The Case for Eating more Carbs in the Evening

[monotonic]

I guess the boundaries aren't obvious. After being so badly damaged by gluten/grains it's hard to think of introducing one back into the diet.

 

[T.C.]

I guess the boundaries aren't obvious. After being so badly damaged by gluten/grains it's hard to think of introducing one back into the diet.

Hey, if how you're eating at the moment works well for you, you don't need to worry about it :)

Like I said, just because Laura suggests something, it's not a command that we all have to do it. It's a 'let medicine be your food and food be your medicine' situation.

 

[hiker]

I am also one of those people who feel better when eating more carbs. I tend to do some amount of cycling, cross country skiing and resistance training, and found out that I started to ”run out of gas” easier with low carbs, much more so than previously. I did some reading and found information about low carb diets not seeming to work with athletes and people doing sports. Once I upped the carbs, my performance and overall well being improved significantly.

I tend to also eat the majority of carbs during evening, well before bedtime. Sleep is better. Eating smaller and more meaty/fatty portions for breakfast/ lunch seems to be a good way to stay sharp and alert at work and during the day.

It is interesting, how right after an exercise session there seems to be a period when the muscles ”soak up” even higher GI carbs, without there being the same harmful effects as there would be if they were eaten/ drank in a sedentary situation.

I guess if you have a good blood sugar control due to appropriate bodily iron stores, suitable body weight and exercising aptly, etc., you can manage more carbs in your diet. It would of course be good to test for personally suitable and tolerated sources of carbs and rotate them, not necessarily eating the same stuff day in day out.

This was an interesting article about carbs and sports:


_http://anthonycolpo.com/why-low-carb-diets-are-terrible-for-athletes-part-1/

_http://anthonycolpo.com/why-low-carb-diets-are-terrible-for-athletes-part-2/


The writer, Anthony Colpo has written other intriguing articles as well:


_http://anthonycolpo.com/the-real-paleo-diet-big-brains-needed-carbs/

_http://anthonycolpo.com/ketogenic-diets-for-cancer-promising-cure-or-wishful-thinking/


(I think Colpo was one of the first writers in the health arena to press the importance of checking the bodily iron levels, and how excessive iron e.g. impairs the blood sugar control.)

Colpo seems to bring up many good points, especially regarding sports/ low-carb. He just appears to have a somewhat no holds barred -attitude in his writing, which can be blunt. I understood, that as he noticed how low carb didn’t work in his case, and after researching the subject further, changing his views and writing about the findings, he was attacked and trolled quite heavily by some more extreme members of the low carb audience. As a result he does not seem to ”suffer fools gladly”.

 

[Laura]

Why oats? Gluten?

Try really reading an opening post.

 

[Foxx]

Mark's Daily Apple has an article up from a couple of weeks ago that has some interesting information regarding carb tolerance and possibly carb need for some:

_http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-definitive-guide-to-using-your-recent-ancestry-to-determine-your-optimal-diet/

AMY1 Copy Number and Carbs

Salivary amylase predigests starch. AMY1 is the gene coding for salivary amylase production. The more AMY1 copy numbers you have, the more salivary amylase you produce in response to carbohydrate intake. According to population genetics, salivary amylase copy number reflects ancestral starch intake. The more copy numbers you have, the more starch your ancestors ate. If you have fewer, your ancestral diet was likely lower in starch. Chimps and bonobos are our closest ancestors, but because their natural diets are fruit-based and low in starch, they have fewer AMY1 copies than humans.

The fewer copy numbers you carry, the more vulnerable you are to obesity and more likely you are to have insulin resistance. This effect persists across ethnicities and may be more pronounced in females. You have to consider the environmental context of the vast majority of people these days: carbohydrate-based diets. If you’re eating a standard American diet of fast food, sweets, and baked goods and you have a low number of salivary amylase gene copies, you’re more susceptible to obesity. So if you have fewer copies, your ancestors probably ate fewer carbs and, to stay lean and maintain optimal body composition, you should, too.

But it goes the other way, too. People with high copy numbers have a better metabolic response to starch ingestion than the person with fewer copies. How to find out?

The global distribution of AMY1 copy number variation hasn’t received a lot of attention, but we have a few datapoints. High-starch agricultural societies (Japanese and Europeans) and high-starch foragers (Hadza) have all been shown to possess higher average copy numbers than lower-starch societies like the Yakut (a Turkic people indigenous to Siberia), the Mbuti pygmies (a foraging society), the Biaka (foragers in the Congo), and the Datog (a group of pastoralists). Another study found that the mean copy number among Brazilians—a mishmash of European, African, and Native American genetics—was just 2.8 with a range of 1-8 copies of AMY1. That’s pretty low.

If you’ve got a confirmed bead on your number of salivary amylase copies, of if your ethnic background is known for having higher copy numbers—and you’re struggling with your weight—try eating a few more carbs. People with high copy numbers have a better metabolic response to starch ingestion than the person with fewer copies. Fewer copies? Eat fewer carbs. Whatever carbs you do consume, though, make sure they’re high-quality Primal carbs.

Chris Kresser's position is that low carb diets aren't for everyone:
_http://chriskresser.com/is-a-low-carb-diet-ruining-your-health/
_http://chriskresser.com/the-3-step-process-to-determining-your-ideal-carbohydrate-intake/

Paleohacks.com has a number of threads regarding carbohydrates, with a number of people anecdotally showing improvements with adding carbs (often sweet potatoes) over a very low carb/zero carb diet.

Some people discuss the role of carbohydrates and sleep, so people who struggle with falling asleep (I'm one) and staying asleep might find benefits from carbs at night:

_http://paleoleap.com/insomnia-and-paleo-diet/

Dietary Therapies for Insomnia

Diet isn’t as obviously connected to insomnia as it is to other problems like IBS or diabetes, but as long as your body is involved, your dietary habits will have at least some effect. On a macronutrient level, a very low carb diet is often associated with poor sleep, and adding in a moderate amount of safe starches, especially in the evening, can help normalize your sleeping patterns. Carbohydrates have been shown to shorten sleep onset by increasing the levels of serotonin and tryptophan in the brain. It’s not necessary to add a lot of carbohydrates – the diet can still be low-carb overall, with a small amount of starch in the evening a few days a week. In fact, it’s not even beneficial to eat more carbohydrates, since neurotransmitters are similar to insulin in that they can provoke a kind of resistance. If your body is used to serotonin spikes, you’ll start needing more and more serotonin just to feel sleepy; it’s best to keep a moderate level all the time, avoiding extremes and the need for a bigger and bigger dose.

I'm personally inclined to go with Chris Kresser's take on carbs, since he's worked with people as a health practitioner and specifically with a lot of paleo people doing low carb: that there's an ideal carb level for everyone, which may not be zero, and is influenced by a number of factors and may vary over time. I suspect that consuming carbs at breakfast is the worst and sets the body up for poor metabolism for the day (the log on the fire metabolism analogy) and that consuming them at night may be helpful for generating inhibitory neurotransmiters.

I know at times I've felt like being zero carb has kept me awake with being unable to stop thinking and at those times (since I couldn't stop thinking), I've wondered if I was basically running on adrenaline due to low blood sugar. That said, adding carbs at various times hasn't provided consistently positive results.

Based on this data, I'm inclined to think that if people are having health issues that aren't resolved with keto, detoxing, gut healing, iodine, and pathogen removal, especially if there are sleep problems present, then adding some carbs back in with a focus of adding them in later in the day/evening may be helpful. If people are doing well with very low carb/no carbs, then that may be best for them.

 

[T.C.]

Thought I'd repost this bit by dugdeep as it came to mind while reading this thread:

I went back to Weston A. Price's 'Nutrition and Physical Degeneration' and read the relevant chapter (http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html#ch4). Here he was studying the people who populated isolated Islands of the Outer Hebrides. These people basically ate oats and fish, some of them eating dairy but many having little access to it because of the lack of pasture land on the rocky islands. It's a really interesting chapter and worth a read (actually the whole book is worth a read, although I admit I've never tackled it in its entirety. It's available in full at the link above.)

Here's a snippet:

In Fig. 6 (lower left) is a young girl from the Isle of Bardsey. She is about seventeen years of age. Her teeth were wrecked with dental caries, the disease involving even the front teeth. We ate a meal at the home in which she was living. It consisted of white bread, butter and jam, all imported to the island. This is in striking contrast with the picture of the girl shown in Fig. 6 (lower right) living in the Isle of Lewis, in the central area. She has splendidly formed dental arches and a high immunity to tooth decay. Her diet and that of her parents was oatmeal porridge and oatcake and fish which built stalwart people. The change in the two generations was illustrated by a little girl and her grandfather on the Isle of Skye. He was the product of the old régime, and about eighty years of age. He was carrying the harvest from the fields on his back when I stopped him to take his picture. He was typical of the stalwart product raised on the native foods. His granddaughter had pinched nostrils and narrowed face. Her dental arches were deformed and her teeth crowded. She was a mouth breather. She had the typical expression of the result of modernization after the parents had adopted the modern foods of commerce, and abandoned the oatcake, oatmeal porridge and sea foods.

{...}

A dietary program competent to build stalwart men and women and rugged boys and girls is provided the residents of these barren Islands, with their wind and storm-swept coasts, by a diet of oats used as oatcake and oatmeal porridge; together with fish products, including some fish organs and eggs. A seriously degenerated stock followed the displacement of this diet with a typical modern diet consisting of white bread, sugar, jams, syrup, chocolate, coffee, some fish without livers, canned vegetables, and eggs.

Note that the picture of the two men at the top are brothers who ate at the same table all their lives, but the one on the left had a taste for imported jams, sweets and white breads while the brother on the left stuck with the traditional diet. It doesn't get much more telling than that!

 

[lainey]

I find I'm better suited to a little extra carbs later in the day.
My normal routine is tea in the morning, super fatty homemade pemmican and egg yolks at lunch then a couple of sausages and a carby treat at dinner. (a little rice or cabbage).
I've settled into that routine and am usually bursting with energy and generally cheerful (I get periods of detox depression but it's less and less frequent).

 

[Approaching Infinity]

Even though I try not to eat too many carbs, when I do it's almost exclusively at night. I noticed that when I ate carbs with breakfast, I didn't do as well. But at night if it's a salad or whatever, I seem to do fine. I wasn't doing horribly when I was zero carb, which was for a while, but I know that since going back to eating some veggies with dinner I do feel better.

Just a "me too".

Me three :)

I find that I feel better eating some carbs at dinner, when I was on very low carbs I lost so much weight that I became skin and bones and it seemed that I was losing muscle mass also. Adding a bit of carbs I gained back some weight and feel stronger.

Joining the club! I've been eating more carbs in the evening for the last few months. After going keto I lost several pounds which I never got back, until now. Like you guys, I only feel like eating carbs in the late afternoon/early evening. In the morning I just want meat and fat. The only other thing I've noticed is that pretty much the entire time while pretty strictly keto my leg muscles would constantly feel tight. I'd need to massage them and stretch, but even that didn't help. That problem has gone away. (I still feel tension in my neck and shoulders, though.)

 

[Buddy]

Even though I try not to eat too many carbs, when I do it's almost exclusively at night. I noticed that when I ate carbs with breakfast, I didn't do as well. But at night if it's a salad or whatever, I seem to do fine. I wasn't doing horribly when I was zero carb, which was for a while, but I know that since going back to eating some veggies with dinner I do feel better.

Just a "me too".

Me three :)

I find that I feel better eating some carbs at dinner, when I was on very low carbs I lost so much weight that I became skin and bones and it seemed that I was losing muscle mass also. Adding a bit of carbs I gained back some weight and feel stronger.

Joining the club! I've been eating more carbs in the evening for the last few months. After going keto I lost several pounds which I never got back, until now. Like you guys, I only feel like eating carbs in the late afternoon/early evening. In the morning I just want meat and fat. The only other thing I've noticed is that pretty much the entire time while pretty strictly keto my leg muscles would constantly feel tight. I'd need to massage them and stretch, but even that didn't help. That problem has gone away. (I still feel tension in my neck and shoulders, though.)

Add me to the club too.

I never consciously decided to "go keto" anyway. I sorta fell into it in support of my wife's personal choices. By the time I had gotten my carbs down to around 10-15 grams a day, I had lost the 18 extra pounds I put on previously (temporary interdepartmental job transfer) and also experienced tight legs as A.I. described. There were so many changes in my work life at the time that I never made a tight-legs-diet connection and it got so bad I wound up stopping what I was doing several times a day to stretch and massage them. I had just thought my "flat feet" issues over the years was catching up to me.

Anyway, originally I started adding a few more carbs to my diet in the evenings because I wasn't being relaxed enough at night to fall asleep as easy as I was used to doing. After a couple weeks of carb "cheating" in the evenings, my problems with tight legs and restlessness at night substantially diminished. I'm at around 30 grams of carbs per day or less right now (I think) and experiencing no problems that I'm aware of ATM. It certainly wouldn't be more than 40, I believe. I hope that's a decent number. I remember 30 from when another member had once said that's about where he was at on the diet. I haven't read the keto thread yet.

 

[Matai]

Beau, what's your blood type? I'm A+, curious if its sort of related to the blood type diet (with O doing best without carbs perhaps?).

I'm O+. I don't know that blood type is an indicator in this specific situation. There's probably a multitude of factors that go into how a person's body deals with specific dietary lifestyles like keto/zero carbs.

I am also O+ and after being full keto for 7-8 months I have also added carbs into my afternoon/night meals and have gained muscle mass, improved sleep and feel more energetic FWIW.

 

[Woodsman]

I managed to attain a state of ketosis a couple of times, but rarely at length.

Carbs just manage to creep in if you maintain any kind of social existence with normal people.

So I mostly just stick to the "Life Without Bread" model; under 70 grams of carbs a day. This would account for some sugar in coffee, and the bit of maple syrup I sometimes add to fried pork and butter to change up the flavor. Lately, though, even that little amount has not been tasting nice. Interestingly, fish has been really delicious lately, and I've never been a big fish guy. I'll fry up some trout or salmon, eat it half and half with organic butter as the fat source, with a little spice and salt... And that sits very well inside me, and keeps me feeling full and satisfied for long periods. I might only eat one meal a day when I'm eating fish.

When I slip and eat potato chips or a muffin or something, I feel utterly horrid no matter the time of day. I don't know if that's because they're nightshades, or if it has more to do with the nasty vegetable oils chips are fried in.

When eating out, I'll aim as best I can for a meat/fat heavy dish, but it will nearly always be mixed with veggies and sometimes come wrapped in bread, like a pita or such. This happens rarely enough, so I let it slide, but interestingly, in those cases, my body responds fairly well. -For the next day or so, I feel a subtle but real sense of physical satisfaction, as though various vitamin/trace-mineral wells have been replenished by the veggie infused meal.

Cookies and treats of a refined flour/sugar nature literally hurt my teeth! -And burn my gut. During the holidays, I'll take a nibble to be polite when a granny passes around her prized baked goods recipe, but even that causes me suffering and a racing heart. This past season was bad; and there were several days where I ate waaaaaay off diet, and I felt woozy and weird the whole time. I'm just glad to be back to normal now. Sugar is really toxic and gives me heartburn like crazy these days.

I'm an A blood type (which took me by surprise; I could have sworn I was an O something, but you can't argue with the little test at the blood donor clinic!)

When left to my own devices, I eat maybe a fat-rich meal once or twice each day. Upon waking and then later on when I get hungry again. I drink a fair amount of coffee, but I've been taking it black lately. I don't trust the cream which comes in those cartons...

In any case.., my body is flab-free and well-toned; I experience good energy, good sleep, no sugar crashes. It almost looks like I work out when I don't do anything more than take daily long-ish walks into town and back; a mile and a bit round trip maybe. I don't really feel the cold so much anymore, (except my nose and toes when it's super frigid and I've not been moving). I've often felt a bit wobbly and sick-ish, but I suspect that had a lot to do with tobacco and me not getting along. That's been shifting lately since I stopped smoking and started the iodine. I think the increased salt intake has also had a big positive influence as well. I really enjoy that glass of salt-water upon waking!

All in all, I aim for keto, but end up with enough carbs sneaking in to make me say, "Low Carb" rather than, "Keto" when describing my diet.

I don't like greens and I never have. Vegetarians seem like a bunch of masochists to me. -But perhaps I should explore some carrots or something in the evenings given my generally favorable response to meat and veggie meals.

 

[T.C.]

I don't like greens and I never have. Vegetarians seem like a bunch of masochists to me. -But perhaps I should explore some carrots or something in the evenings given my generally favorable response to meat and veggie meals.

Redfox's tomato free tomato sauce might be good for this, if you haven't tried it already.

It's delicious over a piece of belly pork

 

[Ollie]

Interestingly, this week I was thinking of going in the opposite direction, cutting out, or reducing to a bare minimum carbs. In researching this, I went back to Dr Jack Kruse of cold adapting and Epi-Paleo ‘fame’.

Some relevant excerpts from Dr Kruse’s blog that may help to explain some of the problems people have with keto adapting:

ORGANIZATION AND STRUCTURAL FAILURE #8 WHY KETOSIS APPEARS TO FAIL SOME? (_https://www.jackkruse.com/organization-structural-failure-8-ketosis-appears-fail/)

…
Why do I have problems with ketosis? This is a question I get asked a lot and a question I see asked in many other places online. The answer isn’t an obvious one. Most people think ketosis is a function of the amount of fat or protein you eat. It is not. The best brand of ketosis is the one that allows our brain and mitochondria to sense the correct circadian signals from our environment. You have to have your circadian cycles and your food match or yoked to understand the context correctly. Ketosis without water is a losing strategy. Water remains in cells when the voltage gated channels are working well. This requires iodine and DHA in cell membranes. If you only look at one and not the other it is akin to having one oar in a row boat. You will spin in circles until you realize both need to match. Ketosis without DHA cannot generate enough IR light from your mitochondria to drive uncoupling. This is why the CPT 1-a mutation exists in cold adapted humans. This defect stops people in cold climates from making too many ketones because we need FFA’s to generate protons to make heat. IR light = heat. When we are cold we make no ATP either. This should stimulate your curiosity further. REM sleep makes no ATP and we are paralyzed at the same time when this occurs. This happens because of quantum reasons tied to cell membrane physiology. The most important thing is how your cells and mitochondria are structured to read and react to the environment. This is called being metastable. It is ultimately tied to a dense source of electrons. Ketosis without electrons is of limited value. Electrons make the world go around. This is why all life evolved from the ocean [we are biologically designed to eat a diet made up primarily of raw sea foods (shellfish primarily)], the place where electrons are most dense.
…
… When DHA is lost we cannot decipher the electromagnetic signals from our environment. This is further complicated by EMF, which causes dehydration inside cells. This is all caused by a lack of proper ketosis or the chronic use of technology and/or blue light devices. …
…
The paleo community believes the brain needs glucose to function. So do most researchers. It does not. That is a belief that caused us to miss the keys of how electrons work in neurons. Many people in ancestral health confuse dysfunction with immaturity. Carbohydrates do not salvage the ketotic template, they enslave your mitochondria to them when certain conditions of existence are tied to their presence. Nora Volkow’s research has showed definitively that when EMF is introduced across your brain stem your cells will increase their needs for carbohydrates. They provide the person with a sense of “perceived wellness” on the surface while, in reality, molecular chaos ensues inside the cell. The more blue light toxic you are, the more you will believe carbs are your salvation. No community embraces blue light more than the ancestral community. Maybe now you can see where their ‘carbophile’ ideas really begin. The chronic addition of highly sunlight powered foods imprisons the person further to the circadian mismatches they have already hard wired into their mitochondria. It is a short term fix for a complex problem. This is why most of paleo gets “ketosis” wrong. Recently we have seen the effects of mixing carbs and a constant source of blue light in the paleo community. I am sorry to see this outcome.
…
As temperature goes up, entropy increases. When entropy increases, water density is less. When water density is less, it contains less oxygen and less electrons. Less electrons mean that less DHA is present in the inner mitochondrial membrane. When oxygen is lowered, less ATP is made. This means that in a warm environment, you are running a more hypoxic state, and you perceive a need for carbs to offset this set of circumstances because carbohydrates recycle ATP more quickly. The thing that gets lost to those “ancestral thought leaders” is that perceived needs are tied to a lack of DHA in the inner mitochondrial membrane. This links it directly to the delta psi of the cell membranes. Carbs just mask that loss. This has huge implications for those who do not understand the details of quantum electron tunneling. …
…
ketosis is linked with cold temperatures in nature all the time. They are naturally coupled by our environment. If the inside of the cell is not filled with a good water hydration shell, ketosis won’t work. This is why HCG diets also fail for many people. I laid this out in the Holy Trinity blog post. (_https://www.jackkruse.com/the-holy-trinity-ct-4/) …
…
… We must eat DHA consistently and constantly as humans. It is also missing in those who were carb adapted and then proceed to move straight to an HCG template. You may begin seeing why paleo is dead wrong about ketosis. Their version of ketosis is fueled with proteins and fats that are mostly deficient in DHA and water as part of their equation. This is why so many develop thirst and constipation when they “go paleo”. Eating meats and offal that naturally contain DHA in small amounts would be good advice if humans did not have a 3 pound brain loaded with cell membranes that are constantly starving for DHA. So one should not expect to obtain optimal results in a ketotic template filled with bacon, offal, and skeletal meats. None of them have enough DHA to offset this damage from a phase shifted cytochrome. Here you can see why “one ketotic template” is not as good as another thermodynamically. The key feature is a lack of DHA and how water acts within a cell. Not all ketosis is created equally with respect to mitochondrial function. …
…
My version of ketosis has massive supplies of DHA constantly included within its boundaries. We should employ a first rate version of our ketotic template and not a second rate version of another idea of what ketosis means. The addition of DHA to a ketogenic template directly alters its thermodynamic potential because it fundamentally changes the size and shape of cytochrome proteins to alter their actions with respect to electrons from foods. This changes the electronic and magnetic capabilities of your cell membranes everywhere in your cell. These fields are what determine how biochemistry will work in your body. …

… Grass-fed meat does not come close to providing enough DHA to our tissues. We live in a world that is loaded with blue light that destroys DHA. The ancestral movement ignores biological history at your expense. They fully embrace its use and never talk about how it destroys nutrients in cell membranes. Among the many lessons that emerge from the geological record, perhaps the most sobering is that in life, as in the stock market, past performance is no guarantee of future results when you consider the effect of blue light on DHA. Eating the way we did 10,000 years ago guarantees nothing for today. The neocortex needs a constant source of DHA that is ketotic to function optimally. DHA depletion alters human brain energenics. Its function falters because of altered thermodynamics. Ketosis without DHA will not help brain function. It is a bandaid on a gaping wound. This is why “ketosis” appears to fail many. It is not ketosis that fails them, it is the recipe they use to create that ketosis that does. The common denominator is altered mitochondrial function. When this occurs, it favors karyotype constriction when the voltage change is massive. This is all tied to electron and proton flux in mitochondria. Karyotype constriction is a loss of chromosome size. This is one of the things tied to the cancer generation.

Excerpts from Cold Thermogenesis 4: The Holy Trinity (_https://www.jackkruse.com/the-holy-trinity-ct-4/)

…
“I saw a man becoming transformed, by a bunch of Monks who lived in the Himalaya’s. It was said most of them lived to be over 100 years old on little food, in the cold, and were incredibly productive. I wondered to myself, could this really occur in life or was it just part of the story?”
…
… In the North, we see Sherpa’s and Himalayan Monks who routinely live to hundreds of years old in subarctic conditions on top of mountains where the air is thin, UV light more powerful, in mountains that seem to reach the sky. Moreover, they eat few calories, wear few clothes, hardly eat or drink, have low stress, great immunity, and are smart and happy people. …

My instincts told me that this was not a function of just their mindfulness practices. I thought it had to be part of our biology. I remembered from my youth, that the Sherpa’s were the only humans that had really lived in this environment for the last 25,000 years. They also ate a very different diet than the rest of India. It was one that was heavily skewed to animal protein and fats. In addition, no carbs really grow that high up in those temperatures with any regularity. Not even the Inuit have lived in the Arctic as long as the Sherpa’s have in the Himalayas. The Inuit also ate an animal diet high in marine mammals without much UV light because of their high latitude. Both diets were mostly ketogenic.
…
The thought occurred to me that maybe HCG and CRON were tied together? I realized that the Monks and Sherpa’s could do many things that calorie restricted primates could not do in CRON trials. They could also do all the things that have eluded humans using the HCG diet as well. It clicked. The cold environment is what tied them together. So I went on a quest to find a brain pathway that could allow for humans to have this ability. This time, I found it quickly. It was the leptin-melanocortin pathway. All the parts were there but nothing seemed to fit the current knowledge of how our biochemistry worked in cold adaptation. I also found that this pathway was present in every mammal on earth, whether they use it or not. This had to be important somehow.
…
… Everyone in the world knew about calorie restriction for longevity, few realized the promise of HCG diet in this role, leptin was the new kid on the block. The cold environment was the only thing that unified them all to allow the pathway to become active in humans. Unusual circumstances, it seemed to me, is why no one put it all together.
…
… This is the same diet modern day Cross fitters and endurance athletes pattern themselves after. They are the same people who think starches are safe in fall, winter, and spring. I do not believe that at all any longer. The proof will be found in their defective hormone assays and their telomere lengths. …
…
I am painting a sober picture of precisely what we see today in our community today. If somebody has a better explanation, I am all ears. To get Optimal, we all need cold, period. Our mammalian biochemistry requires it. It is the only way to access the pathway that the Sherpa’s live in and Mike Phelps used to dominate his sport.
… For the last 5 years Cold thermogenesis is my new way of life while eating a tight ketogenic diet. I eat carbs in summer only. I also eat by strict circadian biology. …
…
If one eats a higher carb diet in a warm environment, it sets up huge mismatches of circadian biology that cause neolithic diseases that are cumulative. …
…
Eating primal/paleo is not enough if you are making errors of assumption that are not true to our biology. Think about your primal habits as a full cup. If you are full of your own ideas that are flawed, how can any more good ones enter your mind? Your cup is already filled. How do we solve this problem? We empty our cup and allow room for more thought. This means that you are doing the same thing a person who is using HCG is to lose weight without the cold. It is akin to trying to increase your health or your longevity by just performing calorie restriction alone without the cold assist it requires. Similarly, a VLCer who thinks eating in this manner forever has no consequences while they are warm adapted. It does. Moreover, just eating primal while cross-fitting like mad, and eating safe starches 24/7 justified by your activity level while you play on you computers all night long has no biologic consequences to your stem cells is plain wrong. Trying to get all cute and use supplements to hide bad decisions won’t work either. Just increasing resveratrol, curcumin, and metformin won’t allow you to “out supplement” poor choices. Exercise must be hormetic and within our circadian cycles too. …

What emerges is the need for eating DHA naturally (as found in shellfish and fish); a need for iodine and water; sustained cold adapting; avoidance of EMF signals and blue light (computer screens, artificial light, etc.); exposing yourself to more sunlight (UV), especially in the morning; abiding by our circadian rhythms for eating (eating protein and fat within 30mins of arising, and any carbs after midday); and eating carbs only in summer.

While I realise that this may not directly relate to being a way to help detox stuff that iodine is releasing for some people, yet sustained cold adapting seems to hold a key and I think that in the long run it is the way to go, along with having more shellfish in the diet (at least for me). Putting it all together may explain why some people are having issues with going fully keto.

 

[Laura]

Interestingly, this week I was thinking of going in the opposite direction, cutting out, or reducing to a bare minimum carbs. In researching this, I went back to Dr Jack Kruse of cold adapting and Epi-Paleo ‘fame’.

<snip>

What emerges is the need for eating DHA naturally (as found in shellfish and fish); a need for iodine and water; sustained cold adapting; avoidance of EMF signals and blue light (computer screens, artificial light, etc.); exposing yourself to more sunlight (UV), especially in the morning; abiding by our circadian rhythms for eating (eating protein and fat within 30mins of arising, and any carbs after midday); and eating carbs only in summer.

While I realise that this may not directly relate to being a way to help detox stuff that iodine is releasing for some people, yet sustained cold adapting seems to hold a key and I think that in the long run it is the way to go, along with having more shellfish in the diet (at least for me). Putting it all together may explain why some people are having issues with going fully keto.

Yes, all of the above is relevant, I think, and certainly ideal. But so few people live in an environment where they can implement this solution. Thus, trying to find the best path for each person means that we consider various approaches.

I do think that the DHA is important, and we've definitely noted that the iodine is super important, and salt water, and so on. But we have to consider the extreme and unusual toxicity of our environment that was not part of the evolutionary scheme of things, and somehow, we have to find solutions that can be implemented in varying degrees of involvement for a lot of people.

I keep thinking back to the "Aquatic Ape Hypothesis" and how such an evolutionary background could be affecting many people now. Lot's to think about and learn, for sure!

 

[SeekinTruth]

Interestingly, this week I was thinking of going in the opposite direction, cutting out, or reducing to a bare minimum carbs. In researching this, I went back to Dr Jack Kruse of cold adapting and Epi-Paleo ‘fame’.

<snip>

What emerges is the need for eating DHA naturally (as found in shellfish and fish); a need for iodine and water; sustained cold adapting; avoidance of EMF signals and blue light (computer screens, artificial light, etc.); exposing yourself to more sunlight (UV), especially in the morning; abiding by our circadian rhythms for eating (eating protein and fat within 30mins of arising, and any carbs after midday); and eating carbs only in summer.

While I realise that this may not directly relate to being a way to help detox stuff that iodine is releasing for some people, yet sustained cold adapting seems to hold a key and I think that in the long run it is the way to go, along with having more shellfish in the diet (at least for me). Putting it all together may explain why some people are having issues with going fully keto.

Yes, all of the above is relevant, I think, and certainly ideal. But so few people live in an environment where they can implement this solution. Thus, trying to find the best path for each person means that we consider various approaches.

I do think that the DHA is important, and we've definitely noted that the iodine is super important, and salt water, and so on. But we have to consider the extreme and unusual toxicity of our environment that was not part of the evolutionary scheme of things, and somehow, we have to find solutions that can be implemented in varying degrees of involvement for a lot of people.

I keep thinking back to the "Aquatic Ape Hypothesis" and how such an evolutionary background could be affecting many people now. Lot's to think about and learn, for sure!

Thanks for that recap, Prodigal Son. I'm going to read both links in their entirety again. One thing I find as a potential problem/obstacle is that so much of the shellfish and fish are contaminated from Fukashima to the BP Gulf disaster toxins to the many decades of mercury and other deadly toxins from industry, etc. contaminating just about all the bodies of water. Are there any ideas about these dangers and how to get the DHA we need without being bombarded with more dangerous toxins?

I need to resume the cold showers that I haven't been doing for quite a while. All in all, I think that Kruse has lots of dots connected for optimal health and functioning (and longevity, which for me is secondary and just comes with the territory of optimal health). So I'm going to review that material and see if there's a practical way of doing a, say, 6 month experiment with his recommendations.