Category Archives: Protein

Fixing your rhythms makes everything better. Here’s how.

Posted on October 19, 2017 | 15 comments

Full article open to everyone over at Patreon! <- link

What’s more anti-cancer than ‘shrooms and isothiocyanates?

Affiliate discounts: if you’re still looking for a pair of hot blue blockers, Carbonshade is offering 15% off with the coupon code LAGAKOS and Spectra479 is offering 15% off HERE. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this then this.

20% off some delish stocks and broths from Kettle and Fire HERE.

If you want the benefits of ‘shrooms but don’t like the taste, Real Mushrooms makes great extracts. 10% off with coupon code LAGAKOS.

Caffeine, large meals, and bright light in the evening induce circadian misalignment. That’s why these are better suited earlier in the day.

Caffeine reduces sleep pressure (which is supposed to start low in the morning and peak shortly after sunset) and delays melatonin onset (Burke et al., 2015). After dinner, make it a decaf or just pass.

Caffeine is an adenosine antagonist, and the accumulation of adenosine in the brain throughout the day is thought to be a chemical mediator of sleep pressure. Caffeine also delays and reduces melatonin, which increases your sleep needs, or at least time in bed/darkness.

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Posted in angiotensin, Bromocriptine, Cabergoline, chronopharmacology, circadian, Dopamine, liver, melatonin, mortality, nicotine, Protein, sex, sleep, Sun, testosterone, vasopressin, Vitamin D

Tagged body composition, circadian rhythm, energy balance, melatonin, mortality, muscle, sleep

Light & melatonin: timing is everything

Posted on October 13, 2017 | 3 comments

This is kinda like circadian rhythms’ second Nobel Prize. Technically it was LED lights back in 2014, but if you don’t see the connection, I have failed.

Suggest pre-readings: Melatonin sensitizes the system and LIGHT timing for circadian entrainment

Melatonin plays a pivitol role in circadian entrainment. Literally thousands of papers published about it every year.

[Patrons click here]

THIS IS WHY YOU NEED BLUE BLOCKERS: A single night light exposure acutely alters hormonal and metabolic responses in healthy participants (Albreiki et al., 2017)

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, angiotensin, Bromocriptine, Cabergoline, chronopharmacology, circadian, Dopamine, melatonin, muscle, Protein, sex, sleep, Sun, testosterone, vasopressin, Vitamin D

Tagged calories proper, circadian rhythm, diabetes, nutrition

Pregnancy dieting and #moderation: just don’t be extreme

Posted on October 10, 2017 | Leave a comment

“If you can’t absorb B12, no amount of steak will help you” (more on this below)

Just like practically everyone in the field, I’m uncomfortable with the word moderation, in part because one person’s moderation can be wildly different from another’s.

Remember the Motherwell studies? In brief, they asked a group of expecting women to ditch carbs and eat a ton of meat instead (about a pound per day), and compared them with a group not given diet advice. It was designed to compare an extreme diet to an average diet (note: they didn’t assess the opposite extreme, ie, high carb vegan).

Tl;dr: babies were healthy at birth but developed a variety of health problems later in life. Perfect study design? No. Better than ALSPAC? Kinda, yeah.

In the context of today’s topic, I’ll define moderation as “not extreme” (bear with me here) (unless ALSPAC is retracted or something… which is possible given the study design.)

Meat consumption during pregnancy and substance misuse among adolescent offspring (Hibbeln et al., 2017) (aka ALSPAC)

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TRP channels in the Tx of muscle pain & cramps

Posted on September 10, 2017 | 8 comments

https://www.patreon.com/posts/14312822

NSAIDs are OK for muscle pain, but may hinder training progress in the long run (eg, Shoenfeld 2012 and Mackey 2013). The electrolyte theory of muscle cramps has been kinda debunked in some contexts (eg, Braulick et al., 2013, Miller 2014, and McKenney et al., 2015)… although I still recommend all the broths & stocks (homemade, store-bought, chicken, beef, seafood, etc.) for just about everything. 20% of Kettle & Fire broths through this link!

But even when pickle juice works (eg, Miller et al., 2010), it kicks in way sooner than if it worked via replenishing electrolytes – more likely works via the acidity activating specific ion channels.

What do we have left?

Google Image Search came through pretty epic for this…

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, circadian, glycine, marijuana, muscle, Protein, strength

Tagged carbs, circadian rhythm, exercise, muscle

Ketosis in an evolutionary context

Posted on August 15, 2017 | 104 comments

Humans are unique in their remarkable ability to enter ketosis. They’re also situated near the top of the food chain. Coincidence?

During starvation, humans rapidly enter ketosis; they do this better than king penguins, and bears don’t do it at all.

Starvation ketosis

Humans maintain a high level of functionality during starvation. We can still hunt & plan; some would even argue it’s a more finely tuned state, cognitively. And that’s important, because if we became progressively weaker and slower, chances of acquiring food would rapidly decline.

Perhaps this is why fasting bears just sleep most of the time: no ketones = no bueno..?

Observation: chronic ketosis is relatively rare in nature. This doen’t mean animals evolved a protective mechanism against ketosis.

Animals with a low brain/carcass weight ratio (ie, small brain) don’t need it. Babies and children have a higher brain/carcass weight ratio, so they develop ketosis more rapidly than adults. Is this a harmful process? No, more likely an evolutionary adaptation which supports the brain.

The brain of newborn babies consumes a huge amount of total daily energy, and nearly half comes from ketones. A week or so later, even after the carbohydrate content of breast milk increases, they still don’t get “kicked out of ketosis” (Bourneres et al., 1986). If this were a harmful state, why would Nature have done this? …and all those anecdotes, like babies learn at incredibly rapid rates… coincidence? Maybe they’re myths. Maybe not.

Ketosis in the animal kingdom

Imagine a hibernating bear: huge adipose tissue but small brain fuel requirement relative to body size and total energy expenditure. No ketosis, because brain accounts for less than 5% of total metabolism. In adult humans, this is around 19-23%, and babies are much higher (eg, Cahill and Veech, 2003 & Hayes et al., 2012).

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, circadian, clamp, coconut, diet, Dietary fat, Exercise, fat, insulin, Ketosis, Protein, Trans fat

Tagged Atkins, calories proper, carbs, diet, energy balance, energy expenditure, fat, insulin, nutrition, Paleo, protein

On the impact of diet on circadian phase setting

Posted on August 10, 2017 | 17 comments

We’ve seen that meal size and frequency can influence circadian rhythms, but here are some examples of how nutrients can, too.

Circadian phase advance: going to bed earlier, waking up earlier. Blue blockers at sunset, bright light at sunrise. Flying east. Autumn.

Circadian phase delay: staying up late, sleeping in. Flying west. Spring. Using smart phones, tablets, and iPads in bed at night. Light pollution.

Relative to adolescents, infants and children are circadian phase advanced. This is part of what is fueling the movement to delay high school start times. Kids are mentally better prepared to work later in the day. With early school start times, performance is down in the morning, but they kill it on video games after school. Delaying start time by an hour won’t totally fix this, but could help.

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Posted in chronopharmacology, circadian, diet, Energy balance, insulin, Ketosis, melatonin, Protein, sleep

Tagged body composition, carbs, circadian rhythm, diet, fat, ketosis, melatonin, protein

Low carb, low glycemic index, or something else entirely

Posted on August 9, 2017 | 10 comments

Why Low Carb?

OmniCarb (Sacks et al., 2014)

Study design & results in a nutshell:

5 weeks, low(ish) vs. high carb (40 vs. 58%) with the calorie difference split between protein (23 vs. 16%) and fat (37 vs. 27%). In other words, the low(ish) carb diet was higher in protein and fat. And there was 2 versions of each diet — a high and low glycemic index. Lots of crossing over; all in all, weak intervention but decent study design & execution.

Aaaand nothingsauce nothingburger. Goal was insulin sensitivity, not weight loss.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, Energy balance, fat, Grains, insulin, Protein

Tagged body composition, calories proper, carbs, diet, energy balance, fat, protein

Endurance Performance Doesn’t Decline on a Low Carb Diet

Posted on July 29, 2017 | 2 comments

The new study by Zinn and colleagues doesn’t debunk ketoadaptation. And the authors agree!

In brief, it was 5 ~50-year old recreational endurance athletes. They’ve been training a lot for a very long time. In other words, one way to view this study is the opposite of n00b gainz. Experienced exercisers don’t typically make gains in 10 weeks without drastically changing their training program or increasing protein intake – neither of which occurred in this study.

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Still looking for a pair of hot blue blockers? Carbonshade and TrueDark are offering 15% off with the coupon code LAGAKOS and Spectra479 is offering 15% off HERE. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this then this.

20% off some delish stocks and broths from Kettle and Fire HERE.

If you want the benefits of ‘shrooms but don’t like eating them, Real Mushrooms makes great extracts. 10% off with coupon code LAGAKOS. I recommend Lion’s Mane for the brain and Reishi for everything else.

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Long-term fat adaptation.

Ketoadaptation

More on physical performance and ketoadaptation

A timeline of ketoadaptation.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, endurance, Exercise, fat, insulin, Ketosis, muscle, Protein, strength

Tagged Atkins, body composition, calories proper, carbs, diet, exercise, fat, insulin, ketogenic, ketones, ketosis, nutrition, protein

Allu-lujah: the new Quest Hero bars

Posted on July 23, 2017 | 7 comments

On that sweetener in the new Quest Hero bars: allulose (formerly known as D-Psicose).

1. I’m sure they were quick to adopt the alternate nomenclature because it’s hard not so say Piss-cose lol

2. Nutrition-wise, Hero bars are basically Quest Lite. A bit less fibre. But I really think they’re getting much better at texture.

3. On to allulose. It’s not really like sugar – even though the FDA says it must be labeled as such – because it carries virtually no calories and actually blunts the blood glucose spike from a meal.

Exhibit A. n=20 healthy peole: 7.5 g D-psicose alone, 75 g maltodextrin alone, 75 g maltodextrin + 2.5, 5, or 7.5 g D-psicose (Iida et al., 2008)

amazeballs

Exhibit B. n=26, zero or 5g psicose with a standardized meal (Hayashi et al., 2010). Note: there are ~12 grams of allulose in a Hero bar.

It works better in diabetics.

They did a 12-week study where psicose was dosed 3 times a day, 5 grams each time, and showed it was perfectly healthy. Some markers even improved.

Exhibit C. Psicose metabolism (Iida et al., 2010)

In doses ranging from 5 to 30 grams, up to 70% is excreted intact and the rest does not go to farts.

It’s virtually calorie-free:

and is barely fermentable (compared to FOS):

compare to other low carb protein bars here, get the new Quest bars here, or just buy some straight allulose and experiment with it!

Mechanisms? 1) it’s not sugar, but it still enhances glucose disposal; and 2) some animal studies show it enhances liver glucose uptake. Idk.

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Discounts: still looking for a pair of hot blue blockers? Carbonshade and Spectra479 are offering 15% off with the coupon code LAGAKOS. And for some delish broths/stocks, Kettle & Fire is 20% off HERE.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diabetes, diet, Energy balance, fermentation, fiber, insulin, Protein

Tagged calories proper, carbs, diet, energy balance, insulin, protein, sugar

FOOD PROFILE

Posted on July 13, 2017 | 9 comments

Hey Fam, announcement: I’m moving to Patreon soon — will still post about 4-5 articles per month with at least 1 open to the public. The rest will be for Patrons. I’m still trying to figure it out and I’m open to suggestions!

I loved this – when describing the two study diets, which differed markedly in carb content (10% vs. 53%), the authors said they were similar in energy, protein, and “FOOD PROFILE,” meaning low-processed, lower-glycemic foods.

Non-industrial foods.

Hunger-free Diet(s).

BOOM!

Visceral adiposity and metabolic syndrome after very high-fat and low-fat isocaloric diets: a randomized controlled trial (Veum et al., 2016)

What happens when you give up industrial foods and start following a Hunger-free Diet (regardless of carbz)?

EVERYBODY LOSES WEIGHT

And le saturated fat? Industrial foods are the problem, not saturated fat. One group went from 48 to 31 grams per day (LFHC), the other group went from 42 to 81 (VLCHF): all metabolic parameters improved in both groups.

Even their livers shrank:

My only qualm: everyone lost a bit of muscle. NOT SURPRISING when you cut calories & protein and don’t exercise. Protein dropped by about ~25 grams in both groups. When you cut calories, you need to up protein or start lifting heavy shit otherwise you’ll lose muscle. The ketonez won’t help.

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Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, fat, insulin, liver, muscle, Protein, strength

Tagged body composition, calories proper, carbs, empty calories, energy balance, fat, ketones, nutrition, protein

Category Archives: Protein

Fixing your rhythms makes everything better. Here’s how.

Light & melatonin: timing is everything

Pregnancy dieting and #moderation: just don’t be extreme

TRP channels in the Tx of muscle pain & cramps

Ketosis in an evolutionary context

On the impact of diet on circadian phase setting

Low carb, low glycemic index, or something else entirely

Endurance Performance Doesn’t Decline on a Low Carb Diet

Allu-lujah: the new Quest Hero bars

FOOD PROFILE

awesome finder

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