The Carb-Sane Asylum

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.

If you've been around the internet the past couple weeks or so, you're aware that it is apparently Summit Season!  Lots of videos (really audios) that you get to listen to free as a marketing pitch.  Nothing inherently wrong with this, but many of the recent ones have really gotten to the point of ridiculousness.  I mean Jack Kruse was supposed to do a talk for a weight loss summit ... along side Jaminet, Bowden and the Alphabet Soup Couple (the Caltons)?  Ben Greenfield?  Mr. Keto-bonking triathlete is everywhere these days -- fat loss, thyroid, diabetes?  This man sells superencoder bracelets and magic water drops !  What the ......    So yesterday, the " 2014 Reversing Diabetes Summit " began hosted by "Dr." Mowll, and ... get this ... Jimmy Moore.  Forget Jimmy's lack of any credentials or credibility to be hosting such an event, let's look at Dr. Mowll : He graduated from Brandywine High School, the University of Delaware, ...

As mentioned in my first rant on this issue, I had intended this post to be part of it.  But it's a somewhat different topic -- condescension of gurus sporting MD's against those lowly PhD's, or "just scientists" in general -- and lengthy enough (per my usual - grin) in its own right. A short while back, Dr. Mercola weighed in on the whole "safe starch" debate.   However collegial the meeting at the WAPF conference between Paul Jaminet and Mercola, it did not keep Mercola from taking pot shots.  The evolution of the title of the piece is interesting in and of itself.   Mousing over the tab on my browser, and the URL reveal the original title: "Expert s Discuss The Benefits of a Low-Carb, High-Fat Diet", but on the actual post?  Initially it was:  "Expert_ {singular} Explains Why You Don't Need Non Fiber Carbs". Huh?  That sounded strange for a post that prominently displayed the PHD Apple/Plate, but OK.  But shortly after th...

This will probably be the last post, other than perhaps dumping articles over in the library, regarding "leptin spikes".  And I don't normally link to and discuss abstracts, but in this case the abstract says it all.   Over on Mercola's hatchet job on starch , as discussed in my previous post , Ron Rosedale MD provided that science he's supposedly bridging over into medicine to support his contention that carbs "spike" leptin.  Here was the first comment addressing yours truly: Because you do not know the science, does not mean that it doesn't exist. This is over 10 years old.  There are many articles subsequently that support and verify this. "Evidence That Glucose Metabolism Regulates Leptin Secretion from Cultured Rat Adipocytes" www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../9449624 Endocrinology,1998 Feb;139(2):551-8 "We conclude that glucose transport and metabolism are important factors in the regulation of leptin expression and secretion." ...

Why do some of these things land in my lap when life gets so busy?  Over on Mercola's site , I've been tangling up a bit with Ron " Spiked Leptinade with my Science Krispies " Rosedale.   Now I don't expect Rosedale to start following my blog or anything, but I did post links to certain posts over there to support my contention that carbs do NOT spike leptin.  By any definition, they do not.  Instead of recognizing this and backing off (and hoping nobody notices, a la Taubes), Rosedale has doubled down on his assertion that carbs spike leptin.  In support of his contention, the science he offers up is ... drumroll please ... a more than decade old study on isolated cultured rat adipocytes .  This wouldn't drip so with irony were it not for the fact that Rosedale shoves his massive clinical experience with live humans in yo' face every chance he gets.  You see, I don't possess his vast clinical experience so I must be in error interpreting the whole blo...

L*. Ron Rosedale's Church of Scikrispology Creating a chasm between science and medicine. Jimmy's original data dump "debate" over safe starches seems to have taken on a little life of its own of late.  For many of us it merely served to further draw the curtain back to reveal the lack of critical thinking in LLVLClue land.  But it also seems to have ignited a resurgence of another LC guru:  Dr. Ron Rosedale.  Rosedale hogged the most "cyber ink" in Jimmy's post, and also posted advanced snippets on his Facebook page. If the Taubesian-led LLVLC circle seems cultish, you really gotta get a load of Rosedale.  After all, Taubes may surely be enjoying his supreme guru status, but he didn't cultivate it as a populist movement (although he does have delusions of grandeur thinking if only all these idjuts in research and medicine would just listen to him). Rosedale, on the other hand, sees himself as a visionary leader of a  movement.  I had heard of Rose...

A few general thoughts on this whole "safe starches" tangent into Ron  "Everyone's a Diabetic" Rosedale's contentions.  I was prompted to look into many of the claims of Rosedale by a short conversation I had with him over at PaleoHacks that can be found scrolling down to his responses here .  When one goes and reads the Facebook links in the root post, it is clear that Rosedale's views are pretty extreme as regards blood glucose levels, diabetes, etc.  It comes down, really, to viewing all blood glucose, leading to any level of glycation, as harmful.  Basically through Rosedale-colored glasses we see circulating glucose as always harmful and to be kept minimal both in circulation and as cellular fuel as much as possible for optimal health.  He also advocates getting virtually no glucose from your diet, relying, instead on your liver for all glucose needs.   Glycation debilitates, deteriorates and ultimately kills you, and in Rosedale's opini...

Before I serve up any more leptinade here at the Asylum, I wanted to share some broader thoughts on the analyses and implications of various measures of blood glucose levels as relates to normal and non-T1 diabetics. The Common Measures: 1.  Fasting Blood Glucose (FBG):  Usually after at least a 10 hr or 12 hr fast.  The implication of this is that it is a measure of basal glucose levels.   Probably more than any other parameter, this one is subject to any manner of fluctuations and can vary 10-20 points mg/dL or more from just one aberration in eating the day before.  Also the degree of activity and length of time since awakening can dramatically alter FBG as can one's stress levels, medications (even an aspirin) and sleep patterns.  This is not going to make as much of a difference with an untreated frank diabetic as their overactive glucose production by the liver likely dominates.  But for the non-diabetic, it is easy to have a "bad day" exceedin...

Well, Jimmy Moore is out with another installment of his crusade against "safe starches".  Yeah, I know, I know.  He's all about learning and helping people get to the truth, moving the debate forward constructively, and above all else protecting people from potentially bad advice such as that a major staple macronutrient for 99.99% of the human population for at least the past 10 millenia and more can actually be "safe".  Sorry, but I call things as I see them, baaayybee!    It's another long piece, and I just can't stomach reading much of Jimmy's self-delusions anymore.  But I am interested in this whole notion that somehow we're all somewhere on a diabetic spectrum and our carb-induced post-prandial glucose spikes are lining our rat poison sprinkled paths to an early grave.   The post includes a long response by Dr. Ron Rosedale, pastor at the Church of the Not-Too-Late-in-the-Day Spiked Leptinade Drinkers .   I'm going to address a few...

In  Science Krispies ... Spiked Pink Leptinade Anyone? ,  I took on Dr. Ron Rosedale's claim  that "glucose spikes leptin".   The study I highlighted looked at 9-hour insulin and leptin profiles holding protein constant and essentially comparing a near-zero carb meal to a near-zero fat meal and fasting.  I've copied that graphic to this post: A&B = women, C&D = men OK, so we do see that the HC meal results in slightly elevated leptin, more pronounced in women, delayed about 4-5 hours after the meal vs. HF or fasting.  Over on the Perfect Health Diet blog (thanks for the shout out Paul!) , Paul Jaminet wrote:   CarbSane partially confirms Dr. Ron Rosedale: eating carbs does raise leptin levels compared to eating fat, but it is a mild rise over an extended period of time, not a “spike.”

Yes folks, Science Krispies are best enjoyed with tall cold glass of Leptinade, stevia sweetened of course. Last week over at PaleoHacks, I've gotten to know a bit more about someone I'd heard much about on Jimmy's forum, but never really bothered to look into.  Dr. Ron Rosedale, author of The Rosedale Diet.  I have a post in mind on some of his claims but we'll see if it floats my boat to post it up.  It was an odd coincidence that I was also skim reading through the copy of Nora Gedgaudas' PBPM book a friend bequeathed to me, and came across the section on leptin resistance, complete with referencing and a quotation from none other than Rosedale.   And when at PaleoHacks, there's no avoiding "The Quilt", aka Jack Kruse Neurosurgeon!  (Whenever I see his name I imagine some movie announcer booming Neurosurgeon! in action hero voice, with Jack as Dr. Evil flipping epigenetic switches on Mini-Me).  Jack's stance on everything seems to boil dow...