Author Archives: Bill

Nutrition Disinformation III

Posted on August 23, 2013 | 4 comments

but they actually get it right this time.   Big HT to George Henderson for bringing this ms to my attention.

In Nutrition Disinformation, Part I, the Mediterranean diets employed by Estruch & colleagues were discussed.  The study subjects’ need for antidiabetic drugs, insulin, and anti-platelets all increased over the course of 5 years.  The media and even the authors themselves reported the opposite, touting the benefits of Mediterranean diets.  Thus begat the Nutrition Disinformation series.

Nutrition Disinformation 2.0 was a follow-up to an older post on the Look AHEAD study, when the results were finally published.  The intensive lifestyle intervention consisted of a pharmaceutical-grade low fat diet (ie, LFD + a little bit of Orlistat), and exercise.  By the end of 10 years, medication use was modestly lower in the intensive lifestyle group compared to controls, but it was markedly increased from baseline.  Therefore, I deemed it egregious to say their intervention was “healthy.”  In the context of Nutrition Disinformation, “healthy” means you’re getting better.  The need for insulin, statins, and anti-hypertensives should decline if you’re getting better.

In part 3 of the series, Yancy must’ve been following the Nutrition Disinformation series 🙂 and decided to conduct a subgroup analysis on the patients in his previous low carb vs. low fat + Orlistat study.  Weight loss was roughly similar, but all other biomarkers improved more on low carb.  In the new publication, Yancy analyzed data selectively from the diabetic patients in his original study to generate a “Medication Effect Score (MES).”  MES is based on what percentage of  the maximum dose was a patient given, and adjusted for the median decline in HbA1c experienced by patients on said drug.  A bit convoluted, but I’m on board (at least tentatively).

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, empty calories, Energy balance, fat, insulin, Orlistat, TPMC

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Calories schmalories, alcohol, and chocolate

Posted on August 15, 2013 | 50 comments

Some calories count, others don’t.  Some calories work in some people, but not others.  Does this sound like an irrefutable Law of Nature?  No, but it is a perfectly acceptable tenet of the Laws of Energy Balance (a construct of my design).

Do alcohol calories count?  Sometimes, but not this time:

The energy cost of the metabolism of drugs, including ethanol (Pirola & Lieber 1972)

This was a study on bona fide alcoholics who participated because they were promised treatment.  Metabolic ward.  FYI, one gram of alcohol burned in a calorimeter produces ~7.1 kilocalories; alcohol = 7.1 kcal/g.

Calories required to maintain body weight (ie, = total energy expenditure) was assessed the old-fashioned way: feeding them enough calories to maintain a stable body weight – they counted calories but relied on the bathroom scale to establish a baseline.  #TPMC.  After a week of weight stability, they ISOCALORICALLY exchanged carbohydrates for alcohol, and broke CICO.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, chocolate, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, TPMC

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Sarcopenia has little to do with aging

Posted on August 9, 2013 | 11 comments

It has to do with the duration of time spent being sedentary.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but luckily enough today you get both.

Sarcopenia: “poverty of flesh,” or the age-induced loss of skeletal muscle mass, strength, and function = reduced quality of life.  Sorry old-timers, but I hereby officially revise the definition from “aging-induced” to “sedentary-induced.”  Herein, I present evidence that sarcopenia is not a phenomenon of aging per se, but rather of disuse atrophy.  Dear Webster’s & Britannica, please revise accordingly.

Skeletal muscles: use ‘em or lose ‘em #TPMC

Thanks to Julianne Taylor & Skyler Tanner for directing me to these images.

divide and conquer

Exhibit A. Chronic exercise preserves lean muscle mass in masters athletes (Wroblewski et al., 2011)

This study evaluated “high-level recreational athletes.”  “Masters” just means they were over 40.  And “high-level” doesn’t mean “elite,” it just means they exercised 4-5 times per week.  These weren’t super-obsessed gym rats… it’s probably who I’ll be in 7 years [sigh].

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Posted in endurance, Energy balance, Exercise, muscle, strength, TPMC

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Physiological Insulin Resistance in Circadia

Posted on August 1, 2013 | 14 comments

If you haven’t read Petro Dobromylskyj’s posts about Physiological Insulin Resistance, then just go do it.  Highly recommended.
I’ve written about it as well, albeit in a slightly different context:
What is our proper “natural” diet?
40 years ago a group of researchers turned ketosis into poetry.

But now on to more pressing matters.  In the food deprived state, Physiological Insulin Resistance develops, in part, to spare muscle (yea yea yeah and glucose for the brain).  But how much of this is due to ‘food deprivation’ per se as opposed to something else… like circadian rhythms.

Exhibit A. Hat tip to Dr Kruse for writing about this TED talk.  In it, Jessa describes a crab that lives on the beach; scurries up the beach when the tide comes in and back down when it goes out.  Scientists captured a few, flew them halfway around the world and put them in little tilted cages.  The crabs still scurried up & down, in time with the tides.

Exhibit B. Evidence that the lunar cycle affects human sleep.  People tend to sleep a little less during the full moon.  Subjects were recruited to a windowless sleep lab and had no exposure to sun/moon/anything outside – they maintained this circadian rhythm for 3 days  (Cajochen et al., 2013).  Different from the crabs, but similar (in a way).

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, circadian, clamp, insulin

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All my organs hurt and I think I’m going blind.

Posted on July 26, 2013 | 38 comments

People, this is how you should eat.

There have been a lot of diet postings lately, and they are some of the healthiest diets you could imagine.  Please click the links to get the full versions, which include lifestyle tidbits, other pearls, and WHY.  And take notes.  I’ve just listed some of the foods here for the sake of brevity (and as an excuse to link to the diets).

Disclaimer: all of these diets fall somewhere on the “low carb” spectrum.  I don’t eat low carb because I have to*, I do so because it’s healthy, convenient for my lifestyle, and I rather like the foods.  *I say I don’t “have to” because I have no underlying health problems or carb-sensitive GI issues.  The people below are also far healthier than most (from what I can gather)… but if you are overweight &/or obesity-prone, or glucose-intolerant &/or diabetic, then you might want to consider following any of them.

Hyperlipid (Petro Dobromylskyj): The Optimal Diet
butter, egg yolks, cocoa, dark chocolate, macadamia nuts, sour cream, beef, green veggies.  His stats: BW stable, 28” waist, greying beard.  Peter will outlive us all.  And take over the world if he ever has the desire to do so.

Anna Fagan (Lifextension): Low Carb Paleo, probably keto
eggs, butter, avocado, cheese, shrooms, bacon, salmon, tea, coffee, nuts, sardines, lamb, pork, eggplant, cream  –> “high fat =/= fat.”  She’s currently off studying paleoanthropology somewhere in Turkey (?).

Jane Plain (ItsTheWooo): Ketogenic
cream, sour cream, nuts, butter, beef & fatty meats, pepperoni.  She, too, is rather fit.  The Scribble Pad = diet & lifestyle vs. psychoneuroendocrinology & metabolism (mixed with equal parts humor & gravitas).

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38 Comments

Posted in chocolate, coconut, diet, Dietary fat, fat, Ketosis, Protein

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Energy Balance > CICO

Posted on July 18, 2013 | 40 comments

The regulation of energy balance is a long-term process, and it can’t be maintained by counting calories on a day-to-day basis.  Taubes once wrote that exercise doesn’t cause weight loss because it builds up an appetite, so you end up sucking down a Starbuck’s Jumbo Calorie Bomb on the way home from doing Yoga at the gym.  This is probably somewhat true, but this little gem from 1955 exposes some very interesting nuances.

Edholm(Edholm et al., 1955)

These researchers rigorously measured food intake and did a comprehensive assessment of energy expenditure during a wide variety of activities – lying down, standing, walking, gun cleaning, stair climbing, dressing, etc., etc.

Divide and conquer

The individual differences: big people expend more energy on life.  most of the time.

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40 Comments

Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Energy balance, Leptin, muscle

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Silent Leptin Resistance

Posted on July 12, 2013 | 32 comments

Conventional leptin resistance has something do with obesity.  It is known.  Silent leptin resistance is … err … complicated. 

Divide and conquer

Fructose-induced leptin resistance exacerbates weight gain in response to subsequent high-fat feeding (Shapiro, Scarpace, et al., 2008 AJP)

A remarkable 60% fructose diet fed to rats for 6 months had absolutely no effect on energy balance.  Nil. QED.
Fig 1

Food intake and body weight were unaffected because the levels of and sensitivity to endogenous leptin were identical in both groups.

Enter the Dragon

Enter the Dragon

“Silent Leptin Resistance” – The fructose-fed rats are, however, profoundly resistant to the satiating effects of Metreleptin (a pharmaceutical grade injectable leptin analog):

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, Fructose, Leptin, Sugar, TPMC

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On calorie information posted in restaurants

Posted on July 5, 2013 | 19 comments

“This is biology, not mathematics.”

It’s law in some places.  It’s a burden on restaurants.  And it will do nothing for the cause – like trying to put out a candle by pressing the off button on your remote control.  In other words, a waste.

Here’s some of the “science” behind it.

Exhibit A.
In a study by Dumanovsky, fast-food customers were surveyed prior to and after mandatory calorie labeling in New York.  25% of the people reported “seeing calorie information,” and 10% of them said it affected their buying decision (ie, 2.5% of all fast-food consumers surveyed thought they knew enough about “calories” to be scared of them).  After the law went into effect, 64% of people noticed the calorie information, and 20% of them were affected by it (=12.8% of all fast-food consumers thought they knew enough about “calories” to be scared of them).  Sooo, the proportion of people making misinformed decisions quintupled.  Calorie Labeling = Nutrition Disinformation.  It’s misleading, and usually wrong.

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19 Comments

Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, empty calories, Energy balance, fat, TPMC

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Look AHEAD – Nutrition Disinformation 2.0

Posted on June 27, 2013 | 1 comment

The day you’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived.  Results from the Look AHEAD study have been published.  When I first wrote about this study (HERE), it had been prematurely halted because the intervention was providing no benefits.  Everybody was in a state of shock and awe because Low Fat didn’t save lives.  But that was before we even had the data.  

Reminder: the “intensive lifestyle intervention” consisted of a Low Fat Diet & exercise.  The results?  Yes, they lost more weight than control, but they also took more Orlistat (of which I’m not a fan, see HERE for why):

orlistat

Orlistat = pharmaceutically enhanced low fat diet. 

Their normal diets were not healthy, but neither was low fat –>

med use

Medication use increased drastically in both groups.  The pundits have gone wild because medication use was lower in the intensive Low Fat group at the end of the study, but this is Nutrition Disinformation 2.0.  Eerily reminiscent of the recent Mediterranean Diet study, the conclusions are the same: keep eating poorly and the need for medications will increase.  You can call it a lot of things, but not “healthy.”  The alternative –>  How to define a “healthy” diet.  Period.


Significant adverse events:SAE

The only thing to reach statistical significance was more fractures in the intensive Low Fat group, but you didn’t read any headlines that said “Low Fat breaks bones.”  Imagine if that happened on low carb [sigh]  The next closest thing to statistical significance was increased amputations in the intensive Low Fat group :/

gem:History of CVD

Translation: if you were healthy at baseline, then you could tolerate a low fat diet.  Otherwise, not so much.  This is exactly what happened in the Women’s Health Initiative.

Ha

needless to say, none of the “possible explanations” they considered were Low fat diet Fail.

calories proper

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Posted in diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, Exercise, fat, mortality

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Dopamine

Posted on June 22, 2013 | 18 comments

“When we block the D2 receptor in humans, it is expected they will develop glucose intolerance, obesity, and sedentary behavior.” -Jane Plain, in her series on The physiology of body fat regulation.  It’s probably true.

Randomized pilot study of cabergoline, a dopamine receptor agonist: effects on body weight and glucose tolerance in obese adults (Gibson et al., 2012)

Cabergoline is primarily used to treat prolinactinoma, or prolactin-secreting tumors.  In women (& men apparently), prolactin stimulates milk production; in men, it is associated with the refractory period after orgasm.  In both genders, dopamine inhibits prolactin secretion.  Cabergoline targets the D2 receptor, but it’s a dirty drug.  It’s used off-label for gyno and to improve sexy times (Kruger et al., 2003 <– yes, that was actually tested).

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, Bromocriptine, Cabergoline, Dopamine, insulin, Leptin

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