"Life Without Bread"

I haven't read "Life Without Bread", but I'd like to bring up that Laura's recipe for date bread ( http_://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNnFjmux6CI ) is simply amazing. Friends and family have commented on how amazing this recipe is. I'd been getting tired of blinis as a bread substitute, and this has really hit the spot. And it's one of the easiest recipes, too.

And seeing as how dates are pretty expensive I wonder if they could be left out and just use this recipe to make a nice loaf of buckwheat bread. I think I'll do that next. Has anyone else made a loaf of buckwheat bread yet?
 
Hesper said:
I haven't read "Life Without Bread", but I'd like to bring up that Laura's recipe for date bread ( http_://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNnFjmux6CI ) is simply amazing. Friends and family have commented on how amazing this recipe is. I'd been getting tired of blinis as a bread substitute, and this has really hit the spot. And it's one of the easiest recipes, too.

And seeing as how dates are pretty expensive I wonder if they could be left out and just use this recipe to make a nice loaf of buckwheat bread. I think I'll do that next. Has anyone else made a loaf of buckwheat bread yet?

I think your post does not really fit into this thread.

PS: I make the date bread regularly and I really like it. inform us on the result of your experiment without the dates. maybe I try it too
 
Legolas said:
As brought up in the last session, this is the topic to discuss the topic about a low carb diet from Dr. Wolfgang Lutz and his book Life without bread

fwiw

Hi Legolas,

I removed your post since it was in the middle of this thread (and look a little bit funny !!!) after moving all the posts form the "Session 9 April 2011" thread.

However, I pasted it in the first post of this thread.
 
Pashalis said:
I think your post does not really fit into this thread.

Yeah, I posted before the two threads were merged, and just assumed that my post would fit. And obviously it didn't. But I'll still let you know how the bread works out. Sorry!
 
Gandalf said:
Legolas said:
As brought up in the last session, this is the topic to discuss the topic about a low carb diet from Dr. Wolfgang Lutz and his book Life without bread

fwiw

Hi Legolas,

I removed your post since it was in the middle of this thread (and look a little bit funny !!!) after moving all the posts form the "Session 9 April 2011" thread.

However, I pasted it in the first post of this thread.

That's fair enough. :)
 
And then I came along and changed the whole deal by moving even MORE posts from the session thread to this one.
 
the review from the Weston A. Price Foundation:

Life Without Bread by Wolfgang Lutz and Christian Allan

Sunday, March 23 2003 15:13
Thumbs Up Book Review

Life Without Bread
By Wolfgang Lutz and Christian Allan
Review by Stephen Byrnes, PhD, RNCP, ©2001

In recent years, a slew of books on low-carbohydrate diets by medical doctors and nutritionists has appeared on the market. Some, like those by Dr. Robert Atkins, MD, have focused on using low-carb diets for weight loss. Others, like the Protein Power series by the Eades, have focused on the lifestyle of low-carb eating. None of the titles, however, has applied low-carb eating to a variety of diseases, showing how such a diet directly ameliorates and heals conditions like Crohn's disease, heart disease, and diabetes. With Life Without Bread, however, that pattern has ended. Lutz and Allan have done an excellent job in lucidly presenting a systematic approach to low-carb eating, its beneficial effects on a number of disease conditions and, most importantly, the scientific and clinical data to back up the claims.

Life Without Bread is mostly based on the clinical experience of Dr. Lutz, an Austrian medical doctor who has successfully used low-carb diets for decades on thousands of patients. The results of Lutz's clinical successes have been published in several European medical journals (mostly in German) and he even authored a German version of LWB as far back as 1967.

Although the German edition of LWB has had many favorable reviews, Lutz's work has been ignored in the United States. While the USDA was hawking the Food Pyramid to the American public, with its 6-12 servings of grain products a day (and with most of the Western world following this lead), Dr. Lutz and a handful of brave iconoclasts were preaching the virtues of high-protein, high-fat, low-carb diets for healthy living. After many years, Lutz succeeded in securing an American publisher and the results of his experience and research are now avilable to all English-speaking people.

The book begins with a definition of just what low-carb nutrition really is, followed by an historical survey of the approach by various doctors and nutritionists including such luminaries as William Banting, Weston Price, Vilhjamur Stefansson, John Yudkin and Carlton Fredericks. In Lutz and Allan's definition, the low-carb diet should include no more than 72 grams of carbohydrates per day. The rest of the diet should be made up of protein and fat from a variety of plant and animal sources.

Chapter Three focuses on the effect carbohydrates have on hormonal function. Despite the complexity of the subject matter, Lutz and Allan do a fine job of explaining the endocrinological details with a variety of graphs, illustrations and references.

Most of the following chapters focus on the benefits of low-carb nutrition for such diseases as diabetes, heart disease, gastrointestinal disorders, obesity and even cancer. The chapter on heart disease deserves special notice, for it effectively debunks the phony, but widely held, notion that saturated fats and cholesterol from animal foods cause this condition. The authors explain in detail the physiological benefits of saturates and simultaneously point out the flawed reasoning behind the Lipid Hypothesis. This chapter is really what sets the book apart from other low-carb titles currently available and is worth the price of the book.

Chapter 11 is also a distinguishing chapter in that it explains the evolutionary basis for low-carb eating. Lutz and Allan clearly show that the low-carb, high-fat, high-protein diet was the diet that humans evolved on and is what we are best suited for today. It is the high-carb, low-fat diet that is alien to our species.

The final chapter is also unique to the low-carb nutrition books available. It shows how to implement the low-carb eating plan in various people. Lutz and Allan wisely point out that older patients need to be eased into the program over a period of time, as opposed to jumping into it cold-turkey. They point out the possible health hazards of such an approach. This chapter should prove invaluable for clinicians.

Lucidly written, heavily referenced, and well-illustrated, Life Without Bread is a must-have book for physicians, nutritionists, and the public.
 
Metabolism and Ketosis

The primary goal of our metabolic system is to provide fuels in the amounts needed at the times needed to keep us alive and functioning. As long as we’ve got plenty of food, the metabolic systems busies itself with allocating it to the right places and storing what’s left over. In a society such as ours, there is usually too much food so the metabolic system has to deal with it in amounts and configurations that it wasn’t really designed to handle, leading to all kinds of problems. But that’s a story for another day.

If you read any medical school biochemistry textbook, you’ll find a section devoted to what happens metabolically during starvation. If you read these sections with a knowing eye, you’ll realize that everything discussed as happening during starvation happens during carbohydrate restriction as well. There have been a few papers published recently showing the same thing: the metabolism of carb restriction = the metabolism of starvation. I would maintain, however, based on my study of the Paleolithic diet, that starvation and carb restriction are simply the polar ends of a continuum, and that carb restriction was the norm for most of our existence as upright walking beings on this planet, making the metabolism of what biochemistry textbook authors call starvation the ‘normal’ metabolism.

So, bearing in mind that carb restriction and starvation are opposite ends of the same stick and that what applies to one applies to the other, let’s look at how it all works. I’ll explain it from a starvation perspective, but all the mechanisms work the same for a carb-restricted diet.

During starvation the primary goal of the metabolic system is to provide enough glucose to the brain and other tissues (the red blood cells, certain kidney cells, and others) that absolutely require glucose to function. Which makes sense if you think about it. You’re a Paleolithic man or woman, you’re starving, you’ve got to find food, you need a brain, red blood cells, etc. to do it. You’ve got to be alert, quick on your feet, and not focused on how hungry you are.

If you’re not eating or if you’re on a low-carbohydrate diet, where does this glucose come from?

If you’re starving, glucose comes mainly from one place, and that is from the body’s protein reservoir: muscle. A little can come from stored fat, but not from the fatty acids themselves. Although glucose can be converted to fat, the reaction can’t go the other way. Fat is stored as a triglyceride, which is three fatty acids hooked on to a glycerol molecule. The glycerol molecule is a three-carbon structure that, when freed from the attached fatty acids, can combine with another glycerol molecule to make glucose. Thus a starving person can get a little glucose from the fat that is released from the fat cells, but not nearly enough. The lion’s share has to come from muscle that breaks down into amino acids, several of which can be converted by the liver into glucose. (There are a few other minor sources of glucose conversion: the Cori cycle, for example, but these are not major sources, so we’ll leave them for another, more technical, discussion.)

But the breakdown of muscle creates another problem, namely, that (in Paleolithic times and before) survival was dependent upon our being able to hunt down other animals and/or forage for plant foods. It makes it tough to do this if a lot of muscle is being converted into glucose and your muscle mass is dwindling.

The metabolic system is then presented with two problems: 1) getting glucose for the glucose-dependent tissues; and 2) maintaining as much muscle mass as possible to allow hunting and foraging to continue.

Early on, the metabolic system doesn’t know that the starvation is going to go on for a day or for a week or two weeks. At first it plunders the muscle to get its sugar. And remember from a past post that a normal blood sugar represents only about a teaspoon of sugar dissolved in the entire blood volume, so keeping the blood sugar normal for a day or so doesn’t require a whole lot of muscular sacrifice. If we figure that an average person requires about 200 grams of sugar per day to meet all the needs of the glucose-dependent tissues, we’re looking at maybe a third of a pound of muscle per day, which isn’t all that big a deal over the first day. But we wouldn’t want it to continue at that rate. If we could reduce that amount and allow our muscle mass to last as long as possible, it would be a big help.

The metabolic system could solve its problem by a coming up with a way to reduce the glucose-dependent tissues’ need for glucose so that the protein could be spared as long as possible.

Ketones to the rescue.

The liver requires energy to convert the protein to glucose. The energy comes from fat. As the liver breaks down the fat to release its energy to power gluconeogenesis, the conversion of protein to sugar, it produces ketones as a byproduct. And what a byproduct they are. Ketones are basically water soluble (meaning they dissolve in blood) fats that are a source of energy for many tissues including the muscles, brain and heart. In fact, ketones act as a stand in for sugar in the brain. Although ketones can’t totally replace all the sugar required by the brain, they can replace a pretty good chunk of it. By reducing the body’s need for sugar, less protein is required, allowing the muscle mass (the protein reservoir) to last a lot longer before it is depleted. And ketones are the preferred fuel for the heart, making that organ operate at about 28 percent greater efficiency.

Fat is the perfect fuel. Part of it provides energy to the liver so that the liver can convert protein to glucose. The unusable part of the fat then converts to ketones, which reduce the need for glucose and spare the muscle in the process.

If, instead of starving, you’re following a low-carb diet, it gets even better. The protein you eat is converted to glucose instead of the protein in your muscles. If you keep the carbs low enough so that the liver still has to make some sugar, then you will be in fat-burning mode while maintaining your muscle mass, the best of all worlds. How low is low enough? Well, when the ketosis process is humming along nicely and the brain and other tissues have converted to ketones for fuel, the requirement for glucose drops to about 120-130 gm per day. If you keep your carbs below that at, say, 60 grams per day, you’re liver will have to produce at least 60-70 grams of glucose to make up the deficit, so you will generate ketones that entire time.

So, on a low-carb diet you can feast and starve all at the same time. Is it any wonder it’s so effective for weight loss?

by Michael R. Eades
 
Actually, from what I've read, the body can use ketone bodies more efficiently so that comparing it to starving is rather ridiculous.

See also:
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/140042-Can-a-High-Fat-Diet-Beat-Cancer-

where we read:

In 1924, the German Nobel laureate Otto Warburg first published his observations of a common feature he saw in fast growing tumors: unlike healthy cells, which generate energy by metabolizing sugar in their mitochondria, cancer cells appeared to fuel themselves exclusively through glycolysis, a less-efficient means of creating energy through the fermentation of sugar in the cytoplasm. ...

The theory is simple: if most aggressive cancers rely on the fermentation of sugar for growing and dividing, then take away the sugar and they should stop spreading. Meanwhile, normal body and brain cells should be able to handle the sugar starvation; they can switch to generating energy from fatty molecules called ketone bodies - the body's main source of energy on a fat-rich diet - an ability that some or most fast growing and invasive cancers seem to lack.

...
The first human experiments with the ketogenic diet were conducted in two children with brain cancer by Case Western Reserve oncologist Linda Nebeling, now with the National Cancer Institute. Both children responded well to the high-fat diet. When Nebeling last got in contact with the patients' parents in 2005, a decade after her study, one of the subjects was still alive and still on a high-fat diet. ...some experts, such as Boston College's Thomas Seyfried, say it's still a remarkable achievement. Seyfried has long called for clinical trials of low-carb, high-fat diets against cancer, and has been trying to push research in the field with animal studies: his results suggest that mice survive cancers, including brain cancer, much longer when put on high-fat diets, even longer when the diets are also calorie-restricted. "Clinical studies are highly warranted," he says, attributing the lack of human studies to the medical establishment, which he feels is single-minded in its approach to treatment, and opposition from the pharmaceutical industry, which doesn't stand to profit much from a dietetic treatment for cancer.

The tide appears to be shifting. A study similar to the trial in Wurzburg is now under way in Amsterdam, and another, slated to begin in mid-October, is currently awaiting final approval by the ethics committee at the University Hospital in Tubingen, Germany. There, in the renowned old research institution in the German southwest, neuro-oncologist Dr. Johannes Rieger wants to enroll patients with glioblastoma and astrocytoma, aggressive brain cancers for which there are hardly any sustainable therapies. Cell culture and animal experiments suggest that these tumors should respond particularly well to low-carb, high-fat diets. And, usually, these patients are physically sound, since the cancer affects only the brain. "We hope, and we have reason to believe, that it will work," says Rieger.
 
I scanned the section on fats from the book "Detoxification and Healing" by Sidney Baker. It is pretty good even though he doesn't understand that saturated fats is crucial for health. But for reference purposes, here it is:

Sidney Baker said:
The toxicity of bad oils and the benefits of good oils

Most of us have been taught to think of fat as basically dangerous, something to he avoided for the sake of one's health. In my medical training, the chemistry of lipids, a more technical term for fats, received little attention. No other factor in nutrition has gone from such a lowly to such an exalted position as my understanding of the importance of oils to health. Fats and oils have three quite different roles in the body, two of which account for the major shift in my appreciation of the subject. The same two roles of fatty acids, as certain lipids are known, explain their enormous significance to health as exemplified in the cases I just described. After a brief description of each role of fatty acids, I will highlight a few key details.

1.The first role of fat is to hold up your pants, or otherwise provide the bulges and curves that belong to a well-rounded person. The fats and oils in your diet that become your body fat are an efficient form of stored energy. It is basically the only way the body has to store fuel that can carry you more than several hours beyond your last meal. Unlike plants, human beings do not have any way to store large amounts of carbohydrates to serve as stable reservoirs of energy. However, the liver does store some carbohydrate as glycogen that provides some energy during the initial day of a fast or during prolonged exercise. We can store fats, which some plants do as well. Nuts and seeds are the best example of plant stores of fat.

2. The second role of fat in your body is to make waterproof membranes. In this case I am not referring to membranes such as the surface of an organ or the mucous membranes lining the inner passageways of your body. I am referring to cell membranes. Your body is made of cells, which are units of life. Life goes on only in the watery environment inside cells, whose water has a special composition quite different from the water outside of cells, whether that be seawater in the case of single-cell organisms, fresh water, or the water of your blood or in the spaces between the cells of complex organisms. Every cell is enclosed in a membrane that provides the waterproofing that enables it to separate its inside water from the water of its surroundings. The cell membrane is made of an uninterrupted fabric made of oil molecules.

3. The third role of oil molecules in your body is to become hormones. Usually, when you hear the word hormone, you think of substances such as thyroid hormone or estrogen, testosterone, cortisol, and other steroid hormones. Another category of hormones is less familiar to most people, partly because these, the prostanoid hormones, were discovered more recently (in the I960s) and because they do not have an affiliation with a particular organ. Moreover, shortages of these hormones produce symptoms that do not fit as neatly into the picture of a disease as do shortages of the other well-known hormones. Prostanoid hormones are made exclusively from fatty acids.

Keep these three roles of fatty acids—energy storage, water-proofing cell membranes, and hormone synthesis—in mind as we explore the ways fatty acids can be toxic or beneficial.

You Are What You Eat

When it comes to oils, however, most of us can barely distinguish between samples of mineral oil, olive oil, safflower oil, flaxseed oil, and motor oil when they are presented to be sniffed, touched, and (except for the motor oil) tasted. I have experimented with audiences to demonstrate that we tend toward taste blindness when attempting to distinguish among the various oils. This is the reason the concept of "vegetable oil" or "salad oil" was readily accepted among Americans

In the 1950s when corn and other oils came onto a market that previously offered only olive oil, lard, butter, and margarine. Even families with a solid tradition of using culinary olive oil could be persuaded to switch to various mongrel oils sold in the supermarket. Such oils, extracted from various plant seeds by means of hot steel rollers and a process that involves dissolving and recovering the oils from a solvent similar to dry-cleaning fluid, were sold with the assumption that this clear, pure-appearing stuff was what we consumers wished to (or could be made to wish to) eat. The oils were also marketed with an eye toward shelf life, so that a bottle of vegetable oil that languished on the shelf of the general store would not go had over a period of months. Some of the oils that can he squeezed and dissolved out of, say, a corn kernel, are quite susceptible to spoilage while others are very stable. Removing the vulnerable fraction of the oil results in a product of remarkable stability. The problem is that the oils that are removed are nutritionally valuable, while the ones that remain are nutritionally undesirable or even toxic. Still, these altered oils may taste just fine. They are toxic not because they are rancid but because they have been altered to lengthen their shelf life. The result is a man-made oil that provides us with molecules we do not need and deprives us of those we do need. Our taste buds are hopeless at giving us the slightest clue that this has happened.

"Toxic oils are probably the most important issue in human health in our time, but the effects of their toxicity are quite different from those presented by the other kinds of toxicity cited in this book. All you need to understand about oils and fats derives from three simple sets of facts.

1. Whatever fats you eat become your fat. 1 have just explained that our sense of taste can't discriminate between different kinds of oils and fats. They are so interchangeable as to be listed on labels of prepared foods as "one or the other of the following." The manufacturer is then free to use whatever source of shortening is currently most available or cheapest on the market. Whatever fats you eat become your fat. Contrary to the points I made in the previous chapter, dietary fats enter the fat stores and cell membranes without being altered. If you eat chicken fat, your fat reflects the fatty acid composition of the chicken. If you were to eat only fat from olive oil, then your body's fat composition would reveal the distinctive proportions of the main fatty acids in olives.

Unlike proteins and carbohydrates, dietary fatty acids come into the body by a very direct path and are neither identified nor, for the most part, disassembled and reassembled. On the other hand, the protein of your body is distinctively yours: if you eat cow's muscle or drink cow's milk, your muscle and your secretions still retain your own distinctive human composition. The same is true for carbohydrates.

The body is capable of making all kinds of fatty molecules that are similar to the ones in your diet (except for two), but usually it does not bother to do so; it uses the fat molecules (fatty acids) that you have eaten. After you swallow your food, the fats and oils are separated from the carbohydrate and protein as they pass through the upper part of the intestine. The carbohydrate, which is broken down into sugars, and the protein, which is broken down into amino acids, pass into the liver where they can be monitored for any properties that are foreign to your nature and altered accordingly. The fatty acids in the fat you eat go by an entirely different route directly from the digestive tract into the bloodstream. This path consists of a vessel that delivers all the fats and oils of your meal directly to a large blood vessel at the base of the neck just below the collar¬bone. The whole concept of digestion is therefore different as far as fats are concerned as compared with carbohydrate and protein. In the case of fats, their digestion is nondestructive and intended only to convert the fats and oils into tiny droplets that can float into the blood.


2. The only two fats you cannot make, but have to get from food, are the raw materials for making a whole family of important hormones. This is one of the most important scientific facts I have learned since before college when Mr. Mayo-Smith began to teach me biology beginning with the notion that there are a few pivotal facts that give
leverage to thinking. To recap: when it comes to fat, you are what you eat. Although the body has the capacity to make fat molecules on its own (for example, from sugar), it generally does not do so.

However, there are two essential fatty acids that the body cannot make. The pivotal fact here is that these two fatty acid molecules are the exclusive raw materials for making all of the prostanoid hormones. Let me put it another way: the body has a constant need to synthesize and manufacture an assortment of substances called prostanoid hormones, the main vehicles for communication from cell to cell in the body. Unlike steroid hormones, which are synthesized in special glands (adrenals, ovaries, testicles), or thyroid hormones, which come exclusively from the thyroid gland, the prostanoid hormones are made by just about every cell in the body. Steroid and thyroid hormones are examples of long-distance message carriers originating in organs that are remote from the tissues throughout the body where their message is targeted. Prostanoid hormones are more involved with short-distance message carrying, and there is no special organ in the body that has the exclusive job of producing them.

A whole orchestra of prostanoid hormones is in constant production. Their combined effect is like music that cells play to their neighbors to keep their mutual efforts harmonized. All of the instruments of this music are made out of the two kinds of fat molecule that have to be eaten regularly to supply the necessary raw materials. It seems extraordinary to me that Mother Nature made us entirely dependent on our diet to supply these two molecules when we have a full capacity to produce at least a couple of dozen other molecules that differ from them in what appear to he only minor details.

The names of the two essential fatty acids are linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid.

Omega-3 fatty acids are the family of fatty acids we make from alpha-linolenic acid. When the manufacturers of vegetable oil developed methods for squeezing various seeds to extract their oils, and various kinds of "salad" or "cooking" oils hit the market in the 1950s, the oils were able to survive on grocery shelves for months without becoming rancid because the manufacturers removed the alpha-linolenic acid, the oil that has the greatest tendency to rancidity.

At the time, no one knew that linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid had crucial roles as the exclusive precursors of all of the prostanoid hormones. Prostanoid hormones would not be discovered, nor their chemistry unraveled, until more than a decade later.

3. All of the cell membranes of the body are made of fatty acids. Cell membranes need to be flexible to function. The two fatty acids we cannot make are the flexible ones. Their unique role in prostanoid hormone chemistry would be enough to place the role of fatty acids in hormone production among the top few items in my biochemical knowledge. However, the use of fatty acids for making cell membranes is a corollary fact that puts it at the very top. Life goes on in cells, not in the spaces in between. For all the cells (100,000,000,000,000 or 10" of them) to function optimally, they must he able to communicate with each other. Prostanoid hormones are one of the most important means for such communication. Each individual cell must be open to such communication while at the same time it must he closed off from the water that surrounds it. The fabric of their waterproof membranes is a velvet made of fatty acids forming the nap. Each tiny strand that forms the surface of the velvet is a fatty acid, a long skinny molecule standing on its end amidst millions of others in all directions, each nested against the other like stacked spoons. One layer of fatty acid velvet faces inward to the inside of the cell and another faces outward, like two pieces of velvet with their naps facing. The whole arrangement owes its most important property (being waterproof) to the fact that oil and water do not mix. There is water inside the membrane and water outside the membrane but the membrane itself does not get wet.

Unlike the cells of plants and fungi, the cell membrane is not a wall. It is a delicate diaphanous fabric with a flexibility more like silk than velvet. It must be so in order to accommodate one of the main functions of the membrane: communication. ... it must be able to form various kinds of pockets in which protein and carbohydrate molecules float in the fat to be receptor sites for messenger molecules coming from other cells. For the cell membrane to be flexible it must be made of flexible oils. Which are the most flexible oils?

You guessed it: linoleic acid and, especially, alpha-linolenic acid.

Alpha-linolenic acid owes its flexibility to the same property that makes it vulnerable to giving up electrons and thus becoming oxidized or rancid; it is very unsaturated. Alpha-linolenic acid is the queen of the polyunsaturated fatty acids and the mother of the omega-3 family of fatty acids.

Essentially, all of the business of the body is conducted within membranes. Those that surround the cell, however important, are part of a much larger system of membranes inside each cell that support the activities of cellular life. If you were to take the measure of the surface membrane of each cell and multiply it by the number of cells in the body, the total surface area would he as large as a tennis court or two. As for the total surface area of all the membranes inside the cells, this would be about the size of ten football fields. It takes a lot of flexible fatty acids to keep these membranes flexible; this is crucial because the stiffer they are, the less well they work.

How does this flexibility—or lack thereof—manifest itself in your health? The stiff and weakening changes in hair, skin, and nails are easy to see in terms of the effects of a lack of fatty acids that have to do with flexibility. The changes that result in hormonal imbalances and cellular damage leading to cancer, heart disease, and other major problems are more difficult to visualize. Moreover, the chain of cause and effect is more complex than, say, the way a tick toxin or an egg allergy can cause illness. The complexity of understanding cause and effect increases as you are asked to make a distinction between had fats and good fats. Simply put, the "good" fats are the thin ones that make flexible cell membranes and prostanoid hormones. The "bad" ones are the stiff ones, the altered oils from which the good fatty acids have been removed.

Fat can harm the body in three ways, two of which you cannot taste. The third, rancidity, tastes so unpleasant that your taste buds know how to protect you. Let's begin with the first two.

When vegetable oils are extracted and processed from seeds and nuts, two kinds of damage occur to their fatty acid molecules. The damage is related to two of the ways fat can go bad. In the first way, the pressure and heat of the extracting process causes some of the molecules to undergo rotation at one of their joints, where two carbon atoms have a double connection with each other. As a result, the molecules change shape. The curve that normally occurs at each double connection becomes reversed so that the molecule is straightened. Recall that in the cell membrane the molecules are nested together like stacked spoons. Straightened ones lose their capacity to fit together in the velvet of the cell membranes, just as a knife would not nest in a stack of spoons. The transformation into an unnatural, straightened fatty acid is one that technical terminology designates as a "trans" configuration. Except for those that are cold-pressed, processed oils tend to have more or less trans fatty acids, which stiffen the cell membranes. They are also unsuited for use as raw materials for making prostanoid hormones.

Margarine tends to have an especially high percentage of trans fatty acids. Margarine, however, is especially toxic for other reasons. Its oils have been intentionally altered and straightened by another process called hydrogenation. Hydrogenation consists of bubbling hydrogen through an oil under conditions in which hydrogen joins fatty acid molecules at the double connections between carbon atoms. The addition of the hydrogen atoms can occur only if half of the double connection is converted for hydrogen holding. Once the new hydrogen is added at these points, the double connections are lost as the fatty acid becomes more saturated with respect to hydrogen. The end result is an oil that has changed from thin and flexible to thick and stiff. The resulting thick and stiff oil resembles fats and oils that are naturally thick and stiff, such as one finds in fattened animals and in naturally saturated oils.

Thick and stiff oils are toxic in that they cause an unwelcome rigidity in cell membranes and do not provide suitable raw materials for making hormones. The symptoms, physical signs of dry skin or hair and the medical problems of the patients I described earlier can all be under-stood in terms of the effects of too many altered (trans or stiffened) fatty acids and an insufficiency of good, flexible oils. The reason that flaxseed oil is especially medicinal for individuals who require an oil change is that it has an exceptional concentration (about 40 percent) of the thinnest, most flexible alpha-linolenic oil of all seeds and nuts. The next closest in concentration are walnuts and rapeseed, the source of canola oil. Each of these oils has about one-fourth the concentration of flaxseed oil. Its plant source is used for making linen cloth, and its small pointed brown seeds yield their oils when pressed by old-fashioned methods available before the modern hot steel rollers used today. Antioxidants are abundant in oils that are freshly pressed by old-fashioned methods that yield a turbid product that would seem dirty looking to the eye of consumers accus-tomed to transparent "pure" oils. The apparent "impurities" in these oil!, are actually parts of the crushed seed that contain the antioxidants that permit seeds to stay fresh during prolonged storage.

{And could also cause reactions in those particularly sensitive to lectins.}

Similarly, these antioxidants, such as vitamin E, protect the unrefined oil when stored or heated in ways that are not recommended for purified oils. family members who grew up on old-fashioned flaxseed oil tell me that it would stay fresh all year without refrigeration and that its taste was much more agreeable than the flaxseed oils that are currently available in the United States. Flaxseed, or linseed, oil was used in Eastern European homes as the principal edible oil for cooking. It was also used medicinally for treating burns where its effectiveness may be due to its generous content of antioxidants. Its effectiveness in treating a wide variety of skin, hair, and nail problems and much deeper underlying medical disorders is owed to its capacity to restore flexibility to cell membranes and replenish the supply of the raw materials needed for prostaglandin hormone synthesis.

The most concise way of describing the superficial effects of restoring the body's supply of alpha-linolenic acid is to say that it gives luster. When we are in good health, we show a glow of health about us.

Such a glow is easily recognized but difficult to describe except that it has to do with the emission or reflection of light. It is no coincidence that flaxseed oil is the unique vehicle for oil paint pigments where it imparts a luster to paintings that cannot he duplicated by another oil. When a painter runs out of linseed oil, he or she does not accept substitute with olive, corn, or coconut oil. Neither should you. And, when your skin gets dull and dry, you should consider whether your oil needs changing before you reach for a cream, lotion, oil, or cosmetic to cover up the problem.

{And consider how many months or years you must consume good oils to replace all the bad oils forming the cells in your entire body. However, if you are what you eat, you have to consider if you really want to be a vegetable.}

Are there tests to measure what you are missing? Serious alterations in the kinds of fatty acids in your blood and cell membranes can be detected by ordinary quantitative tests for fatty acids. Even so, such tests are available only at special laboratories.' Early stages of fatty acid deficiency are common in North Americans, who consume mostly altered or saturated fats. The analysis of blood to detect these abnormalities is the special interest of Dr. Eduardo Siguel, who has developed the technology to measure early changes in the proportions of good and bad fatty acids including Mead acid, which the body starts to make for use in cell membranes when it runs out of alpha-linolenic acid. Mead acid lacks the proper shape and flexibility of the real thing. However, it is all the body can do in a pinch and it is one of the keys to Dr. Siguel's method for fatty acid deficiency determination.' Dr. Siguel's book' provides a comprehensive review of the subject, and several of his recent papers describe essential fatty acid deficiency as the key to coronary artery disease,' a common complication of digestive disorders,' and one of the most misunderstood aspects of various prevailing recommendations concerning a healthy diet.'

I have described three basic facts about oils: 1. you are what you eat, 2. good oils provide for the flexibility of cell membranes, and 3. they are the raw materials for making the prostanoid hormones. I have discussed two of the three ways that dietary fats can be toxic: when they are misshapen or when they are stiff. Rancidity, the remaining way that fats can be toxic, can happen before or after they enter your body. Our taste buds (actually our sense of smell) are so sensitive to rancid changes in oils and fats that we are quite well protected from consuming oils that have gone bad in this way. The same damage that constitutes rancidity can happen after fatty acid molecules have reached their destination in our bodies. It is worth understanding the details of what happens to fatty acids when they become rancid, because once you have grasped that process you will be able to understand the most globally toxic force affecting all of the molecules of the body, the enemy of youth, the ally of all diseases, and the fundamental mechanism of all Injury, deterioration, aging, and death: oxidation.

If oils are extracted in the old-fashioned way, without heat or chemicals, they retain many of the protective substances that keep them from going bad. Only when oils are filtered and refined to remove these protective substances and make them clear do they become subject to oxidation or what we know as rancidity. So far I have referred to the toxic properties of fats in terms of their texture—stiff or flexible. Because the texture of the fats in your body is completely dependent on the flexibility of the fats in your diet, it makes sense to favor flexible oils over stiff oils. Your palate may be quite blind to the different viscosity, saturation, stiffness, or omega factor of various oils but it is relatively acute when it comes to rancidity. So you may say, "What is the problem? I don't eat any rancid oils." Indeed, you have a built-in capacity to taste rancidity when it is present at a very dilute concentration in any oil that you eat. You may be quite blind to the big difference between mineral oil and vegetable oil but you have an acute sense of the difference between a fresh oil and one that has just begun to turn. However, as far as the body is concerned, rancidity's ill effect really occurs after you eat oils (which may taste perfectly fine) and they become part of cell membranes. Thus it is essential to good health not to allow the body's oils to become rancid.

The following illustrative skit will provide a metaphor for under-standing not only what happens when fats become oxidized or rancid, but also the series of events that protect fats and all of our other living molecules from undergoing the same damage. These events are important to understanding oxidation and antioxidants, which are as important as they are complex. The complexity of antioxidants may be easier for you to keep in mind if you use your visual memory; hence the following short play is offered for you to envision.

The first character is the Juggler, who represents a fatty acid molecule with its electrons in the air. The Juggler could, however, be any molecule in the body including DNA. The second character is the Rogue, who represents any kind of oxidative stress. The third is Ascorbia, the lady in white, playing the role of vitamin C. Other players will appear as the scene unfolds.

Imagine the Juggler in a crowd of tourists. He is magnificent, able to keep seven objects in the air, a swarm of sparkling items that shine like rho sequins of his costume. It almost seems as if he is casting parts of his very self into the air as the rhythmic simplicity of his juggling captivates us and compels us to give him room in the crowd. Now there is a disruption at the edge of the onlookers as a busybody emerges and violates the space around the juggler. It is the greedy young Rogue charging the juggler and shouting, "I want one, I want one." Enter Ascorbia, dressed in white, stepping from the crowd to intervene just as the Juggler begins to feel the pull of the Rogue's approach. "Don't take his," she cries, "take mine," and she holds out a sparkling article, which disappears in the grasp of the Rogue. The entertainment continues as the crowd offers grateful glances to Ascorbia who, however, is bereft of her sparkling article and looking sad until Bio Flavonoid, her companion dressed in yellow, offers her one just like it. She is soothed, but now Bio Flavonoid slips from the crowd with an air of dejection that is immediately broken by the hounding presence of a large golden retriever named Carrots, who lays a shimmering sphere at the feet of Bio Flavonoid and then runs off. If we were to follow Carrots, we would see her head straight for an old man named V. E. Shute with baggy pants and pockets glowing with replacements for the sparkling objects. Mr. Shute is visited regularly and replenished by a princely figure, Regie or reduced glutathione (RG), whom I described more fully in Chapter 8.

If the sparkling objects are electrons, then the Juggler, the members of the crowd, the lady, her companion, the dog, and the old man are all molecules. Let's replace the Juggler with a fatty acid molecule. The unruly Rogue could be any of several kinds of oxidative stress that have a common greed for electrons. Atmospheric oxygen is the most abundant of such electron-hungry substances. We use it to enable us to take electrons from the sugar and fat molecules we use for fuel. The disassembly of our fuel molecules is accomplished by the removal of their electrons. The need for oxygen to do this, however, threatens us with the prospect that the molecules we wish to keep intact are subject to oxygen's burning influence. Suffice it to say that it is oxygen and all related oxidative stresses that put our molecules at risk of losing an electron. Such a loss is a necessary part of all chemistry in which molecules participate voluntarily. All chemistry has to do with the sharing, gaining, or losing of electrons from one atom or molecule (a collection of atoms whose electrons swarm together).

The involuntary or inadvertent loss of electrons from molecules whose integrity is important to the structure of our cell membranes, DNA, the skin, or the clear substances in the eye results in damage or disease. The oxidative stress may be physical trauma, exposure to chemicals or heavy metals such as mercury or lead, the wear and tear of aging, or a burn, which is oxidation in its most extreme form.

The fire from a candle flame aptly illustrates oxidation in which the electrons of the candle wax are ripped off by oxygen in the atmosphere with the resulting, self-perpetuating release of light and heat. If a fatty acid molecule gets its electron ripped off by oxygen in the air, it is damaged. If the fatty acid molecule is a pat of butter or olive oil, we call the damage rancidity. If the fatty acid molecule is nested among millions of others in the velvety pile of our cell membranes, we call the damage oxidative damage or peroxidation. If one cell membrane fatty acid molecule loses its electron, its neighbors feel the suction of the loss and a collective destabilization occurs so that the whole area of the membrane becomes more easily oxidized and thus damaged, altered, misshapen, and stiffened.

Enter vitamin C, an antioxidant whose companions, the bioflavonoids, aid in the transfer of a replacement electron. Beta-carotene is a necessary bridge in the transfer of a new electron from vitamin E, which is replenished in turn by glutathione. In the end the replacements are supplied by a nutrient-rich diet. However, the path from dietary intake to antioxidant protection through the generosity of vitamin C is dependent on an inflexible sequence that is very much like a bucket brigade and it quenches a problem that is very much like a fire.

Another firefighter's instrument, a ladder, is an even better image than a bucket brigade for understanding antioxidants. It is an especially good metaphor to underline the flaws in various research efforts that cast doubt on the value or safety of particular antioxidants. A recent study- of vitamin E and beta-carotene in heavy smokers in Finland suggested that beta-carotene might be dangerous because of its statistical association with a higher incidence of lung cancer in men who took supplements of beta-carotene as part of a long-term experiment studying the effects of vitamin E and/or beta-carotene supplementation. The antioxidant brigade is like a ladder: it depends on the presence of all of the rungs for its safe operation. Modern scientific thinking favors experiments in which a very limited number of variables are studied while all the other circumstances are controlled. That approach translates into selecting a single drug, nutrient, or other intervention to be studied, avoiding the confusion that would result from the introduction of several variables at once.

The same question comes up every day in my practice. After taking a history and doing tests that indicate a lack of certain nutrients and/or the presence of certain allergens or toxins, I suggest that my patient undertake several remedial steps at once. These may also include advice to exercise, learn diaphragmatic breathing, meditate, or verbalize strong feelings such as anger or grief. "But how will we know what is working?" asks an occasional patient. It you get better, you may be quite confused. It is preferable to be confused and better than to be so selective that progress may be impossible. Remember that if you are sitting on two tacks and you remove just one, you will not feel 50 percent better.

Chronic illness is multifactorial. It is downright negligent to focus so exclusively on a single treatment that you fail to address the whole picture.

What about the Finnish smokers? The researchers who carried out the experiment followed an understandable, but in this case, inappropriate, instinct to be selective. They chose to study only one or two antioxidants that function as members of a team of many. One, beta-carotene, becomes toxic itself if it cannot become replenished by vitamin E, which in turn, runs short if sufficient supplies of riboflavin (vitamin B1) are not available. It is as if a study were designed to validate that ladders are useful tools for firefighters to climb to put out a fire by breaking the ladder down to its components and testing each one individually. Such a study would prove that a long ladder with many rungs missing is not only useless, but potentially dangerous. The experiment of the Finnish smokers was conducted with scientific precision. Its flaw was a fundamental ignorance of antioxidant chemistry. Antioxidants do not work alone.

Fat is arguably the most important material in the body. It is responsible for the packaging of every cell, the membranous support most cellular activity, and the raw material for making the hormones that communicate between cells. As this picture has emerged over the past thirty years, it was a revelation to me. When I went to medical school the chemistry of fat was glossed over as dull and unimportant. It is even more surprising to me that the cholesterol frenzy of recent years has taken precedence over the significance of good fatty acids. By good fatty acids I mean not only alpha-linolenic and linoleic acids, but the avoidance of factors that introduce stiffness and flaws into the fabric of our fatty membrane acreage. Eating stiff (saturated) or altered (trans, hydrogenated) fats is a problem because the palate is absolutely no help in protecting us from the toxicity of these molecules. I reemphasize that rancid fats are a problem not because we tend to eat so much of them, but because oxidation threatens our fatty acid molecules after they are eaten and have already taken up their proper place in our membranes. Oxidative damage is a threat to nearly all molecules in our body, but the threat to fatty acids has a special twist. Remember that when they are membrane molecules, fatty acid jugglers are not alone in a crowd but are members of a continuous formation of jugglers packed together like a marching band in tight formation. Oxidative damage affects them more than other molecules in the body because of the domino effect that occurs when one of their fatty acids becomes oxidized.

There is a big molecule, superoxide dismutase, that can actually grab and subdue oxidative stress before vitamin C comes to the rescue. For the most part, however, the protection of our fatty acid membranes and other important molecules is a quintessentially cooperative enterprise in which hundreds of molecules that are not ordinarily considered antioxidants can lend a hand (or an electron) when the need arises. The failure of antioxidant protection yields a toxic effect on molecules of all kinds. The molecules that are the most precious jewels of our chemistry are the DNA that carry the instructions that maintain our identity in each of the cells as well as our ancestral identity.

Fatty Acids

What can you can do to improve your fatty acids? The stakes are enormous and the rules are simple. The stakes have to do with lowering your risk or improving your health in just about every way you can name. Stories and studies show how fatty acid supplementation can help this or that disease or condition. I hope, however, that what you have read in this chapter helps you understand that fatty acids work at such a deep layer in body chemistry that they are good for everyone, but in different degrees and different ways. Individuality is the key to most good medical treatment of chronic conditions. More than any other sphere of nutrition, fatty acids are, however, a kind of panacea in the modern world in which deficiency of omega-3 oils is nearly universal. ...
 
Yes, the glucosis-cancer connection is also fascinating.

You are right, after a closer look this definition of "starving" is indeed ridiculous. I chose this article because I searched for an explanation of ketosis and I think it's worth reading. But nevertheless the author doesn't claim that low-carb is the same as starvation. But it uses the same mechanism. In the end it is nothing like starving, more like the normal and healthy way of life with intelligent use of energy. This is exactly what the author says, so I think it's a good article anyway. Maybe a little bit "unfavorable" explained

As far as I know the medical establishment is using the word starvation when it comes to low-carb because there dogma is that you need glucosis to live. Ironically it is indeed starving when your brain runs out of energy a few moments after your last meal like it is with a high-glycemic carb diet. :D

By the way, the fact that coconut medium chain triglycerides act like carbohydrates demonstrates that a low-carb diet may protect against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer and others.

Form here (http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=13001.30):

[quote author=Four Tablespoons of This "Brain Food" May Prevent Alzheimer's]
"Brain Starvation" is a Hallmark of Alzheimer's Disease

One of the primary fuels your brain needs is glucose, which is converted into energy.
The mechanism for glucose uptake in your brain has only recently begun to be studied, and what has been learned is that your brain actually manufactures its own insulin to convert glucose in your blood stream into the food it needs to survive.
As you may already know, diabetes is the condition where your body's response to insulin is weakened until your body eventually stops producing the insulin necessary to regulate blood sugar, and your body's ability to regulate (or process) blood sugar into energy becomes essentially broken.

Now, when your brain's production of insulin decreases, your brain literally begins to starve, as it's deprived of the glucose-converted energy it needs to function normally.This is what happens to Alzheimer's patients - portions of their brain start to atrophy, or starve, leading to impaired functioning and eventual loss of memory, speech, movement and personality.

In effect, your brain can begin to atrophy from starvation if it becomes insulin resistant and loses its ability to convert glucose into energy.

It is now also known that diabetics have a 65 percent increased risk of also being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and there appears to be a potent link between the two diseases, even though the exact mechanisms have yet to be determined.
It seems quite clear however that both are related to insulin resistance - in your body, and in your brain.

Alternate Brain Food Can Stop Brain Atrophy in its Tracks

Fortunately, your brain is able to run on more than one type of energy supply, and this is where coconut oil enters the picture.
There's another substance that can feed your brain and prevent brain atrophy. It may even restore and renew neuron and nerve function in your brain after damage has set in.The substance in question is called ketone bodies, or ketoacids.

Ketones are what your body produces when it converts fat (as opposed to glucose) into energy. And a primary source of ketone bodies are the medium chain triglycerides (MCT) found in coconut oil! Coconut oil contains about 66 percent MCTs.

The benefits of ketone bodies may also extend to a number of other health conditions, according to Dr. Newport:

"Further, this is a potential treatment for Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclero­sis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease), drug resistant epilepsy, brittle type I diabetes, and diabetes type II, where there is insulin resistance.Ketone bodies may help the brain recover after a loss of oxygen in newborns through adults, may help the heart re­cover after an acute attack, and may shrink cancer­ous tumors."

Medium chain triglycerides (MCT) are fats that are not processed by your body in the same manner as long chain triglycerides. Normally, a fat taken into your body must be mixed with bile released from your gallbladder before it can be broken down in your digestive system. But medium chain triglycerides go directly to your liver, which naturally converts the oil into ketones, bypassing the bile entirely. Your liver then immediately releases the ketones into your bloodstream where they are transported to your brain to be used as fuel.

In fact, ketones appear to be the preferred source of brain food in patients affected by diabetes or Alzheimer's.

"In Alzheimer's disease, the neurons in certain areas of the brain are un­able to take in glucose due to insulin resistance and slowly die off, a process that appears to happen one or more decades before the symptoms become apparent,"

Dr. Newport states in her article.

"If these cells had access to ketone bod­ies, they could potentially stay alive and continue to function."

The Ketonic Diet - Why Avoiding Grains Also Protects against Neurodegeneration

Another way to increase ketone production in your body is by restricting carbohydrates.
This is what happens when you go on a high fat, high protein, low carbohydrate diet: Your body begins to run on fats instead of carbohydrates, and the name for this is ketosis. This is also why you don't starve to death when you restrict food for weeks at a time, because your body is able to convert stored fat into ketones that are used as fuel instead of glucose.
Consuming medium chain triglycerides such as coconut oil is a better option, however, because the ketones produced by ketosis are not concentrated in your bloodstream, but are instead mostly excreted in your urine.[/quote]
 
Hi,

I´ve reduced my carbohydrate intake down to 25 gr = 1 bread unit per day , I eat this way for a longer period now, cause of recommended diet changes for my thyroid problems and overweight ( I was always tired, no power etc.) This was a tip from a friend , he is a marathon runner and told me it could be important to reduce the carbohydrate intake, so the body switches from sugar metabolism to fat metabolism (ketosis), and then you have longer lasting energy ( he eat this way before he start with the marathon to use the long lasting energy). The biggest problem for me was the adjustment phase… headaches, bloodrush, skin rash, nausea… this symptoms could also be a detox reaction, cause when the body changes fats into ketones (for the brain) , maybe there can be a lot of evil stuff (heavy metals etc) go back into the bloodstream, cause they are also stored in the fat tissue …. Only my consideration !

I wonder that a lot doctors recommend to fast regularly, but hue and cry if it comes to low carb diet( my doc included, he says low carb is ok, but ketosis is not ok !) and that you can become a ketoacidosis when you eat not enough carbs, but when you are fasting the same happens… your body build ketones to guarantee the energy supply for the brain, so for me it´s about as broad as it´s long. :huh: By now I feel very well in ketosis, and when I lost to much weight I adjust my intake of carbs up to 2 – 3 bread units (approx 70gr) per day, or I eat more fatty meat and eggs and together with the supplements and the other diet changes this works very well. I use keto stics to test the ketone bodies in the urine to have an overview.

Last thoughts: In my case I feel very well with very low carbs, maybe others can have problems with this small amount of carbs, but when you live long enough on low carb you begin to wonder if this could be the normal condition for the body, cause you have more power, a lot of health benefits , better skin etc, and it could also be a good detox support.

Only my experience !
 
Nimue said:
Hi,

I´ve reduced my carbohydrate intake down to 25 gr = 1 bread unit per day , I eat this way for a longer period now, cause of recommended diet changes for my thyroid problems and overweight ( I was always tired, no power etc.) This was a tip from a friend , he is a marathon runner and told me it could be important to reduce the carbohydrate intake, so the body switches from sugar metabolism to fat metabolism (ketosis), and then you have longer lasting energy ( he eat this way before he start with the marathon to use the long lasting energy). The biggest problem for me was the adjustment phase… headaches, bloodrush, skin rash, nausea… this symptoms could also be a detox reaction, cause when the body changes fats into ketones (for the brain) , maybe there can be a lot of evil stuff (heavy metals etc) go back into the bloodstream, cause they are also stored in the fat tissue …. Only my consideration !


Thanks for this. It could be the explanation for the recent rashes experienced by some of us here since we have gone more toward meats and fats and cut out even more carbs lately.


Nimue said:
Last thoughts: In my case I feel very well with very low carbs, maybe others can have problems with this small amount of carbs, but when you live long enough on low carb you begin to wonder if this could be the normal condition for the body, cause you have more power, a lot of health benefits , better skin etc, and it could also be a good detox support.

Only my experience !

Same here. So far, after some adjustment, we all feel much better with more consistent energy, mental clarity, etc.
 
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