During the production of dark chocolate, cacao beans are fermented, roasted, and processed into 3 components: chocolate liquor, cocoa butter, and cocoa powder. These are combined in various proportions to make unsweetened chocolate. Sugar can be added to make dark chocolate, or milk & sugar added for milk chocolate. White chocolate has no cocoa; it’s essentially cocoa butter, sugar, and milk.
Posted in chocolate, coconut, Dietary fat, liver
Tagged chocolate, cocoa, fat, inflammation, liver, saturated fat, stearate
Nutritional ketosis is a normal, physiological response to carbohydrate and energy restriction. A ketogenic diet
In ketoacidosis, gluconeogenesis occurs at a very high rate and the lack of insulin prevents glucose disposal in peripheral tissues. Skeletal muscle protein breakdown contributes gluconeogenic substrates, exacerbating the problem. This can cause blood glucose to reach pathological levels, exceeding 250 mg/dL.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, fat, insulin
Tagged carbohydrates, carbs, diet, energy balance, fat, insulin, ketoacidosis, ketogenic, ketones, ketosis, nutrition, obesity, protein, sugar
“Dietary protein has a purpose, and that purpose is not carbs.” Nor is it to break ketosis or stall weight loss.
Drastically increasing protein intake may reduce the degree of ketosis in the context of a large energy surplus, but this is likely due more specifically to the large energy surplus than the protein. This would explain why Warrior dieters (1 meal meal per day) often report reduced ketones if they eat too much protein. It’s more likely that the 2000 kcal bolus is exerting it’s anti-ketotic effect by being a large energy surplus, such that anything other than 90% fat would blunt ketosis. It’s not the proteins… Want proof? Here’s an n=1 to try: give up Warrior dieting for a few days and try 3 squares. My bet is that you’ll be able to increase protein intake and still register ketones as high or higher than before. There are data to support this and reasons why it may not matter (below).
disclaimer: I don’t think “deep ketosis” is necessary to reap the benefits of carbohydrate-restriction. But if you love high ketone meter readings, then this might be a better strategy to maintain deep ketosis while getting adequate protein. win-win.
if I hear: “oh no, I was kicked out of ketosis!” one more time…
All of the studies below are confounded one way or another, but so are we humans.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, Energy balance, fat, insulin, Ketosis, Protein
Tagged Atkins, body composition, calories, calories proper, carbs, diet, energy balance, fat, insulin, ketosis, nutrition, obesity, protein
Ketosis. Happens during starvation and also by restricting carbohydrates (and protein, to a lesser degree)… might be important for epilepsy and bipolar disorder, too.
Ketostix
Conversely, when glucose levels decline and fatty acid oxidation increases, liver redox potential drops which reduces AcAc/bHB.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, circadian, depression, diet, Dietary fat, epilepsy, Exercise, fat, Ketosis
Tagged Atkins, calories proper, carbs, circadian rhythm, depression, diet, epilepsy, exercise, fat, ketogenic diet, ketosis
It is known. Carbohydrate restriction improves (lowers) testosterone in women with PCOS. It works for men, too… but by “works” I mean “increases.”
Decrease of serum total and free testosterone during a low-fat high fibre diet (Hamalainen et al., 1982)
Intervention pseudo-crossover study: 30 healthy Finnish men in their 40’s were studied on their habitual high fat diet (40% fat), then put on a low-fat (25%) high fibre diet for 6 weeks, then switched back to high fat. The high fat diet was also higher in saturates, P:S ratio 0.15 vs. 1.25.
Free testosterone levels declined on the low fat diet, but they recovered after 6 weeks of going back to their high [saturated] fat dieting (p < 0.01).
Some observational data: Testosterone and cortisol in relationship to dietary nutrients and resistance exercise (Volek
…fat, and in particular saturated fat, is associated with increased testosterone levels [in men]:
Posted in Advanced nutrition, clamp, diet, Dietary fat, fertility, insulin, sex, testosterone
Tagged calories, carbohydrates, carbs, diet, fat, insulin, testosterone
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:
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.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, Protein, TPMC
Tagged calories, calories proper, carbs, diet, empty calories, energy balance, fat, protein, soda
From T.S. Wiley’s website:
“People spent summers, before electric lights, sleeping less & eating heavily in preparation for winter because the light triggered the hunger for carbohydrates. Now, light is available 24 hours a day. Heating and air-conditioning climate control our hormonal responses to consume carbohydrates now available year round. This is the scenario for obesity, Type II diabetes, and depression… In Wiley’s opinion, sleep is the best medicine.”
And Wikipedia:
“Wiley’s main thesis in Lights Out is that light is a physiological trigger that controls dopamine and hormones like cortisol. Wiley posits that with the extension of the natural day through artificial lighting, rest at the hormonal level is rarely adequate for optimum biological needs of the body. In her view, this results in both fatigue and unnatural appetite, which leads to weight gain, exhaustion, and disease. Wiley theorizes that the body’s responses are cyclical, reflecting the seasons of the year, and that the body’s needs vary seasonally. According to Wiley, during the winter months the body needs more sleep, and carbohydrates should be restricted as they would have been naturally during hunter-gatherer times.”
Most of the first third of Wiley’s book “Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival
Much of this blog post is my take on that first third (I couldn’t wait to finish it before writing about it), plus a little input from Google, Pubmed, et al; some commentary & pseudo-fact-checking as well. I’m going to finish the book, and hopefully it will inspire a few more blog posts as opposed to a tin foil hat. Most of the stuff in Lights Out makes incredibly good sense, but: 1) that doesn’t mean it’s true; and 2) the strings of logic are far too long to do a proper fact-check. But really it’s how well it makes sense (mostly) that has me intrigued.
divide and conquer
Melatonin is a sleep-inducing hormone controlled by the light-dark cycle. It is known. On the day-to-day, melatonin increases at night and decreases during the daytime. From Wiley: on a seasonal level, longer days during the summer meant less melatonin overall during these months. Since melatonin suppresses sex hormones (inconsistent? Eg, Smith et al., 2013), summer is supposed to be breeding time, so the baby is born in spring when food is plenty (I’m OK with this now, but will certainly disagree come December). Melatonin also suppresses metabolic rate, so the decreased daylight and thus increased melatonin during the winter months helped to survive on less food (supported by Marrin et al., 2013).
Disruptions in circadian rhythms royally screws us up. According to Wikipedia, fireplaces/candles and incandescent bulbs produce less of the melatonin-suppressive blue lights… use these at night in winter?
Antidepressant and circadian phase-shifting effects of light. (Lewy et al., 1987)
Abstract: Bright light can suppress nighttime melatonin production in humans, but ordinary indoor light does not have this effect. This finding suggested that bright light may have other chronobiologic effects in humans as well. Eight patients who regularly became depressed in the winter (as day length shortens) significantly improved after 1 week of exposure to bright light in the morning (but not after 1 week of bright light in the evening). The antidepressant response to morning light was accompanied by an advance (shift to an earlier time) in the onset of nighttime melatonin production. These results suggest that timing may be critical for the antidepressant effects of bright light.
Next: Prolactin inhibits sex hormones, and melatonin stimulates prolactin (supported by Gill-Sharma 2009 & Campino et al., 2008). Thus, less melatonin in summer means less prolactin = more sex & fertility. She also says day sex is more likely to result in conception compared to night sex for this reason (couldn’t find a reference for or against this).
Dopamine inhibits prolactin, whereas TRH & melatonin stimulate it. Melatonin also blunts ACTH-induced cortisol secretion (supported by Torres-Farfan 2003 & Campino 2008). Winter = high melatonin, prolactin, and low cortisol & dopamine. Summer = high dopamine & cortisol, and low melatonin & prolactin. Prolactin is supposed to be high in winter, during pregnancy; low dopamine would support this.
Dopamine is a summer hormone? Lu et al. (2006) showed high dopaminergic activity was associated with light and wakefulness (ie, summertime). However, Venero (2002) showed melatonin stimulated dopamine synthesis in specific brain regions, and Eisenberg (2010) showed increased dopamine synthesis in fall & winter relative to spring and summer. Two possible confounding factors come to mind: 1) Location, location, location! Some of these discrepancies may be due to brain region-specific dopamine metabolism… actually, Lu is the only odd-man out, so perhaps dopamine is a winter hormone? And 2) Wiley’s main premise is that we pwned the light… epigenetics and the like mean that we, including the people in those studies, have deeply screwed up light/dark summer/winter metabolic programs on an epigenetic level, so it’s possible those studies are riddles with artefacts. However, Wiley also says that people get sick because they live in perpetual summer (lights on all the time = high dopamine), and Markianos (2013) showed elevated dopamine metabolites in overweight patients; in my experience these studies usually continuously enroll patients, year-round.
I’m really just blazing through abstracts here – this is why I call it “pseudo-fact-checking;” not to be confused with any degree of academic rigor.
To be continued… (no tin foil hats, I promise) (not yet at least)
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Posted in circadian, Dietary fat, Dopamine, empty calories, Energy balance, fat
Tagged carbs, dopamine, energy balance, estrogen, fat, obesity, prolactin, sex
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).
Posted in Advanced nutrition, diet, empty calories, Energy balance, fat, insulin, Orlistat, TPMC
Tagged calories, calories proper, carbs, diabetes, diet, empty calories, energy balance, energy expenditure, fat, insulin, nutrition
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.
Posted in Advanced nutrition, chocolate, diet, Dietary fat, empty calories, Energy balance, TPMC
Tagged calories, calories proper, carbs, chocolate, diet, empty calories, energy balance, energy expenditure, fat, nutrition
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
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).
Posted in chocolate, coconut, diet, Dietary fat, fat, Ketosis, Protein
Tagged body composition, calories, calories proper, carbs, chocolate, diet, fat, nutrition
