The Carb-Sane Asylum

April 2018 Update: Here in the year 2018, it's fair to say that #Paleo is pretty much over. Nothing tells us this more succinctly than a quick trip over to Mark's Daily Apple, a website I rarely frequent these days. I'd heard rumors that Mark had "gone keto" ... given the seemingly meteoric rise of #Keto of late, is anyone really surprised?  This is the same man who developed the "more addictive than crack " P90X recovery drink and other things,  Ever the businessman (can't fault him for that), Mark seems to have transitioned from using his blog to sell paleo/primal-related books (did he ever find a proper ghostwriter for his wife's book?) to selling over-priced avocado oil products.   The whole "primal" thing is about as downplayed as possible for someone whose signature product is The Primal Blueprint, can be.    Poor Grok.  Now it's Keto Reset time!  Can these marketeers PLEASE make up their minds?   Wh...

S ummary: BUMPED January 26, 2018 This post was written around three and a half years ago, and through some bizarre twist of dietary fate, somehow ketogenic diets are still trending on Google for everything from weight loss to hang nails.  So I thought I'd bump this post which was my attempt at dispelling some myths regarding ketosis and the role of dietary protein in the mix.   In the end, and some of these points are not made specifically in this post but I'll make them here: Carbohydrate restriction is the greatest determinant of ketogenesis  Protein (various amino acids) can feed into the Krebs Cycle and attenuate the reduction in oxaloacetate that favors ketogenesis from fatty acids. Ketogenesis represents a conversion of fat energy to ketone energy but it is not evidence of the ultimate usage of that energy.   Like glucose, ketones will be burned for energy before fatty acids, so ketogenesis is not an indicator of actual fatty aci...

If you've circulated in the realms of nutritional science or sorcery for any length of time, you've probably heard the phrase ... Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food ... enough for it to have long past turned to the point of cliché.   Whether or not it was actually said by Hippocrates notwithstanding, you've probably seen it misused as often as it is appropriately applied.   This post is about its misuse in the image below. Starving cancer:  Dominic D'Agostino at TEDx TampaBay Screenshot

I'm working on some posts on "the list" from a recent one , and find myself in need of a few backgrounders for the upcoming Ketones are NOT the End of Cancer. Tim Ferriss & Dominic D'Agostino Should Be More Responsible   (link goes live when it's published) post.  Recently I tweeted out the following:   It's time for responsible scientists & docs to rein in keto cancer cure and alternative therapy hype. #KetogenicDiet pic.twitter.com/k82Rh82JmT — Evelyn (@CarbSane) November 19, 2015 My tweets are auto-posted to Facebook (including to my mostly-private page) where a friend responded to the statement that "a ketogenic diet is [...] safe". The comment basically challenged how we know this, or even if we know this to be true, My response is essentially the impetus for this post, but it was, in a nutshell: CONTEXT

Minor Update:  Sorry, sometimes I hit Publish instead of Close when I'm in a rush and want to make sure I have most recent version saved.  I had intended to include this video -- Instant Ketosis -- along with this "report" on the MLM angle in my post --  Pruvit Review – Another Ketones Based MLM Company?    My first thought from that title is a question:  "There are others?"  The tagline on this article reads: Will Pruvit's core products and MLM-modeled opportunity have what it takes to make it in the ketones health space? Let's prove it one way or another for you. I want to also make very clear that I am NOT encouraging anyone to get into this or any other MLM -- matters not the code words used to sell something.  Indeed I warn strongly against such.  If you search on MLM truth, or MLM scams, or MLM fraud, or any number of short phrases, you'll hit on ... well hits too numerous to count.  Here's one I suggest:   MLM-theTruth...

For the past couple of months, I've been somewhat obsessing about thermodynamics having written the AARR piece and a few blog posts, not to mention revisiting several dating back to near the beginnings of this blog.  I began this a while ago as a single lengthy post, but it's gotten out of hand and finding time to tidy up such a post vs. publishing shorter chunks in parts became impossible.  Not sure how many parts this will have.  This series will put several members of the IHC "on the record" so to speak.  While I've done so in the past, the hope is to have it all in one place. Robert Atkins the Calorie Guy!    Surely Atkins is an honorary member of the IHC, even though he passed away over a decade ago before this community reached the level that it has.  Most of the "greats" have learned something (perhaps essentially everything) they know about low carb diets and tangentially about thermodynamics/calorie theory from the "late great one...

1.  It is known that the adult human brain consumes roughly 23% of total daily caloric expenditure for the "average person".  Glucose utilization by the brain has been determined to be at least 100 g/day, the most common figure I've seen is 125-130 g/day, and I've seen up to 150 g/day.  In light of this (and absent rare brain GLUT transporter deficiency disease), wouldn't EVERY human have a "carbohydrate tolerance" of at least 100 g/day?   2.  Low carb advocates like to focus on the fact that there are approximately 1 to 2 teaspoons or somewhere between 4 to 10 grams of sugar (glucose) dissolved in circulation at any given time.  However normal individuals "clear" several times that amount in fairly short order (an OGTT runs 50 to 100 grams of glucose).  The "insulin resistance" paradigm implicates a backlog of glucose in the blood stream due to cells with filled up glycogen stores.  This sounds like common sense.  Why, then, do...

I have known a number of people personally, including family members, that have had cancer.  I remember a high school friend's mother dying of lung cancer.  I remember a high school class and teammate being diagnosed with pituitary cancer.  Obviously none of these people are me, but I've had a taste from a fairly young age of the disease and what people go through "up close and personal" from early on.   Although no medical treatment is fool proof or works 100% of the time, when, in my 20's, I was working alongside folks with kids in day care, I contracted strep throat quite a few times.  I would go to the doc, they would do the swipe test, and within a short time I would walk out with my prescription for an antibiotic, I'd fill the script, take it, and the infection would go away. Cancer is not like that.  It's different in different organs, there are different types in the same organs/tissues, there's metastasis, different growth rates,...

Oh my lordie, last night I went to bed feeling like I had just spent the day in some alternate land of Woo Woo.  I was puttering about the house doing chores most of the day, checking in on the laptop (more than I should have!) from time to time in between.  Every corner I turned it seemed mangled science, marketing schtick and woo woo popped up like some hydra monster determined to relegate me to Grain Brain status.  And then I awoke this morning to find this in my Facebook newsfeed.  It's a link to Dave Asprey's article in some online BeMore magazine article .  You'll want to type 33 in the top middle to go to the article.  I think we need a new award for cramming the most scientific crapola into the fewest number of words or something.  This guy would win, along with scam artist of the year.   Since I'm way under the weather today, let me take a few moments of convalescence to address this shiz.

There hasn't been much buzz about this year's LC Cruise, but a couple of days ago, a tweet from the presentation of one Dr. Dwight Lundell made a little splash on Twitter and FB.   The most toxic chemical in the human diet is GLUCOSE. -Dr. @ dwightlundell #sugarkills #LCCruise13 — Dietitian Cassie, RD (@dietitiancassie) May 7, 2013

The cornerstone of the American justice system:  Innocent until proven guilty.  According to Wikipedia : sometimes referred to by the Latin expression Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat (the burden of proof lies with who declares, not who denies).  I like the first part of that Latin expression and suggest that what is truly needed in nutritional circles is to put the burden of proof on those making claims.  My point here is not a political one, it is not to argue the merits of my country's justice system or its implementation, or anything of the sort.  It is to put forth a suggestion -- that ALL who demonize foods be tasked with proving their charges.   I suggest this because it is darned near impossible to do the opposite especially in the face of baseless charges.   It is a bit of a stretch, but keep in mind that many of the compounds, such as water, can be toxic at some level of ingestion.  Furthermore, some of the chemical ...

Alternate Title:  Picture Worth More Than 1000 Words.  In speeches and interviews lately, Jimmy Moore has become fond of mentioning a few things (well, in addition to name dropping Robb Wolf) Nutritional Ketosis as being somehow unique from run-of-the-mill, what, biochemical ketosis.  NK requires blood ketone testing as this is more accurate.  And, Ketosis is evidence of burning body fat which he wasn't doing prior to this experiment. Ketones and blood glucose being reciprocal Tis true that measuring blood ketone levels is more accurate than urine ketones.  For one thing, urine levels vary widely with fluid intake, frequency of urination, etc.  Urine ketones are also "spill-over".  This is why nobody is ever busted for DUI on the basis of a urine test.  But just because urine levels are not necessarily representative of one's ketogenic production doesn't mean a person is, or is not, in NuttyK.  But let's presume that to be truly Nutt...

This notion of being a "sugar burner" vs. a "fat burner" -- with the latter being touted as preferable based on nothing I've seen in the scientific literature -- is getting really out of hand.  This is not a new idea, but it certainly seems to be being pushed more lately, particularly in the area of athletic performance.  There were a smattering of posts about the diets of Olympians about the net and I just have to shake my head at the one that goes something like "just imagine how much better fill in the blank  would do if (s)he didn't eat grains" or "ate LCHF" or "went paleo".  C'mon already ... Michael Phelps is a prime offender of all laws and gods nutritional, but will someone please remind me how many medals he's earned and records he's held/broken in his career?  Gawd forbid any of these elite athletes set a bad example by having their face put on a box of Wheaties!  I dunno ... it all seems so silly when Phel...

Ketones and lactate “fuel” tumor growth and metastasis Previously, we proposed a new model for understanding the “Warburg effect” in tumor metabolism. In this scheme, cancer-associated fibroblasts undergo aerobic glycolysis and the resulting energy-rich metabolites are then transferred to epithelial cancer cells, where they enter the TCA cycle, resulting in high ATP production via oxidative phosphorylation. We have termed this new paradigm “the Reverse Warburg effect.”  Here, we directly evaluate whether the end-products of aerobic glycolysis (3-hydroxy-butyrate and L-lactate) can stimulate tumor growth and metastasis, using MDA-MB-231 breast cancer xenografts as a model system. More specifically, we show that administration of 3-hydroxy-butyrate (a ketone body) increases tumor growth by ~2.5-fold, without any measurable increases in tumor vascularization/angiogenesis. Both 3-hydroxy-butyrate and L-lactate functioned as chemo-attractants, stimulati...

Again, leaving aside the creepiness of this man's words, I've got to address how irresponsible his advice in a recent blog post was.  I may come back at some point and address the "Listen to your body?" stuff, but MM reminded me in the comments on another post of some more disturbing content in the post. His advice boils down to "up the fat" to hasten the transition into ketosis so that your "induction flu" is as short as possible.  Now, I've never experienced any such symptoms so I can't really relate to this, but apparently newbies and restarters have done very well taking the advice in The New Atkins to increase salt intake by sipping a little bullion.  Anyway, Eades -- oddly enough author of a book subtitled "The High-Protein/Low-Carbohydrate ..." --  has now jumped full on into a tub of Mangalista lard.

Westman, Volek and Phinney were among the contributers (and Westman headlined) the following, partially Atkins Foundation funded, review: Low-carbohydrate Nutrition and Metabolism I can't recommend reading this highly enough. I've listed the references in a separate post , numbered (the formatting farkled the last few but I'll let you count ;) ) For a non-gimmicky discussion of how low carb diets REALLY work for weight loss, this is where it's at!

Acetoacetate and β-hydroxybutyrate in combination with other metabolites release insulin from INS-1 cells and provide clues about pathways in insulin secretion Putting this here for my own orgnization Conclusions: The synergistic insulin release by compounds that can be metabolized to mitochondrial acetyl-CoA, such as KIC, β-hydroxybutyra te, or acetoacetate, in combination with methyl succinate that can be metabolized to mitochondrial oxaloacetate, suggests that acetyl-CoA and oxaloacetate condense in the citrate synthase reaction to form citrate. Numerous compounds can be formed from citrate, and citrate can carry acetyl-CoA and oxaloacetate out of the mitochondria to the cytosol. Many compounds, including most short-chain acyl-CoAs, can be formed from acetyl-CoA in the cytosol. KIC and β-hydroxybutyra te can also be directly converted to acetoacetate and acetyl-CoA in the mitochondria. Acetoacetate can be exported to the cytosol and converted to acetoacetyl-CoA to...

Long term exposure to fatty acids and ketones inhibits B-cell functions in human pancreatic islets of Langerhans We previously demonstrated in the rat that long term exposure to fatty acids inhibits B-cell function in vivo and in vitro. To further assess the clinical significance of these findings, we tested in human islets the effects of fatty acids on glucose-induced insulin release and biosynthesis and on pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) activity. PDH is the enzyme thought to control the entry of acetyl CoA from glycolysis into the Kreb's / TCA /Citric Acid Cycle. These authors did an in vitro  study with human cells to see if the results compared with those seen both in vitro and in vivo  in rats.  While in vitro  observations don't always correlate with what we see in whole organisms, this did correlate for the rat.  Therefore it is reasonable to believe that the results of this experiment are applicable to human metabolism. Human islets were obtained...

Carbohydrate restriction regulates the adaptive response to fasting The importance of either carbohydrate or energy restriction in initiating the metabolic response to fasting was studied in five normal volunteers. The subjects participated in two study protocols in a randomized crossover fashion. In one study the subjects fasted for 84 h (control study), and in the other a lipid emulsion was infused daily to meet resting energy requirements during the 84-h oral fast (lipid study). Glycerol and palmitic acid rates of appearance in plasma were determined by infusing [2H5]glycerol and [1-13C]palmitic acid, respectively, after 12 and 84 h of oral fasting. Changes in plasma glucose, free fatty acids, ketone bodies, insulin, and epinephrine concentrations during fasting were the same in both the control and lipid studies. Glycerol and palmitic acid rates of appearance increased by 1.63 +/- 0.42 and 1.41 +/- 0.46 mumol.kg-1.min-1, respectively, during fasting in the control study and by 1....