Metabolic Flexibility - Get Real

(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #55

An interesting theory is that mitachrondria actually were baceteria that inhabited a host cell and then formed a partnership with the host. There are two competing theories of which the more interesting one (to me anyway) is:

An alternative theory posits that the host that acquired the mitochondrion was a prokaryote, an archaebacterium outright. This view is linked to the idea that the ancestral mitochondrion was a metabolically versatile, facultative anaerobe (able to live with or without oxygen), perhaps similar in physiology and lifestyle to modern Rhodobacteriales. The initial benefit of the symbiosis could have been the production of H2 by the endosymbiont as a source of energy and electrons for the archaebacterial host, which is posited to have been H2 dependent. This kind of physiological interaction (H2 transfer or anaerobic syntrophy) is commonly observed in modern microbial communities. The mechanism by which the endosymbiont came to reside within the host is unspecified in this view, but in some known examples in nature prokaryotes live as endosymbionts within other prokaryotes. In this view, various aerobic and anaerobic forms of mitochondria are seen as independent, lineage-specific ecological specializations, all stemming from a facultatively anaerobic ancestral state. Because it posits that eukaryotes evolved from the mitochondrial endosymbiosis in a prokaryotic host, this theory directly accounts for the ubiquity of mitochondria among all eukaryotic lineages.

The above is from:

https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-origin-of-mitochondria-14232356/

I’d like to pretend that I understand this well but that would be a big fat lie.

(Joey) #56

I recall reading something about this too, concerning the likely origins of mitochondria. The fact that they possess their own unique DNA seems to be telling.

Then again, perhaps we don’t really need to understand it - as long as the bacteria get all this - with our being 90% bacteria we’ve got it covered implicitly. :thinking:

(mole person) #57

Don’t worry at all. I hadn’t been upset at you post in the slightest. I have been quite enjoying this debate actually while ruminating on it privately. More on this later.

I reread my own post and realized that you might have though I was peaved because of my “ffs” but that was not meant to be directed at you or even any frustration with this discussion but rather I was aiming for a “wtf” at the bizzare finding that only eating meat could improve my health so much.

This actually made my day. :hugs:. I sometimes worry that my argument style comes off as overly cold and aggressive.

Soo funny…I finally told my doctor a few weeks ago that I was only eating meat. I knew that she was a Vegan and she’s told me before that the Vegan diet is the healthiest one so I knew it would be very unpleasant. But I really needed to be sure that after 6 months the diet wasn’t harming me so I wanted a bunch of blood tests of vitamin levels and blood markers.

Her reaction was amazing. She told me she thought I should take the pain and eat my veggies…lol. luckily she was so sure I must be dying that she ordered almost every test I wanted plus some so she could show me.

My every result was in normal range, including vitamin C. :grin:

I have a bunch more to say but I’ll start with this because I’m writing sloooowly today.

(mole person) #58

So as I’ve been reading this thread my own feelings about metabolic flexibility have evolved a bit. My initial thought was that the stomach aches etc. that some of us get from eating carbs did not really imply metabolic inflexibility. The fact that our gut bacteria are throwing a fit in our small intestines doesn’t imply that we aren’t metabolizing the glucose as well. Nothing in the definition of ‘metabolic flexibility’ says you have to feel 100% you just have to be using the fuel efficiently. Now, I’m not saying there is no good reason to want to eat some carbs and avoid feeling shitty while doing so, I’m just saying that the stomach aches do not necessarily imply specifically ‘metabolic inflexibility’.

But after I wrote my post yesterday where I distinguished between the two types of intolerances, I realized that I’d missed a big one. It’s one that actually hits me very hard and I do think it represents a real keto induced metabolic inflexibility.

When I eat a lot of sugar, for example an ice cream, I don’t get any sort of stomach ache like I get from things with fibre. But what I do get is basically a horrible hangover the next day. My mood crashes, my energy crashes, and I’m a walking zombie at least half the day. I was not a person that suffered significant brain fog prior to keto, but now if I eat much sugar I’m pretty wrecked the next day. Now I think this is just physiological insulin resistance and that it would subside in a week but even if it is, that means that for that week most of the cells in my body are rejecting glucose because that’s what they have been trained to do. And, during that week eating loads of carbs does cause out of whack energy metabolism.

So, yes, I do think keto leads to some metabolic inflexibility. In fact, I think ‘physiological insulin resistance’, which we know is a thing on keto, is pretty much the definition of a short term ‘metabolic inflexibility’.

Now, I think the question of whether or not that is something that we should be trying to avoid is a seperate one. More on this in a later post.

(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #59

I too love your posts. I have learned from you.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #60

Really?

If I drank a bottle of bourbon, got falling down drunk, sick and miserable for the next 3 days, would that indicate metabolic derangement? Would it be good advice to drink more bourbon to ensure my metabolic flexibility? Would I be better off if it took two bottles of bourbon rather than one to knock me out?

Everyone on this forum, with the exception of a few carnivores, consumes incidental dietary carbs every day. Those carbs don’t magically disappear. We digest, metabolize the glucose out and utilize it. All the while remaining in ketosis, metabolizing fatty acids and ketones. That does not sound like metabolic inflexibility or derangement.

(mole person) #61

Thank you! I feel like it must be my birthday! :hugs:

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #62

Not by using ‘metabolic flexibility’ as an excuse to consume carbohydrates. You’re simply reinforcing my OP assertion.

You might get into a more interesting, and possibly more convincing, discussion about why we have the capability to metabolize exogenous carbohydrates at all, or have cells and organs that require glucose. My opinion is that these are metabolic relics of our herbivore primate ancestry.

Having strong opinions about stuff is not religion. My opinions can, do and have changed based on persuasive evidence.

#63

In a post-truth post-postmodern and often crazy digital culture, getting real is not for the faint of heart, and it usually involves informed choice based in solid lineages of study & practice.

For those who’ve become 100% fat-adapted and well established on the LCHF/keto path, and who’ve turned around IR and/or morbid obesity, there is much value in aiming for a more socially-engaged or emotionally intelligent low carb understanding, ie Keto Without The Crazy, as Amy Berger MS describes it.

In other words, actually reading and integrating what the foundational clinicians of LCHF/keto have already proven out as viable phases/stages for health creation success for hundreds of thousands of patients.

IF one has read the key texts of this dietary healing realm (Yudkin, Atkins, the Drs. Eades - who advocate for the keto cusp rather than deep ketosis - Phinney/Volek/Westman, Robert Lustig, along with Taubes, Fung - and also gotten familiar with Banting) one should understand that for most of them their protocols involve - for the 100% fat-adapted - increasing carb tolerance carefully ON A CASE BY CASE BASIS (up to as much as 100-150g net carbs as per the Eades and others, particularly for endurance athletes) - as a matter of both health maintenance and cultural sanity for the vast majority of patients. While LCHF/Keto is about self-experimentation, it’s not about cobbling together personal dogmas to shun and ignore the successful foundations upon which this way of eating is built in the modern world as well as the fact of very diverse, indigenous/aboriginal peoples whose traditions are generally dismissed as not-evidence, and which Weston Price did a lot of noble work to bring attention to. Peoples who understood that Land is Life - and the natural world gives us many kinds of nourishment.

Personally, my take on Keto Without The Crazy is that it is scientific-but-not-culturally-supremacist, spiritual-but-not-religious-zealotry (or just plain ole non-sectarian or interfaith). My experience is that it is the cultivation of long term antifragility in an uncertain world that is the most precious gift of it, beyond short term robustness in a falsely certain world.

For those who are 100% fat adapted and who mindfully follow the solid protocols laid out by Atkins/Eades/Phinney/Volek/Westman and others it is a path of increasing functionality, flexibility, and new strength not just metabolically but also digestively and culturally. It supports liberation both from physical illness and so much more as we go along into the second and third year of LCHF/keto and move into Pre-Maintenance and Maintenance stages as outlined by the aforementioned cornerstone clinical foundations - especially dramatic for those who do other mitochondrial enhancement practices like HIT strength training or other biohacking!

Because it also offers greater freedom for diverse food experiences along with freedom from mental states which may be crazy in the otherwise-healthy human. As one great mystic advised, it’s about living in the world yet not of it . Amy Berger points to how otherwise metabolically well folks may be getting stuck in dogma. I think sometimes it can be some shunning of the joys of this brief life and/or during travels or holidays, and may manifest as:

Fear of Fruit
Chagrin of Chocolate
Dread of Dal
Lingering Anxiety of Lemons
Paranoia of Purple Potatoes
Regret of Rice
Sorrow of Spices
Terror of Tamales
Worry of Worchestershire Sauce or Wine with food (both allowed in moderation for the non-addicts if you look at the menus of the Drs. Eades, Phinney et al)

In addition, there is interesting and compelling info in the integrative medicine/functional medicine world on the longer term anti-cancer benefits of anti-oxidants/polyphenols/lectins,along with the hormonal benefits of incorporating a robust amount of less acid-producing foods (particularly for females as per the clinical work of Anna Cabeca MD).

:avocado::herb::fish::sheep::steakcake::bacon::eggplant::fried_egg::green_salad: :tomato: :lemon: :avocado:

So, that’s about as much as I care to say about it - as the aforementioned foundational LCHF/Keto explorers and clinicians have well articulated this realm, its phases and/or fasting & non-fasting opportunities. There’s nothing controversial about metabolic flex, microbiome magnificence, and real foods foodieness for those who are medically able to cultivate such, unless one isn’t bothering to know what actual LCHF/keto is in terms of clinical and sustainable reality for the vast majority of folks. (There is also a thing called dopamine which some people derive from dogma or identity-driven pseudo discourse - and I’m aware there’s no getting in between a person and their dopamine unless they themselves are keen on neuroplasticity, cognitive flex, high EQ approaches, etc.)

#64

I want to give you so many more than just one heart for this, Mary. :heart::heart::heart::heart::heart:

#65

Awww… glad my flow worked for you @buxomlass. Thanks for the love!

(Justin Jordan) #66

Well, it’s like this:

The vast majority of healthy people, including those who have lived very long lives without chronic disease, have done so consuming more than keto levels of carbs, which I’ll define here as twenty net grams or less.

Verrrry few indigenous and historical cultures have actually eaten keto levels of carbs. We are evolved to be able to digest utilize some forms of carbohydrate.

What that all means is that while we don’t need, as a species, necessarily NEED to eat carbs, it does speak to the fact that carbs are not inherently evil or UNhealthy to us as a species. That’s true even if you believe plants are toxins - hormesis is a thing.

So as that relates to metabolic flexibility, aside from being able to eat carbs for hedonistic reasons, I think metabolic flexibility is good as a marker. If you can eat a bunch of carbs, your blood sugar doesn’t spike, and you’re able to get back to ketosis easily and don’t need to readapt, I think it’s a pretty good marker that your metabolism is working something close to optimally, or at LEAST healthily.

Which is something akin to the ability to say, maintain a high percentage of your heart rate while exercising for an hour or two. Should you do that every day? Probably not. Does it mean you won’t get some kind of health problem? Probably not.

But the ability to do it is probably a pretty good indicator your body is working well, ESPECIALLY in conjunction with other stuff. Can you work hard aerobically for an hour? Can you pick up your bodyweight without injury (really, this one should be higher)? Can you move your joints through a full range of motion?

Well, you’re probably okay in a lot of other ways. Metabolic flexibility is like that.

Hard keto places and people tend to have a built in bias for believing that burning one form of fuel all the time is bad, and burning the other is good. I suspect the ability to only effective do one or the other well is indicative of damage.

Now, then, assuming you buy all that, is introducing carbs helpful for building metabolic flexibility? I dunno. I suspect the answer is likely yes, but I am (currently, anyway, ask me again in a year) also pretty sure the level and kind of carb matters. I’d use the exercise metaphor here. We have metabolic pathways I suspect need to be used to work optimally, and I think we’re probably healthier and more resilient if we can. Now that’s the general, generic human…

And having said all THAT - I’m not sure everyone CAN get to a level where they can ingest carbs and have all their stuff work well. I’m not convinced I can, and hence a LOT of the time my diet ends up being carnivore by default.

(indeed, between alternate daily fasting and just my regular diet, I’m probably not consuming any non animal products 5 or 6 days out of seven, and my carbs are usually less than ten grams. This gets my blood sugar to true normal. Is that forever? Dunno. Hope not, but only one way to find out)

(Justin Jordan) #67

Of course, I’ve also literally only ever known my ketone level when I was in the hospital. Well, after I left and could look at my records. So, you know…

(Empress of the Unexpected) #68

100s of hearts. You are the voice of reason. I agree that people who are diabetic or fighting cancer may need to really scale back the carbs. But I am 61 and totally healthy. That is why I eat bread or potatoes every so often. But I was raised on 3 meals a day and no snacks. So I was raised old school with healthy eating habits. No need for extremism unless health issues or weight problems. I do thank keto for helping me shed the 20 pounds. And what is even better, they seem to be permanently off. But I still believe our bodies can usually easily use carbs. Not a throw back relic.

(Empress of the Unexpected) #69

Define work well.

(Justin Jordan) #70

What I mentioned earlier in that long post generally, but very specifically:

If you can ingest say 100 grams of carbs, your blood sugar doesn’t rise above 140 and is back to normal within a couple hours, your fasting blood sugar is not affected (beyond normal fluctuations), and you can get into ketosis again within, say, twelve hours of not eating.

(Empress of the Unexpected) #71

Sorry, I missed that. No matter what I eat the highest I went was 120 something and that scared me. I always get into ketosis the next day. Thanks for the clarification. If I saw 130 I would panic

(Justin Jordan) #72

I think that’s excellent.

I suspect 120 is probably a better number for the peak. I’d need to look up the Kraft Assay Tables, but there’s one of the patterns there that I think is probably pretty indicative of healthy metabolism. It doesn’t speak to ketosis, but generally, if you eat carbs, your blood sugar stays low and the next day you’re in ketosis again, my non doctor self would say you’re doing really well.

(Empress of the Unexpected) #73

Seriously thank you. Out of blood strips but about to do some more hard core testing. But that involves testing multiple times a day. But I love numbers so will do it. Starting with garlic bread? :rofl:

#74

I see train wrecks with grain and legume experimentations. Especially with wheat due to the gluten exorphins.

Slippery slippery slippery slope with carbohydrates. 🤸