Category Archives: gluten

Is gluconeogenesis demand-driven? answer: it depends (#context strikes again!)

Context #1. The easiest way to explain gluconeogenesis (GNG) is how it relates to starvation. If you’re not eating food, your brain still needs a steady supply of fuel. Mostly glucose at first (ketones come later), but since you’re not eating anything, glucose comes from hepatic GNG (huge potential supply*) or glycogenolysis (limited supply). *One of the precursors for GNG, glycerol, comes from stored fat (which you’ll die of something else before you run out of stored fat bc GNG).

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In this case, it is mostly true that GNG is demand-driven.

 

If you’re interested in this, more HERE.

 

Context #2. Protein (which also contains GNG precursors) doesn’t acutely increase glucose. But you might think protein does convert to glucose via GNG but protein also induces a splash of insulin which is why blood glucose doesn’t rise. Read this blog post at least up to the awesome Fromentin study: “8% of the blood glucose produced under optimal gluconeogenic conditions came from dietary protein.” But also check out the Conn & Newburgh studies. And Gannon.

 

 

This is usually the reason recreational keto dieters say they can be high protein, which either ends up looking like PSMF or it’s probably not very ketogenic (which doesn’t really matter in this #context; protein is restricted in therapeutic ketogenic diets).

#BenignDietaryKetosis #BDK

 

 

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Context #3. the mouse doctor is in 🙂

Context #3b. Chronic high protein.

Context #4. Random thoughts on animal foods.

Whole grains aren’t all they’re cracked up to be

WUUUT *rimshot*

A new study on whole grains demonstrates how nuanced & complicated nutritional science can be.

Substituting whole grains for refined grains in a 6-wk randomized trial favorably affects energy-balance metrics in healthy men and postmenopausal women (Karl et al., 2017)

Sounds simple enough…

Study design: adequate to address the questions being asked.  Isocaloric, weight-maintenance diets.  Biggest differences between the two diets were whole grains (0 vs. 200 g/d) and insoluble fibre (15 vs. 30 g/d).

Disclaimer: I’m not a huge fan of cereal fibre, but that’s irrelevant for the point of this post.

 

 

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The Hunger-Free Diet(s)

It started out as “lose weight without hunger on LCHF” and went all the way to “effortless fasting on keto.”  Works for some and it might be true, but the same can be said for low fat diets!  The key, I think, in both contexts, is simple: fewer processed & refined foods… something the Paleo movement got right, imo (although I still think many low-calorie sweeteners are way less unhealthy than HFCS & sugar).

The logic:

1) add “good calories” like almonds to your diet and appetite spontaneously compensates by eating less other stuff: energy neutral

2) you don’t compensate for added “bad calories” like sugar-sweetened beverages: positive energy balance

3) remove bad calories from your diet and you don’t compensate by eating more other stuff: negative energy balance

 

Book: Good Calories, Bad Calories

 

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Keto myths & facts

:::begin rant:::

Trigger warning?  Maybe.

Disclaimer: I’m pro-LC (P<0.05), but not anti-LF because LF works better than LC for some people.  And with the exception of things like keto for neurological issues, I think macros take a back seat to many other factors.

Myths: carbs cause insulin resistance (IR), diabetes, and metabolic syndrome.  Carbs are intrinsically pathogenic.  If a healthy person eats carbs, eventually they’ll get sick.

And the only prescription is more keto.

cowbell

And of course all of this could’ve been prevented if they keto’d from the get-go.

Proponents of these myths are referring to regular food carbs, not limited to things like Oreo Coolattas (which would be more acceptable, imo).  Taubes, Lustig, Attia, and many others have backed away from their anti-carb positions, yet the new brigade proceeds and has even upped the ante to include starvation.  Because “LC = effortless fasting?”

Does this sound sane?

“No carbs ever,
no food often…
otherwise diabetes.”

oreo-coolatta

no one in their right mind would say lentils & beans cause diabetes

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Non-celiac gluten sensitivity

Gluten is protein, not carbs.  A gluten-free diet is frequently low-carb, because most dietary gluten comes in the form of bread (and wheaty foods).  But believe it or not, bread is an incredibly complex food… many different proteins, carbohydrates, and nutrients that could be problematic for some people (more on this later).

Gluten is not a FODMAP, but most gluten-containing foods are.  Gluten is actually very rich in the amino acid glutamine.  Gluten, not bread.

So we have three studies on purified “gluten,” asking if it’s the gluten, FODMAPs, or something else in wheaty food that is problematic.

Study #1. No effects of gluten in patients with self-reported non-celiac gluten sensitivity after dietary reduction of FODMAPs (Biesiekierski et al., 2013)

Strong study design; patient population was people who thought they were gluten sensitive (but definitely not celiac).

This is the study which led journalists to claim non-celiac gluten sensitivity doesn’t exist, and it’s really sensitivity to FODMAPs, in part, because of this:

 

 

low FODMAPs and gluten free

 

 

Baseline = low gluten diet
Run-in = low gluten and low FODMAPs

 

Here’s the fly in the ointment:

 

symptoms returned in all participants

 

After the run-in period, subjects still followed their gluten-free diets but also received either 16g relatively pure gluten/d (High gluten), 2g gluten + 14g whey protein (Low gluten), or 16g whey protein (placebo).  GI symptoms returned in all participants.  So, low FODMAPs worked for about a week, but then symptoms returned regardless of whether they were eating gluten or not.  In other words, neither low FODMAPs nor low/no gluten worked very well in this study.

But this study may have introduced a brilliant new confounder: food intake was strictly controlled — the experimental diets were different from their normal diets.  Restricting gluten and FODMAPs may have provided some transient benefit, but if the new experimental diet introduced something else that caused problems, then that may explain the gradual return of symptoms…

bollixed?

 

 

Study #2. Small Amounts of Gluten in Subjects with Suspected Nonceliac Gluten Sensitivity: a Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Cross-Over Trial (Di Sabatino et al., 2015)

It was another high quality study design: “Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Cross-Over.”  And it was addressing a basic question: do people who strongly suspect they have non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) really have NCGS?  Alternatively, is NCGS real?

Intervention was strong:

1) 4.375 grams of gluten or placebo (rice starch) daily for a week.  This is roughly equivalent to two slices of bread (note: this is way more than enough gluten to destroy the intestines of a patient with bona fide celiac disease).

2) important: they defined the what they would classify as NCGS prior to starting the trial.  A priori.

61 patients strongly suspected of NCGS started the trial, and one withdrew due to gluten-related symptoms in both the gluten and placebo groups.

 

Results:  regardless of whether they were assigned to gluten or placebo FIRST (prior to the crossover), most patients reported gluten-related symptoms.  More importantly, 3 of the 59 patients exhibited significantly worse symptoms on gluten relative to placebo according to the endpoint they defined prior starting the trial.  In one sense, this could be interpreted to mean 5% of people who strongly believe they have NCGS actually have NCGS.

 

gluten sensitive patients

 

Two patients reacted just as selectively strongly to the placebo as the three “real” NCGS patients did to gluten.  Rice-starch sensitivity?

 

See here for a more detailed description of the statistics involved in this study.  I’m willing to accept the “5%” rate, despite the strength of the placebo-responders, whereas the author of that blog post is not.  That’s fair, imo.

And here is another article which questions the legitimacy of NCGS based on this study.  I don’t think that’s totally fair.

And Raphael’s post, where he humorously concludes: “[Gluten-free] does not include advice to sport a gas mask when walking past bakeries.”

 

 

Study #3. Effect of gliadin on permeability of intestinal biopsy explants from celiac disease patients and patients with non-celiac gluten sensitivity (Hollon et al., 2015)

 

 

gluten increases intestinal permeability

 

 

“Delta TEER” is basically the amount of intestinal permeability in intestinal explants exposed to media + gluten (experimental condition) minus those exposed to plain media (control condition).  A better control condition, imo, would’ve been something like they did above: substitute gluten with another protein like whey protein.

 

NC: healthy people
RCD: celiac patients in remission
ACD: celiac patients with active disease
GS: non-celiac gluten sensitivity

 

Active celiac samples responded significantly worse than those in remission, which is good as it functions as a positive control for the experimental protocol.

 

However, gluten sensitive samples responded significantly worse than celiac remission samples; actually, they responded just as badly as celiac samples with active disease.  Celiac disease is supposed to be a million times worse than non-celiac gluten sensitivity… and statistically speaking, even permeability the normal samples declined as much as NCGS samples.

 

This led some to conclude that gluten is bad for EVERYONE.  I’d say it means the assay is bollixed.  Occam’s razor?

 

 

My advice: don’t be anti-science, but don’t use bad science to justify diet choices.  We simply need better studies on non-celiac gluten sensitivity and FODMAPs.

If bread doesn’t work for you, don’t eat bread.  You’re not missing much.

 

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Mediterranean Diet Fail – Nutrition Disinformation, Part I.

Do not get your hopes up, do not pass GO!  do not collect $200.  The Mediterranean Diet.  Fail.

Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease with a Mediterranean Diet (Estruch et al., 2013)

This is one of the biggest diet studies we’ve seen in a while, and no doubt it was a very good one.  It very effectively put the Mediterranean Diet to the test.

I felt compelled to write about this study out of fear for the nutrition disinformation that it would likely inspire.  The Mediterranean Diet is associated with all good things, happiness, red wine and olive oil; whereas the Atkins Diet is associated with artery clogging bacon-wrapped hot dogs and a fat guy who died of a heart attack.  Nutrition disinformation.

If you ran a diet study with 3 intervention groups for 5 years, and by the end of the study everybody (in all 3 groups) was on more prescription medications, would you conclude any of the diets were “healthy?”  If so, then we should work on your definition of “healthy.”

Study details: big study, lasted roughly 5 years, and the diet intervention was pristine.  Mediterranean diet plus extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) vs. Mediterranean diet plus nuts vs. low fat control.  They even used biomarkers to confirm olive oil and nut intake (hydroxytyrosol and linoleate, respectively).  Compliance was good.

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Paleotard, meet potatotard, Op. 132

(credit to Dylan and Woo, respectively, for introducing me to those terms)

Empty calories – the potato

While it has a decent amino acid profile, with only 3 grams of protein it’d take a diabetic amount of potatoes to fulfill your daily protein.  By “diabetic,” I mean about a thousand grams of starch.  potatoes are just as glycemic as white bread.

potato

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Fish oil. Pills or directly from the source? Opus 118.

As a proponent of consuming fatty fish (sardines, salmon, etc.), I was interested to read the new fish oil study; as an opponent of meta-analyses, however, not so much.  A meta-analysis is a type of study whereby the researcher thinks of something they want to prove, then cherry picks studies that best support their point.  Or perhaps I’m just biased.  Nonetheless,

Association between fish consumption, long chain omega 3 fatty acids, and risk of cerebrovascular disease: systematic review and meta-analysis (Chowdhury et al., 2012)

In brief, regarding whole fish consumption, 3 servings per week reduced stroke risk by 6% and 5 servings by 12%.  Surprisingly, there was no effect of fish oil pills that contained ~1.8 grams of long chain omega 3 fatty acids.  What this study lacks is any information about the dose of EPA and DHA (the major bioactive fatty acids in fatty fish); and with 38 studies analyzed, I’m not about to try to figure it out (sorry team)…  a serving of fish can have anywhere from 0 to 1 gram of EPA and DHA; 1.8 grams of long chain omega 3 fatty acids can have anywhere from 0 to 1.8 grams of EPA and DHA.  Therefore, I’ll resort to reviewing two of my favorite fish studies of all time: DART and GISSI.  For a more detailed review of fish oils and these studies, check out The poor, misunderstood calorie (chapter 9).

divide and conquer

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Protein bar takedown, part III (or V)

No more pretense or cute backstory; I just like reviewing ingredient profiles of protein bars.  It’s a hobby of mine:
Candy in disguise, Op. 73 (circa April 2012)
Decepticon Promicor (soluble corn fiber), Op. 81 (June 2012)
Candy in disguise II, Op. 87 (July 2012)
Protein bar round-up, take II (September 2012)

See?

This is a review of Netrition’s “highest rated” bars.  Important notes about this category: these are not necessarily “new” protein bars, or even the bars everyone buy (“best sellers”).  They are the bars everyone who votes like the most.  They’re not the healthiest either… but some come close.   Continue reading

Corn. A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.

Utterly.  Shocked.  is how I feel gazing upon the ingredients listed on one particular popular snack food.  And it isn’t one of those fancy gourmet all-natural whole food snacks, it is a classic that is probably in the kitchen of every child-wielding household.

Corn, corn oil, and salt.  And salt doesn’t even count, so it might just as well have said corn and corn oil, which could be summarized as “corn.”  Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the reigning champion of snack food sorcery, the red-headed stepchild (no offense) of international superpower PepsiCo… Fritos.  Using only corn, the wizards of Frito-Lay are turning this:into this:

and that’s without the use of trans fat, gluten, artificial additives, dairy, msg, onions, or soy.  They’re Kosher too.

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