"Life Without Bread"

Oxajil said:
SeekingTruth said:
That's an interesting observation, Oxajil. What you've described is an effective part of the Work, but you seem to be implying that it is becoming enhanced by the diet -- more sensitive AND better concentration.

I also agree about better memory and concentration on this diet. I've been on the diet since spring of 2011 (earlier, but that's when I brought the carbs below 20 grams) and immediately noticed the improvements, both in the process of increasing fat and decreasing carbs. I've always had a very good memory, but in my 40's it wasn't what it used to be up to my 30's. Now there's a big improvement and the ability to concentrate for very long periods of time, as well.

Great, isn't it? :D

Yes, it is. :) I'm not only excited about my own memory and concentration improving, but that everyone else on this diet will have the same benefits. Who knows what kind of non-linear effects all this can have down the road? :dance: (I finally got to use the dancing banana smiley!) :lol:
 
SeekinTruth said:
Oxajil said:
SeekingTruth said:
That's an interesting observation, Oxajil. What you've described is an effective part of the Work, but you seem to be implying that it is becoming enhanced by the diet -- more sensitive AND better concentration.

I also agree about better memory and concentration on this diet. I've been on the diet since spring of 2011 (earlier, but that's when I brought the carbs below 20 grams) and immediately noticed the improvements, both in the process of increasing fat and decreasing carbs. I've always had a very good memory, but in my 40's it wasn't what it used to be up to my 30's. Now there's a big improvement and the ability to concentrate for very long periods of time, as well.

Great, isn't it? :D

Yes, it is. :) I'm not only excited about my own memory and concentration improving, but that everyone else on this diet will have the same benefits. Who knows what kind of non-linear effects all this can have down the road? :dance: (I finally got to use the dancing banana smiley!) :lol:

Thank you SeekinTruth, your enthusiasm is good to see and your usual support is really appreciated! :thup:
 
Interesting observation: I had excluded eggs for some time - they seemed to be very mildly inflammatory - but tried introducing them again a couple of days ago, and eating them seems to have other benefits that make it worth it. (I speculate that the choline content might be significant, though there may be other things as well) And this made me think of the past and what had changed when I became less tolerant of butter - and so, I just tried butter again after these days (and counting) now eating eggs, and thus far (food issues usually come within half an hour for me, so at this point I can be fairly sure) have not had any major foggy-headedness reaction.

So perhaps butter may be in again - provided I keep eating eggs. Maybe eggs are somehow beneficial for my gut?
 
Psalehesost said:
So perhaps butter may be in again - provided I keep eating eggs. Maybe eggs are somehow beneficial for my gut?

It's hard to test when you've introduced two things. But be alert to creeping inflammation.
 
Psalehesost seems to be suggesting a synergistic relationship between the butter and the eggs though, so this would be rather hard to distinguish if only testing one at a time?

Perhaps doing them one by one, and then both together, and see how it goes? (With decent pauses in between).
 
I think it's more of a masking effect? Butter brings him "down", eggs bring him "up".
(Choline isn't an opioid receptor antagonist but can work synergistically with such.)
 
A series of articles written by Dr. Barry Groves just blew my mind. I think it relates to the previous discussion here of fermentive bacteria and their production of short chain fats (note, original link has some picutres and diagrams not included here). I think it also brings more to light on what humans are "supposed" to eat by looking at the actual diets of other mammals.

[quote author=http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/should-all-animals-eat-a-high-fat-low-carb-diet.html]
Should all animals eat a high-fat, low-carb diet?
Part One: The Basis for a High-fat Diet


Consider cattle, sheep, horses, gorillas, rhinoceroses, koalas, all of which are herbivores eating grass and leaves; lions, wolves, polar bears, all of which are carnivores eating other animals; and humans. Before continuing, I want you to ask yourself:
Which of them in its natural habitat eats a high-fat, low-carb diet?
cows koala polar bear
lion rabbit Maasai warrior

It's likely that you will classify the herbivores as low-fat dieters and the carnivores – particularly the polar bear – in the 'high-fat diet' class. But what about humans? Where do we fit? Those are the important questions today.

In 1997 the Journal of Nutrition published a study of the dietary intake of Western Lowland Gorillas, as the authors considered that the diet of one of our nearest 'cousins' could have implications for our (human) health.[1]
gorilla

The Western Lowland Gorilla

The Western Lowland Gorilla eats leaves from around 200 species of plant. These foods are low in fat and available carbohydrate, varied in protein and very high in total dietary fibre. Macronutrients, in grams per 100 grams of dry matter, were found to be:

Fat 0.5g (range 0.1 - 1.8)
Available carbohydrate 7.7g (range 0 - 22.4)
Protein 11.8g (range 1.7 - 30.0)
Fibre made up by far the major part of the plants ranging between 52.0g and 96.5g for a mean of 74.0g.

Putting the available macronutrients in terms of calorific values we have:

fat 5.9%
available carbohydrate 37.1%
protein 57.0%

On the face of it, therefore, it looks as if gorillas eat a very low-fat, high protein diet. But things aren't as clear cut as that.

No mammal — not even the herbivores — has developed an enzyme that will digest vegetable fibre. This is why we tend to discount it when calculating our calorie intakes. However, while mammals have not developed an enzyme that will digest fibre, there are lots of micro-organisms and bacteria that can the job for them. The herbivores employ billions of these bacteria.

Comparison between Man and gorilla


You will note in the picture on the right that there is a marked difference in shape between a human and a gorilla. But the gorilla's gut is not only much larger than a human's, it also has an entirely different design.

Human

Small intestine is major organ used to extract nutrients.
Small intestine ~ 50% of the total volume.
Caecum and colon ~ 20% volume

Gorilla

Ratios exactly the opposite
Small intestine ~ 25% volume
Caecum and colon ~ 53% volume.

This difference is highly significant. In a herbivore such as the gorilla, the caecum and colon harbour huge colonies of bacteria which ferment carbohydrates, particularly fibre, and use it to produce short chain fatty acids (SCFA) — principally acetic, proprionic and butyric acids. These are then absorbed into the body to be used as a source of energy.

If we look at the gorilla's diet, we now see that the authors of the study into the western lowland gorilla's diet find that the fibre provides some 1.5 kcals of energy per gram of fibre, in the form of SCFA. As the fibre averages about three-fourths of the gorilla's diet, this energy forms a highly significant proportion of the gorilla's total energy intake.

These SCFAs must be added to the fats already present in the gorilla's diet, which gives us the following proportions:

Overall energy
(kcal) per 100g %age
Protein 47.1 24.3%
Available carbs 30.6 15.8%
Fat 4.9 2.5%
SCFA from fibre 111.0 57.7%

This gives totals of:

protein = 24.3%
carbs = 15.8%
fats = 59.8%

In other words, although the western lowland gorilla's diet, exclusively of leaves, looks like a very low-fat, carbohydrate-rich diet, it is actually a high-fat, moderate-protein, low-carb diet.

But what of other animals. We'll look at them in Part Two

Reference

1. Popovich DG, et al. The Western Lowland Gorilla Diet Has Implications for the Health of Humans and Other Hominoids. J Nutr 1997; 127: 2000-2005.[/quote]

[quote author=http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/should-all-animals-eat-a-high-fat-low-carb-diet-2.html]
Should all animals eat a high-fat, low-carb diet?
Part Two: Digestive difference between herbivores and carnivores


We know, then, that gorillas eat a high-fat, low-carb diet, but what of other herbivores? And carnivores, and humans?

Herbivores

The major digestive difference between herbivores and carnivores lies primarily in the herbivores' ability to convert vegetable fibre and other carbohydrates into short-chain fatty acids and to absorb those fatty acids, an ability that carnivorous animals and humans do not possess.

They do this in one of two ways. They are either 'hindgut digesters', or 'foregut digesters'. But firstly, no animal, whatever its diet, has developed an enzyme that will digest vegetable fibre. Vegetable fibre is always digested using fermentation by bacteria.

Hindgut digesters

The gorilla, like most primates, is a hindgut digester. Other animals in this category include horses, pigs, and rabbits. These have gastrointestinal tracts with a similar basic layout as humans. The differences are in the relative sizes and functions of the various parts. Where a human (or other carnivore) has a small caecum and colon, the caecum and colon of a hindgut-digesing herbivore are both much larger.

Hindgut digesters digest and absorb proteins, available carbs and fats, as humans do, through the stomach and small intestine. The undigested fibre in their diet then passes to the caecum and colon which house huge colonies of bacteria. It is here that the fibre, and any undigested carbohydrate, is fermented to produce SCFAs, which are then absorbed into the body to be used for energy.

Foregut digesters (ruminants)

The foregut digesters are those animals that ruminate. Ruminants evolved to consume and subsist on roughage – grasses and shrubs built predominantly of cellulose. Ruminants include the large grazing or browsing mammals such as cattle, goats, sheep, deer, and antelope and, among primates, the colobus monkey.

In ruminants, the major organ of fermentation is their stomach, or perhaps I should say stomachs as there tends to be four separate compartments: the rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum which, collectively, occupy almost three-fourths of the abdominal cavity.

This multiple stomach also employs bacteria. Coming first in the digestive tract, the stomach not only ferments fibre to produce SCFAs, but also available carbohydrates. This reduces the amount of available carbs to be converted and absorbed as glucose, but increases the amount of SCFAs from a given amount of plant food such that: “Volatile fatty acids are produced in large amounts through ruminal fermentation and are of paramount importance in that they provide greater than 70% of the ruminant's energy supply.”[2] In this way, ruminants have a diet that is even higher in fats and which contains practically no carbohydrates at all.

All herbivores utilise one or other of these methods of getting energy from what looks like pretty energy-deficient food sources. It seems clear, therefore, that the metabolisms of all of them are adapted to utilise SCFAs as their major energy source, rather than glucose, and that they are actually designed and adapted to live on a high-fat, moderate-protein, low-carb diet.
lions

The carnivore's diet

Carnivores, such as lions, tigers, dogs, cats, wolves and hyenas, are quite unable to use fibre as an energy source in the same way as that herbivores do. But this doesn't matter as the carnivores are adapted to eat herbivores. It is noticeable that carnivorous animals tend to go for the fattier parts of their prey. This is particularly noticeable with hyenas whose jaws and teeth are designed to break the long bones and skulls to get at the bone marrow and brain within, which are very high in fat. So, the carnivores are also adapted to eat a high-fat, no-carb diet.

The human diet

So, where do we humans fit into the picture?

The first thing to note is that we are just as much an 'animal' as any of the others when it comes to diet, and there is no reason to suppose that we need to treat ourselves any differently.

This is borne out by observations by anthropologists and medical missionaries over a couple of centuries who all related that 'primitive' human cultures also ate and preferred high fat diets.[3-8]

The only thing we need to do, therefore, is determine whether we should eat a herbivore (vegan) diet, or a carnivore diet.

And that is not difficult to determine. We have little caecum to speak of and, while we do have fermentative bacteria in our colons, their products are only poorly absorbed into our bodies if at all. Those facts put us clearly into the carnivore class of animals.
Australian Aborigine Kalahari Bushmen Inuit with polar bear

Conclusion

If we look at the various natural diets of all mammals, we find the same pattern: All of the diets are high in fat, and most of that fat is saturated as, apart from the saturated fats found in meat, all the short chain fatty acids produced by fermentative bacteria are 100% saturated. Also, all mammals' natural diets are very low in carbohydrate in the case of herbivores, and practically carbohydrate free in the case of carnivores.

There is no reason to suppose that we 'civilised' humans should eat any differently. And we do so at our peril

References

2. http://vetmedicine.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=vetmedicine&zu=http%3A%2F%2Farbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu%2Fhbooks%2Fpathphys%2Fdigestion%2Fherbivores%2Frumen_anat.html
3. Stefansson V. The Fat of The Land. New York: Macmillan Press, 1957.
4. Wilkins GH. Undiscovered Australia. London: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1928.
5. Price WA. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration: A Comparison of Primitive and Modern Diets and Their Effects. Paul B. Hoeber, Inc, New York, 1939.
6. Grant GM. Ocean to Ocean. Toronto, 1873.
7. Peary RE. Secrets of Polar Travel. New York: Century Co, 1917.
8. Hanson EP. Journey to Manaos. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock. 1938.[/quote]

There is a part 3, but I didn't find it to be very relevant (it basically just sums up by saying "and this is why we're sick, and so are our pets).

As I siad, I found this really mind blowing. The idea that EVERY mammal (and maybe other species as well) eats a high fat, low carb diet. So by depending primarily on carbohydrate for a food source, without having the same hindgut or foregut fermentation abilities of other mammals, humans haven't just turned away from the ideal human diet, they've abandoned the ideal MAMMALIAN diet. Pretty fascinating stuff.
 
Many thanks dugdeep for sharing this very interesting information! It helps so much by understanding the relation between who we are here on Earth and how we join in the context of life which is our.

I have some searchs to make about the pig meat (seen here in the thread) and the manners at the time of the Goddess Mother. I am reading a book talking about it, so, I will let you know what I found about that... If I found something, but at least I had this thoughts during the beginning of this reading, it was 6 months ago... I know, it is a long time to read one book, but actually, I read several books in the same time. I will be ready now to continue "Before the Gods, the universal Goddess - François Grange... ;)
 
That was a good article, dug. I've known for some time that ruminants get energy from the bacteria and not the plants they eat, but I didn't know it applied to gorillas and other types of mammals as well. It certainly explains how they manage to grow humongous eating only greens.
 
I agree. That's coming at it from the right angle. I know that NOT having all those bacteria needed to deal with fiber in my gut is a HUGE relief every way you look at it. No more bloating, no more gas, no more bowel problems of any kind. That, alone, was worth changing my diet to achieve.

And I should note that if I start feeling hungry for salads and stuff, I really have to limit it because eating that sort of thing can bring on the gas and bloating.
 
Thank you dugdeep! So...all herbivores use SCFAs! That explains why you find butyric acid in milk; it's to feed the calf.

The Lizzies made us breed grains with huge endosperms to force us to subsist on sugar for fuel, and by feeding those grains to cows and pigs we're giving them diabetes. And the fat diabetic cows/pigs produced so much insulin (because they became insulin resistant) that the medical industry took the cow/pig insulin and gave it to diabetic humans. (This is before recombinant DNA entered the picture of course.)
 
Laura said:
Psalehesost said:
So perhaps butter may be in again - provided I keep eating eggs. Maybe eggs are somehow beneficial for my gut?

It's hard to test when you've introduced two things. But be alert to creeping inflammation.

I know from past experience - having eliminated and reintroduced eggs on the present diet before - that problems don't build up from them; they are possibly very mildly inflammatory, though if so at a stable level, but it's hard to know, since anything - including perhaps better nutrition, if they give something essential that has been lacking - anything that makes for greater contact with the emotional center might feel much like mild inflammation due to its state.

As for the butter, inflammation did creep in - in the end it got almost as bad as before - and for now it is out again, which makes an immediate difference.

Muxel said:
I think it's more of a masking effect? Butter brings him "down", eggs bring him "up".

Given significant inflammation, eggs or any other food don't suffice to bring me "up". I'm thinking that eggs either correct a nutritional deficiency and/or help the gut in some way, but in any case it's not enough to deal with the butter long-term - though the improved short-term tolerance suggests they might have some benefit.


And as for the butter itself, the best I can get - nothing better in any ordinary store, and haven't found any relevant non-ordinary store - though organic, is grain fed and pasteurized, which means - according to PBPM - that there's essentially no omega 3 and that the (other) polyunsaturated fats it has are rancid, and the cholesterol oxidized. Such milk products are noted in PBPM to exacerbate casein intolerance. (though as for rancid polyunsaturated fats - I wonder if ghee, when made, can ever have anything but, given the prolonged heating involved in making it. in any case, the ghee I make is made from the same butter. but have just finally, once again, got a lot of pig fat - probably also grain fed - so for the time I can again cut back and use lard instead, which the body agrees fully with, grain fed or not)
 
Thanks for posting dugdeep, that surely clears it up for me! I've been reintroducing butter for a week now, and I'm happy to say that I'm doing really well with it!
 
While searching for information on insulin, I ran across many references to garlic. Of the web sites I saw, all of them recommended garlic for diabetic patients. They claim that garlic (or one or two components of garlic) reduce blood glucose. Most also claim that garlic increases (improves) insulin sensitivity. So far, so good!

However, many claim that garlic also increases insulin levels. Good for (high carb) diabetics that need it, but bad for me.

Here is one of the more informative pages I saw:
_http://www.diametrixhealth.com/diabeticherbs/garlic-diabetes.html
Onion and garlic have significant blood sugar lowering action. The principal active ingredients are believed to be allyl propyl disulphide (APDS) and diallyl disulphide oxide (allicin), although other constitutents such as flavonoids may play a role as well. Experimental and clinical evidence suggests that APDS lowers glucose levels by competing with insulin for insulin-inactivating sites in the liver. This results in an increase of free insulin. APDS administered in doses of 125 mg/ kg to fasting humans was found to cause a marked fall in blood glucose levels and an increase in serum insulin. Allicin doses of 100 mg/kg produced a similar effect.
If I use lots of garlic, I might improve my insulin sensitivity, which is a good thing. But while doing this, I will probably be increasing my insulin levels, which will make weight loss harder (among other insulin problems).

Since I am on a low-carb diet, I am thinking that improving my insulin sensitivity may be less important than keeping my blood insulin levels low.

I will keep digging for more information, but maybe others may find this interesting.
 

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