I want to mention the great blog that Brent is running over at “healthcare epistemocrat“.    Brent is doing a good job forging his “n=1″ point of view by using his own reasoning, and updating his overview of his continuously shaping approach by incorporating other points of view, as well. In this link, he has a great interview.  I was struck just a bit by his comment about the catabolic state, “Today, I aim for anabolism and catabolism-avoidance.”

I assumed that  Brent was referring to chronic catabolism brought on hormonally through bad diet (e.g., Standard American Diet of high carbs and sugar) and chronic cardio (e.g., marathons, jogging).   Because Brent, like many others in our evolutionary community, appreciates the merits of intermittent fasting, he inherently endorses acute catabolism.  So, when he writes  ”catabolism-avoidance” it should not be assumed that you should always be afraid of dipping into the catabolic state.

I don’t mean to speak for him here, but I want to illustrate in this post that catabolism-avoidance means something completely different in the paleo community compared with the layman’s and/or mainstream fitness-health expert’s definition.  The mainstream’s point of view that we should practice  TOTAL catabolism-avoidance (both acute and chronic) is very destructive.  For example, the guy I buy my supplements from at the vitamin store is a body builder who would agree with Brent’s statement, but wouldn’t understand that what Brent is saying is completely different.  This body builder is hopped up on carb drinks, sugar protein shakes, and is eating 6 meals a day.  IF in his routine?  As if!  There’s a difference here in philosophy that needs to be pointed out.

In my studies on the subject, heavily influenced by Dr. De Vany’s take on it, given the non-steady state of the energy landscape from which humanity over millions of years had to had to choose from for fuel, there were dips into the catabolic state.  These were acute catabolic states that happened frequently yet randomly, but not chronically.  In my understanding, that’s what an Intermittent Fast (IF) is all about, recreating the blueprint of a time when we didn’t have such constant access to calories, recreating a hormonal environment based on diet composition and eating frequency for which our endocrinological systems are best adapted .  Certainly, having a meal at 6 or 7pm in the evening, and not eating until breakfast the next morning at 6 or 7am allows for your body to reap some of the benefits of IF.  I’m not going to repeat or reinterpret Professor De Vany’s thoughts on the matter, go to Arthur De Vany’s website for an education of why you don’t need to be afraid of the word “catabolic.”  My purpose in writing the below is just to quickly point out the different view an adherent to evolutionary living has on this word compared with the mainstream.

A non-paleo bodybuilder would have a hard time understanding balancing IF (which is a short term fast that brings on an acute catabolic state) and “catabolism-avoidance”, because for him he can’t see the difference between acute catabolism (via IF) and chronic catabolism (via cardio and bad diet or long-term starvation). The bodybuilder (or runner) as reward for never going into a catabolic state maintains a high insulin level via eating high carbs and 6 meals a day. The piper gets paid in the end when metabolic syndrome inevitably results.

Again, a chronic catabolic state through long term & constant caloric deprivation, which is unfortunately many people’s approach to dieting, can be very harmful in breaking down muscle.  It causes your body to retain fat while you’re hungry because you’re still eating a high % carb diet (causing high insulin) even though you have reduced your caloric intake.  In the end, as you may have experienced, it results in binge eating.  And what is that you binge on?  A plate full of meat and vegetables?  No, after someone starves themselves while still maintaining the standard American diet, they binge on as much bread, pasta, crackers, chips, potatoes, and corn products they can stuff in their faces.

However, the paleo diet allows you to:

-never experience long-term hunger, as you are not counting calories,

-eating until full (an agile fullness),

-and insulin levels spike just a bit after eating fruits and vegetables with moderate levels of carbs

-then low (normal!) insulin levels are restored so that fat stores may be utilized during a brief fast or overnight while sleeping.

Someone who is starving themselves but occasionally eating pieces of bread and potatoes (or candy!) spike their insulin levels very high so even when their cells are screaming in hunger, the insulin (from the high carb shock) doesn’t let them access fat stores.  OK, even with all of that said, when you’re on an Evolutionary Fitness diet, or as it’s called now, New Evolution Diet, even though you cycle energy better by going through glucose and then accessing your free fatty acids, even if you’re not doing IF you still dip into a catabolic state overnight.  Not a bad thing.  Why?  To clean out the waste, the injured parts of cells, the dying cells.  I think it’s worth it to post this large section from Wikipedia below:

Catabolism (Greek kata = downward + ballein = to throw) is the set of metabolic pathways that break down molecules into smaller units and release energy.^[1] In catabolism, large molecules such as polysaccharides, lipids, nucleic acids and proteins are broken down into smaller units such as monosaccharides, fatty acids,nucleotides and amino acids, respectively. As molecules such as polysaccharides, proteins and nucleic acids are made from long chains of these small monomer units (mono = one + mer = part), the large molecules are called polymers (poly = many).

Cells use the monomers released from breaking down polymers to either construct new polymer molecules, or degrade the monomers further to simple waste products, releasing energy. Cellular wastes include lactic acid, acetic acid, carbon dioxide, ammonia, and urea. The creation of these wastes is usually an oxidation process involving a release of chemical free energy, some of which is lost as heat, but the rest of which is used to drive the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). This molecule acts as a way for the cell to transfer the energy released by catabolism to the energy-requiring reactions that make up anabolism. Catabolism therefore provides the chemical energy necessary for the maintenance and growth of cells. Examples of catabolic processes include glycolysis, the citric acid cycle, the breakdown of muscle protein in order to use amino acids as substrates for gluconeogenesis and breakdown of fat in adipose tissue to fatty acids.

There are many signals that control catabolism. Most of the known signals are hormones and the molecules involved in metabolism itself. Endocrinologists have traditionally classified many of the hormones as anabolic or catabolic, depending on which part of metabolism they stimulate. The “classic” catabolic hormones known since the early 20th century are cortisol, glucagon, and adrenaline (and other catecholamines). In recent decades, many more hormones with at least some catabolic effects have been discovered, including cytokines, orexin and hypocretin (a hormone pair), and melatonin.

So, a smart paleo educated person has a different understanding of catabolism-avoidance than a bodybuilder or the layman in general.

-You avoid chronic catabolism by not doing a chronic & constant caloric deprivation diet.

-You avoid chronic catabolism by not having chronic high levels of insulin from eating less % of carbs in your diet.  Chronic catabolism happens at the cellular level when muscular and organ and brain cells become insulin resistant and are deprived of fuel even when you have plenty of fat stores.   The fat is locked essentially so long as your insulin remains at an average high state.  Insulin resistance happens when you’re constantly exposed to high levels of insulin.

-You avoid chronic catabolism by not engaging in chronic jogging and marathoning.

However, you embrace “intermittent catabolism” (e.g., acute catabolic state) by allowing for your body to go 10-14 hours without eating (overnight or skipping a meal or doing an IF), and not spiking your insulin levels before you start this short fast.

An acute catabolic state may be viewed as a spring cleaning for your cells.  This allows for the good stuff to keep growing, weeds not to develop, and lets the dead flowers return to the earth to help the next cycle bloom.  In a jungle or a forest the process happens without a human centrally planning it.  We used to live in that environment, too, as you recall.

A chronic catabolic state is when you start burning chairs for firewood.  You want to avoid that.  After you burn the chairs and the tables, you don’t have anything left to sit on.  Your muscles atrophying into nothing from long term starvation (or inactivity or jogging) leaves you nothing to stand with.

“A wind with a wolf’s head
Howled about our door,
And we burned up the chairs
And sat upon the floor.”

–EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

A chronic anabolic state (caused by eating 6 meals a day, high insulin levels, waking up in the middle of the night to eat) is like the cells becoming the person who’s a pack rat, and never throws out the garbage.

Ironically, this obsession about always being in an anabolic state on a high carb diet will lead to insulin resistance which leads to chronic catabolism at the cellular level, as explained above, with a lot of garbage piling up throughout your body in your adipose (fat) cells and throughout your body (again, go to De Vany’s site, and buy his book due out this coming 2010 summer).  This garbage has a way of accumulating into mountains and smelling really bad when not thrown out.  The smell in our modern times takes on the form of dozens of diseases that weren’t common or even non-existant in the paleo garden.

Thanks to health epistemocrat (Brent’s site) for recently mentioning The Paleo Garden and bestowing us with a Doctorate of Curiosity.  I hope that this post contributes a note or two to the online melody for which health epistemocrat is certainly also very much providing instrumentation.

In our vocab lessons, we’ve discussed glucose and insulin.  Now we’ll talk a bit about the glycemic index.  One of the things to remember is that carbohydrates break down into glucose in your body.  Glucose is commonly called blood sugar, meaning the amount of glucose in your blood.  Glycemic index in a nutshell is not just indicative of how much carbohydrates a food has, but how fast carbs break down into glucose after ingestion to affect your blood sugar level.

In turn, this spike in blood sugar will trigger your pancreas to pulsate out insulin (must click here!).  A huge spike in insulin from chronic ingestions of foods with a high glycemic index is a subject very much explored in detail in Good Calories, Bad Calories.  Certainly, Art’s site is one of the best ones out there that breaks this understanding down into a fitness regiment (there’s more to it than that, but let’s walk before we may run).  Understanding the relationships between carbohydrates, glucose and insulin was THE light bulb moment for me.  So, let’s learn a bit more details.

The glycemic index, glycaemic index, or GI is a measure of the effects of carbohydrates on blood sugar levels. Carbohydrates that break down quickly during digestion, releasing glucose rapidly into the bloodstream, have a high GI; carbohydrates that break down more slowly, releasing glucose more gradually into the bloodstream, have a low GI.  -wikipedia

Here above is a good food pyramid for the glycemic index.  Low glycemic foods (foods with a low carbohydrate content and/or with a slower rate of carbohydrate turning into glucose and raising blood sugar) is at the bottom.  The higher glycemic foods are at the top of this above pyramid.  Kind of interesting how it’s a bit of a flip from the “healthy pyramid” standard which had grains at the bottom for us to eat 6-11 servings per day?  See below.

Hmmm, makes you think, eh?  And if the glycemic index in pyramid form is almost a mirror opposite of what our government approved food pyramid tells us to eat, on that point, why is it that the glycemic index food pyramid looks like a MIRROR IMAGE of The Paleo Diet food pyramid?  So the paleo/evolutionary diet below (except for a bit of grains at the top as a recommendation to eat them in extreme moderation, or not at all!) reflects a similar construct of a diet that humanity ate for millions of years and it just about matches a pyramid representing the glycemic index?  See below.   Hmmm….

So, in summary, is what we’ve been told to eat according to the approved USDA food pyramid heavy on foods with a high glycemic index?  The answer is yes.

If what we’ve been told to eat according to the approved USDA food pyramid is heavy on foods with a high glycemic index, does this mean that these foods have high carbohydrates that break down into glucose and raise our blood sugar to high levels rapidly?  The answer is yes.

If what we’ve been told to eat according to the approved USDA food pyramid is heavy on foods with a high glycemic index, and these foods have high carbohydrates that break down into glucose and raise our blood sugar to high levels rapidly, does this mean that it spikes our insulin levels sky high?  The answer is yes.

Does the updated USDA food pyramid still favor a diet of foods with a high glycemic index? The answer is yes.  See below.  Notice the orange stripe below has the thickest stripe of all with high glycemic foods.

When did the official government recommendation of a low fat/high carbohydrate diet come into effect?  Around ~1977.

What year was the original USDA food pyramid formed? The answer is 1992.

So, with a recommended USDA food pyramid (both historical and current versions) which provides a diet that spikes our insulin levels to unseen levels in human history are the cases of obesity and diabetes growing in the US over the last 30 years since the recommendation of a high carbohydrate/high glycemic diet?  The answer is yes.

So, are you saying that the unprecedented high carbohydrate/high glycemic diet in human history that is being recommended to us and the unprecedented explosion of diabetes and obesity are related?