"Life Without Bread"
- Thread starter Ellipse
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Yes, completely eliminating grains should be your goal to work toward. :)
As I think was mentioned in this thread (or somewhere on the forum) the Paleo Summit is currently underway - http://paleosummit.com/ It's put on by Sean Croxton of Underground Wellness, and he's got some really great people lined up doing interviews.
The videos are being put up two or three at a time, left up for 24 hours, then removed. Currently there's one with Paul Jaminet of "The Perfect Health Diet" which is quite good. Although his views on the right level of carbs isn't quite congruent with ours (he generally thinks one should eat enough carbs to avoid the necessity of gluconeogenesis, or making glucose from protein, which he says is hard on the liver), most of what he has to say is quite informative. It's only posted until midnight, so if you have a chance it's worth checking out.
Also, tomorrow is Nora Gedgaudas' presentation. She's the author of Primal Body, Primal Mind and seeing/hearing her speak is always a treat. I'll be checking that one out for sure! It's up from midnight tonight (PST) until midnight tomorrow night, I believe, so check it out if you have a chance. It think all the interviews are being packaged and sold once the summit is done, but it's nice to be able to check it out for free :)
The videos are being put up two or three at a time, left up for 24 hours, then removed. Currently there's one with Paul Jaminet of "The Perfect Health Diet" which is quite good. Although his views on the right level of carbs isn't quite congruent with ours (he generally thinks one should eat enough carbs to avoid the necessity of gluconeogenesis, or making glucose from protein, which he says is hard on the liver), most of what he has to say is quite informative. It's only posted until midnight, so if you have a chance it's worth checking out.
Also, tomorrow is Nora Gedgaudas' presentation. She's the author of Primal Body, Primal Mind and seeing/hearing her speak is always a treat. I'll be checking that one out for sure! It's up from midnight tonight (PST) until midnight tomorrow night, I believe, so check it out if you have a chance. It think all the interviews are being packaged and sold once the summit is done, but it's nice to be able to check it out for free :)
So I think bye bye pasta! 
Geez, I've been taking milk thistle supplements for a long time now, when the C's said "protect the liver". I did my research to find stuff that could help my liver, I heard about it and yes : it did a great job, making me more "efficient", less brain fog, less feeling like crap, etc... I feel like an idiot to not have share this earlier. :/LadyRodgers said:
ScarletBegonias
Dagobah Resident
I've been listening to these and yesterday Dr. Jack Kruse mentioned the vagus nerve, criticized agriculture and even said what he learned in med school was wrong (or backwards, something like that)! I think he was referring to the stuff on diet. These lectures are great!dugdeep said:
mkrnhr said:
Yeah, I didn't know they were going to take them down so fast! It's annoying, but there are three more up today:
dugdeep said:
My problem with Paul Jaminet's interview was that his claim for optimal macro-nutrient intake including 20 - 25% carbs would make it impossible to go into and stay in ketosis. If we remain in glucose metabolism, there's no way to really live optimally.
Since we are creatures if Ice Age, how on earth could we have eaten that much carbs in our evolutionary history for any extended period of time?
I'm looking forward to Nora Gedgaudas' video (and it says on the site that she'll be refuting most of what Paul Jaminet said). It's not up yet. And unfortunately, I missed Dr. Jack Kruse's -- it's not available anymore, but I'm going to his blog to read now. Starting with his latest post.
I went to Dr. Jack Kruse's site and read his most recent blog entry (after his Paleo Summit Interview). I think there's quite a bit of interesting things there: _http://jackkruse.com/the-holy-trinity-ct-4/
I'm starting to read his "Quilt" _http://jackkruse.com/the-quilthow-to-beat-agin/ and other entries over there. For those interested, you might want to check this out and see what we think / what we come up with. I'd especially be interested what Psyche's take on the things Dr. Kruse is claiming he discovered would be (as well as Laura's) in the context of all the other research that's been reviewed and tested / is in the process of being tested.
Just the briefest summary of what I've read so far: Cold, and Ketogenic diet is what is optimal for humans (and most mammals); there are no safe starches (as claimed by Paul Jaminet); we have a hidden metabolic pathway for super health and longevity that comes out only with exposure to cold -- so his Cold Thermogenis recommendation; many paradoxes and conflicting data in the research literature starts to make sense and is solved by this understanding; many calorie restriction diets for longevity don't work properly because of this fact of not controlling for temperature; mTOR actually works FOR longevity when this pathway and metabolism is activated which is connected to human (and mammalian) "thermoplasticity;" he claims that he tested all this first on himself then on his patients and that his and his patients' telomeres are tested before and after and become longer reversing the aging process (he claims nothing else by itself does this if all factors are not present simultaneously); sleep is crucial and sleep quality is one of the first questions he asks his patients, etc. FWIW.
I'm starting to read his "Quilt" _http://jackkruse.com/the-quilthow-to-beat-agin/ and other entries over there. For those interested, you might want to check this out and see what we think / what we come up with. I'd especially be interested what Psyche's take on the things Dr. Kruse is claiming he discovered would be (as well as Laura's) in the context of all the other research that's been reviewed and tested / is in the process of being tested.
Just the briefest summary of what I've read so far: Cold, and Ketogenic diet is what is optimal for humans (and most mammals); there are no safe starches (as claimed by Paul Jaminet); we have a hidden metabolic pathway for super health and longevity that comes out only with exposure to cold -- so his Cold Thermogenis recommendation; many paradoxes and conflicting data in the research literature starts to make sense and is solved by this understanding; many calorie restriction diets for longevity don't work properly because of this fact of not controlling for temperature; mTOR actually works FOR longevity when this pathway and metabolism is activated which is connected to human (and mammalian) "thermoplasticity;" he claims that he tested all this first on himself then on his patients and that his and his patients' telomeres are tested before and after and become longer reversing the aging process (he claims nothing else by itself does this if all factors are not present simultaneously); sleep is crucial and sleep quality is one of the first questions he asks his patients, etc. FWIW.
SeekinTruth said:
Yeah, like I said, his views on carbs don't vibe with our perspective, but everything else he had to say was pretty spot on, OSIT. Dr. Jack Kruse's presentation was interesting - all about the hormone leptin and what controls it. After listening to his presentation, though, I went and read his latest blog post and found it to be extremely long, meandering and lacking real data. 80% of the post was completely unneccesary, detailing how he got his inspiration, giving vague metaphors about things like 'northern and southern India are like ying and yang', and other strangeness. He seems unnable to synthesize his ideas down to communicate them to his audience. And the actual meat of the post was extremely vague. It's kind of hard to sort out what he's actually saying and a lot of it sounds like wishful thinking. [Note: just saw SeekinTruth's post and he seems to have distilled the post rather well.]
Here's the link if anyone is interested - _http://jackkruse.com/the-holy-trinity-ct-4/
All that said, I find his idea of "cold adaptation" to be intriguing. He says that living in the cold adapts the body so that it no longer relies on leptin signaling for hunger signals and no longer uses the thyroid for body signaling as those functions are taken over by the brain. He offers no backup of these points however.
Anyway, his followers, who seem a bit overly enthusiastic given how little backup he actually seems to be revealing, are all plunging themselves in ice baths, wearing nothing but t-shirts in the winter and keeping themselves covered in ice on their daily commutes. Kind of odd, to say the least.
But, I have come across the idea of using cold to promote health in the past (or at least weight loss). In Tim Ferriss' book "The 4 Hour Body" he talks about people using cold baths or putting cold packs on the back of their necks to increase the body's store of brown fat and increase metabolism and therefore weight loss. He doesn't say anything about changing the body's use of leptin or thyroid hormone, though.
[quote author=4 Hour Body]
ICE AGE
Mastering Temperature to Manipulate Weight
"Don’t tell me it’s impossible, tell me you can’t do it. Tell me it’s never been done … the only things we really know are Maxwell’s equations, the three laws of Newton, the two postulates of relativity, and the periodic table. That’s all we know that’s true. All the rest are man’s laws."
—Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway and recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Lemelson-MIT Prize
Michael Phelps eats 12,000 calories a day …”
That was all Ray Cronise heard from across the room. He jerked his eyes up from the spreadsheet and reached for the TiVo to pause the television.
Twelve thousand calories.
Ray Cronise had been a high-ranking material scientist at NASA for almost 15 years, and his specialties included biophysics and analytical chemistry. He’d been in mission operations and seen—hell, helped produce—research the public wouldn’t see for decades.
But spending half of his life behind a computer had taken its toll. The creeping two to four pounds per year had added up and left him weighing 230 pounds at 5′9″.
It was now a much-improved 209-pound Ray Cronise who sat with a spreadsheet in front of him and his eyes on the paused television. He still had more than 30 pounds to lose. It would take at least 18–24 weeks at his current rate.
The spreadsheet was designed to fix this by comparing all the human activities he could isolate, each correlated to its caloric expenditure per hour for his weight. He was tired of being fat and hoped the numbers would provide a faster solution. Instead, they painted a futile picture: even if he ran a 26.2-mile marathon he would only burn around 2,600 calories, or approximately ¾ of a pound of fat.
How could Phelps eat an extra 9,000 calories per day? Ray scanned his hunger through the columns, jotted down a few notes, and defaulted to the calculator. It made no sense. “In order for Phelps to burn those kinds of calories above and beyond what his resting metabolic rate [RMR] was,” Ray recalls, “keeping in mind that I had the calculations in front of me, and it’s about 860 calories an hour at competitive swimming rates, he would have to sustain more than 10 hours of continuous butterfly every day. Not even he can do that.”
So what was going on? Was Phelps misinforming journalists during his Olympic quest? Sabotaging competitors foolish enough to mimic him based on interviews?
The physics didn’t work.
Then, in an instant, paused over the spreadsheet, after 15 years of frustration, it all became crystal clear:
“It was the thermal load of the water. Water is 24 times more thermally conductive than air. Phelps spends three or four hours a day in the water.”
The effect was the same as pouring hot coffee into a metal cup instead of a ceramic mug; the former loses calories (heat) much faster. Ray did the math with this new variable, and, amazingly, it seemed to add up.
In the six weeks that followed, from the weekend of October 27 to December 5, he would lose 28.6 pounds of fat and never regain them.
The game had changed.
From NASA to Everest: Correcting the Metabolism Equation
It seemed too good to be true. So, as any good scientist would, Ray tried to disprove himself.
In the studies and science he reviewed, what struck him most was not evidence that contradicted his conclusions, but rather the near-complete omission of heat as a factor in fatloss.
The common equation in the literature was simple: weight loss or gain = calories-in – calories-out. △Wt = kcal in – kcal out.
This wasn’t the problem.
The problem was that every table for calories-out (caloric expenditure) immediately fixated on activity level. Thermodynamics—thermodynamics—had somehow been robbed of heat. In Ray’s world of space shuttles and atmospheric reentry, heat was king. The laws of thermodynamics were being cited by people who didn’t understand them. Take the first law as an example. In simple terms:
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It can only change forms.
The misquoters were limiting the ways ingested calories could change form. They treated exercise and storage as the only two options. In fact, the human body is an open thermodynamic system and has a number of other options. Ray’s then-209-pound meat-frame could exchange energy with his environment in the form of work (exercise), heat, or matter (excretion).
Running a marathon might burn 2,600 calories, but working out in an 82°F pool for four hours could burn up to an extra 4,000 calories, if one considered thermal load.
How else could people like Scott Parazynski, a friend of Ray’s, eat can after can of Spam and other high-fat foods? Scott was an MD and former astronaut who had attempted to summit Everest twice, losing about 25 pounds on each attempt. He was successful on his second ascent. His troupe ate lard and sticks of butter to prevent excessive weight loss. The workload of the climb alone could not account for the caloric expenditure, a 5,000-calorie deficit. It was the cold. Lots of cold.
So Ray began to treat himself like a human space heater.
He tried everything: he drank a gallon of ice water between waking and 11 A.M.; he slept with no covers; he took midwinter “shiver walks” of 20–30 minutes with nothing but a T-shirt, earmuffs, and gloves on his upper body.
He later found less painful options, but the results were undeniable. He lost almost six
pounds in the first week.
It Gets Better—The Devil’s in the Details
This was not the first time Ray had tried to lose weight.
In 2006, he lost a respectable 20 pounds following the Body-for-Life (BFL) exercise and diet plan, designed by Bill Phillips. BFL performed as advertised, and Ray lost 17.8 pounds of fat in 12 weeks, for an average weekly fat-loss of 1.48 pounds. This was, by all conventional measures, a huge success. Unfortunately, in a pattern familiar to millions, he then gained it all back, plus interest.
In the second experiment, however, repeating BFL with intermittent cold exposure, Ray lost 28.6 pounds in six weeks, for an average weekly fat-loss of 4.77 pounds. The addition of cold exposure alone increased fat-loss per week more than three times. This added up to 61% more total fat lost in half the time.
I found Ray’s results both incredible and believable. But something seemed to be missing.
First of all, he had also gained more muscle with cold exposure. Losing more heat couldn’t account for that. Though the muscle gain could have been accounted for by the slight inaccuracies of home-use calipers (plus or minus two pounds), I suspected there was more to the story.
Second, looking at the research, the math didn’t add up quite as neatly as I’d hoped.
It’s been shown that you can burn almost four times more fat than usual with two hours of cold exposure15 (176.5 milligrams per minute instead of 46.9 milligrams per minute). This is great, but percentage changes can be deceptive. If there are nine calories in one gram of fat, and assuming the effect lasts for the time you are in the water, then this exposure would burn an extra 139 calories,16 or 15.5 grams of fat.
15.5 grams?! That’s about 11 paper clips … for two hours of torture.
Ray was losing more than three additional pounds (approximately 1,350 grams) of fat per week with cold exposure. To achieve that with water immersion alone, looking at the same studies, he’d need to spend 174.2 hours per week in 50° water. It seems unlikely that Ray spent more than 24 hours per day in water. In fact, he didn’t spend two hours per day swimming in, or consuming, 50° water.
Something else needed to be happening. It could have been the other thermic loads he experimented with: cold walks, sleeping without sheets, etc.
Digging deeper still, I now believe that the “something else” involves two players you’ll hear much more about in the next few years: adiponectin and BAT.
Adiponectin is a cool little hormone, secreted by fat cells, that can both increase the oxidation (“burning”) of fatty acids in mitochondria and increase uptake of glucose by muscle tissue. I believe adiponectin is largely to thank for Ray’s muscle gain.17 Speculation notwithstanding, the research is in its early stages, so I’ll reserve adiponectin as an intellectual dessert for the geeks. My forays into its potential can be found in the online resources.
BAT and my related torture experiments, on the other hand, are worth taking a closer look at.
If the science gets too dense and you want the index card version, skip to “Ice Age Revisited—
Four Places to Start” on this page. I won’t be offended.
Fat-Burning Fat
Not all fat is equal. There are at least two distinct types: white adipose tissue (WAT) and brown adipose tissue (BAT).
WAT is what we usually think of as fat, like the marbling on a steak. A WAT cell—an adipocyte —is composed of a single large fat droplet with a single nucleus.
BAT, in contrast, is sometimes referred to as “fat-burning fat” and appears to be derived from the same stem cells as muscle tissue. A BAT cell is composed of multiple droplets that are brown in color because of a much higher volume of iron-containing mitochondria. Normally associated with muscle tissue, mitochondria are best known for producing ATP and oxidizing fat in muscle tissue. BAT helps dissipate excess calories as heat. These excess calories would otherwise be stored in the aforementioned WAT and end up in your beer gut or muffin top.18
In a nutshell: cold stimulates BAT to burn fat and glucose as heat. Cold, as well as drugs called beta-adrenergic agonists,19 can also make BAT appear within WAT in mice and rats. In other words, cold might help you increase the amount of your “fat-burning” fat. This has tremendous implications.
My Experience
In 1995, I began conducting experiments on myself using the powerful “ECA stack” discussed in the last chapter.
It was an effective thermogenic cocktail. So effective, in fact, that I suffered heat exhaustion three times and should have been hospitalized on two of those occasions. It doesn’t matter how ripped you are if you’re dead.
In 1999, four years of experimentation later and much the wiser, I had eliminated the contributing factors that led to heat stroke conditions (in my case, all exercise or sun exposure at 70%+ humidity) and began to combine ECA with timed cold exposure.
The outcome: in four weeks, I lost what usually took up to eight weeks with ECA alone, and I did it without the side effects. I used two different protocols, both of which worked:
PROTOCOL A
1. I consumed the ECA stack 45 minutes prior to cold-bath immersion on an empty stomach. Though the metabolism of caffeine (caffeine clearance) varies from person to person, I assumed that blood concentration would peak between 60 and 90 minutes post–oral consumption, which was based on the average pharmacokinetics of caffeine in white male subjects. Pharmacokinetics, usually in graph form, show the relative blood concentrations of a specific drug over time after administration. Caffeinated gum, for comparison with pills, shows peak levels at 15 minutes. Delivery mechanisms matter.
2. I placed two ten-pound bags of ice in a cold-water bath and submerged myself for a total of 20 minutes. Those 20 minutes were phased as follows:
00:00–10:00 minutes: Up to mid-waist, legs submerged, torso and arms not submerged. 10:00–15:00 minutes: Submerged up to neck with hands out of the water (sitting cross-legged
then reclining makes this easier in a standard bathtub).
15:00–20:00 minutes: Submerged up to neck, hands underwater.
Sound painful? It is.
The second protocol, performed without ECA and tested separately, activated BAT and was far
easier.
PROTOCOL B
1. I placed an ice pack on the back of my neck and upper trapezius area for 30 minutes, generally in the evening, when my insulin sensitivity is lower than in the morning.20
That’s it.
I tested protocol A three times per week (on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) and protocol B five times per week (Monday through Friday). The former caused grand mal–like shivering and the latter caused no shivering.
Nonetheless, looking at the bodyfat results, Protocol B appeared to be around 60% as effective as the torture baths in Protocol A.
Not a bad yield, considering that no convulsing is involved.
In 1999, amusingly, most researchers firmly believed that BAT, while abundant in infants, was nonexistent or negligible in adults. I was in the midst of my Guantanamo Bay baths21 at this time, and these conclusions did not square with my experience. It wasn’t until years later that better tools, most notably positron-emission topography (PET), became more widespread and were used to demonstrate that BAT is most certainly present in adults, particularly in the neck and upper chest areas.
That explains why the ice packs on my neck and upper trapezius worked.
In the May 2009 issue of Obesity Review, a paper was published titled “Have we entered the BAT renaissance?” I’d say the answer is yes. The abstract concludes: “These recent discoveries should revamp our effort to target the molecular development of brown adipogenesis in the treatment of obesity.”
Let’s start with cold. It isn’t fancy, but it works well.
Ice Age Revisited—Four Places to Start
If we combine the research with data from self-trackers like Ray and his 50+ informal test subjects, there are four simple options you can experiment with for fat-loss:
1. Place an ice pack on the back of the neck or upper trapezius area for 20–30 minutes, preferably in the evening, when insulin sensitivity is lowest. I place a towel on the couch while writing or watching a movie and simply lean back against the ice pack.
2. Consume, as Ray did, at least 500 milliliters of ice water on an empty stomach immediately upon waking. In at least two studies, this water consumption has been shown to increase resting metabolic rate 24–30%, peaking at 40–60 minutes post-consumption, though one study demonstrated a lower effect of 4.5%. Eat breakfast 20–30 minutes later à la the Slow-Carb Diet detailed in earlier chapters.
3. Take 5–10-minute cold showers before breakfast and/or before bed. Use hot water for 1–2 minutes over the entire body, then step out of water range and apply shampoo and soap to your hair and face. Turn the water to pure cold and rinse your head and face alone. Then turn around and back into the water, focusing the water on your lower neck and upper back. Maintain this position for 1–3 minutes as you acclimate and apply soap to all the necessary regions. Then turn around and rinse normally. Expect this to wake you up like a foghorn.
4. If you’re impatient and can tolerate more, take 20-minute baths that induce shivering. See protocol A earlier in this chapter but omit the ECA. For extra thermogenic effect, consume 200–450 milligrams of cayenne (I use 40,000 BTU or thereabout) 30 minutes beforehand with 10–
20 grams of protein (a chicken breast or protein shake will do). I do not suggest consuming cayenne or capsaicin on an empty stomach. Trust me, it’s a bad idea.
Six Reasons to Take a Cold Shower
1. Short-term cold exposure (30 minutes) in humans leads to fatty acid release to provide fuel for heat production through shivering. This same shivering could be suficient to recruit GLUT-4 to the surface of muscle cells, contributing to increased lean muscle gain.
2. Even at shorter durations, cold exposure with shivering could increase adiponectin levels and glucose uptake by muscle tissue. This effect could persist long after the cold exposure ends.
3. In the absence of shivering, it is still possible to capitalize on “fat-burning fat” through the stimulation of BAT thermogenesis. Curiously, even without shivering, there are small but unaccounted increases in lean muscle tissue when comparing underwater (superior) vs. landbased exercise.
4. Cold water improves immunity. Acute cold exposure has immunostimulating effects, and preheating with physical exercise or a warm shower can enhance this response. Increases in levels of circulating norepinephrine may account for this.
5. Not germane to fat-loss, but another reason to use cold exposure: cold showers are an effective treatment for depression. One study used showers at 68°F for two to three minutes, preceded by a five-minute gradual adaptation to make the procedure less shocking.
6. The visible results, of course: [before and after photo of Ray Cronise]
TOOLS AND TRICKS
ColPaC Gel Wrap (_www.fourhourbody.com/colpac) These pliable wraps, used in physical therapy clinics, can be cooled quickly and applied to any body part, including the back of the neck, for BAT activation.
“How to Make a Real Ice Pack for $0.30” (_www.fourhourbody.com/diy-ice) If you prefer the frugal approach, this article will show you how to quickly and easily make your own reusable ice packs at a fraction of the cost of store-bought packs.
“TED Talks Lewis Pugh Swims the North Pole” (_www.fourhourbody.com/pugh) Lewis Pugh is known as the human polar bear. Why? He swam across the icy waters of the North Pole in a Speedo and regularly swims in freezing cold water. Watch this TED speech for astonishing footage and blunt commentary on super-cold swims.
Ray Cronise Cold Experiments (www.raycronise.com) Explore Ray’s experiments in cold exposure to find additional options for accelerating fat-loss. If he can keep NASA shuttles from incinerating, he can help you lose heat.[/quote]
I dunno. It's all kind of interesting. Considering we are children of the ice age, it makes sense that the body may have certain adaptations to living in cold that may actually be advantageous. But without any more actual data, it's really just taking it on faith. Tim Ferriss has some interesting research, but it's all geared towards weight loss. Since there are many unhealthy ways to lose weight, nothing he's written really indicates this is how the body optimally functions. I'm going to keep an eye on Dr. Kruse to see if gets any more clear about the science behind it all.
[Edit: the forum software keeps clipping my posts, so I`m trying to add the rest back in