The Quack speaks

From FTA:

Jack Kruse // May 9, 2012 at 17:42
I have a conundrum here. What was done to me will be found in justice. What kind of
justice, I am unsure as yet. But I have a consciousness about the movement that this
“twatter” undermined by the actions said. They people who are complicit in this are
crafting a message that my response has damaged the movement. Quite the
contrary……the “twat” opened that can of worms. I have to protect that emotion in
spite of my anger, because the movement and helping others is part of my mission.
The ‘respected leaders’ have to back “paleo the movement”, but neurosurgery pays
my bills, so I must protect my house first and foremost. I have hired peopel to do just
that on Sunday night as I was driven back to Houston after being removed from the
boat. The first person I called was Robb Wolf because I knew what he was crafting
was just hit with a torpedo from the “in paleo crowd”. The respected leaders forget to
easily, because Paleo pays their bills. But I promise you the “twat” who opened that
account will be found and prosecuted in the court of law and in the court of public
opinion. To those who fed that ‘twatter’ account……..hire someone now, because
the law says if you fed it……..you own it because of what happened. See
consequences do matter when the federal government resources are wasted. And if
they choose not do deal with it I have plenty of time and money to follow up to see to
it that the rest of this community knows precisely who put our message at risk. When
you came after me you opened the door, my response is called defense.

Sounds like ACTUAL threats to me Dr. (for now) Kruse.

Comments

Unknown said…
Is he seriously suggesting he is going to sue people to retweeting/following SKS? Well, have fun with that. He's not the only rich person in the world. First he needs to subpoena Twitter for the IP address of the person running it, then they have to trace it to that person, then they have to establish a never-before heard of legal precedent that you can be guilty for RT-ing. Yawn. Not losing sleep over this, that's for sure.

Robb Wolf already spoke on PH and as for the rest of the leadership, it says a lot that Kruse's threat-buddy Kevin Cottrell is no longer on the PaleoFX board
http://paleohacks.com/questions/118128/meta-whats-the-deal-with-paleohacks-dr-kruse-and-the-fbi#axzz1uJAJ8IvV
bentleyj74 said…
It really gives me the willies that a guy who can't put one single coherent thought together after several days of planning is performing surgery. If I didn't know he was a doctor already I would read the above and presume he was mentally compromised in some way.
So, he believes in "guilt by association"? If you read or retweet, you done the deed? Does this dude have a concept of social media and how it works? Really?

Actually, the tweet itself wasn't the threat. Maybe he should spend his time and money to find who "Lance" is. That's what we'd all like to know...
Sanjeev said…
I'm wondering if the police that questioned him talked about his MRSA experiments, whether they had gone to his articles and guessed there may be something to be concerned about there.

And if so, his apparent desire to get more publicity with (again apparently) zero reflection on what the authorities found actionable information just raises more red flags (as if any more were needed ...)
Woodey said…
"....my response is called defense."

No it’s called retaliation. Also, this jackass is assuming he knows who did it and is trying to intimidate. To me it sounds like he wrote this after having one too many. I found what he said to be irrational, belligerent and unjustified. After reading what Robb said on PH Kruse is losing his friends and will soon find himself on an island with only a handful of stragglers.He better stick with neurosurgery, not much income is going to be found elsewhere.

In the end we are all better off having this quack sail off (no pun intended) into the sunset. He's like a big fart in the wind; large explosion of sound, heads turn, people gasp at the smell, and then before you know it all gone and people move on.


On another note, this is a quote from Robb's post on the Kruse subject:
"If we are too stupid/irrational to sort out our shit then we deserve mainstream medicine"

While I agree with him on the premise I disagree with the attitude he has of mainstream medicine. Thank God for mainstream medicine, without it we would be dying from diseases that used to kill people off in droves. Anyhow that's for another blog, I just wanted to get that off my chest.
Unknown said…
Help! somebody get me a Kruse-English dictionary!!!!!

I'd love to comment more, Evelyn, on your posts regarding Kruse. You seem to write a lot of those lately. Thing is, you also quote a huge chunk of his writing in those posts, too, and it is pretty much incomprehensible. Though I thought that, "my brain thinks vertically and horizontally" thing was hilarious!
Anonymous said…
"On another note, this is a quote from Robb's post on the Kruse subject:
"If we are too stupid/irrational to sort out our shit then we deserve mainstream medicine"

While I agree with him on the premise I disagree with the attitude he has of mainstream medicine. Thank God for mainstream medicine, without it we would be dying from diseases that used to kill people off in droves. Anyhow that's for another blog, I just wanted to get that off my chest."

Thank you for this, Woodey. I was thinking the same thing. I am as disgusted with the "health care delivery system" as anyone but I get tired of paleo or alternative anything acting as if the whole edifice of modern medicine is nothing but corruption and stupidity.

I mean, really. Vaccinations and orthopedic care for fractures alone justify modern medicine. I am fond of saying the alternative to medicine is not alternative medicine, it is better medicine. I guess I should repeat myself more.
Sanjeev said…
> then we deserve mainstream medicine

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. I hope it was some kind of temporary a brain fart.

gee ... yes, I deserve vaccinations, antibiotics, all the medications I"ll use and never use but which are available if needed, prosthetics, surgery, doctors being forced to wash their hands and all the things that modern medicine has GOTTEN RID of; no more blood letting and leeches ...

All that is the barest tip of the veritable iceberg. Even people in small villages in the boonies have some access to most of this stuff, but because they don't have the easy, ready access that's available to most of us that live in major urban centres, it's a constant source of angst for those communities.
Josh said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Josh said…
...and the alternative to conventional wisdom is not unconventional wisdom aka just making stuff up. evidence based wisdom is probably better but will never be as popular as ideology based wisdom. i am currently confused as to what value there is in a paleo/ancestral approach to nutrition and health. if the evidence genuinely supports it then it simply an evidence based approach. if the evidence doesn't support it, then it is just another ideology based approach and of little value to those with a genuine interest in furthering their knowledge on nutrition
I likely would not have made it to age 5 without modern medicine, what with all my bouts with pneumonia (hospitalizations included) and my severe asthma, which plagues me even as a middle-aged gal (ie, did not outgrow). Nearly died of an attack at age 14, and thank God for the cop who busted through lights and got me to the ER in time to get steroids and epinephrine and the super-fast treatments that reopened my airways. I have to replace thyroid meds...without them, dire happenings would ensue. I had to have an emergency appendectomy at age 42..nearly burst an appendix there. Was home in 4 days.

Yes, thank God for modern medicine!
Sanjeev said…
great way to put it

> the alternative to medicine is not alternative medicine, it is better medicine

While there are conventional doctors that resist change, it's great that there is a skeptical, self-improvement, self-correction process built into scientific approaches as opposed to the canonical or traditional approaches.
Sanjeev said…
I have one of these babies

also known as this

upshot: DOESN'T HELP, just give up.

> "my brain thinks vertically and horizontally"

Jack's got NUFFIN on me ... I think screw-i-ly AND Möbius-stip-i-ly, while drinking beer out of a Klein bottle while walking up Escher's (ancient pathway) staircase.

We evolved creatures are as far above Jack as he is above ... MRSA. Good thing my cold exposure made me immune to Jack.
Anonymous said…
Josh said:

"i am currently confused as to what value there is in a paleo/ancestral approach to nutrition and health."

I am not sure there is any now. There might have been, but just from the total inability to coalesce around core recommendations, and the radical variability in approaches we see under the label, anyone could be forgiven for thinking paleo is a lot of ideologically-driven a priori narrative-based dietary faddism.

OK, everyone agrees that a preference for real food is smart and that we could ditch wheat and sugar without ill effects if we want, but otherwise there is no "core curriculum" as it were.

We still have factions claiming with a straight face that Milk is a cause of multiple sclerosis (!!) and other factions recognizing that pastured milk products might be some of the healthiest traditional (definitely not paleo) real foods you can eat.

And we have factions that cling to the shunning of legumes on a basically theoretical (if weak) basis which as far as I can tell has zero support in epidemiology and little other evidence to support it. In fact, it seems to be an artifact preserved from the original conceit of Eaton and Cordain that anything "we could not have eaten easily" when we were not even who we are now, cannot be good for us. This is a conceit that has never made an iota of sense for me. other than perhaps as a starting point for suspicion.

Then we have serious but well meaning confusion over what to do about the preponderance of n6 in the modern diet. Swamp it out with high dose fish oil while continuing to eat nuts (which cannot reasonably be thought by any anthropologist to be more "paleo" than legumes or wild grains) high in n-6? Turns out that might be worse than doing nothing.

Finally we have the fatal virus that has infected paleo from the beginning but now looks more like an ineradicable retrovirus rather than a 24 hour flu. Low Carb hucksterism and offshoots of it like Krusism. The atkins fad diet -which works so well to reduce craving and food reward effects, has evolved into a full fledged dietary cult that has now, with aid of it's profiteers selling books and xylitol based treats not found in nature, glommed on to "paleo" like Ursus Maritimus hugging a newborn penguin.

Result - there are now people who actually believe that BANANAS can only be eaten seasonally.

The paleo label actually is kind of finished. It does not represent any scientifically respectable approach and has such few reliable core elements as to be a heuristically useless concept. It has nothing to add to reading Michael Pollan or and just adding some red meat, or Weston Price sans sourdough bread.

Just try being a total newbie, googling paleo diet and coming up with something really scientifically defensible beyond eating real food - you might not even get that, with all the paleo bars and supplements about.

PS My comments are about the state of "paleo" as a meme. It is of course useful to use an ancestral approach to nutrition in some ways. The problem is, in order to instruct someone in it, I would have to specify how to do it and WHO is doing it correctly and not just making up stories, etc. And then, I would be roundly criticized for trying to constrain the libertarian wonderland that is paleo on the internet, where every idea is a beautiful snowflake that deserves a fair hearing and is somehow "contributing to the conversation" - as if dialogue about diet were a useful good for it's own sake.

I would be considered a "hater" who is not interested in "helping people" by being so negative as to point out which of the beautiful paleo flowers are really just weeds.
Birdie said…
I'm completely confused. It sounds like Kruse is only going after the @SKS twitter account owner? And not "Lance," the person who allegedly called/emailed in the threat? That doesn't make sense at all. Is Kruse the person who called/emailed in the threat? Folks were saying that he was gunning for the @SKS twitterer for a week prior to all of this. Maybe he thought it was a way to get some attention and get the twitterer to quit?

I think I need a tin foil hat...
Melissa, I don't think his plan is to sue folks who retweeted or followed SKS (yeah, that'd be pretty frivolous). But he and Kamal had an exchange on Twitter where Kamal claimed that SKS was a "crowd-sourced feed."

So my read is that those are the folks he's interested in. I'm not a lawyer, but I don't know that the precedent is there for that either. Does something not count as fair use under parody because Carnival and the FBI didn't get it at first glance?
Tonus said…
I'm thinking that they're not mutually exclusive, at this point.
Tonus said…
He may simply be flinging poo at the wall to see what sticks, or as ivat said, just letting off some steam. Getting yanked off of the LC cruise is both embarrassing and aggravating, especially in the manner that it happened. Think what you will of him, that's a very underhanded (and possibly illegal) thing to do to a person.

That said, his attempts to intimidate via blanket threats and angry words should embarrass him much more than what just happened to him. I don't know that he'd have the legal recourse to discover who made the suspicious tweet or the phone call. And suing people based on a whim, well... you can sue anyone in this country, provided you have a lawyer willing to take the case. But that will only get you as far as a judge who will quickly throw it out.

If his desire is to mobilize some kind of LC/Paleo internet army, then you might be seeing the defining moment of the end of the whole movement.
bentleyj74 said…
"I am fond of saying the alternative to medicine is not alternative medicine, it is better medicine. I guess I should repeat myself more."

{Applauds}
Unknown said…
Internet lawsuits are hard to bring because usually the people live in different states and filing in federal district court is expensive and takes forever.
Anonymous said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said…
I avoid eating a lot of nuts because I find the case against excess n-6 compelling (see William Lands), even if nuts specifically are not well studied.

There is no question that it is hard to minimize excess n-6 while eating a lot of nuts. Hence I avoid eating a lot of nuts more than I avoid eating legumes like black beans.

Jack is a liar and now a bully threatening people with baseless lawsuits and prison time for a parody tweet and hosting a twitter account, neither of which are the slightest bit illegal.

Let him punch a pillow to let off steam. He has no one but himself to blame for what happened.
bentleyj74 said…
@KGH

When you say that you avoid eating a lot of nuts I assume you mean eating A LOT OF NUTS ie nuts by the handful and crusts made of nuts which would be no different than eating foods fried in refined n6 oils and baked treats both in regard to n6 load and calorie excess. Nuts are a common go to for people still looking for ways to make high reward foods [and lots of them] fit into their food rules aka missing the forest for the trees.
Unknown said…
1) Someone sets up a parody twitter account

2) Someone post a parody tweet on this account

3) Someone named "Lance" reads this parody tweet and informs the FBI/Homeland Security about this tweet

4) The FBI/Homeland Security investigates this and clears good Dr

5) Carnival Cruise orders Dr Kruse to leave the ship even though he was cleared

6) Kruse is now threatening legal action against all parties involved and the Paleo world is having a fit

EVERYONE SHOULD JUST TAKE A CHILL PILL
Richard Nikoley said…
Woodey (no matter what he thinks of me) and Kurt are right.

I have never understood this Paleo-Luddite attitude toward modern medicine. Hell, my tonsils were infected regularly as a kid, I broke a couple of bones, and in college had an ingrown toenail that was killing me and a quick surgery on local anesthesia fixed it forever more. And many, many more quality of life things that were simple to deal with but could have spelled disaster otherwise, not just for myself but essentially every friend and family I have.

That said, I'm sure Robb would agree. He was just tweaked. I wouldn't know anything about that, though.
Harry's Acolyte said…
That's a good post, Dr. Kurt.
SimonM said…
Re: Twitter jokes taken too seriously, this infamous case from the UK is interesting (and terrifying in equal measure):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Paul_Chambers
Harry's Acolyte said…
Richard,

Is your stance in this Kruse stuff based more on your innate proclivity to take up for the guy that the majority is seemingly going after or is it based more on the fact that you impishly like being a contrarian or is it because you truly feel that Kruse has the right of this dispute/issue?
Unknown said…
Chill pills are not Paleo
Anonymous said…
Ivat

"Nuts are full of fibre, for example, much of which carries on through and out of the body, taking a significant percentage of entrapped fat with them; so they don't, in my opinion, release as much O-6 into the body as might be expected from composition tables."

Unless you have steatorrhea you are definitely getting exposed to the (usually quite oxidized) PUFA in nuts by eating them, fiber or not. Do you really only eat raw, soaked nuts? Most people are eating roasted ones that are going to be oxidized as hell.

"I disagree that nuts aren't well studied;"

I mean medically well studied - epi and randomized trials. They are not, IMO.

"I've read a lot of studies of their calorific effect, digestive effect, and health effect. However, I'm not gung-ho about this; what the likes of Land and Peat say about nuts frightens the wits out of me, since I eat about 200g a day.:

Why on earth are you eating them so much, then?
bentleyj74 said…
I really did LOL on that one Unknown.
CarbSane said…
WOW! Great post.

To posts above, I do think -- I HOPE at least -- Robb just left out a few words. By that I mean rather than modern medicine, he meant modern medical dietary advice? Just trying to cut him some slack. He came off quite a bit holier than thou in that post than needed be, but ...
CarbSane said…
I hope they are ostracized for their behavior as it should be. I'm not worried over having to answer to any court over this. But it's a pretty despicable tactic. For starters, "why didn't you contact Evelyn aka CarbSane and ask her to take down SKS if you thought it was her". Or tweet SKS and ask they cease and desist! That would be the first things I would do.
CarbSane said…
Welcome Feathered! I think this is one of the more telling things in this saga. He's obsessed with SKS while the FBI clearly is not. He's not at all concerned with "Lance" while the FBI seems to be.

Another oddity is why a tip off to the tweet would be more worrisome to the FBI than the tweet itself, because I've yet to hear any details what the caller said. I imagine the person alerted them to the tweet. Isn't that called good citizenship these days? I've yet to hear there was any real "bioterrorism threat" and the reporting on this is UNREAL. For this caller/emailer to be in trouble for calling/emailing they would have had to actually THREATEN -- as in use of the first person.
Woodey said…
I read his book the Paleo Solution and liked some of the points he made. From what I have seen and read he doesn't strike me as the paranoid type that rants against modern medicine and science (I leave that for people like Tom Naughton or Jimmy Moore), maybe he was just in an off mood. I mean he just had a baby and thanks to modern medicine his wife and baby are doing fine. Wasn't too long ago that the chance of living through childbirth for baby or mother was a lot slimmer.

That was one thing that disturbed me when I was heavily involved in the LC/Paleo community, I never could understand the anti- establishment mentality. I remember discussions on the Fat Head Facebook page with people who were against vaccinating their kids because they couldn't trust doctors. It just blows my mind.

I blame the leaders of these movements for fostering this kind of mentality. Last week I was on Naughton's blog and he was doing the usual posts about "scientists lie" and it drove me nuts reading the comments cheering him on as the savior of the people. I guarantee that if Tom found a lump on his nut he wouldn't go sit in a tub full of ice and try to freeze it off while eating a pound of coconut oil soaked bacon. He would go to one of those evil doctors and get help.

Adults who bash doctors and scientists are like kids who bash their parents, but run to them when they need something. Its convenient and it impresses their followers/friends, but its a big joke.

I agree with Kurt that there is a need for improvement in medicine, but that takes time and the reality is things are improving. Meanwhile there are some things we can do to take care of ourselves so that maybe we won't need to see the doctor as often, diet being one of them. I just wish some of these health gurus wouldn't feed off of peoples fears and make doctors (who are there to help us) out to be the bad guy.

Two articles that sum up why I think naturopathy and homeopathy practice should never ever replace modern medicine and real doctors.

http://www.readperiodicals.com/201101/2274226131.html
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/10-03-31/
Woodey said…
"I would be considered a "hater" who is not interested in "helping people" by being so negative as to point out which of the beautiful paleo flowers are really just weeds."

Just point to the hemlock plant and tell them it makes great tea.
Woodey said…
@bentleyj74 Read your response to Razwell and yeah that was my first encounter with the guy. What he posted was just too much temptation for me to avoid, I just had to take a couple of potshots at the guy.
Woodey said…
It is a good well thought out post. I think there are some good nutritional aspects of Paleo. One good thing is it cuts out a lot of processed refined foods, which really do nothing for the body except excite our taste buds and trigger the reward center. Eating foods with high nutritional value is something I fully promote as does everyone on here, but you don't need to be Paleo for that.

The downside is the diet is too restrictive and that just doesn't cut it for the majority, because of this I think it harbors a mental aspect to food that just isn't healthy. Also I feel that it tries to sell false hope to people that are worried about diseases, things like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. For me quitting LC/Paleo has been hard because I worry about my health and for the past year I felt that the diet was going to save me from modern day afflictions that are on the rise.

Another issue I see is we don't know the long-term benefits or detriments this diet can have on people. Being Paleo for a year or a few years is not long-term, not when people live to be 70 or 80. Short-term results are not good indicators for making any kind of claim for long-term benefits!!!!Yet you see it time and time again people making speculations that others run with and embrace as if it is established universal law.

I see the Paleo movement as just another group glamorizing a past era, not fully understanding it and just taking sections of it that fits their mental picture. Hey I would love to head over to my neighbor’s hot hot girlfriend, club her on the head and take her back to my pad for some whoopee. Times have changed and so has our body. Before we were hunter/gatherers we were scavenger/gatherers and we ate whatever we could get our hands on, uncooked to until we knew how to make fire. I wonder how many Paleos are out there eating raw roadkill and bugs. I mean come on lets be true to our Paleo roots.
Oh, please update your blog. This comment makes me wish you'd blog more. :D
When I first read about this, I thought, "Did someone read that parody tweet and think it was real and reported it?" If so, they were just being civic-minded, concerned.

But...then I thought, "Um, who would just come across such a tweet. It would have to be soemone reading that twitter account. If so, they knew it was a joke. If so, then reporting it went beyond prankster-mode."

Perhaps that is why the FBI would be interested in "Lance." Lance, if malicious in intent, knew it would cause time/trouble/expense/humiliation/discord/fear/etc. And I doubt the FBI likes having its time wasted on such nonsense when real terrorists abound.

I'd want to smack "Lance", too, if this was the case: "Let's get SKS in trouble with a little email/call."

If "Lance" was malicious and not civic-minded (as may be the case, it seems), I hope he gets the worst case of piles on records and has to spend all he has on underwear and Preparation H. :D
I recommend, instead of a chill pill, a nicely chilled hours-long ice bath. That's Paleo. :D Or at least Ice Age-y.
Woodey said…
@Richard Ahh if I was comfortably numb I would probably regret how I have put some things, unfortunately my supply is gone so...But anyhow I snap and say stuff rather bluntly that's just how I am, as I have seen you can be as well. Hell, when motivated who isn't?

That being said I came to Carbsane's defense because I felt that she has been unfairly picked on and that some people have used the Kruse incident as an opportunity to funnel their anger at her. You came to Kruse's defense and I came to Carb's.

You have done nothing personal to me and if you and Carb where to hash things out in private and all was well I would act accordingly. Maybe I am acting like Carbsane's watchdog (not by her asking btw), but that's fine, her blogs are wonderful treats and she has been nice to me. My thing is I don't really like seeing women unfairly (even if its fair I still don't favor it, I am a bit old fashioned in that regard)picked on.

If you have something good to say and its constructive I'll listen, even give well thought out feedback. Case in point I read your post liked it and responded.
Harry's Acolyte said…
"Jack Kruse‏@DigiSurg

Going to be on FOX studio B national news in a few minutes.......DTV channel 360"
bentleyj74 said…
@Woodey,

I responded to Razwell? Seriously? When did I do that?
Anonymous said…
Ivat

Nuts are not an issue for me because I never ate a lot of them and see no reason to now. It would not emulate any sort of actual historical ancestral diet, nor would the consumption levels you describe offer me anything I desire or need in my diet. And there is the very convincing case about excess n-6 in them.

The point is that you claim to be seeking them in excess - i.e., making it a point to eat a lot of them. 200 g a day is a HUGE amount of nuts. Why eat so many if YOU (not me) are finding Lands' reasoning something reasonable?

Any food can be treated as a food, no? Why would it follow that it is desirable to eat 200 g a day of nuts? Desirable vs allowable and no big deal at 20 g a day, say. Anything that is a whole food can be viewed as Pollan does. So? Does this mean any given whole food is a super-food to eat 200 g a day of?

"You rightly raise an eyebrow at the way certain Paleo contingents deprecate this or that major time-honoured source of food; but you retain this suspicion of nuts."

You misunderstand my position. My suspicion of nuts is not about nuts per se, it the prescription to EAT A LOT of them. It is their alleged superiority to things like legumes I am taking issue with. Paleo dogma a la Cordain argues that legumes are bad and nuts are to be eaten in preference due their historical pedigree.

Saying I take issue with this prescription TO EAT A LOT OF NUTS BECAUSE THEY ARE GOOD is not the same as saying I am as suspicious of nuts per se as Cordain is of legumes or milk.

In any case, I was using the few sentences I wrote about nuts as an illustrative example of the lack of core prescriptions in paleo. I was not trying to preach anything to you personally, and in fact the way you are making this an off-topic discussion about nuts only further defines the point I was trying to make.

I don't care if you personally eat nuts or legumes or snickers or anything else...
bentleyj74 said…
@ KGH

[points up] That's what I thought you meant :)
Anonymous said…
Princess and Evelyn and Woodey -thank you!

Evelyn - I was not meaning to pick on Robb the man. I think he just worded that poorly and assume like you do that he means the obtuse way modern medicine treats diet.

Just riffing on the meme he brought up. I very much appreciate most of what Robb posted on his sleep-deprived paleohacks missive.
Anonymous said…
Woodey said:

" I guarantee that if Tom found a lump on his nut he wouldn't go sit in a tub full of ice and try to freeze it off while eating a pound of coconut oil soaked bacon. He would go to one of those evil doctors and get help."

Priceless.
I finally got to read Robb's comment at PH...and wow. He's mad. Rightly so.

And I c/p this excerpt!

"Well, let me spell some things out: 1-Jack used this as a power grab. He was HORRIBLY victimized in this, I will not forget that nor let it go. But he also used this situation to his advantage and to the serious detriment of the Ancestral Health movement at large. 2-Thugish McCarthyism tactics were used to silence people. This is beyond appalling and is completely unacceptable."

Wish I had an adorable baby girl to play with. Now, that's good for one's health. :D
Tonus said…
I think he is referring to me. I made some brilliant (just sheer genius) comments in that topic, but Evelyn deleted it all. I mean, it was terrific stuff. Whole galaxies spontaneously burst into existence when I finished posting those comments.

And now... gone. :(
Woodey said…
@bentley You didn't I worded it in a manner that would have been better fit if I was talking to you in person. I meant that I read your response to me in regards to Raz. That's what I should have said.

Even if you had Carb removed his posts and those related to him on that thread....although he has made more comments, but I'm fairly certain those will get removed as well.
Woodey said…
@Tonus I know how you feel. I was hoping Raz would go further into the Atkins/scat connection I pointed out.
CarbSane said…
Yeah, after this if I ever need surgery I'm going to check FB, webs, etc.
CarbSane said…
Jack is not at all interested in Lance. Another very telling piece of the puzzle.

I'm still not getting why Lance would be in trouble either -- I mean if someone other than Kruse calls in a tip that someone carrying biohazardous materials on board, don't we usually pin a medal on them? If it went down like this, and someone thought that tweet was from Jack and there was any threat, (shakes head)
bentleyj74 said…
"Just point to the hemlock plant and tell them it makes great tea."

Ha! Gently steaming cup of aconite anyone? It's organic you know...anyone? Sadly that sort of thing does occasionally happen for people who fancy themselves just a bit more savvy with the gather end of the spectrum than they really are. Heck...it probably happens irl for tribal folk too every now and then. Paleo for reals.



"I think it harbors a mental aspect to food that just isn't healthy."

Agree.




"Also I feel that it tries to sell false hope to people that are worried about diseases, things like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes."


And this.



The only common denominators for longevity and health involving diet that I can find are basically to not overeat on a mostly nutritious diet that is NOT neurotic and that does allow for social enjoyment/feast times because those social aspects are at least as important to your well being as your macro ratios :)

Paleo can easily have 2/3 strikes, depends on how you play it.
Woodey said…
"Sadly that sort of thing does occasionally happen...."

It does. I've spent most of my life living in the Northwest and occasionally you hear about people that go mushroom picking out in the woods and end up hospitalized or dead. Back in the 80s a family went shroom picking (not magical ones) to eat with dinner, they ended up extremely sick and killing a couple of them.

I have never bought the "eat the foods nature provides" line. As much as people love to sound groovy by talking about Mother Nature and the wonderful goodness she provides for us, she's kind of a b**ch.

"The only common denominators for longevity and health involving diet that I can find are basically to not overeat on a mostly nutritious diet that is NOT neurotic..."

Sound words of advice. I am embarrassed to say that I spent a year not following that train of thought. My character is prone to going gung ho when I find something I like. Fortunately I am also quick to question whenever something isn't working or I get frustrated. In the end their is no magic bullet, while common sense and balance give me the best chance to get through life.
CarbSane said…
Interesting, yeah. After all, that tweet said nothing about "boarding the Carnival Magic in Galveston" -- so either someone didn't take time to read any other tweets before doing some investigating to "tie" it to Jack and the LC Cruise, etc. or the more likely scenario is someone did have malicious intent -- which I would in no way condone -- which is why they are interested in this person. As this unfolds and Kruse spouts more, he said this happened within 10 min of boarding. Twill be interesting if ANY first hand witnesses among the LC cruisers. Possible it could go on w/o one being nearby for any of it (it's a big ship <10% full capacity cruisers were LC), but no buzz? Nada??
Robb Wolf said…
I'd have thought folks knew me a bit better than to assume I was advocating scuttling of the medical system. I'm getting my daughter vaccinated (shock! GASP!) but I'll do it selectively and a bit later down the road than normal. What I'm talking about (largely) is the scenario of an insulin resistant individual going to their doc for "sleep issues." Doc prescribes Ambien, does not adress metabolic issues which are the root cause. The individual does NOT have an Ambien deficiency, ambien does not restore sleep, it creates a state of unconsciousness. I could list a thousand examples along this line.

My point in that statement is we are knocking on the door of upending that paradigm. The risk assessment program here is Reno is exploding:
http://robbwolf.com/2012/04/16/paleo-diet-risk-assessment/

We've had contacts form several hundred Police/Fire/Municipalities who want help enacting similar programs. I was on an email exchange with a researcher who is writing up an RAC for an NIH proposal. From where I'm sitting some pretty good stuff is happening.

But wait! Paleo lacks the epimistimological rigor of quantum mechanics! We should just give up. No, let's work to make the damn thing both function empirically (which it does a pretty good job of) and have the type of academic continuity that allows folks to sleep at night.

Kurt-
I hold you in Demi-God status. Really. So I suggest you organize and oversee a Darwinian Medicine statement of facts/purpose. Some kind of Article sof Confederation where we take what we do and do not know and lay it out in some kind of cogent manner.
Autoimmunity: Wheat is a pretty good suspect, dairy and legumes much less so. perhaps however it is reasonable to recommend eliminating these foods for a period of time, see if disease processes improve, then reintroduce.

"Paleo" as a descriptor of all this is unfortunate. It should have been Darwinian, Evolutionary or the like. It will be eventually, but we need to build the academic rigor, and that is going to come AFTER infiltrating the mainstream with he general "paleo" moniker. The NIH proposal goes in as Paleo/Darwinian Medicine. We capitalize on the momentum of the movement to do things like crowd source research funding. Concurrently we get our epistemological house in order.

And a bit on the Libertarian comment. I suspect I'm the main offender on that count. I've been very reticent to take folks to task on their ideology, preferring instead to rely on "market" forces to bring the best practices to the surface. Much of this is born of my experience in CrossFit in which I was effectively fired for recommending we focus on food quality instead of 40/30/30 proportionality ala the Zone. I can't say the split has been anything but good for me, but the process sucked and I've not wanted to visit that type of behavior on other folks.

BUT, as Kurt (or someone...I'm operating on about 4 hrs of sleep) alluded, not all ideas are of equal merit. If you do not have a research background, are not articulate with the literature and or do not have a clinical background your commentary gets little or no weight. We HAVE mapped significant swaths of this landscape. The pontificating and mental masturbation about minutiae comes from quarters that are not from the academic/clinical side of this. If we have some kind of a formalized document about what we know we know, think we know, suspect etc, then we have a pretty solid platform for QA/QC.

so Doc, when do we get started?
CarbSane said…
Thanks for weighing in here Robb. I'm out the door for errands so will address most of this later, but it seems many here, myself included, were giving you the BOD on this, and likely those who may have jumped a little don't really know you (I don't "know" you that well). I imagine you're super busy so there's no rush, but if you could email me with a contact email (carbsane at gmail dot com) I'd like to chat privately. Also, I noticed duplicate comment. I had that troll Razwell pay a visit with over a dozen screeds today, so had to put the moderation on.
Woodey said…
"To posts above, I do think -- I HOPE at least -- Robb just left out a few words. By that I mean rather than modern medicine, he meant modern medical dietary advice? Just trying to cut him some slack. He came off quite a bit holier than thou in that post than needed be, but ..."

@Evelyn It is a possibility that he meant something else other than what he wrote, but on the internet we can only go by what people type. After reading his book I got the impression that he was more level headed and knowledgeable than the majority of diet gurus out there, so I was a little surprised to read the statement he made.

He took the time to come on here and share some of his thoughts, but he hasn't done that on Paleohacks, which to me says he stands by what he typed. He's obviously intelligent and knows that the movement he is a part of is rife with ant-government/establishment people who do view the medical community as bought by big pharma and untrustworthy.

So what do you do? You cater to it, maybe not in a big in your face "I look like a nut" way, but you hint and suggest. What he said is plain as day and stuck out like a sore thumb. He was making a point and followed it up with a sensationalistic crescendo, perfect for driving home the message.

I've spent a few days on PH and there is a lot of people asking questions that should be directed at doctors and dieticians, oh but ummm can't do that, they are part of the problem not the solution. Paleo is the solution and the layman have the answers to people's problems. Construction worker Bob will give you sound health advice because he doesn't eat dairy or grains. UMMMMM....HMMMMM.

Robb being in the position he is in and knows the respect he commands by his name alone needs to be more on top of what he says. That's just part of the responsibility that comes with leadership. Nice guy or not I will cut him the same slack I give Jimmy Moore.
ShottleBop said…
" . . . The atkins fad diet -which works so well to reduce craving and food reward effects, has evolved into a full fledged dietary cult that has now, with aid of it's profiteers selling books and xylitol based treats not found in nature, glommed on to "paleo" like Ursus Maritimus hugging a newborn penguin."

And in what state of nature would an Ursus Maritimus ever encounter a newborn penguin? :D
Sue said…
Re what Robb said about being reticent to take Kruse to task because of his personal experience with CrossFit. That is what happened not many in the know said anything about Kruse and just let him run amok. Then he is welcomed as a speaker and rolled out the red carpet. All could have been avoided.
Sanjeev said…
Speaking to one very narrow point

> ambien does not restore sleep

is this proven fact or the naturalistic fallacy in another guise?

A year ago I would have reflexively agreed but now I want proof.

Ambien has some deeply profound effects. I'm open to the possibility that Ambien sleep is better than normal sleep. But I would need to see proof of that too, if anyone claimed it.

ambien and coma sufferers
Sanjeev said…
On a slightly related note: what's the best alternative
1. take 6 months to figure out why I can't sleep (maybe insulin resistance, maybe not)

with the real-world corollaries:
1a drive sleepy
1b operate heavy machinery sleepy
1c be a sleepy pedestrian (so lack of attention or balance will put me in a car's path)

or
2. take a pill
Sanjeev said…
this was the first place I saw the Ambien thing (it's one of the google search hits above) :

Steve Novella, god bless ; ) that man
Anonymous said…
Y'all let's not pick every little word apart here that Robb said. The dude wrote this with a 6 day old daughter, as he stated running on no sleep for 36 hours. He still comes across far more coherent than Jack, any day of the week. Paleo affords many of us modern disease-free lives and when he says if we can't get this right and sort out our shit, then we deserve mainstream medicine, I believe he means we deserve to not have it any better than that -- when we could have an optimum system and that's what this movement is looking to work towards. In fact, Robb specifically is working towards that end, optimizing medicine/physicians/healthcare professionals, etc to offer better care than what the current mainstream medical system offers...working to give us a better system...I feel certain this is what he meant, nothing more, nothing less.
Anonymous said…
Ha! I responded further up, hadn't read all the comments...so I didn't see that you had responded Robb, pretty much what I thought you meant. Give Zoe kisses from us!
CarbSane said…
Welcome Michelle! I read most of the comments on this a bit differently and mostly in agreement with what you just wrote here. I'm not sure many of my regular readers are all that familiar with Robb -- don't know.

On another note, you might be interested in this: http://www.thedreamlounge.net/jack-kruse-fox-news/

I tried to leave this comment, but apparently I'm on a blacklist where anything I post on sites I've never even attempted to comment on go directly to the vapors. Comment: This is all on Jack's head. You might be interested in this: http://paleohacks.com/questions/118128/meta-whats-the-deal-with-paleohacks-dr-kruse-and-the-fbi#axzz1uc1LdOO7

Cottrell is out of PaleoFX ... comments on root post
CarbSane said…
Welcome to the Asylum ShottleBop! I'm guessing the same place where polar bears emerge from hibernation "shredded".
CarbSane said…
I cannot allow Razzy posts here because I do not allow that sort of vulgar, racist commentary and cannot wade through it to pick those that might be allowable. Nested replies go with the root comment. Sorry Tonus ... I'll bet your response(s) were funny & clever as always.
Woodey said…
I thought mine were also funny.:( HAH! Actually I'm very glad you are monitoring the forum and removing the comments. I think its funny the way he types and the stuff he says all the while trying to hold us to some kind of upper intellectual standard.
Woodey said…
"Y'all let's not pick every little word apart here that Robb said."

Oh I wasn't. Most of what he said I agreed with, just that one sentence stuck out, which is all I'm commenting on.

"Robb specifically is working towards that end, optimizing medicine/physicians/healthcare professionals, etc to offer better care than what the current mainstream medical system offers...working to give us a better system..."

I have no desire to live in a system that Robb thinks is best. What's he going to optimize it with paleo medicine? I don't see any peer reviewed evidence that paleo is even healthy let alone optimal health. It’s arrogant for him to assume he knows the healthy way for all of us and that he is going to do his best to make sure we live that way.

Besides he is not altruistic, his income is dependent on what he says; therefore he is terribly biased and will do what it takes to make money. How much more eager is he to make a living now that he has a baby girl. He has to hustle, especially with the damage Kruse has done and the Mark Sisson shadow he lives under. Robb is second fiddle in the paleo community Mark is the king, therefore you have to work twice as hard.

What happened with Kruse is a prime example of people not trusting modern medicine. The greater majority of them don't have the schooling to refute doctors so they live by word of mouth and the direction they get from above. They leave themselves wide open to quacks and there are a lot of them out there. So Robb has to come in and do damage control, which in general means making statements that will cater to his crowd. That message in the paleo community is the "medical community and our scientists have failed us and we have to take matters into our own hands. Our way is the right way and we have to go out there and make a difference." Ew gross. It’s self righteous and deluded.

To make matters worse there is nothing to indicate that paleo is the end all when it comes to nutrition. Pushing a diet that is flawed and has many unknowns, one of them being what the long term effects are is not smart or safe. But there is a large market for the disenfranchised, which means a lot of money.

Is Robb going to clarify to his paleo supporters what he meant in his post? No, but he comes here to do that, a place that is skeptical of him. No need to explain on a site that doesn't question.

I don't have a bias towards Robb that will explain away what he "really meant to say". So I will question and demand explanation. Will I get it? More than likely not, but I will get his sympathizers explaining and defending him.

It’s my birthday and I am going to go enjoy it and take a break from the internet today. You all have a good day.
CarbSane said…
This was the point of my "the more I think about it" post vis a vis Jimmy. Kruse had certainly crossed that line with the TEDx talk. To me any that came to his defense after that weren't thinking clearly. Forget the name, forget everything. Evaluate what was claimed which was either illegal/unethical on many levels if it happened, or Jack "Charlie Sheening" himself. I don't know that every person needed to come out publicly after that with a renouncing, but certain names should have. I was disappointed that the coordinators of AHS didn't recind his invitation in short order. It's embarrassing how he's on national TV talking about how he's speaking at Harvard in a few months and how he's worried something similar might happen to him there?!

Still, I can understand when one has contractual agreements, conferences in late stages of organization, etc.etc., popular forums where he posts/posted, etc. it is difficult to know the exact moment when you can pull the plug w/o going down the drain with him. Pull the plug too early and the backlash would be considerable. So either Jack's really a genius or there was just a perfect storm of timing that brought about these current events. It steamrolled past the time to pull the plug.
Kamal said…
So...this is a pretty freaking interesting issue. Let me hypothesize a little here.

I think the most direct way to influence the fragmented US medical system is: personal and targeted communication to higher-ups!

At work (at an evidence-based medical research center), I occasionally get to interact with some crazy influential people. For example, one of our nutrition projects involves three professors/doctors who were on the 2010 Dietary Guidelines committee. I'm still a peon, at least until I finish my PhD, and not an alpha-male in social situations, so I never say anything at all. Not that it would be appropriate to throw around my dietary views in a work context, and not that I won't remain a peon long after finishing school.

But if anybody knows someone who has some influence, some subtle talk about evolutionary / ancestral thinking would be awesome. I gave a lecture at work last week titled "Evidence-Based Wellness: You're doing it wrong". Controversial for sure, but might have led the curious to do some google searching. Last summer at Whole Foods, I bumped into a biostats professor from the Harvard School of Public health and was too aggressive in talking up macadamia nut oil, of all things.

Gotta strike the right balance between scientific rigor, lack of crazy-talk, and being nice. Luckily "paleo" is blessed with some leaders that possess all of these traits. Whether it's called paleo, ancestral hoo ha, or whatever, enough people are becoming interested in rethinking the whole "diet" thing that it gives me a little fuzzy feeling sometimes.
CarbSane said…
You know there are so many good people this is what is such a shame about the JK's of this community. Oh yeah ... I'm just afraid of the ice! LOL
bentleyj74 said…
@Robb

"What I'm talking about (largely) is the scenario of an insulin resistant individual going to their doc for "sleep issues." Doc prescribes Ambien, does not adress metabolic issues which are the root cause. The individual does NOT have an Ambien deficiency, ambien does not restore sleep, it creates a state of unconsciousness. I could list a thousand examples along this line."

Oh I dunno...tribal folk are mighty fond of their drugs :) That part doesn't get mentioned a lot in the ancestral health brochure.

I don't have time at the moment to go bone picking but I do have time to suggest that you have ample ethics tangles to run a fine toothed comb over among your associates without branching out to fictional accounts that portray primary care docs as snake oil salesmen.
Robb Wolf said…
I guess you do not frequent my podcast! The ancestral psychedelic use has been talked about a good bit. HOW this relates to a sleep aid...I guess I've had inadequate mescaline to make that connection.

And interpret the lack of effective treatment of reversible conditions as you like. I'm unsure as to the N-3/N-6 breakdown of snake oil.
bentleyj74 said…
I think my point was pretty clear, a better evasion would be to suggest you have consumed too much mescaline to connect the dots.
Anonymous said…
@Shottlebop

Good catch : ) The San Diego Zoo?