Paleo Diet: Raw Paleo Diet and Lifestyle Forum
Raw Paleo Diet Forums => Health => Topic started by: chris h laing on June 06, 2009, 08:51:34 pm
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So I've been trying to gain weight for a long time, at first on a high pro, low carb, high fat diet, but I guess my body doesn't digest fat well at all, so I was constipated all the time, and I didn't gain any weight. Now I've switched to a high pro, high carb, low fat diet, and I'm only constipated on some days, but most days I am fine. I have also started to finally gain some weight.
But now I am getting these god awful migraines. Last night was the third week in a row for me to get one on fri night/sat morning.
I'm thinking maybe its all the increased sugar intake, because my high carbing has come from all fruits because they are more calorie dense which makes it easier to gain the weight.
Heres a little background info if it helps. I strength train three times a week, judo twice a week, and tricking./tumbling twice a week. I weight 140-145, and am 5'9. Recently I have been eating around 210g protein daily, and 270g carbs daily, with minimal fat.
Anybody know what might be causing these migraines or what I should change in my diet to make them stop?
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Could very well be the minimal fat. Fat and protein are the 2 most important nutrients, as they have diverse forms that cannot be manufactured in the body (unlike carbs which generally all end up the same way in the blood stream - glucose). Fat is also a powerful source of energy, far superior to carbs. Tho I will give you that carbs can help you gain weight.
What kind of protein and fat did you eat on your high fat / high pro diet? Was your carbs zero or almost zero? Some people don't do well with that few carbs, and even so, there is generally an adjustment period. Maybe you could try an equal carb/fat/protein ratio, and experiment from there?
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Thanks for the reply guittarman. From what I've read on these forums you seem to know a lot about the paleo diet, so thanks for helping me out.
And with regards to your question, I started off doing the zone, so I had a pretty good balance of protein, carbs, and fat. Then I starting leaning out too much, so I dropped some carbs and upped the fat. Thats when I started to get all my digestive problems. So i added the carbs back in, and dropped the fat. Dropping the fat completely has left me without my digestive problems, but now I have the migraines.
My carbs when I was low carbing were very low. I would only eat veggies, mostly broccoli, except for a piece of fruit after a workout. I feel I had already gone through the period where my body shifts from using carbs to using fat as the energy source during my days with the rx'd zone, so I dont think that was part of it.
And I am thinking about trying something like a more balanced diet, by slowly reintroducing fat back into my diet.
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But You didn't tell us whether your low-carb diet was raw or cooked - it's a vital question :)
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all of my meat was always cooked, i think id have a hrd time with raw meat...
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all of my meat was always cooked, i think id have a hrd time with raw meat...
How do you cook your meat?
I experimented with cooked meat using grilling while trying homo optimus diet and it made me feel bad.
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That can definitely make a differnce, depending on the meat and how it's prepared. For example if you're eating fried chicken and well done meat and lots of extracted oils (vegetable, coconut, olive, nuts, etc), then I can see how that would cause problems.
Have you thought about eating rare steak? If you upped the intake of rare cooked fatty beef, you might do better on reduced carbs.
Not sure how you eat your veggies, but there's a good case to be made for eating your them cooked instead of raw. Too much raw veggies can give me a headache - I do fine on fruit tho - avocado, tomato, peppers, all fruit.
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I agree. Too much raw veg can be a problem re digestion(though a little raw veg is fine). So go for fruit.
And cooked animal fat is the unhealthiest kind of food there is, other than trans-fats. Animal fats are particularly badly affected by cooking, and produce far more heat-created toxins than other types of cooked food such as cooked veg or cooked, lean meat. Constipation is also an issue:-
http://www.youngerthanyourage.com/13/constipation.htm
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I was rid of migraines three weeks after beginning paleo. Forever.
At the time, my version was animal fat, raw meat, raw egg yolks and a little cooked veg.
I tried veggy fat years later, and the migraines did not return, but I also got cravings which tell me that veggy fat is not the way (and not paleo either).
BTW raw meat goes down a lot easier if it is grassfed organic and dried. The animal fat is still essential, proven for me because I get low fat headaches if I eat only jerky.
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And cooked animal fat is the unhealthiest kind of food there is, other than trans-fats.
I have to disagree with that. I would bet you my house that if I ate 100% cooked animal fat and you ate 100% white sugar you would die first and be in constant agony from head aches and mood swings within a couple of days. There are many foods, including all the neolithic ones, that I believe are more unhealthy than cooked animal fat. I think you're putting too much stock in that list of toxins, when we all know it was when people started consuming cooked plant oils and more carbs that most modern diseases began, not when people started consuming cooked animal fats.
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And cooked animal fat is the unhealthiest kind of food there is, other than trans-fats.
I have to disagree with that. I would bet you my house that if I ate 100% cooked animal fat and you ate 100% white sugar you would die first and be in constant agony from head aches and mood swings within a couple of days.
Well, you would obviously lose the bet , as that involves wild exaggeration. Anyone could survive for a week or more just eating 100% sugar. Hell, there were times , pre-rawpalaeodiet, when I would just eat sugar-heavy Mars bars(or other sugar-heavy snack) and drink coffee or water every day for a week or more(I had no money at the time, being a student). Sure, it didn't help my health but I certainly didn't die from it.
Of course, it's all a bad analogy as peoples' cooked animal fat-intake generally comes with protein(and carbs for many) and sugar is only ever used as a topping not as a main food, by itself. And eating 100% cooked animal fat(no protein or carbs whatsoever) would , in the long run, be just as deadly as eating 100% sugar - no one can survive on such an extreme mono-diet.
There are many foods, including all the neolithic ones, that I believe are more unhealthy than cooked animal fat. I think you're putting too much stock in that list of toxins, when we all know it was when people started consuming cooked plant oils and more carbs that most modern diseases began, not when people started consuming cooked animal fats.
Unfortunately, the claim that modern diseases only began when cooked-plant-oils and more carbs came into the diet, is completely wrong, something invented by Weston-Price and frequently contradicted by others.
For example, there's the Kitavans who had roughly the same levels of health as the Inuit or any other native-tribe(that's not saying much), but who also happened to eat a diet consisting of 69% carbs.
Then, as regards the carbs comment, I notice that zero-carbers and even weston-price-followers love to use the general term "carbs" to describe the damage to health done in the Neolithic. But when we look at the actual evidence, one sees that the decrease in health in the Neolithic had nothing to do with carbs in general, but was mostly due to grains and dairy(and possibly legumes). Fruit/veg didn't cause such problems in the Neolithic era, clearly, as Palaeo peoples did not suffer from fruit/veg-intake, by contrast(palaeo peoples were indisputably healthier than those in the Neolithic, after all).
The other common point made by RVAFers is the notion that all those modern hunter-gatherer tribes Weston-Price looked at, were 100% healthy. Weston-Price was somewhat misguided, believing in a sort of nonexistent Rousseau-esque "Noble Savage" Utopian diet/lifestyle, so he deliberately ommitted certain crucial facts. For example, modern scientists have pointed out that one of the primary reasons why such tribes looked, at first glance, to be healthy, was because of the great deal of daily physical exercise they had to endure.Now, as any decent doctor will tell you, doing high levels of (natural) exercise will help reduce many symptoms of modern diseases.For example, I recall posting on rawpaleodiet a study re the Masai where scientists showed that the Masai had the same atherosclerotic(hardening of the arteries) tendency as Westerners, which was alleviated, to some extent, by hard daily exercise:-
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/95/1/26
(atherosclerosis is one of the main conditions affected by toxins in cooked foods, particularly cooked animal foods)
The other problems with Weston-Price's analysis is that he judged his subjects solely on personal appearance. It is extremely likely, also, that he only chose the photos of those tribespeople who proved his hypothesis, while discarding the rest(there were no independent observers/researchers involved, after all, and personal bias is endemic throughout the scientific community).
Also, it has been shown, again and again, that the lives of native tribes were nasty, brutish, and short, involving frequent famine(and the occasional feast). Also, these tribes would routinely eliminate any defective children during very early infancy as they, unlike modern Westerners, didn't have the resources/facilities needed to care for them for the rest of their lives. So, Weston-Price's claims, based on frequent photos of healthy adults, that native tribespeople were born/raised with fewer defects than Westerners, solely due to their diet, is quite misleading, as it doesn't take that factor into account.
Anyway, this and numerous other studies routinely show that ingestion of high amounts of cooked animal fat is very bad for you. I see this also in my everyday life. Those older people I know who live off diets high in plant-foods and plant-oils like olive-oil(with the plant-foods mostly steamed or only lightly-cooked) are the ones living the longest, whereas those eating diets high in cooked-animal-food quickly start dying after reaching a certain age. Now, granted, being on such plant-heavy diets means that they suffer from frequent nutritional deficiencies and suffer awful pains(the main reason they avoid (cooked) animal foods is because that aggravates their arthritis/joint-issues), all of which they try to alleviate, partially, by taking numerous mineral etc. supplements every day, but at least they're alive, unlike the ones eating lots of cooked animal food.
*That comment re cooked-animal-fat-consumers reminds me of Stephen Byrnes, who constantly championed a weston-price diet online for years , but who died at the age of 41!"*
That's the trouble with raw animal food diets, while Aajonus is such an obviously dodgy figure, rather too many people believe every one of Weston-Price's claims. I'll sooner or later have to debunk Weston-Price(and Aajonus) on rawpaleodiet.com Ah well, more work for me.
Lastly, I'm not sure one can simply label 1 particular food as definitely being worse than another. There are so many differences. For example, cooked intensively-farmed veal is virtually worthless as a food, whereas raw, 100% grassfed bison/beef tongue is very healthy indeed. Same goes for sugar. White, refined sugar is undoubtedly not worth much
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When I said 100% sugar I meant that, just sugar; vs. just fat.
About the health problems being caused by dairy/grains rather than just carbs, I would posit that dairy/grains are the greatest source of carbs in human diet and therefore you cannot use that as an argument for carbs but against those foods. As for fruit, please show me a significant caloric source of fruit from the wild and I could begin to believe that paleolithic peoples ate more than a modest 5% at most averaged out over the year of carbs.
But I would take anyone up on this challenge, I will eat only rendered animal fat for a while and see what happens, and the other person only refined sugar. Pure fat vs. pure sugar.
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I disagree with that Masai study. I think it's clear that exercise is hardly effective at protecting from disease. If they truly ate a diet that promoted artery damage like a SAD nothing could protect nearly the entire population. Researches 'speculate' that exercise protected them from heart disease. I speculate they don't know what they are looking for and are confused.
I would have to say cooked low carb diets are healthier than cooked or even raw diets with excessive carbohydrates
http://www.apinchofhealth.com/resources/lowcarb/low-carb-research.html
There are many studies correlating health improvements from low carb diets which are based around cooked grain fed meat. Nearly all studies showing (cooked) meat to cause bad health have not controlled for carbohydrates at all.
Diet's high in plant food tend to be healthier through better cooking methods and less processed food eg. Japanese food - raw fish, steamed rice, vegetables, beef, pork vs SAD of coke, pizza, fried meat, white flour, cookies, chocolates etc. Even if the ratio of plants:meat and macro nutrients were the same a SAD would still be far more detrimental to one's health.
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I disagree with that Masai study. I think it's clear that exercise is hardly effective at protecting from disease. If they truly ate a diet that promoted artery damage like a SAD nothing could protect nearly the entire population. Researches 'speculate' that exercise protected them from heart disease. I speculate they don't know what they are looking for and are confused.
Hehe, yeah so over rated and often even harmful
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I still think 5% is still way too high.
Is excercise that important? look at Lex he just gets healthier and healthier!
5% would be way too low for any palaeo tribes in the tropics. I'm afraid that zero-carbers have only the Inuit/Arctic tribes to draw upon, so that they make the false assumption that every other Palaeo tribe, even in the tropics, also ate zero-carb - an incredibly unlikely scenario.
Re Exercise:- Exercise is, indeed, vitally important as well as being an inescapable aspect of palaeo lifestyle. Examinations of palaeo bones have routinely shown that palaeo humans had daily exercise levels(and physiques) at levels far beyond most modern men(equivalent to Olympic athletes or above). Yet, Lex appears to admit that his exercise levels are nonexistent, by contrast.
Besides, the fact that exercise shows such benefits re removing unhealthy symptoms from people, is strongly indicative of its necessity. On an anecdotal level, I've found that my skin positively glows and that my circulation improves etc. when I do a lot of exercise - this cannot solely be ascribed to the sun/vitamind etc. as I've gotten the same effect from doing exercise indoors in the gym.
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I disagree with that Masai study. I think it's clear that exercise is hardly effective at protecting from disease. If they truly ate a diet that promoted artery damage like a SAD nothing could protect nearly the entire population. Researches 'speculate' that exercise protected them from heart disease. I speculate they don't know what they are looking for and are confused.
Unfortunately for you, 1000s of studies show that exercise negates or alleviates damage from heart-disease. So, this is nonsensical. The fact of the matter is that that study shows very clearly that the Masai had a strong tendency towards arterial hardening, despite their diet. If their diet were truly healthy, one wouldn't even expect to find that.
I would have to say cooked low carb diets are healthier than cooked or even raw diets with excessive carbohydrates
http://www.apinchofhealth.com/resources/lowcarb/low-carb-research.html
There are many studies correlating health improvements from low carb diets which are based around cooked grain fed meat. Nearly all studies showing (cooked) meat to cause bad health have not controlled for carbohydrates at all.
Unfortunately, a far greater multitude of studies all show that the higher the proportion of cooked, grainfed meats/animal food there is in the diet, the higher the mortality-rate is. The claims re grainfed meat being better are in very tiny numbers, by comparison, and that usually means that the latter studies are hopelessly flawed(science operates by concencus, after all, with credence being given more to the majority as, inevitably, no matter how rigorously studies are performed, there will always be a minority which have been badly performed.
Diets high in plant food tend to be healthier through better cooking methods and less processed food eg. Japanese food - raw fish, steamed rice, vegetables, beef, pork vs SAD of coke, pizza, fried meat, white flour, cookies, chocolates etc. Even if the ratio of plants:meat and macro nutrients were the same a SAD would still be far more detrimental to one's health.
I'll concede that many of the older people I know
who eat plant-rich diets often
tend to eat the plant-food lightly-cooked, but that just emphasises how much more important it is to eat raw than the issue of eating meat instead of plants.
And it's certainly highly intriguing that vegetarians do better than SAD-eaters(or cooked low-carbers for that matter(re longevity/heath studies on 7th-day-adventists etc.)) - and one has to bear in mind that vegetarians commonly go in for very highly processed meat/animal-food substitutes like tofu unlike cooked-low-carbers.
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About the health problems being caused by dairy/grains rather than just carbs, I would posit that dairy/grains are the greatest source of carbs in human diet and therefore you cannot use that as an argument for carbs but against those foods. As for fruit, please show me a significant caloric source of fruit from the wild and I could begin to believe that paleolithic peoples ate more than a modest 5% at most averaged out over the year of carbs.
Dairy isn't that much a source of carbs. That's only claimed for milk, if that. Butter and others are far less carb-filled. And given that fruit and veg are routinely described as part of a "palaeo" diet, c.35% carbs being most commonly cited, it's absurd to suggest that carbs were hardly or never consumed in the Palaeolithic era - at the very least, a figure of less than 5% carbs is a decidedly minority view among researchers, except as regards Arctic areas.
Re palaeolithic-era carb-content:- The big problem with evidence from Palaeo times is that evidence of organic matter is virtually nonexistent. The only evidence that is difficult but easier to find than the rest is evidence of bones(in other words, signifying plant-matter). The result has been that, until c.a few years ago, researchers concentrated on the carnivory aspect of the human diet. However, as science has advanced, better methods have been found which have determined the plant-consumption in the Palaeolithic era, and which are now, progressively debunking the notion of minimal carb-consumption in the Palaeolithic era:-
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=20430335
As regards fruit-consumption , nowadays, that's irrelevant. As people have pointed out, many times before, in newspapers et al, there are no truly wild areas, any more. Supposedly wild places like the Scottish Highlands, being full of heather, turned out to have been filled with forests before humans destroyed them all, over time. Also, I can only relate from my own experience in childhood,
that when I went into much less civilised countryside-/woodland
areas than usual, that I would, increasingly, find more and more sources of raw carbs such as garlic leaves by the multitude(enough to feed entire tribes for ages), along with fruits during certain seasons etc. And this is at a time when wild areas have been practically ruined by human management/expansion. Imagine how much more plentiful the plant-food-sources would have been in the Palaeolithic era, being largely untouched.
But I would take anyone up on this challenge, I will eat only rendered animal fat for a while and see what happens, and the other person only refined sugar. Pure fat vs. pure sugar.
Rendered animal fat, like suet, would, presumably still have protein in it. Even suet, according to the USDA nutrient database, has 1.5 % protein in it. So, realistically, it's absurd to separate the various different substances within foods, as they are all over the place - even raw liver contains some carbs as do raw oysters etc.
Therefore, such an experiment would be dud. Plus, if we are talking about white, refined sugar, which is at the end of 1 extreme, then for comparison , one would have to eat cooked animal fat(along with trans-fats produced by excessive-cooking, such as found in McDonalds). And, if we are pressing the point of raw vs cooked, then 1 person would have to eat raw cane for the sugar(where the hell could that be gotten?), while the other person would have to eat the cooked animal fat at an extremely high temperature(to the point of being charred)
, so as to justify the notion that cooking isn't really all that harmful.
By the way, if you counter-claim that lightly-cooked animal food isn't "all that" harmful whereas white, refined sugar is, that is not a fair comparison. After all, examples of very sugary but healthy foods being OK include raw fruit - refined, white sugar is at 1 extreme, while heavily-cooked grainfed meat(and similiar crap) is at the other extreme.
Anyway, the whole issue is a bit absurd as our teeth/guts etc. are clearly designed for omnivorous diets.
At any rate, I am not disputing that eating 100% sugar is bad for one, I am stating that eating just 100% cooked animal fat(0% protein) would be equally deadly if eaten for long enough.
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"Anyway, this and numerous other studies routinely show that ingestion of high amounts of cooked animal fat is very bad for you. I see this also in my everyday life. Those older people I know who live off diets high in plant-foods and plant-oils like olive-oil(with the plant-foods mostly steamed or only lightly-cooked) are the ones living the longest, whereas those eating diets high in cooked-animal-food quickly start dying after reaching a certain age."
How do you know that it is the fat in the cooked animal food that is the most detrimental for health ?
To my knowledge, saturated fat is less prone to oxidation than unsaturated plant oil, and can resist high temperature.
People eating a diet high in plant are the one who generally take more care to their health than people who eat a diet high in cooked animal food (including processing meat, dairy, etc.). They smoke less, drink less alcohol, coffee, exercice more, etc. On has to see the entire picture, not only what's in the plate.
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So I've been trying to gain weight for a long time, at first on a high pro, low carb, high fat diet, but I guess my body doesn't digest fat well at all, so I was constipated all the time, and I didn't gain any weight. Now I've switched to a high pro, high carb, low fat diet, and I'm only constipated on some days, but most days I am fine. I have also started to finally gain some weight.
But now I am getting these god awful migraines. Last night was the third week in a row for me to get one on fri night/sat morning.
Anybody know what might be causing these migraines or what I should change in my diet to make them stop?
From my experience, the cause was mineral deficiency, and raw meat paleodiet fixed it.
It might not be just carbs, but what kind of carbs, as they all have some kind of nutrient blockers. If you must eat the pesky things, try whatever carb does not block magnesium uptake, and wastes the least potassium.
Aajonus claims that fat is a solvent and lubricant as well as energy source and nutrient, so more animal fat should relieve constipation.
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"Anyway, this and numerous other studies routinely show that ingestion of high amounts of cooked animal fat is very bad for you. I see this also in my everyday life. Those older people I know who live off diets high in plant-foods and plant-oils like olive-oil(with the plant-foods mostly steamed or only lightly-cooked) are the ones living the longest, whereas those eating diets high in cooked-animal-food quickly start dying after reaching a certain age."
How do you know that it is the fat in the cooked animal food that is the most detrimental for health ?
To my knowledge, saturated fat is less prone to oxidation than unsaturated plant oil, and can resist high temperature.
People eating a diet high in plant are the one who generally take more care to their health than people who eat a diet high in cooked animal food (including processing meat, dairy, etc.). They smoke less, drink less alcohol, coffee, exercice more, etc. On has to see the entire picture, not only what's in the plate.
The trouble is that the much older people I'm referring to are mostly in their 70s and 80s, and therefore tend to do very limited exercise(many do none at all, a few do a couple of hours a week at most). A few smoke, a few don't drink alcohol at all(most do drink).
. The reason they do so little exercise is because they all have arthritis by that age so that it is quite painful for them to exercise too frequently.They also tend to avoid cooked animal food as it tends to aggravate such age-related symptoms.
Also, the various studies all seem to agree on this issue:- that cooked animal food contains way more AGEs than cooked plant-food and that cooked animal fat outperformed protein(or plant-fat) in terms of toxic AGE-creation. Here is a study, where butter(very high in saturated fats) is shown to be an extreme AGE-creator when heated:-
www.newcastleyoga.com.au/links/Food%20AGEs%20text.pdf
Now, granted that the relevant studies don't necessarily isolate the various fats(PUFAs/MUFAs/SFAs) from each other as they're more concerned with analysing the AGE-content of foods as a whole.But it is telling that other studies which don't necessarily focus on heat-created toxins like AGEs, do tend to single out those foods with the highest (cooked) saturated fats-content as being the most damaging/toxic. I think the exception is coconut oil, high in saturated fat, but, from what I understand, it's not usually heated as much as animal foods prior to consumption(?).
Now, of course, animal foods usually tend to be cooked, by most people. at higher temperatures than vegetables(the latter are often steamed or boiled), so there is that to be taken into account, but studies like the above one measured the various foods at the same temperatures, each time.
I suppose 1 explanation could be that while saturated fats are less prone to oxidation in a general sense, they are simply more prone to producing heat-created toxins. Those 2 are not necessarily the same.
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Unfortunately for you, 1000s of studies show that exercise negates or alleviates damage from heart-disease. So, this is nonsensical. The fact of the matter is that that study shows very clearly that the Masai had a strong tendency towards arterial hardening, despite their diet. If their diet were truly healthy, one wouldn't even expect to find that.
Never seen anything conclusive. Athletes eating SAD have heart attacks or get cancer often.
Unfortunately, a far greater multitude of studies all show that the higher the proportion of cooked, grainfed meats/animal food there is in the diet, the higher the mortality-rate is. The claims re grainfed meat being better are in very tiny numbers, by comparison, and that usually means that the latter studies are hopelessly flawed(science operates by concencus, after all, with credence being given more to the majority as, inevitably, no matter how rigorously studies are performed, there will always be a minority which have been badly performed.
I haven't seen studies showing that increasing meat intake is bad when the rest of the diet is controlled. The studies showing (cooked) meat to be bad are done on high carbohydrate diets, which is the actual problem there. No studies show low carb diets full of cooked meat to make people's health worse than SAD.
Of course raw meat is healthier than cooked meat, but from my experience and data I've looked at carbohydrates and particularly very processed carbohydrates are worse than cooked meat
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Exercise most certainly DOES help improve overall health, whether you're RP or not. It helps to increase insulin sensitivity (which inevitably tends to decline with age). It keeps your muscles and tendons strong and flexible, helps keep your joints functional. It induces increased production of testosterone and growth hormone which help maintain youth and vigor. It helps to keep you strong and keep your bones dense for those times when you have to lift and move stuff (thus helping to prevent injury). It helps keep your cardiovascular system strong. There are numerous studies demonstrating increased mental acquity and capacity in those that exercise vs those that do not; and even more compelling are studies indicating that physcial activity has effects on childrens' performance on intelligence exams.
-- "but look at elite athletes and their average longevity, it's much shorter than the average person." A poor argument: athletes often take performance enhancing drugs above the norm- which are not longevity increasing. But I will give you this: If you are an elite type athlete, even on RP, I would suspect a somewhat shorter life b/c your body has spent a lot of it's energy on growth and metabolism. From what I understand, cells can only divide so many times before they are spent. But the differences that occur in the body as a result of moderate exercise promotes longevity, and more importantly, quality of life.
--"athletes die of heart attacks and cancer all the time." No one said exercise was a 100% way to never have that happen no matter how you eat.
Cooked fat vs cooked carbs: There are so many different types of fat, essential, non-essential, 6 and 3s, and on. Many of these are used for very specific functions and are most effectively utilized when in their pure and unadulterated state. Fats' composition is corrupted by heat - the amount of heat necessary to chemically alter depends on the fat, but these alterations leave many compounds in the product that negatively affect the health of the body. This is in addition to the bio-chemical differences induced by the altered fats themselves. Carbs however, even when cooked, by and large end up as glucose in the blood stream. Sugars aren't as affected by heat, they tend to just remain sugars. I'm sure there are likely toxins in cooked fruits/veggies as well, but I'm guessing they are MUCH fewer than in fats. Both products have a loss of nutrients and enzymes.
Now both cooked fats and excess carbs (cooked or not) will contribute to heart disease. I'm not sure the mechanism by which fats contribute (Tyler seems to have done a lot of study on AGEs and other toxins), but the mechanism by which excess carbs do the same thing is insulin resistance. I won't get into all of it here, but obesity, high/bad cholesterol, diabetes, all have a root in insulin resistance, which occurs b/c of the overconsumption of carbs.
So everyone has their differing views on where we make our 'cheats' but for these reasons, I generally make my cheats in the direction of cooked, sometimes even non-paleo carbs, since insulin resistance takes years to develop, and I can mitigate the effects anyways with strength training. I still try to separate them from meat due to the digestive issues when combining.
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ps: glucose itself does not cause direct damage to the body, whereas toxins and altered fats do.
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ps: glucose itself does not cause direct damage to the body, whereas toxins and altered fats do.
Some groups of people in South East (China, Japan) ate high-carb diet and lived very long (above 100 years)
but their carbs aren't definitetely our carbs
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Also, the various studies all seem to agree on this issue:- that cooked animal food contains way more AGEs than cooked plant-food and that cooked animal fat outperformed protein(or plant-fat) in terms of toxic AGE-creation. Here is a study, where butter(very high in saturated fats) is shown to be an extreme AGE-creator when heated:-
www.newcastleyoga.com.au/links/Food%20AGEs%20text.pdf
Now, granted that the relevant studies don't necessarily isolate the various fats(PUFAs/MUFAs/SFAs) from each other as they're more concerned with analysing the AGE-content of foods as a whole.But it is telling that other studies which don't necessarily focus on heat-created toxins like AGEs, do tend to single out those foods with the highest (cooked) saturated fats-content as being the most damaging/toxic. I think the exception is coconut oil, high in saturated fat, but, from what I understand, it's not usually heated as much as animal foods prior to consumption(?).
Now, of course, animal foods usually tend to be cooked, by most people. at higher temperatures than vegetables(the latter are often steamed or boiled), so there is that to be taken into account, but studies like the above one measured the various foods at the same temperatures, each time.
I suppose 1 explanation could be that while saturated fats are less prone to oxidation in a general sense, they are simply more prone to producing heat-created toxins. Those 2 are not necessarily the same.
In this study, olive oil contains a high amount of AGEs, so the old people you refer to should be in a better shape for other reasons than the use of vegetable oil. For exemple, the way they cook their food generates less AGEs than the way meat eater generally do.
I indeed wonder if the difference between the amount of AGEs from cooking plants and animal foods is maiinly because of the way they are cooked : "Foods that are composed mostly of carbohydrates, eg, starches, fruits, vegetables, and milk, contain the lowest AGE concentrations. However, within this group, commercially prepared breakfast foods and snacks show signi?cant AGE content".
Can you elaborate on the heat-created toxins from satured fat ?
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Never seen anything conclusive. Athletes eating SAD have heart attacks or get cancer often.
Given that professional athletes routinely doctor themselves with performance-enhancing drugs/steroids as a matter of routine, it's hardly surprising that many eventually get heart-attacks etc(bodybuilders are the worst, in this regard). However, that doesn't change the fact that exercise improves the various health-markers in the body.
I haven't seen studies showing that increasing meat intake is bad when the rest of the diet is controlled. The studies showing (cooked) meat to be bad are done on high carbohydrate diets, which is the actual problem there. No studies show low carb diets full of cooked meat to make people's health worse than SAD.
The trouble with this notion is that the multitude of studies don't merely state that (cooked) animal food is bad for you but they also state that the health-problems become steadily worse the higher the amounts of (cooked) animal food there is in the diet. So the cooked carbs can't be as much of a problem if health-problems increase as cooked-animal food-consumption increases in the subjects' diet while plant-food-consumption in the diet decreases.
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In this study, olive oil contains a high amount of AGEs, so the old people you refer to should be in a better shape for other reasons than the use of vegetable oil. For exemple, the way they cook their food generates less AGEs than the way meat eater generally do.
The old people I referred to didn't necessarily souse all their foods with vegetable-oils , just used them with salads(which, though, do appear to be more frequently consumed than meats by these people). AFAIK, even non-raw olive-oil isn't as heavily heated pre-sale as meat is when it's cooked, so that would mean that they would be less affected by AGEs.
I indeed wonder if the difference between the amount of AGEs from cooking plants and animal foods is maiinly because of the way they are cooked : "Foods that are composed mostly of carbohydrates, eg, starches, fruits, vegetables, and milk, contain the lowest AGE concentrations. However, within this group, commercially prepared breakfast foods and snacks show signi?cant AGE content".
The study I linked to carefully heated all the various foods in the same way yet still showed that cooked-plant-foods had less AGE-levels than cooked animal foods at the various different stages,so the amount of AGE-creation can't be due to the differences between the way animal-foods and plant-foods are cooked.
Can you elaborate on the heat-created toxins from satured fat ?
That's the trouble. So far, most of the studies have focused only on the amounts of AGEs/advanced glycation end products in cooked-diets in general. A rather smaller number of studies have focused on the average AGE-content of particular foods, with none really studying saturated fats in isolation. At least, this study on cooking suet(ie tallow which is 98.5%(?) fat and mostly saturated-fat in content) is the closest I've seen:-
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf00070a016
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Also, the various studies all seem to agree on this issue:- that cooked animal food contains way more AGEs than cooked plant-food and that cooked animal fat outperformed protein(or plant-fat) in terms of toxic AGE-creation. Here is a study, where butter(very high in saturated fats) is shown to be an extreme AGE-creator when heated:-
www.newcastleyoga.com.au/links/Food%20AGEs%20text.pdf
Now, granted that the relevant studies don't necessarily isolate the various fats(PUFAs/MUFAs/SFAs) from each other as they're more concerned with analysing the AGE-content of foods as a whole.But it is telling that other studies which don't necessarily focus on heat-created toxins like AGEs, do tend to single out those foods with the highest (cooked) saturated fats-content as being the most damaging/toxic. I think the exception is coconut oil, high in saturated fat, but, from what I understand, it's not usually heated as much as animal foods prior to consumption(?).
Unfortunately, there is no analyse of pure fat in this study. Butter contains casein and lactose (around 2%). Ghee, which is pure fat from butter can be cooked at high temperature without problems, contrarily to butter which turns black and dangerous. It does not mean that ghee is healthy, it just means that it can resist high temperature without being denatured.
There is no doubt that vitamins, cholesterol, etc. which are contained in the fat are affected by heating, but I just wonder if saturated fatty acids alone can resist ?
In my experience, I strongly react to cooked lean meat (headache, etc.) but have no really trouble with pure cooked animal fat. Of course, raw fat feels always better!
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Unfortunately, there is no analyse of pure fat in this study. Butter contains casein and lactose (around 2%). Ghee, which is pure fat from butter can be cooked at high temperature without problems, contrarily to butter which turns black and dangerous. It does not mean that ghee is healthy, it just means that it can resist high temperature without being denatured.
There is no doubt that vitamins, cholesterol, etc. which are contained in the fat are affected by heating, but I just wonder if saturated fatty acids alone can resist ?
In my experience, I strongly react to cooked lean meat (headache, etc.) but have no really trouble with pure cooked animal fat. Of course, raw fat feels always better!
Well, many others' experience is quite different, namely that they have no problems with cooked lean meat, but a multitude of problems with cooked animal-fat-heavy sources.
Also, last I checked, not even ghee can claim to be 100% fat , as even it contains trace amounts of casein and lactose.
And, anyway, ghee is only specially prepared cooked butter, and, as that other study showed, cooked/heated butter forms the highest amounts of AGEs in any foods.
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Well, many others' experience is quite different, namely that they have no problems with cooked lean meat, but a multitude of problems with cooked animal-fat-heavy sources.
Also, last I checked, not even ghee can claim to be 100% fat , as even it contains trace amounts of casein and lactose.
And, anyway, ghee is only specially prepared cooked butter, and, as that other study showed, cooked/heated butter forms the highest amounts of AGEs in any foods.
Do you have the links of these other studies ?
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A rather smaller number of studies have focused on the average AGE-content of particular foods, with none really studying saturated fats in isolation. At least, this study on cooking suet(ie tallow which is 98.5%(?) fat and mostly saturated-fat in content) is the closest I've seen:-
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf00070a016
Does not apply to us, as the study is of fats used in deep fat frying which is heated to temperatures >225°F.
Also does not specify if the tallow was made from hide fat or kidney fat; and grassfed or grainfed. We know that there is a difference.
With reference to the long-lived East Asians, IIRC they ate a lot of cooked pork fat.
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With reference to the long-lived East Asians, IIRC they ate a lot of cooked pork fat.
Look at the places like Rugao, Zhongxiang, Bama, where there is the highest number of long-lived people
"The Bama people have the custom of offering guests what they call Longevity Soup. One of its ingredients is hemp seeds oil extracted from the plants that grow in the mountains. Hemp seeds oil is high in non-saturated fatty acids and the world’s only edible oil that dissolves in water.
Seniors in Rugao swear by the porridge, made from rice, corn flour and barley, that they eat for breakfast and supper which Chinese herbalists say particularly nourishes for the spleen and stomach. Rugao also produces a yellow wine that contains proteins, enzymes, microelements and bifidobacterium that prolong life and health. None of the Bama people of advanced age have ever died of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases or cancer."
China’s Centers of Longevity (http://www.chinatoday.com.cn/English/e2006/e200609/p31.htm)
their diet is high in carbs, low in meat and fat
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The trouble with this notion is that the multitude of studies don't merely state that (cooked) animal food is bad for you but they also state that the health-problems become steadily worse the higher the amounts of (cooked) animal food there is in the diet. So the cooked carbs can't be as much of a problem if health-problems increase as cooked-animal food-consumption increases in the subjects' diet while plant-food-consumption in the diet decreases.
The best way to measure the effects of a change in diet is to take someone measure some bio markers of health and then change their diet and measure the change.
I have not seen a study where the same group of people, have kept their entire diet the same, with the only change adding in more cooked meat and seeing negative changes in their lipids etc. Every time someone goes on a lowcarb diet in a study their blood lipid profile invariably improves.
Regarding longevity, these plant eating people are following calorie restriction when compared with SAD. Calorie restriction will improve health if diets are identical. Meat and fat is useless if eating grains and carbohydrates to the extreme that SAD people do. So again a direct comparison has too many variables to be too useful.
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Do you have the links of these other studies ?
Re mention of other study:- I was specificially referring to the previous link I gave re specific AGE-levels in certain foods.
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I have not seen a study where the same group of people, have kept their entire diet the same, with the only change adding in more cooked meat and seeing negative changes in their lipids etc. Every time someone goes on a lowcarb diet in a study their blood lipid profile invariably improves.
I'm sure there are also immediate benefits for people going vegetarian as well, in the short-term, after transitioning from a SAD diet - almost any markers would improve if the really serious junk-foods were avoided.
However, it's the longer-term studies that count as they monitor changes over time. And, while there are plenty of long-term studies done on vegetarians there is very little in the way of studies done on cooked low-carbers over several years(with the exception of the Inuit who, anyway, don't eat grainfed meat and who eat partially raw(well the ones doing traditional diets , anyway).
Regarding longevity, these plant eating people are following calorie restriction when compared with SAD. Calorie restriction will improve health if diets are identical. Meat and fat is useless if eating grains and carbohydrates to the extreme that SAD people do. So again a direct comparison has too many variables to be too useful.
If cooked meat is supposed to be so incredibly healthy, then one would expect health-problems to improve the higher the amounts of cooked-meat there is in the diet, not decrease, like the various studies show.:-
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19307518
Also, grains and dairy are also cooked prior to consumption(for most SAD-eaters, anyway). Eating fermented grains and raw dairy would improve health-issues, if only to some extent, judging from RVAFers comments in the past, so it's again the cooking that's the problem as opposed to the issue of plants versus meat.
Re the older people I know:- Most old people eat less and less as they get older, regardless of diet - this is partly due to metabolic slowdown(ie their physical activity decreases considerably so their appetite goes down as well). That's a standard. As regards caloric restriction, only some of the old people I know go in seriously for caloric restriction in a big way, the rest eat the usual 3 meals a day.
Regarding vegetarians, last I checked, just being vegetarian adds something like 7(?) years to your life, according to endless surveys. Vegetarians don't necessarily eat less foods each day(I remember my own time as a fruitarian where I would binge on vast amounts of fruit each day due to a humungous appetite), and many eat large amounts of highly processed foods like tofu - plus, many(most?) vegans/vegetarians tend to be that way not for any health reasons but because they don't want to eat animal flesh out of concern for animal welfare - the latter group would not necessarily be healthier, therefore, as smoking/alcohol etc. would not be frowned upon.
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Geez...how did I say it was so incredibly healthy? Wow...
Cooked grainfed meat is not healthy (in the sense that there is healthier food), but it is healthier than excessive/refined carbohydrates. Health won't be good if cooked meat and high carbohydrates are eaten together but if carbohydrates are replaced by meat health will improve somewhat. If red meat was the main problem with the SAD it would be impossible for people who go on low carb diets to always show improvements in health in studies, and without any mention of the meat being grass fed it's safe to assume it's just regular supermarket meat.
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Geez...how did I say it was so incredibly healthy? Wow...
Cooked grainfed meat is not healthy (in the sense that there is healthier food), but it is healthier than excessive/refined carbohydrates. Health won't be good if cooked meat and high carbohydrates are eaten together but if carbohydrates are replaced by meat health will improve somewhat. If red meat was the main problem with the SAD it would be impossible for people who go on low carb diets to always show improvements in health in studies, and without any mention of the meat being grass fed it's safe to assume it's just regular supermarket meat.
The claims re improvements in health-studies from low-carb are meaningless in light of the fact that vegetarians have also been shown to improve health in the short or long-term when turning to vegetarian diets:-
http://www.cababstractsplus.org/abstracts/Abstract.aspx?AcNo=20043202980
In short, switching from a SAD diet, full of trans-fats and artificial chemicals/preservatives, to a slightly less unhealthy one, involving either cooked, grainfed meat or cooked plant-foods or whatever, will invariably result in some slight improvement in health. But unless massive changes are made re switching cooked for raw, grassfed for grainfed,health-gains will, in most cases, be too slight to be meaningful.(Unless, of course, one only has a very slight health-problem to begin with).
The way I see it's not so much a matter of a particular food being superior to another. After all, different unhealthy foods will cause entirely different problems. So, for example, intake of large amounts of cooked grainfed meat in a diet will, judging from the statistics, lead to a reduced average lifespan and age-related complications due to the toxin-load, while having a diet consist of mostly raw plant-food will, inevitably result in nutritional deficiencies of various kinds, also causing health-problems. So, better to avoid all unhealthy foods, whether animal- or plant-based.
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Tyler, I am with you, so don't read the rest and believe I am not. Me; raw, grassfed... My point is that I don't think the evidence is in that eating zc cooked grain fed meat like Charles is doing is causing him problems. I do think he is embarking where not many have gone before and is encouraging others to do like himself with only I think about three years of anecdotal experience. But long term, haven't read any evidence to say otherwise. I have read the usual studies about meat and fat and carbs and processed oils etc..... Any ideas here. I will say that those who have studied longevity and those cultures who peoples lived the longest don't seem to include the Inuits and the American plains Indians, who Charles usually mentions as proof enough for him that ( at least cooked meat-not grass fed ) his diet is optimal.
Have been around long enough to notice how a lot of people generalize to make the point that we currently hold as 'truth' whether it be about diet, religion,,, you name it....
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. I will say that those who have studied longevity and those cultures who peoples lived the longest don't seem to include the Inuits and the American plains Indians, who Charles usually mentions as proof enough for him that ( at least cooked meat-not grass fed ) his diet is optimal.
Pre-contact Inuit kept no records of lifespan, and post-contact Inuit ate junk food/cooked, as noted by Stefansson.
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Guys, I think we're missing the larger picture here:
Again, excess carbs (the kind you get from potatoes, bread, rice, etc) leads to insulin resistance, which causes overproduction of insulin, which causes overproduction of cholesterol, thickening of the smooth muscle cells in the arteries, depositing of more and more fat in fat cells, overworking the heart, a pancrease with decreased function, etc REGARDLESS of whether or not your meat is cooked. So when you take away the carbs even on a cooked meat diet, you are reducing that response and regaining insulin sensitivity which WILL improve health and longevity overall. I'm almost positive that's why calorie restricting diets (in general) have shown to lead to longer life span - you have taken away the insulin response (in addition to reducing the amt of toxins from cooked meat).
If you go to zero or almost zero carb on a cooked meat diet, you are losing out on vitamin C (which you need on a cooked diet), potassium, and I'm sure a few other minerals/nutrients. Thus the need for fruits and veggies if eating cooked meat. Even if you're eating raw, many (not all) people still need some carbs to maintain health.
Now if you go the other way and take out the cooked meat in favor of vegetarianism, you suddenly give your body a chance to rid itself of all those heat induced toxins from protein and fat. Of course your health stats will go up and you will feel invigorated - at least for awhile.
The problem is the body ultimately NEEDS animal protein and and fat, even if adulterated by cooking. So vegetarians eventually decline in health. Although years of eating cooked meat (especially if overcooked) will also lead to health problems, if I had to eat a cooked diet, I would take moderately cooked meat on the moderately low carb paleo plan over cooked vegetarianism any day.... even though as a RPer I generally make my cheats in the direction of cooked, even non-paleo carbs.
Why the seeming oxymoron?
b/c it's a different conversation as you move towards the raw meat end of the spectrum. You're body is now under the influence of fewer toxins, and it's operating more efficiently wrt digestion and utilization of animal food sources. Introducing cooked meat to such a system is akin to taking poison + food :: now your body (used to high quality octane) has to remove all this crap, which causes a a cascade of reactions to eliminate those toxins, often accompanied by unpleasant symptoms. However, even cooked carbs still end up as just glucose. This is not toxic (unless you're a diabetic with ketoacidosis), and is easily handled by your pancrease with insulin.
The big picture:
--High carbs, even raw paleo carbs, cause insulin resistance over the course of YEARS, not hours or days.
--Vegetarianism, whether raw or cooked, leads to insulin resistance and nutrient deficiency
--Cooked meat leads to a toxic body, and combined with very low carb leads to nutrient deficiency; however,
--Cooked meat for non-raw paleo-eaters is essential for health. They may want to consider eating more fruits/veggies and nuts than their raw counterparts, and even some low temp extracted oils from fatty plant sources (olives, nuts, coconut, avocado), but not vegetable and highly processed oils. These are not ideal for raw paleo'ers.
--Cooked meat for RPers is like taking poison + food, and thus, from a chemical standpoint, it's probably healthier to have the occasional cooked carb (sans any processed/cooked fat) than cooked meat.
--Raw or cooked meat, you probably should get no more than 1/4-1/3 of your calories from carbs.
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Pre-contact Inuit kept no records of lifespan, and post-contact Inuit ate junk food/cooked, as noted by Stefansson.
Err, Stefansson also noted that the traditional-diet-eating Inuit aged far more rapidly than other peoples.
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Tyler, I am with you, so don't read the rest and believe I am not. Me; raw, grassfed... My point is that I don't think the evidence is in that eating zc cooked grain fed meat like Charles is doing is causing him problems. I do think he is embarking where not many have gone before and is encouraging others to do like himself with only I think about three years of anecdotal experience.
I know, food-science is so new it's difficult to make statements re diet which are 100% guaranteed. That said, I have my doubts re Charles. As Angelo and others have pointed out re anecdotal experiences, being on zero-carb means taking much longer to recover from exercise, and with cooked grainfed meats that just makes that and other problems much worse.
My main gripe, though, most cooked-zero-carbers have no real justification, whatsoever, in citing the Inuit as an ideal. Not only did the Inuit generally go in for lots of (Omega-3-rich) fish but they also ate plenty of raw meats/organ-meats as well as rotting meats, all rich in omega-3s being from seals/caribou etc.So the Inuit diet has nothing in common with a diet consisting of cooked grainfed supermarket meat - come to think of it, do people on the zerocarbage forum all boil their meats like the Eskimos or do they not mind frying/microwaving and the like?
As regards unheallthy diets, it's perfectly possible for people to stay healthy(if only in a relative sense) for years and years, even if their diet is lacking in some way. There are a few raw vegans for example who manage to stay/seem outwardly healthy for decades and who only exhibit symptoms like b12-deficiency at a much later stage, due to the body storing b12 traces etc. - but this doesn't discount the fact that many other people will indeed suffer from such unhealthy diets in the short- or long-term, whether consisting of 100% cooked-grainfed meat or 100% raw plants.
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Err, Stefansson also noted that the traditional-diet-eating Inuit aged far more rapidly than other peoples.
My point is that by the time Stefansson got there, there were no more completely traditional-diet-eating Inuit. They had been trading with whalers for ~100 years, during which they acquired pots which made cooking possible, and became addicted to tea.
There is however a good explanation for rapid aging, and that is that traditionally they lit their residences with seal oil lamps so that the inner wall of their snow house would be black from soot, lungs as well.
Same effect as pre-electric times when women were called the weaker sex, they really were, most likely because they spent more time indoors breathing the fumes of kerosene lanterns & such.
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My point is that by the time Stefansson got there, there were no more completely traditional-diet-eating Inuit. They had been trading with whalers for ~100 years, during which they acquired pots which made cooking possible, and became addicted to tea.
There is however a good explanation for rapid aging, and that is that traditionally they lit their residences with seal oil lamps so that the inner wall of their snow house would be black from soot, lungs as well.
Same effect as pre-electric times when women were called the weaker sex, they really were, most likely because they spent more time indoors breathing the fumes of kerosene lanterns & such.
The Eskimos Stefansson saw not only ate cooked meat as well as raw but still followed traditional diets(at least the tribes he saw).
As regards air-pollution, well it's a theory but I'm not so sure it could cause rapid aging by itself.
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there is no real evidence that they aged faster. Stefannson just said they looked older (which i don't think they do based on the few pictures I've seen). That comment is rather out of place i think, and am curious why he chose to close 'adventures in diet' on such a negative note. His final paragraph saying that everything he wrote is basically worthless and there is no reason to follow such a diet that he just spent thousands of words discussing the benefits of. I wouldn't rule out him being pressured into ending it on a negative note as to not be 'promoting' a meat-only diet.
Accelerated aging is associated with increases in disease. Less disease invariably means slower aging as after all biomarkers of aging such as insulin, blood sugar levels etc are also the causes of disease. It's impossible for an entire population to be suffering from rapid aging yet remain disease free. Plus if we look at the Inuit in isolation, hypothetically if they did have rapid aging (they didn't really) changing their diet has made them age even more rapidly.
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zero carb cooked grainfed meat diet is pretty horrible in terms of nutrients, enzymes etc compared with a raw grass fed diet, but it does bring benefits.
It works in the same way 'calorie restriction' works really, with the effects mimicking those of calorie restriction in humans. Lowering carbs and entering ketosis makes the body sense starvation causing lower insulin, lower blood sugar, lower thyroid, lower metabolism etc.
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Lowering carbs and entering ketosis makes the body sense starvation causing lower insulin, lower blood sugar, lower thyroid, lower metabolism etc.
Odd, it sure doesn't feel like starvation. Pemmican satisfies so that I need eat only once a day, and I would not know ketosis if it bit me.
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there is no real evidence that they aged faster. Stefannson just said they looked older (which i don't think they do based on the few pictures I've seen). That comment is rather out of place i think, and am curious why he chose to close 'adventures in diet' on such a negative note. His final paragraph saying that everything he wrote is basically worthless and there is no reason to follow such a diet that he just spent thousands of words discussing the benefits of. I wouldn't rule out him being pressured into ending it on a negative note as to not be 'promoting' a meat-only diet.
Perhaps he just wanted to be honest and admit that, like everything else in life, there are benefits and disadvantages to every proposition. Besides, he is so fanatically in favour of a meat-only diet in the main chapters of his books(making sweeping statements not corroborated by other anthropologists) that it does seem unlikely that he would shoot himself in the foot unless there was something to that last statement. or perhaps most eskimoes died at an early age and he tried to suggest an alternative suggestion, that the diet aged them but didn't kill them. Or maybe Stefansson was enthused with a now disproven theory that was popular at the time( re increased metabolic rate leading to rapid aging)
Whether or not Stefansson is wrong or right re this point about rapid aging on zero-carb isn't really what I was emphasising. I am more concerned with the fact that Stefansson is the only authority-figure on the subject of ZC, and since Stefansson's other favourite theory, about "Blond Eskimos", has already been proven dead wrong(he was actually accused of fraud, at the time), I do think that it's a bad idea for people like William to cite Stefansson as if he were Moses on the mountain.
Accelerated aging is associated with increases in disease. Less disease invariably means slower aging as after all biomarkers of aging such as insulin, blood sugar levels etc are also the causes of disease. It's impossible for an entire population to be suffering from rapid aging yet remain disease free. Plus if we look at the Inuit in isolation, hypothetically if they did have rapid aging (they didn't really) changing their diet has made them age even more rapidly.
Both statements are incorrect, I suspect. For one thing, while the Inuit have been getting modern diseases ever since Stefansson first met them, due to changing to modern diets, they also have been increasing their lifespan due to access to better medical aid etc., like any other former hunter/gatherer tribe.
Secondly, disease doesn't necessarily automatically coincide with rapid aging. I mean people can age rapidly due to some severe shock/stressful event but not necessarily develop disease right at the same time(I'm thinking of the phenomenon of getting white hair after a frightening event). Also, the Eskimoes(on traditional diets) are known to be prone to excessive bleeding due to a high intake of omega-3s, so they are not immune to health-issues.
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zero carb cooked grainfed meat diet is pretty horrible in terms of nutrients, enzymes etc compared with a raw grass fed diet, but it does bring benefits.
It works in the same way 'calorie restriction' works really, with the effects mimicking those of calorie restriction in humans. Lowering carbs and entering ketosis makes the body sense starvation causing lower insulin, lower blood sugar, lower thyroid, lower metabolism etc.
Well, in that case, doing intermittent fasting on a high-carb diet would have the same effect re improved health.
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medicine doesn't slow down biological aging, can just allow longer chronological age.
Really the link between aging and disease is established and would require very strong evidence to disprove. It's what Calorie restriction is entirely based on. Aging can be seen as the parent 'disease' with heart attacks, cancer etc all being the symptoms of rapid aging - literally the body choosing to turn off systems to maintain health itself having sensed the time to reproduce (the purpose of life) has past, and this sensation is because of rapid aging. The effects of stress actually mimic over eating and rapid aging. The same hormonal changes that speed aging are also disease causing (insulin, blood sugar, blood lipids, lowered sex hormone binding goblin).
Intermittent fasting could prove beneficial, however I'm not sure about on a high carb diet. IF studies conducted by some person called mattson(sp?) showed that IF (warrior diet method) is actually not beneficial (when eating a regular diet and not calorie restriced). It would make sense really since carnivores practice IF while herbivores (carb eaters) are grazers, so really IF would benefit carnivores more seems natural.
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The problem seems to be what is the definition of aging. All those biomarkers you mention re insulin etc. are generally described by many scientists NOT as symptoms of aging but actually as symptoms of impending mortality, which is quite a different thing(this is in relation to genetic so-called rapid-aging diseases like progeria etc.)
Re IF:- We already have a relevant example such as the Kitavans who ate 69% carbs as part of their diet, yet enjoyed the same level of health as the Inuit. Plus, the few studies that I've ever heard of from wikipedia etc.)which deal with IF always deal with SAD-eaters, and they show beneficial results therefrom, even if no calories are restricted.
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IF naturally causes a reduction calories which improves health (Primitives also ate less calories overall, hence able to tolerate different macro nutrient make up).
Fasting can lower metabolism with theoretically makes one able to reduce calories and receive benefits but maintain more body weight then eating frequently.
Only one study (the mattson study) has controlled caloric intake for IFers on high carb diets, the very small amount of others (there is one study on islamics during ramadan) are too arbitrary.
I believe the actual fasting improves health but the meal that breaks the fast is just as important. An insanely high amount of glucose ingested at once can not be handled by the body and is counterproductive to any benefits received, and so low carb energy/nutrient dense food (meat) works best.
Also i remember doing intermittent fasting on a 'healthy' diet of raw vegetables, steamed vegetables, fresh meat and wholegrains and it just didn't work. My digestion was horrible, flatulence was insane, horrible stomach cramps. From my experience definitely can not mix carbs and protein.
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While I myself would agree with you up to a point(my own experience was that it was also much easier to do IF on low-carb due to fewer hunger-pangs, though I didn't have the other symptoms you had when i tried high-carb IF), I was surprised, many months ago, to find numerous people on the fasting yahoo group(dealing with intermittent fasting, not fasting , as such as a subject) who were passionate high-carbers(mostly vegetarian) who claimed they had no such negative issues while doing IF and who didn't have the constant hunger-pangs I had on high-carb IFing. Of course, I suppose there are so many other factors involved such as each person's meatbolic rate/health-condition etc. which would influence the matter.