Category Archives: diet

Protein Leverage Hypothesis

Posted on November 10, 2013 | 40 comments

Inverse Carb Leverage HypothesisTM

Protein Leverage Hypothesis: Dude eats 15% protein on a 2000 kcal diet (75 g protein).  Exchange 25 grams of protein with carb, and he’s now eating 10% protein on a 2000 kcal diet (50 g protein).  Theory states Dude will increase total food intake to get back those 25 grams.

Ergo, Protein Leverage Hypothesis:

protein leverage hypothesis

Disclaimer: I don’t care much for the Protein Leverage Hypothesis.  It might be true, but that doesn’t mean it matters.  It works well in rodents, but obese patients eat tons of protein.  The rebuttal to this is that the protein in their diet is too diluted with other [empty] calories.  They’re overeating because of low protein %.

The flipside, confirmed ad nauseam in rodent studies, is that frank protein deficiency increases food intake.  Frank protein deficiency means negative nitrogen balance & tissue loss… not just skeletal muscle; organs, too.  Incompatible with survival.

Feed someone a low protein low fat diet, they get hungry.  If it’s ad libitum, they eat more.

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

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Protein dilemma ~ sleepy or smart. #Gelatin

Posted on November 3, 2013 | 3 comments

Gelatin and glycine have bounced around the blogosphere for quite some time.  Coming from a nutrition-centric place: you say gelatin, I think tryptophan (or lack thereof) and glycine.  Others think:

Jane Plain discusses positive mental effects of gelatin and pimps Pro-Stat (good source of glycine).  Chris Masterjohn discusses glycine and in typical WAP fashion seems to favor bone broth (20% off Kettle & Fire’s awesome broths HERE!).  Knox gelatin didn’t help Michael Allen Smith sleep better, and he apparently tracks sleep quality quite well.  However, Sondra Rose thinks it improves sleep harmony, and gelatin simply blows Dana Carpender’s mind.

bones

 

Tryptophan-rich proteins like those found in whey and egg whites will elevate blood levels of tryptophan relative to other large neutral amino acids (Trp:LNAA ratio), leading to higher brain uptake and subsequent serotonin synthesis.  Tryptophan-poor proteins like gelatin do the opposite, and impair memory.  But the high glycine content in gelatin improves sleep quality.*  Glycine powder might be able to get around this, it’s dirt cheap and it seems to have the opposite effect on brain serotonin, albeit at a much higher dose (and in rats).

 

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, gelatin, glycine, insulin, nicotine

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Ketosis: anti-brain fog. Neurotransmitters, dietary protein, and the gut microbiome.

Posted on October 27, 2013 | 51 comments

Treatment for dietary protein-induced brain fog: dark chocolate with 3% GOS and 10% MCTs.  Who’s in?

#IntermediaryMetabolism (bear with me here)
Ketosis from liver’s perspective:  increased fatty acid influx & [partial] oxidation causes acetyl-CoA levels to rise dramatically.  Concomitantly, gluconeogenesis redirects oxaloacetate (OAA) away from combining with acetyl-CoA via TCA cycle citrate synthesis and toward gluconeogenesis.  Since the acetyl-CoA doesn’t have much OAA with which to couple, it does itself to make acetoacetate.  Ergo, ketosis, and fortunately liver lacks ketolytic apparatus.

ketosis

 

Brain is singing a different tune.  Ketones provide ample acetyl-CoA and are efficiently metabolized in the TCA cycle.  Ketolysis is not ketogenesis in reverse, else liver would consume ketones.keto metabolism

Teleologically speaking (and I don’t really know what that word means), ketones are meant to spare glucose for the brain by replacing glucose as a fuel for peripheral tissues like skeletal muscle and displacing some brain glucose utilization.  The former is vital as one of the few sources of “new” glucose is skeletal muscle amino acids, and they would be exhausted in a short amount of time if skeletal muscle kept burning glucose –> incompatible with survival.  Getting some of that fuel from fatty acids, ie, ketones, is just way better.  Thus, the “glucose sparing effect of fat-derived fuel.”  And by “glucose,” I mean “muscle;” and by “fat-derived fuel,” I mean “ketones.”  There are numerous intracellular signaling events and biochemical pathways pwned, but that’s the gist of it.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, chocolate, coconut, diet, fiber, liver, microbiota, Protein

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Summer is fattening. Don’t do it in winter.

Posted on September 5, 2013 | 32 comments

Seasonal eating proper

More on seasonal eating in what appears to be the primary model for its justification for use in humans – hibernating mammals.

How it goes, or so they say: in summer, hibernators massively overeat, including carb-rich foods, in order to generate muscle and liver insulin resistance, so as to promote body fat growth.  The long light cycle reduces evening melatonin, which pushes back the usual nighttime peak in prolactin, which causes an abnormal resistance to leptin, which induces hypothalamic NPY and subsequent carbohydrate craving.  Ergo, summer is fattening.  In today’s day, increased artificial lights guarantee year-round pseudo-summer; and we no longer experience the benefits of the short light cycle: longer sleep times (akin to hibernation) and fasting – either complete fasting as in hibernation, or pseudo-fasting, ie, a ketogenic diet.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, Bromocriptine, circadian, diet, Dietary fat, Dopamine, empty calories, Energy balance, fat, Fructose, insulin, Leptin, TPMC

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

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