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Paleo Medicine

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

I’ve always liked the line from Good Will Hunting regarding not underestimating where a novel questioning of the status quo may come from:

Professor Lambeau:

“In 1905 there were hundreds of professors renowned for their study of the universe, but it was a 26 year old Swiss patent clerk, doing physics in his spare time who changed the world. Can you imagine if Einstein would have given that up just to get drunk with his buddies?”

good-will-hunting

By the way, it wasn’t a “Swiss patent clerk”, it was the German-born Einstein working in Switzerland.  But I digress…

What’s unique in the paleo/evolutionary living community is that there are paleo medical professionals who admit what they previously didn’t know and acknowledge that they learned it from people outside of a so-called prerequisite field. There are also many paleo health and fitness professionals rendering nutrition and weight training “treatments” that are doing more for people than any mainstream M.D. pushing a low-fat concoction of horror. In turn, there are a lot of low-fat, low-intensity, heavy on the pasta and cardio type of trainers making a lot of money in appearance fees but whose actual advice isn’t worth a penny compared to a low-carb (normal carb!) doctor’s medical appointment.

In the end, it’s the combination like that of Professor Arthur De Vany, Mark Sisson & Robb Wolf with Drs. Eades, McGuff and Davis (and countless others) that allows for the paleo remnant to see that the clinical and the research minded evidence is out there, understood, explained and offered by the Doc to his patients, by the trainer to his trainee, and by the wise professor to a gathering crowd seeking epistemology.

Mainstream Medicine would like you to ignore evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology and all forms of evolutionary medicine and accept on faith and faith alone the government approved food pyramid, HFCS, and the false correlation of cholesterol & heart disease.  Mainstream Medicine hoists up a cheap sheepskin (educational/medical degree) onto a vanquished and crumbling low-fat/high-carb rampart as if that sheepskin allows for someone to deny gravity (or the existence of insulin).  And in the same breath, they reject all of humanity’s accumulated medical knowledge from the dawn of time until Ancel Keys did his Seven Countries Study with cooked books.  Essentially, such skewed statistics became gospel, and those that questioned “the modern low-fat medicine men” were called witch doctors.

However, the strength of the evolutionary living community is completely opposite.  There are no sacred texts.  The paleo clinicians (the trainers, the crossfitters, the lifters, the reformed carb-addicts) and the paleo doctors are learning with each other.  One group feeding data to the other group and circling back again.

The challenge before you is to learn what all of these different voices are saying. If you’re a doctor, resist pride and understand that the Ancel Keys textbooks you have studied are no more than a bucket of leaches. You’re still required to pay those medical student loans that made you take those Ancel-inspired courses, however, that fact shouldn’t stand in your way.   On the other hand, if you’re a layman, whether a bricklayer, a bodybuilder or a lawyer, resist the temptation of submitting to the “approved” health advice meme. You were never given the full explanation of all of what they said before, so don’t just repeat the words of the medical professionals you see on CNN or on Oprah and accept it as the gospel truth.

ornish1gupta1c16greenedr-oz1

This requires you not to just regurgitate the latest epidemiological statistic paid for by the obligatory interest group, but to actually dig in a bit on the endocrinological basis of the paleo diet. Read up on the evolutionary basis as to why our fast and slow twitch muscles do that they do. Why lifting heavy things beats a spin class. Why a 30 minute walk or jog doesn’t mean you’ve ”earned” your breakfast of a yogurt, bagel and orange juice. Don’t take it all at face value. Cross reference. Google it.

Read The Paleo Diet.

Read Good Calories, Bad Calories.

Read Primal Blueprint.

Read The Protein Power Plan.

Read Body By Science.

Read articles from Nutrition and Metabolism (with a dictionary handy expecting to only understand 30% at first).

Read the dozens of other paleo sites out there of people (whether they have a medical degree or not) performing n=1 methodology (h/t health epistemocrat).

If you can’t explain it in layman’s terms to someone else, you’re not there yet. As a layman or doctor if you can’t politely discuss this with low-fat doctors without posing questions leaving them speechless, you’re not there yet.  I don’t have a cabinet to store this all in, instead it’s stored in the evolutionary living community members I listen to, the things I read, the decisions I make, it’s in the food I eat, it’s in the rest while I sleep, and it’s in the words I offer up to others for their sake in return.

There’s a Native American phrase when praising someone that says,”He/she has strong medicine.” But in the English vernacular that doesn’t mean that the person necessarily had the best pharmacy in the tribe (e.g., really knew about herbs), it could have meant a whole host of things. The person offered good words at a pow-wow or meeting, the person offered good prayers or perhaps provided good spiritual guidance. Maybe, the person was indeed the best at presiding over a religious service. Or, it could actually mean that his/her ability to look for and find herbs for medicinal purposes was second to none.

medicine-wheel03

A couple of weeks ago I made a list of the great evolutionary living sites out there. I made a mistake by putting the group in cardinal order. What I should have done was to describe these sites as members of a “support group” or even a paleo council. So, those that were on my recent list should not be seen as being numbered from 1 to 10, it should be seen rather as a group sitting in a circle, with no distinction of rank or title. They were mentioned because I find them to provide rather good paleo medicine, in the above mentioned sense. Mark Sisson may be the only “medicine” I take on a given day, other times it’s from many others not even on that list.

Learn how to make “medicine” for yourself. This means actually understanding why and what your doctor is prescribing for you. This may indeed require prescription pills under the supervision of a doctor or perhaps even surgery at points in your life.  In no way am I implying that modern medical knowledge shouldn’t be considered, or that you should avoid going to the hospital when you have a broken leg! But remember, just because an Ancel Keys indoctrinated doctor can write a prescription on a pad of paper doesn’t mean that he’s giving good medicine. Thankfully, we have doctors amongst us in this online paleo world that are humble and wise enough to admit to you that they learned about good paleo medicine after years of handing out bad medicine.

Posted in Medicine, The Paleo Garden Party | 5 Comments »

The Golden Rule and Evolution

Monday, January 4th, 2010

A long time ago, there was a place called Eden. Eden was a beautiful garden. And in this garden there was love, there was blood, there was birth, and there was death. And in this garden, people lived.

While living in the garden, even before teeth were sunk into that famous apple, something wondrous happened there. There was fire, and meat roasted on a spit.

The curly wisps of smoke like helixes rose up to the sky out of the flames. And in the smoky air over the years the faces and bodies around the fire began to change.

the-paleo-garden

The people learned to hunt together, for each other. They learned to gather, for each other. What they picked, dug up or stuck with a spear didn’t upset the balance of the garden (just don’t tell that to the mega fauna!). What they ate and metabolized allowed for the various cell colonies and organisms in their bodies to live in harmony. There was balance regarding what the humans took from the garden to eat,… for what they took was needed by the garden to be taken. And that which was taken by the humans to eat provided their hormones and cells an environment in which it was advantageous to work together.

They did on to each other, for themselves and the garden, as they would have each other and the garden do onto them.

But then one day, they ate a forbidden apple from a tree (although it might have really been crushed wheat that was their downfall, perhaps the serpent offered an apple pie?), and obtained a knowledge of agriculture, namely, how to domesticate grains, that challenged the garden’s hunting and gathering way of life. And for this, they were cast out. Out of the garden.

cast-out-of-eden

And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?

Hot ashes for trees?

Hot air for a cool breeze?

Cold comfort for change?

And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?

-from Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”

And humans lived on. They began to grow plants and further domesticate animals.  And thousands of years later, this system provided them food very unlike how it was provided for them when they lived in Eden.

And they began to take more from their gardens than they put back into them. The wheat and corn and sugar and soy and rice began to strip the land of its wealth. They began to fight for the land and water and crops at a scale that brought a level of destruction that was unlike anything ever seen in a tribal war.

They cared not how they treated each other. The Human Action that created the economics of hunting, gathering and trading with each other their fruits and vegetables and meats for mutual health and wealth ceased. They just ignored the fact that their food was making them sick, and instead concentrated on fighting with each other over the power to see who had the authority to dole out the rations from the granaries.

And so appeared a top-down growing model, nothing like a garden, an agricultural system that grew to become based on fiat/paper money and ag subsidies. Their fields produced high fructose corn syrup for gluten and sugar laden foods begotten from an exhausted earth. These strange foods were even fed to their animals (and bees to make honey!), which made the animals as sick as the humans.

And the people cared not what they did onto the earth to grow their food, and the dying earth began to do onto them in the same way back. Famine, drought, and underproduction occasionally took their respective tolls on the centrally planned food system and accompanying centrally planned human societies founded on malinvestments in unhealthy sugars and carb-filled crops using the sandy bedrock of paper money that makes profits turn into debt and bankruptcy via inflation.

10,000 years after their exodus from the garden, the food that the people ate started to cause war among the colonies of cells within their human bodies. The high carbohydrate diet from the grains and sugar caused the adipose tissue to expand and horde nutrients at the expense of the organs and the brain. Hormones that used to work in harmony now spoke past each other in a cacophonous discord causing metabolic syndrome.

What they thought was enough food stored in their granaries was pure sugar, and it began to slowly cause them debt, and cause them to become sick. And they began to realize that what they thought would be enough, wasn’t. And they couldn’t grow enough anymore for everybody. Quite simply, the “real” price of their grains was becoming known, and it was an investment based on incorrect assumptions of currency stability, the food’s health benefits, and the ability of the earth to continue growing in unsustainable ways.

The Golden Rule preached 2,000 years ago which echoed the lost life of the garden, now in this day and age is forgotten by many. But not by all. These teachings are a part of religion for many, they are teachings that I indeed try to follow. There are many who don’t follow a religion, and instead explain the world solely through the scientific method. But these teachings are also part of our evolution, our lives both in and out of the garden, and in our bodies, and amongst our cells. The aspect the Golden Rule plays in our evolution can be understood by those who hold the Golden Rule as part of their religious outlook.

We may not be able to return to Eden, but the Golden Rule applied to evolutionary living will help us find a way to feed each other.  We are now the faces that may be seen through the smoke. We are the ones now sitting around the campfire once again figuring out a way to continue to live for our mutual health and wealth.

fire

Do onto others, as you would have them do onto you. This is part of us, this is how we may evolve if we are to continue.

We are part of this evolution right now.  

Posted in EF-De Vany reference, Granary, Kairos, The Paleo Garden Party | 3 Comments »

Go Theory To Practice, and read this link, and then go here…

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Keith, excuse me for not asking for your permission first, but “The Perfect Storm” sketch picture below distills it all down to the purest element, and I had to share it, and of course properly attribute it at the same time!

I encourage you to click on this link to read “The Looming Health Care Trainwreck” by Keith Norris of Theory to Practice.

Keith’s post was in turn inspired by probably Richard’s greatest piece of writing yet on Free The Animal (as Uncle Lew notes he didn’t even have to say “fuck” once, kinda like Eddie Murphy doing a funny routine without saying “motherfucker”).  Seriously, Richard is a great writer on all things paleo inside and outside the kitchen, but his piece on Registered Dietitians Dispense Only Conventional “Wisdom“ is by far him at his best.

Read both of Keith’s and Richard’s latest pieces linked above.  The paleo community is on fire as of late, and its spreading in a stochastic and non-centrally planned way.  One idea feeds off of another and another.  It’s almost like (paleo) Glasnost ripping apart (lowfat/granary) Soviet propaganda.  I know that there are many low-fat enthusiasts/proponents that have their hearts in the right place, but their foundation of belief is made from a shaky unscientific sandy material of big pharma, big ag, big oil and big government that is not Capitalism, but a twisted form of Corporatism.

My mental definition of corporatism is basically the unholy union of fascism and socialism (pending on the appendage of the beast it’s either one or the other or both).  This beast wears the mask of Capitalism, but it’s nothing more than top-down Corporatism with less capitalism and free market and free choice until the union of fascism and socialism gives way to a purer form of Soviet-like communism.

The Perfect Storm that Keith describes first made us fatter.  It’s starting to pick up speed in making us sicker.  It’s starting to make us poorer.  And given our unsustainable food production system we’re hurdling down the road to become fat, sick, poor, starving people.  Once you go “Paleo” and once you decide that’s how you want to continue living, whatever end of the political spectrum we may find ourselves on these issues encapsulated by Keith’s diagram we are all on the same side of the barricades.  Even those non-paleo types in our midst!, we’re on the same side here, and the curtains hiding the lie must be ripped down.  And until we figure that out, the storm hovers over us, and we will remain in its Metabolic Syndrome Eye.   

Posted in Granary, The Paleo Garden Party | 4 Comments »

A piggyback on Free The Animal post

Saturday, November 28th, 2009

Richard recently posted something titled: Saturated Fat and Coronary Heart Disease, Part III: Cognitive Dissonance

Very well written.  If I had to choose the best way to refute the eternal argument that we evolutionary living enthusiasts must face I would choose this quote:

“The deleterious effects of fat have been measured in the presence of high carbohydrate. A high fat diet in the presence of high carbohydrate is different than a high fat diet in the presence of low carbohydrate.”
Richard Feinman, PhD

The best way to refute some of the opening quotes from the so-called experts (and for other occasions when the low-fat dogma police spew their unfounded claims) is to say this quote over and over.  Feinman is one of the leading researchers out there producing data that will bring down their house of cards:

Read it again, say it out loud as you read it.  Internalize it.

“The deleterious effects of fat have been measured in the presence of high carbohydrate. A high fat diet in the presence of high carbohydrate is different than a high fat diet in the presence of low carbohydrate.”

If one repeats this above quote as a mantra to the low-fat priests whose research now is based more on blind faith to the incorrect “dietary cholesterol causes high cholesterol and heart disease” hypothesis that was essentially unraveled when insulin was more understood, and it became obvious that high blood glucose level from a high carb diet was the true culprit in heart disease and high bad cholesterol (made worse w/ the combo of high carbs and high fat) … well, it shatters their argument.

1. THE WORST: High fat & hight carb/sugar diet.

Low carbers/paleo diet adherents and the low-fat crowd can agree on this!  High fat and high carb/sugar is very destructive.

2. REALLY BAD, ALMOST THE WORST: low fat & high carb/sugar diet

The low-fat crowd made this above recommendation public policy, and look at the horrors it has produced in our society.  They recommend to eliminate/lower animal fat (and almost automatically lower protein) which causes a higher % of carbs to be in one’s diet (carbs that turn into blood sugar upon consumption whether they’re whole grain or not).

The low carbers/paleo diet adherents believe this diet is pretty bad.

High blood glucose causes the inflammation which our body tries to repair by producing cholesterol.  Same thing happens with high fat and high carb diet mentioned as the WORST, but it’s not the fat in diets #1 and #2 that cause the high bad cholesterol, it’s the carbs/sugar!

3. THE BEST WITHOUT QUESTION: high fat & low carb diet And it’s not “Low” carb diet either! It’s normal, NORMAL carbs!  NORMAL LEVEL OF CARBS are eaten in a “low carb diet.”

The low-fat crowd really doesn’t understand the HUGE DIFFERENCE between what we all agree on (low fat & high carb/sugar diet is BAD, e.g., diet #1) and that their recommendation of a low-fat diet with a high carb/sugar content (diet #2) is not the same thing as a high fat diet with low carb/sugar (diet #3).

OK, now, if that was too meandering to follow, please allow me to ask you to read the below once more.

“The deleterious effects of fat have been measured in the presence of high carbohydrate. A high fat diet in the presence of high carbohydrate is different than a high fat diet in the presence of low carbohydrate.”
Richard Feinman, PhD  

Posted in The Paleo Garden Party | 1 Comment »

Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Grass of Forgetfulness

Saturday, October 17th, 2009

I really like a blog called “healthcare epistemocrat”.  This guy is a flat out wicked talented writer.  He’s a public health scholar, adheres to evolutionary living, and a big fan of Nassim Taleb.  You will see this young man testify before congress someday, and I hope it’s sooner rather than later.  People of his generation breaking through the dogma may be the only hope for millions out there.

There was a post not too long ago about personal mythologizing with an ‘n=1‘.

Yes, I think that’s why the Sisson Grok avatar is very powerful.  Like reading a book, you may put your face on the character.  I have found myself from time to time thinking of what would my great^100 grandpa do.  The Paleo Garden’s Lorette has a great collection of writings on the powers of myths in our lives.

Arthur De Vany early this year had a fascinating discussion on the fall of Eden being a metaphor of hunters and gatherers moving into agricultural lifestyles.  Though Art had mentioned the exodus out of the garden into agriculture previously, it was when this article came out that the conversation really heated up.  The discussion that continued among the EF’ers and Art resulted in cataclysmic changes in the mythologies that helped me explain the world.  I started to look at the world when Eden was still here on earth.  When we all still lived in a garden with the flowers, rainbows, fangs, and sharp teeth.  All that beauty, all that brutality.  Yet, of course, profound grace of a mother toward a child and man toward man existed even then.

In many ways, nothing’s changed, I still believe in Eden.  I still believe in the Garden.  I just understand now what the garden was and still is.

If the apple was from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, then Wheat is the Grass of Forgetfulness.   Let us understand wheat, let us understand how for good and bad it has changed human society profoundly and completely.  Metabolic Syndrome, IBS, cancer, MS, (and there are many others) look like they could be caused by this grass.  And let us remember what wheat (and rice, and corn, and potato) has caused us to forget.

Remarkable find: A frieze from Gobekli Tepe

We have forgotten that we used to all live in a garden.  Remember The Paleo Garden.  

Posted in EF-De Vany reference, Kairos, The Paleo Garden Party | 1 Comment »

We’re growing, pass it on!

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Well, we’ve been online now for a 1/4 of the year.  Our first post went up on the brightest day of the year, and just the other day we crossed over to when the days have started to become shorter than the nights.  It’s been great getting your emails of encouragement, and watching the stats show our readership grow every day.  Thanks for dropping by, we hope that in this paleo subculture we offer something unique and complementary to the other great paleo sites you have to choose from.

In the next couple of months we’ll have some of the best paleo original content coming your way.   We encourage you to invite others to join the growing Paleo Garden Party, it keeps us motivated as we’re having fun spreading the word.  

Posted in Kairos, The Paleo Garden Party | No Comments »

The Paleo Garden Party: Invitation to Alec Baldwin (Part III)

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Dear Mr. Alec Baldwin,

Greetings again from The Paleo Garden! In the previous invitations, we realized that we neglected to give some directions as to how to get to the party.

Our bodies for millions of years evolved to eat more or less a balanced ratio of the 3 macronutrients:

-Carbohydrate
-Fat
-Protein

A researcher by the name of Loren Cordain has shown that by looking at archeological records of ancient hunter and gatherer societies as well as modern hunter and gatherer societies, our bodies were not designed to take in such a high percentage of sugar (sucrose and/or fructose) and other carbohydrates from grains and starches.

When carbohydrates are ingested they become glucose in your blood stream (e.g., blood sugar). This causes your insulin levels to spike. Insulin is a hormone that tells your cells to stop releasing fat, and to take in glucose.

With high levels of carbohydrates in your diet, your pancreas is signaled to excrete high levels of insulin, with high levels of insulin, you have no release of fat to use as energy. Instead, your cells only take in and “burn” glucose.

When your muscle and organ tissues are gorged with glucose, your fat cells continue to accept the glucose and become bigger and bigger. Your body has to store all of the excess blood sugar/glucose somewhere.

People become obese and succumb to metabolic syndrome not because of the fat and protein that they eat, they become obese because of:

-High levels of carbohydrates in their diet that turn into glucose which triggers the production of insulin
-Insulin prevents your body from utilizing energy from fat and signals your cells to just intake glucose
-Excess glucose (blood sugar) is stored as fat. Fat can’t be tapped with high levels of glucose and insulin in your blood stream
-Over time, these high levels of insulin cause obesity, hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes, as your fat continues to grow

One of the best essays you can read on this subject is Art De Vany’s “Why We Get Fat.”

Here are some pictures from members in this paleo community here, here, and here. These results came from lowering carbohydrate intake, which lowered glucose in the bloodstream, which lowered insulin secretion, and thus increased the ability to utilize stored fat.

Mr. Baldwin, these are but our interpretations of these directions on how to get to this party, which rests on the shoulders of giants and those that came before us. There is some great research out there and other practitioners who may also lead you here. Again, thank you for your consideration of this invitation, we hope to see you at the garden party. The favor of an RSVP is requested.

Best Regards,

The Paleo Garden  

Posted in EF-De Vany reference, Kairos, The Paleo Garden Party | No Comments »

How much more effective could they be?

Monday, August 17th, 2009

A few months ago on Art’s blog he had an interesting piece about Cynthia Kenyon.  If you want to know more about his comments and those of his enlightened members, go to Art’s site, where it’s much better analyzed than what I write below.  Well, I researched Dr. Kenyon a bit more, read her bio, and was fascinated how she walks the walk regarding applying the findings of her own research in her own life:

Cynthia Kenyon’s eating habits are defined by her ageing research on worms. “There’s a lot of these diets … and what they all have in common is low carb—actually, low glycaemic index carbs,” she says. “That’s not eating the kind of carbohydrates where the sugar gets into your bloodstream very quickly [and stimulates production of insulin].”

“No desserts. No sweets. No potatoes. No rice. No bread. No pasta. When I say ‘no,’ I mean ‘no, or not much,’ she notes. Instead, eat green vegetables. Eat the fruits that aren’t the sweet fruits, like melon. Bananas? Bananas are a little sweet. Meat? Meat, yes, of course. Avocados. All vegetables. Nuts. Fish. Chicken. That’s what I eat. Cheese. Eggs. And one glass of red wine a day.”

Dr. Kenyon founded her own company (disclaimer: I own no shares, I don’t have the honor to know Dr. Kenyon nor anyone who works there).  One of the things that struck me on this website was:

“They discovered that modulating the evolutionary-conserved anti-aging genes and pathways in mammals not only increased lifespan, but also promoted weight loss and increased insulin sensitivity. Accordingly, the Company’s understanding of these pathways has been converted into a platform for the discovery, development of and commercialization of novel pharmaceuticals for the treatment of metabolic diseases such as diabetes and obesity.”

cynthia3

Given Dr. Kenyon’s own “walk the walk” diet, one can only imagine how much more effective her pharmaceuticals could be if one followed an Arthur De Vany Evolutionary Fitness “prescription” building lean muscle mass with a good evolutionary diet, that the good Dr. Kenyon wholeheartedly endorses.  Perhaps, Kenyon’s drugs would kick start the process (e.g., prime the pump) for those lost sugar/fructose addicted souls and would be taken in short duration as an EF diet is transitioned.  Or perhaps, these pharmaceuticals  could be seen as supplements to an evolutionary diet assisting us in retaining and even improving our insulin sensitivity well into our twilight years.

My main point in writing this is that Dr. Kenyon represents a good story.  Let us remember that there are researchers, doctors and whole cadres of various professionals working in labs with the goal of helping mankind.  There are many, like Dr. Kenyon, who have open minds that with their knowledge, recommendation, and coupling of a paleo diet with their respective research a new era may indeed be facilitated.  

Posted in EF-De Vany reference, The Paleo Garden Party | No Comments »

The Paleo Garden Party: Invitation to Alec Baldwin (Part II)

Sunday, August 16th, 2009

Dear Mr. Alec Baldwin,

I hope that you received our first invitation to The Paleo Garden Party. Just in case it got lost in the mail, please allow me to send you this second invitation.

In the paleo garden not so long ago, 100% of humanity only ate meat, fruits and vegetables.

In a standard American diet an average of 55% of caloric intake is from carbohydrates. For thousands of millennia, the human diet consisted of 30-40% carbohydrate with the rest being fat and protein. And of that 30-40% carbohydrate from our diet that we did eat 10,000 years ago and earlier, it was mostly fruits and vegetables with very low carbohydrate content.  There are American households, and I’m sure you’ve seen them, where probably 80-90% of their diet is sugar, grains, and starch which means 90% is carbs.

So, here in the “modern” world we have significantly increased carbohydrate intake, while at the same time hardly eating any fruits and vegetables. So, if 10,000 years ago and earlier early humans’ caloric intake consisted of 30% carbohydrate from fruits and vegetables, but now for some carbohydrate intake is 90% and very little fruits and vegetables are eaten, how is this possible?

-Sugar and sugar water (soda, juice, energy drinks, coffee/tea with heaps of sugar)

-Processed food consisting of:

1. Corn (and in liquid form, High Fructose Corn Syrup)

2. Rice

3. Potatoes

4.  Wheat

How much of these foods did we eat before the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago?

Zip. Nado. Zero.

Our diet for millions of years consisted of just meat, fruits, vegetables, and fresh water. That’s what we ate, that’s what we evolved to eat.

I was in the supermarket and family after family had loaded on their shopping carts, cases and cases of sugar water: soda, juices, flavored teas, energy drinks bursting with sugar. Boxes of carb-loaded pastas, snacks, etc. If indeed the average is 55% caloric intake from carbohydrates, you can be sure that half that carbohydrate intake didn’t come from leafy vegetables and fruits. No way. The caloric intake is all from sugary products and/or flour-potato-corn-rice products laden with sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

A new health movement is growing based on research on the evolutionary diet. Folks in this community are a diverse lot. We’d also invite you to take a look at some of the “everyday” men and women who are following this evolutionary diet:

-Son of Grok
-Free the Animal
-Jimmy Moore’s Livin the Vida Low Carb
-Theory To Practice

Again, thank you for your consideration of this invitation, we hope to see you at the garden party. The favor of an RSVP is requested.

Sincerely,

The Paleo Garden  

Posted in Kairos, The Paleo Garden Party | No Comments »

Nutrition and Metabolism Society, and their petition to get the NIH to take heed

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009


I had the honor to speak with Dr. Richard Feinman of Nutrition and Metabolism this evening.   It was very useful to get some professional/personal mentoring from the Michael Jordan of restricted carb diet research.  He’s a great guy, and was gracious to give me some time in his busy schedule.

Dr. Feinman has been interviewed on a number of occassions by the great Jimmy Moore, I encourage you to check out these and all of the interviews on Livin’ The Vida Low Carb podcast show and blog.

One of my many questions to him was how can we here at The Paleo Garden help fight the fight to bring the evolutionary/paleo diet to more people who deserve a better life.  His response was simple, assist in the facilitation of “banding together.”

So, I know other sites have maybe already posted this, and perhaps readers out there have already taken it, but I ask you to please consider filling out this online petition so the NIH may take heed and acknowledge science.  For those other great lowcarb/paleo/primal/EF sites out there, please consider posting the below on your sites, and for all of the readers out there, please pass this along!  

Some background regariding this petition

New England Journal of Medicine published the ACCORD study results. “We investigated whether intensive therapy to target normal glycated hemoglobin levels would reduce cardiovascular events in patients with type 2 diabetes” (intensive therapy meant intensive drug therapy).

Conclusion:
“As compared with standard therapy, the use of intensive therapy to target normal glycated hemoglobin levels for 3.5 years increased mortality and did not significantly reduce major cardiovascular events. These findings identify a previously unrecognized harm of intensive glucose lowering in high-risk patients with type 2 diabetes.”

An elementary understanding of science lets one recognize that it is likely the treatment (intensive drug therapy) that has the (unrecognized?) harm. A substantial background of studies shows that not reducing glycated hemoglobin is a health risk.
It is the absence of any consideration of dietary carbohydrate restriction, the most safe and effective method of improving glycemic control that is so objectionable.

Scientists are stymied. Fighting with the NIH is not simple, generally not a career builder, and the number of people involved in this trial is in the hundreds. Only the public can help. We need your help in reaching them.

Please ask your readers to contribute by signing this petition.

Thank you.

Richard Feinman
Professor of Biochemistry
Founder, Metabolism Society
www.nmsociety.org

Posted in Kairos, The Paleo Garden Party | No Comments »

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