better to Swim in Standard Temp Pools Than Lie Still in Ice Water.
Nigel Kinbrum said…
Anyway, moving swiftly on..... :-D
bentleyj74 said…
No way! Let's hang around and argue about it then find some other way to reinvent the wheel ;P
Andreas said…
Just some random thoughts on CT and Wim! He has run a half and a full marathon nearly naked and barefooted in the winter in northern Scandinavia, temperatures around minus 20 Celsius, he did get some frostbites on the soles of his feet. And he was in pain the last couple of miles both times. Medical testing of him prior to the half Marathon included a 30 min full body dip in 6 degrees Celsius water. He sat in the water immersed to the neck and the thermometer he had swallowed shoved that his core temperature went up slightly during the test. He was relaxed and showed no signs of stress and his pulse remained in the low fifties. The experiment was terminated when the doctor performing the test was convinced, that Wim could endure the cold with no ill consequences.
I took part in an experiment five years ago or so, and was immersed into zero degrees water for 3 min. In those 3 min I could feel the numbness beginning in the fingers and toes, and it had just reached my knees and elbows, when the 3 min had passed.
Regular CT does increase your cold tolerance somewhat, and I think that BAT is involved, but you would probably have to be talented and "crazy" to do some of Wim's stunts.
Andreas said…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvheyS9R6PQ
Ice in water, not just ice!
CarbSane said…
Welcome Andreas! I notice he didn't stay in very long ;) Ya know I keep reading over at FTA how addictive cold therapy is. Maybe we're witnessing a side effect? ACTIP*

*Advanced CT Induced Psychosis