Is this what Brown Fat activation feels like?

bat
(Bob M) #21

Well, my turmeric capsules have an expiration date in 2019, so I won’t be able to participate in this experiment for a while. I know I got these at Costco, so the next time we go there, I’ll put these on the list.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #22

Nothing unusual to report about turmeric since my possibly associated hot flush on Monday afternoon. My beginning-of-shift temp reading yesterday morning was back to the low end of my usual range: 35.6. BUT, I neglected to wear my cap yesterday and although it wasn’t too cold, it was cold so my head likely got chilled which led to the low measurement. Will see what it is today when I wear my cap.

I’ve been doing a fair bit of reading about turmeric and its main active component curcumin. I find it a bit perplexing because there are so many positive reports about how eating turmeric is good for this or that and/or helps to cure this or that disease and/or prevent it. They all talk about curcumin as the primary active component causing all these wonderful effects. Then it gets interesting. Everything I’ve read about it says curcumin content of turmeric is 2-5% by weight and that curcumin is very poorly assimilated when ingested orally. There have been studies done where isolated curcumin was fed to rodents and humans in the amounts of 1-2 grams per kilogram of body weight. Yet still the amount of it measured in the blood was either minute or not even measurable. So what’s going on?

Turmeric - the spice - has been used for a couple thousand years or more as a medicinal herb. It’s been used in Indian, Chinese and Indonesian cooking not only to add colour and taste, but also for its supposed medicinal properties. So what’s going on? Multi-century mass hysteria?

Curcumin has been studied extensively since its discovery a couple hundred years ago and it does have a number of interesting properties when available in large concentrations. In fact, you can buy the stuff as a supplement at up to 90% content. Yet turmeric got its great rep thousands of years before anyone knew anything about curcumin, nor how little of the stuff is in turmeric, nor how little of that little can actually get into your bloodstream. Nor how to extract and concentrate it into a supplement.

Maybe there’s other stuff in turmeric in greater quantities and more readily bioavailable that either enables curcumin to do its thing, or supplement its activity, or do all the good stuff themselves. More research needed.


turmeric

Several papers investigating both curcumin and other components of turmeric. If you select the Volume 57, Issue 9 link, all the papers mentioned in this editorial are listed and linked to their abstracts. Unfortunately, to read the full papers you need pay for a Wiley Library subscription. Or if any strike your fancy particularly you might search for it and find another online source with full text.

#23

how long keto?

as we change and adapt we change and our hormones rebalance and our toxins dump from our bodies and our bodies are like…holy SH** and yea we get effects. In all ways. Heat flush is one of them.

It is normal and fine and ok IF it is not any type of emergency scary situation for you of course on health but yea, normal.

just go with the flow, hold strong, keep the faith your keto is changing you to healthy metabolism and a ‘reset of natural life’ in your body and healing.

I say you will be just fine :slight_smile: but with little info about you in general for medical and how long on plan? I say that with total confidence unless more info is forthcoming? So…yea soldier on, cause alot of us hit wierdo changes as we ‘do change’ and you are human and it will happen…so keep moving forward, you are ok I think.

you don’t need to find some answer thru adaption times, and they can be long for many of us since we are so individual ya know…just let it go down, cope and be cool and hold plan…hold plan and heal more cause the other side of healing your body inside and out thru our nutrition is the best darn place to be!

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #24

Not much to report today:

  • I added 2 grams of turmeric to my keto mix because why not
  • An hour after drinking my coffee I had armpit BO for the first time since starting keto 4 years ago!
  • I wore my cap to Walmart this morning and my forehead temp was .2°C hotter than yesterday morning: 35.8°C.
  • I had a hot flush this afternoon at work for a couple of hours, but others also found it warm so maybe/probably not turmeric related
#25

Yesterday was my rest day. I ate a maintenance amount of calories. No real physical activity other than a brisk walk in the afternoon, hit 10k steps for the day. Didn’t feel anything unusual.

I put a teaspoon of turmeric into my decaf last night, and within an hour, the ‘furnace’ came on. It could be a coincidence. I’ll have to experiment a little bit more.

#26

Oh, I didn’t think that anything was broken or had any medical concerns. I was reading about folks here talking about BAT and was wondering if BAT activation is what I was experiencing. I think it is based on location of where I’m feeling that the heat is coming from.

Since you asked, I’ve been doing keto properly for just over a year, dirty keto for about 6 months before that. Lots of positive changes with energy and alertness levels, the ability to fast, and just feeling a heck of a lot better.

As I’m writing this I’m feeling hot again. Not unbearably, but unusually for me. Maybe this is my new normal? I could’ve used this more when it was really cold last month :slight_smile:

#27

I plan to up the amount too, to make potential effects more obvious.
I only started yesterday, half a teaspoon golden milk mix (half of it is turmeric I think… I did it ages ago) in my egg milk, it was very nice.
Nothing happened yet, no wonder, I still don’t expect much.

About the dose… I’ve read 17g turmeric a day may start to cause bad things but I won’t even go near that.
And I’ve read shameless unrealistic praises about so many plants (another step and it will bring world peace… turmeric have an article simply saying it cures all ailments. seriously, why writing extremely obvious lies? or they consider this acceptable exaggeration? clickbait? no idea), I don’t believe them. They may be good for something for someone, sure but nothing THAT impressive…

(Allie) #28

Personally I’ve linked this type of flushing feeling with when I’ve eaten too much protein in one go.

#29

how about this?

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #30

Interesting. I did recently mod my macros to up protein amount by 25% (Feb 28). So maybe an adjustment period until things settle down again?

(Mg ) #31

Zero clue but I did ask my doctor about this once. He looked into ketogenic and low carbs on the side to keep up with me hee hee (not his speciality )
He mentioned thermogenesis…
Shrug (clueless look )… We did blood work
It was menopause. I’m old. :rofl:
I never researched it because it didn’t involve my situation, but sounds familiar.
Except you’re a guy and all.

(Bob M) #32

Dr. Cate Shanahan might argue that you’re burning PUFAs from your fat cells, and this is the cause of the heat.

https://drcate.com/about-drcatecom/

I can’t find a direct link, but she’s definitely said this, maybe in here:

As for protein, there are MANY studies indicating higher protein causes higher metabolic rate. This is low fat (sadly), but here’s one:

This is a longer article, but with this one (like many others) you have to ignore the whole undercurrent of “but we know protein is bad for you, and you’re likely to DIE by eating high protein!”):

(Mg ) #33

Good stuff

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #34

This is an interesting study (citation #62 from the Nutrition & Metabolism link:

Abstract

Increased gluconeogenesis (GNG) has been suggested to contribute to protein-induced satiety via modulation of glucose homoeostasis… There was no correlation between appetite ratings and GNG. Glucose concentration was lower … and β-hydroxybutyrate concentration was higher … after the high-protein compared with the normal-protein diet. In conclusion, after a high-protein diet, GNG was increased and appetite was lower compared with a normal-protein diet; however, these were unrelated to each other. An increased concentration of β-hydroxybutyrate may have contributed to appetite suppression on the high-protein diet.

Maybe I’m missing something or over simplifying, but to me it seems that higher protein stimulates ketogenesis and the increase in β-hydroxybutyrate decreases appetite because it provides an alternate fuel.

#35

1g, 1g, 2g of turmeric this far. No effect this far but my “golden milk” (I call it like that but it’s even farther from the original recipes. I barely put any ginger into it, I probably will try it without) is really tasty :slight_smile: I stopped having coffee with egg, it’s good as I drink too much coffee and should just stop. So I have that.
I will up my game later. I wonder how much turmeric I am able to eat easily. 10g is surely comfortably doable (even using only my golden milk but I have other ideas) and that shouldn’t cause any problem either. It’s just for a short term experiment.

Protein and satiation… Once I raised my protein intake… I massively overate on that day. It’s hard to be me. I need enough protein for satiation (2g/kg for lean bodyweight should do, sometimes even a bit less but I never can stay below 1.5, I just get hungry and eat more. I go beyond 3 very often as I still tend to eat more than once a day and then that happens now and then) but adding more changes little, it seems. Maybe I need experiments with leaner protein. I had a single low-fat keto day once and I was satiated but it was highly exceptional.

But in the experiment the normal protein diet was high-carb… Just taking out the carbs would make me way more satiated (take some fat and protein too if you like, just take away almost all carbs, it will happen).

#36

At first I thought it might have been because I was consuming too much protein.

But it that were the case, I thought that the process of converting any excess protein into energy would get me hotter (check), but that I would also smell ammonia in urine as the body tries to get rid of the nitrogen that it isn’t using as a result of using protein for energy.

#37

I decided to have a cheat weekend with my wife last weekend and decided to go on a 48 hour extended fast, for balance.

Usually after 20 hours my hands and feet start feeling colder. I had a decaf with a little turmeric and that sensation went away.

Even today, I was 36+ hours into a fast, added a little turmeric to my coffee, and I started to get warmer. I just came in from a walk, (2C outside but windy), and didn’t have a problem coping with the cold.

(Allie) #38

I never have done :woman_shrugging:

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #39

This morning (Mar17) I did not add turmeric to my morning coffee mix. A couple of reasons. First, aside from that afternoon hot flush I mentioned above, I have not experienced anything that I can attribute to consuming 2 grams of turmeric daily in my coffee. Second, I got tired of the mess turmeric makes of my coffee. Even soaking overnight in hot fat does not dissolve it. The grit just suspends itself in the hot liquid. So no more turmeric in coffee for me!

That does not mean I don’t intend to continue the turmeric experiment. Just need to come up with a new delivery system. I will advise when I do so.

As for BAT. I have been warm every day since I upped my daily protein. Not ‘hot flush’ warm, just warm. I spend most of my sleeping time with the covers thrown off. I find the cool/cold air in the morning very invigorating.

I have also only occasionally, like maybe 1-2 days per week hit my calorie target, but generally hit the low end of the range. Although, on many days I even miss the low end of the range. Mostly because I’m not very hungry. For me, not feeling cold, not feeling weak, not feeling any more tired than usual - and generally eating less than before - I expect to start losing weight. So I’ll start weighing myself again tomorrow. Too late to start today since I’ve already consumed a liter of coffee!

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #40

I think you have to overeat protein by a huge amount to generate an ammonia odor. It’s not going to happen from simply ‘excess protein’. Given that our ancestors likely hit the jackpot once in a while and had the opportunity to gorge on fat and protein for a few days, it seems logical that having the capacity to retain ‘excess protein’ would be survival enhancing. Only a toxic level would trigger a purge. I don’t recall where now, but a couple weeks ago someone noted the scent of ammonia in his urine and the advice given my multiple posters was simply back off protein until to odor stopped.