The Carb-Sane Asylum

Hey all!  Long (LONG) time no blog.      This is mostly an update, because the King Kahuna of Keto is still sort of kicking around out there.    Jimmy Moore can't help himself!! Nah ... not one iota of evidence!  LOLOL On the gossip front, it appears the split with his wife is imminent and he lost the Low Carb Cruise and most of the friends in the split.  Christine has lost 400 lbs in the past year -- well, 50 of her own since no longer eating like Jimmy ... and Jimmy.   After taking six or four months off, King Krankypants of Ketonia tried to rebrand as "The Man of Real" discussing his childhood.   That went over like a lead balloon and apparently what remaining sponsors he had went the way of handshakes and hugs in 2020.   This has left Jimmy in three-to-four tee shirts, surviving on eggs from his chickens (and the occasional ribeye from a friend), ranting away on IG and solidifying his place in nutritional history ...

Blogstress Note:  I'm trying to finish up a project outside the Asylum, have had lots of computer issues that have made this frustrating to say the least, coupled with family obligations and "real job" starting back up.  An unfinished, older, now past-its-shelf-date post went live the other day that I have since unpublished.  I may or may not re-publish it merged with another at some point. I've been meaning to weigh in on the whole Keto Clarity Academy launched by Jimmy Moore and Melanie Miller (of Evangelizing Low Carb fame), and a more in depth look will have to wait until higher priorities are fulfilled.   Here is the current front page of Keto Clarity Academy.  Finally, the stock photos have been replaced, though at this time we still don't have bios and official roles of the four ladies joining Jimmy and Melanie in this endeavor. For $75 (down from $100) you can take KETO 101 based on Jimmy's book.  The blurb on the bottom reads: ...

Jimmy Moore has been complaining a lot about criticism lately.  This is nothing new.   livinlowcarbman This comment I received today is a great teachable moment to share with you a bit more of my philosophy on how to share feedback with someone online. Thank you  @creativename79  for sharing this! * Here was my response to Kris: * I love and appreciate genuine constructive feedback and always have. It's why I've attained the level of success that I have and I'm grateful for the opportunity to be even better than I am now. * * But what you're not privy to is an intense ramping up lately of personal attacks and outright nastiness behind the scenes unlike anything I've seen in my 12+ years of doing this. I don't think it's by accident as my profile has risen in the past few years that the scrutiny of my work would be magnified even more. * * And here's the thing--allowing such stuff to linger unchallenged creates a mob ...

I recently stumbled across this video.   It's a tough watch, but *this* epitomizes ALL that is wrong with the low carb weight loss industry.     For starters, diet really is religion for these folks as this get-together, marketing stunt for Dr. Eric Westman's HEAL Clinics/care, was held in a church.  There was prayer, there were references to God, and a collection, and paying it forward.   If you can't stomach too much of it (I don't blame you), I'll list a few time-stamps.  If anyone cares to give time stamps for various gems and ridiculous claims, please do so in comments! 11:35 Prayer ... 17:25 Melanie Miller takes the stage ... 17:33 Introduces Dr. Mark Cucuzzella ... 20:36 Dr. Mark speaks, thanks Jimmy Moore, talks about the movement, calls obese people in audience paradoxes! ... 23:30 Dr. Mark shares analogy that losing weight is like holding a beachball under water, don't try to hold it too far down!  ... 30:00 Success Story parade up on...

Sixteen Post Bumps for 2016 ...  No. 1 Post Summary The main role of insulin in the body is to inhibit processes that release energy substrates into circulation on an otherwise "always on" continual basis.  Insulin plays a stimulatory role in the clearance of glucose from circulation, but this is secondary to its inhibitory role, and may not even be physiologically important.  The generally accepted progression of "insulin resistance" -- beginning with impaired uptake of glucose in response to insulin stimulation, leading to a "backing up" of glucose into circulation, and requiring more and more insulin to clear the glucose -- is almost certainly incorrect. Radiolabel studies have demonstrated that in both T1 and T2 diabetics, glucose uptake is not impaired , and indeed may even be greater than normal. Hyperglycemia is due to  relative insulin deficiency even if overall insulin levels are high .  This deficiency is due to failure of the pa...

Politics swirled this week, and as a scientist I wept.    Much more to come here, check out recent posts if you missed them!   As billionaire pescatarians Laura and John Arnold   bankroll meat industry spokesperson  Nina Teicholz via their lobbying 501(c)s Action Now Initiative & Nutrition Coalition  it is easy to lose sight of the actual nutrition surveys and science we are talking about. The hand-wringing, panty bunching, and other various "ings" going on over the impending issue of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines is almost assuredly not about the scientific rigor of the process or the guidelines themselves.  Are they perfect?  No.  Are they really all that radical or far off from what would be healthful eating, on a population-wide basis, for the United States of America?  Again, no.   Setting aside the particular foods themselves for the time being, the main argument is that this grand low-fat experiment has been a g...

gratuitous image of the Drs. Eades, early 2015 A little while back I wrote  Nutritional Ketosis is an Oxymoron .  I was taken to task a bit in comments for the inappropriate use of oxymoron, but I'm going to plead for leniency in the spirit of the use of the term.  The crux of that post was that the terms nutritional (as in being in a calorically sufficient, weight stable state) and ketosis are metabolically contradictory.  This is perhaps evidenced in no more profound manner than the extremes required to produce and sustain such a state, and the ease with which it is abolished. Ketowars rage on as the standard bearer appears to be imploding on the sidelines ...  I got into a discussion on Twitter with Dr. Eades about a side issue, and here you go ... SUMMARY: Starvation ketosis is distinctly different from nutritional ketosis. No human populations in sustained nutritional ketosis (not even the Inuit). Dietary reasons why the Inuit weren't in nu...

I received some fanmail yesterday -- it was a nice email!! -- encouraging me to share Dr. Roy Taylor 's  presentation at the 2015 Diabetes Summit -- of Newcastle Diet aka "crash diet" for reversing diabetes.   It's too bad he ended the talk encouraging the host to keep spreading good information ... sadly his is a rare inclusion in this event. HURRY -- I thought these would be available through Thursday Noon, but it's saying 3 hours :(  -- hopefully they'll extend that.  SORRY!! This summit is the second annual event put on by the director of Sweet Life Diabetes Centers, a chiropractor turned nutrition expert and other things, Brian Mowll DC.  Last year he co-hosted the event with Jimmy Moore, and I dubbed it the Reversing Diabetes Knowledge Summit .   There are more of the same chiropractors, naturopaths, and such spreading their views on how you basically should eat a very low carb diet and avoid this or that bad food that is killing your pa...

Hello all!  A quick follow-on post to yesterday's offering on the Ma-Pi2 diet for diabetes.  This diet is vegan, grain based (brown rice, millet, barley), includes legumes and copious veggies, and "macrobiotic" foods like seaweed and green tea.   Recent Post:   Vegan Ma-Pi Diet Bests "Conventional Treatment" for Diabetes in Recent RCT Previous Posts:   Carbohydrate and Diabetes , Carbohydrate and Diabetes II I want to make clear that my purpose for blogging on this particular diet is not one of advocacy.   I don't believe there is any evidence for humanity avoiding all animal derived sustenance and, sorry, but the Ma-Pi diet does seem a rather austere one to me.   Furthermore, I am offering no comment on the "macrobiotic" claims and whether the inclusion of some of these special foods is integral to the success of these programs.  When looking at the success of programs such as native Hawaiian diets (discussed here ), and others, which...

What happens when you take 25 overweight-to-obese, type 2 diabetics and: increase their carbohydrate intake by around 100 g/day   increase their absolute carbohydrate intake by 45%  increase their carbohydrate percentage in the diet by over 25% of total calories have them consume over 300 grams of carbohydrate in a day decrease their caloric intake modestly (< 200 cal/day*) cut 50 g/day of fat from their diet reduce absolute fat intake by over 60% reduce fat to only 15% of total calories cut protein by almost 40 g/day cut absolute protein intake by roughly 40% accomplish all of this on a grain-heavy vegan diet What happens?  Do they get fatter?  See their glucose spiking and soaring and fear imminent amputation and blindness?   No.  What happened is this: This after only three weeks.  Oh ... and 70% of the Ma Pi group dieters taking oral diabetes drugs at onset were able to get off their drugs.

Links to scientific background and calculations below.   Oh ... and more teaspoons :-)

Those who follow me on social media know that I broke down and purchased a copy of Keto Clarity .   I'm deciding on whether to bother with a formal review of the book or Jimmy Moore's contribution.  With respect to Jimmy Moore, this is a second volume of convincing himself and the world that his crazy diet schemes are healthy rather than unhealthy, as if repeating it often enough will make it so.   But for the rest of the world, it is more Dr. Eric Westman's stamp of approval and co-authorship that is problematic for his credibility.  In Cholesterol Clarity , he signed off on a book where Jimmy's horrific lipid panel including, at times, LDL-P over 3000, LDL-C over 300, TC over 400.   In Keto Clarity , the fact that Jimmy Moore's biomarkers did NOT improve, despite a temporary weight loss of almost 80 lbs, is magically presented as a healthy dietary lifestyle.  

Dr. Westman is the director of the Lifestyle Medical Clinic at Duke University Medical Center. He is the President of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians.  He is co-author of The New Atkins for a New You .  He has published clinical research mostly treating diabetics on an Atkins Induction-style low carb diet.  He knows obesity.  He knows many obese people.  He has treated some to great success.  No doubt he has observed countless others that are not as successful.  He has been on Jimmy Moore's low carb cruises, and most recently he has lent his name and reputation to highly questionable health claims and advice made by his former patient and friend in their books Cholesterol Clarity and Keto Clarity.   One thing that I hope we can ALL agree on is that crazy crash diets are not a long term solution to the problem.  In Keto Clarity Westman criticizes marketing schemes and diet book gimmicks (from pgs 115 and 177)