Keto Alternative, or Wackadoo?

#1

I have enjoyed the Keto WOE since March/April along with IF. I have a lot of respect for the Dudes, and Dr. Fung and a number of other commentators and podcasters and bloggers. I enjoy Jimmy’s podcasts that I have heard, especially the ones with Dr. McNally. I am not talking about any of them in this post.

However, I have followed diet (whether LC or otherwise) in one form or another for many years and there are a number of other people (not those mentioned previously in this post) who I have considered either long term wackadoos or in it for the $$$$. Who have monetized diet or wellness for years who strongly support low carb. Needless to say this gives me pause and makes me wonder if this is yet another fad and 6 months from now I will be following Furman or Ornish.

I recently started listening to a lot of podcasts, so much cheaper than Audible

Anyway, I have really enjoyed most of the them but today I listened to a podcast (not one usually mentioned on this site) with an alternative practitioner guest talk about low carb, adjustments, energy and grounding. Really, am I really getting ions through my feet if I walk barefoot on my suburban tall fescue? Maybe?

(KCKO, KCFO 🥥) #2

There are wackadoos out there promoting all kinds of things. I stick with Fung&Ramos, McNally, and Phinney primarily. The 2ketodudes have exposed me to much of the science and I love their podcasts and the forums. I don’t waste a lot of time with at random diet promoters, be it Keto, SAD, Vegan, or whatever the flavor of the day is. As a child of the 60s I have had enough alternative practitioners in my life. I am sticking with science and what works for me, I am as grounded as I want to be and know how to ground myself if I don’t feel like I am.

Keep calm and Keto on.

(John) #3

They are following the fads and trying to make money. Keto has been around a long time and proven, but that doesn’t mean it won’t spike in popularity and likely see a lot of products geared toward it. There will be big promises (looking at you exogenous ketones that already have several MLM schemes set up) and when people fail to see the quick results promised by buying all the fake stuff the will discard it as just another failed diet fad. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, but people want it even easier (really, could it get much easier?) and businesses will come in that take advantage of that with all kinds of promises. If you did get skinny and healthy, what then? What fad diet can they get you to do next?
Think of how much healthier the world would be if people all actually followed just the Atkins diet. That diet is well known and has been around for decades but people don’t do it until there is a promise of a quick fix by buying a bunch of products. There have been lots of reports of keto, especially in athletes, but did the majority jump on board? No, it is just question after question about exogenous ketones and ways to get back into ketosis fast after cheating. Businesses go where there is money to be made, and fat people (I include myself here) go where there is a promise of easy dieting with no effort.
I would love to say keto is the end of the cycle, but it isn’t, there is too much money in people being unhealthy. Imagine the largest producer of statins coming out and saying you don’t even need this shit if you eat butter and stop eating sugar.

Imagine going back in time when you could invest in Google, or Apple, it would be awesome, but you couldn’t have known that then, only through hindsight. Now I just jumped to AstraZeneca’s site and this is what they show there:
image

Diabetes increasing in every country with 2/3 in emerging markets, T2 is 85-95% of those, 50% of cases are undiagnosed! (that means potential doubling of the market!!!), demand is rising and projected to hit 2/3 of a BILLION by 2040. This is not a company looking for a cure, they are straight up telling you that this is happening and they are the makers of the drug that treats it.

(KetoCowboy) #4

I have no idea whether to take the idea of grounding seriously or not, but I did see Dom D’Agostino (whom I consider reliable) suggesting that the reason it feels so great to walk barefoot on the beach is that the negatively charged surface of the earth is draining positive charge through your bare feet.

(Brian) #5

So if it’s a matter of touching the dirt, we could do that just as well with our hands. Or could we just be touching plants (as in gardening)?

(Mary) #6

There is a Vibram sole minimalist running sandal that has been a regular wear item for me that transmits ions to your feet without being barefoot. It took a while to get used to the strap between my toes and even experienced foot cramps from an improper fit.

I use them, it gives me thought about the circadian rythm should also transfer to you from the ground. The thought of being grounded literally made sense to me and I seem to sleep better and longer…my sleep cycle seem more akin to longer naps but between naps I do this, read posts, look at Facebook and take another nap when I get tired. I use an air purifier I got from AirDoctor and breathe through my nose using Buteko method to combat allergies with no medications.

At 63 years old I work in a jungle farm on weekends, am more intermittent fasting than strict Keto but I know that is the best WOE for me. My husband kept off over 50 lbs but I am lazy and cook all the meals and still do a 9 to 5 at a sit down job with co workers bringing home made stuff I can not yet resist.

I also cannot remember the brand of shoe but it is just a conducting metal tab in the toe of the shoe with a conducting lace that winds around your foot and ankle. The earth magnetism surrounds your foot and I walk on a hot sidewalk sometimes on lunch break and the Vibram sole protects my browned feet.

It is a long post, sorry to be chatty but it is 2:52 am and I am catching up on the forum posts.

(Anderson Herzogenrath Da Costa) #7

I respect Jimmy but lately he has some weird sponsors on his podcasts like magnetic therapy products or fasting mimic shakes.

I still listen to him but I just skip all the ads.

#8

Yes I try to always skip the ads. To be clear, I am absolutely not talking about Jimmy. This was an early podcast from a someone I started listening to recently who has some amazing guests on in their later episodes. I guess when they were first starting out they were more alternative

#9

Would it be immoral to invest in AZ I wonder?

All kidding aside, this graphic makes me think that the US and other first world countries will be changing their eating habits. 642 million is not that many for a population of 8 billion. Or they are way underestimating the T2 case numbers.

I am sure the drug companies have someone whose sole job is to monitor trends and report on them. They know about keto, they know for 90% of overweight T2s this is a fix. So they are looking to emerging markets

(Erin Macfarland ) #10

I think this is a very valid and important question

#11

If my avatar and handle doesn’t give it away already, whenever I see intriguing questions like Saphire’s I google the question and add “Mark’s Daily Apple.” 9 times out of 10, Mark has written on the topic.

This is no exception:

I find his approach pretty even-handed and non-wacky. He cites research in this post which seems to suggest there may be something to walking barefoot as much as possible in nature. Research aside, who could possibly argue with that anyway?

#12

Thank you for the link. I did notice it did not mention walking barefoot, lol. May buy a small electric fountain but then does the positive ions from the electricity counteract the negative ions? Mostly not asking this seriously. Although when I clicked on the ion generators I did notice many produced ozone. Which is controversial and questionable for health. I used to have an air purifier but lent it to a friend. I found I could not stand the smell it produced after a day or so which I assume is ozone but I am not sure.

I love walking barefoot and have my entire life, but it never stopped me from feeling like crap. I live near water and have spent the last decade or more walking barefoot along the water every summer, never seemed to do much for me. I was raised never to wear shoes in the house (we lived above the landlord when I was young and my parents did not want to pay to carpet our hallways, Then we moved to a house with white carpeting (who does that with small children)

My husband was raised to wear shoes in the house and everywhere else. So he tracks the dirt from the train station into our house, drives me nuts. I have tried buying him slippers and house shoes and since we no longer have crawling babies I have given up. It drives him equally crazy to see me without shoes in the yard. Plus I hate stepping on stones but I do it anyway

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #13

If that’s true, and it may be, walking on concrete will do the same thing. Electrically speaking, if you are standing on concrete, you are standing on bare earth.

#14

Along the same lines as my original post, a friend recommended a physician who had put her on a limited carb diet for allergies or autoimmune or thyroid (I forget what her exact issue was but she has always weighed under 100 lbs.) She seems to be doing well with it. When I went to the doctor’s web site, the office was located in a fancy building and it seemed too slick and again seemed to designed to monetize the general yuppy crowd’s dissatisfaction with their aging selves or so that was my impression. Of course despite being an MD or a DO he did not take insurance either. I have listened to enough podcasts by naturopaths and functional medicine doctors to know that many cannot afford to do this any other way because insurance pays for sick care, not well care or so the line goes. Still I am skeptical. Is there some database of reliable functional medicine doctors other than Jimmy’s keto list I wonder

(KetoCowboy) #15

FWIW, cardiologist Steve Sinatra makes a similar point about walking on most surfaces, but he singles out asphalt as non-conductive, so he’s all for walking barefoot on most sidewalks, but not on most streets. I’ve heard other folks say (and I’m not knowledgeable enough to evaluate these claims) that walking barefoot on the beach feels so much better than walking on plain grass or concrete because the ocean water adds an element of conductivity to the equation.

Again, I haven’t looked into any of this stuff, but I share the OP’s curiosity about it because it does come up (with a weird frequency) in random interviews. I know I’ve heard it from D’Agostino, Sinatra, Mercola, and even Gerald Pollack (the exclusion-zone water guy). There are probably others I’m forgetting, but I have gone from thinking “That sounds wackadoo” to wondering if there’s something to it.

(Linda Culbreth) #16

A website to check out on functional medicine is www.ifm.org (Institute of Functional Medicine.) This is where I found my current health provider - have to travel 2 1/2 hours one way, but she at least listens to me and accepts my keto diet.

(Carpe salata!) #17

A lot of these things have a little bit of science and a handful of crepe. For example negative ions in the air helps to settle allergen particles by electrostatic attraction to trees, the ground, walls etc - making for clearer air that feels better to breathe (Scientifically verified.). Ions through your body from the ground is a lot more woowoo than that.

I look for when they try to use sciencey words like cellular, resonant, energy field, ionised - they are probably being used in a totally redefined way than an actual scientist in the field would use those words and so they become meaningless.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #18

Surely if it were real science, people would be able to point to actual studies, written up in reputable peer-reviewed journals, right?

I know, don’t call you Shirley. :blush:

(Carpe salata!) #19

Roger Captain, Over.

(Carpe salata!) #20

I think the ‘feeling’ of walking barefoot anywhere is different and more unconstrained than wearing shoes. You hear the same kind of enthusiasm about walking naked in the open air from nudists. But there is no electrical conductivity woowoo from the nudists - it just feels good.

And the placebo effect.