Metabolic Flexibility - Get Real


#74

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

Slippery slippery slippery slope with carbohydrates. 🤸


(Shane) #75

I had a look and I think it was total nonsense. The site is there to sell supplements, not look after your health. And I have a problem with web sites that are trying to sell stuff to solve problems that might not exist.
I had trouble with dry eyes for years and now I don’t. If for some reason my body needed carbs, it would make them, I don’t have to eat them. Not so much with essential proteins and fats. That’s the way our bodies work.


(Prancing Pony) #76

:roll_eyes:


(Bob M) #77

On Saturday, January 20 of 2018, I took an OGTT with insulin (2 hour Kraft test, with 75gm glucose. Take a look at my peak:

Now, they were supposed to take a test at the one hour mark, and I wanted to take a reading using my CGM at the same time. Unfortunately, I did not take a reading, so the software did not put a mark there (as it does when I take a reading). So, I’m not sure where my peak ended up, but ended up well over 140. 180? 190? 200? (Multiply 18 to get US units, so 7.5 = 135.) But according to my Kraft test, I had normal blood sugar and insulin response.

Now, I did not carb up before this, so maybe that skewed the results.

Also, notice how relatively flat my blood sugar was on 18+19 of January. That’s what low carb eating does for you.

I personally don’t think we as a race NEED to eat carbs, but if we had access to carbs (the kind that wouldn’t kill us/make us sick), we did eat them.


(Ken) #78

Interesting topic. A few points. Metabolic effects can literally take years to develop. They are also very dependent on Lifestyle, as far.as degree of activity. Someone following VLCHF may not experience them for quite.some time, and if not leading an active lifestyle the metabolic symptoms may be very mild and not be obvious. It may only be something like a long term Stall. If people are happy with that so be it. Others who are not have the option to perform n=1 experiments in order to reach their body composition goals. To deny what many have found to be a solution is dogmatic, and certainly may deny people the ability to reach their goals if practiced.

This type of thought is certainly common, and appears to be a normal phase keto people go through, I myself did as well. It took me literally years to begin objective experimentation with carbs in order to achieve my goals.

In reality, it can take many years for things to become obvious. It can even take longer for people to admit them.


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #79

At risk of sounding like a scratched record I think it’s necessary to remind everyone that most human evolution occurred under very different climatic conditions than we are lucky enough to be living in now. I wake up every morning and say a hearty ‘Thank you’ for the Holocene! During most of that time, carbohydrates could not possibly have constituted anything more than a very small portion of what our ancestors ate to survive. There were simply too little nutrients to make it worthwhile to expend time and energy searching for it.


(Bob M) #80

It’s also possible that your goals aren’t the same as other people’s goals. For instance, if your goal is to gain a lot of muscle mass, maybe some carbs are useful? Not everyone’s goal is that, though. My goal is to work out without getting reinjured.


(Ken) #81

Much of that is extremely ecosystem dependent. And once you throw seasonal effects in, not only growing seasons but animal migrations affected by them it becomes very subjective. So, at times, and in suitable locations, plants were available to be gathered and consumed. Consumption was probably no where near the levels of the agricultural era beginning with the Neolithic, but to say it.didn’t happen at all is incorrect.


(Joey) #82

@Justin_Jordan I enjoyed this post of yours. The snippet (above) made me wonder if a “hedonistic” urge reflects an evolutionary mechanism at work - i.e., something tastes really good for a good reason.

When a food is particularly tasty, there’s a better-than-even chance that we evolved to eat more of it while it’s available.

During those fleeting seasons when honey, berries and other fruits were to be found (before the winter frost) they served as perfect sources for energy and prompted the fat/protein in our diet to get stashed away, bulking us up in advance of the winter. (Contrast this with toxins, many of which make us recoil at the smell or taste.)

Of course, we all know the problem… Given today’s perennial fruit/produce section at the grocery, today most Western eaters are bulking up 12 months a year for the “food winter” that never comes. Ooops.

Don’t get me wrong … I don’t really miss American-style carbs a bit. I’m thoroughly loving my WOE (around 20g/day of net carbs, all of which are extraneous from red wine, veggies, nuts, eggs, etc.).

Still, I’m a fan of moderate hedonism. As such, I won’t rule out incorporating sensible amounts of non-manufactured carbs at some point - even if only to relish the range of flavors. :stuck_out_tongue:

[Don’t knock hedonism until you’ve tried it.]


(Justin Jordan) #83

AND we’ve made food hyperpalatable, too. Particularly processed food, but fruits and veggies as well.


#84

Once I made the determination I achieved “flexibility” and started monitoring things again and noticed my sugars weren’t across the map post “Bad” meal I connected those same two dots!

I got the same problem, I’m direct and to the point and don’t sugar coat, my wife informs me that I’m just an asshole. I like me :grin:


(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #85

I do not and have never claimed that humans did not eat carbohydrates. What I try to get folks to realize is that the amount of nutrition possible to obtain from Pleistocene flora was so dilute as to be pretty much not worth the effort to find it and eat it. I’m not saying our ancestors didn’t do so regardless.


(Doug) #86

A question for everybody - when we say “physiological insulin resistance” - what are we picturing as happening?

Fabia, prior to this, I’d thought of physiological insulin resistance as when the fat cells are at capacity or very close to it - really full of fat, and they “don’t want” to take in any more. This is opposed to the “non-physical” insulin resistance, which I’d call metabolic/chemical (or something like that; not really sure :smile:).

If muscles are running on ketones, then it makes sense that they don’t need glucose the way they do on a higher-carb diet - thus they will be somewhat resistant to insulin. The brain - I thought most of it runs fine on ketones (actually better than on glucose). There are parts of the brain that have to have glucose - I think it mostly comes down to the cells that don’t have mitochondria - but while I don’t have hard numbers on this I think it’s ~25%.

If a keto diet makes some of our tissues more resistant to insulin, this doesn’t seem like such a bad thing to me, since overall insulin levels are lower than while eating substantial portions of carbs in the diet. What do you think?

I’ve also got another question about that study - it says that “Switching to the KD (ketogenic diet) was associated with increased cholesterol and inflammatory markers, decreased triglycerides and decreased insulin-mediated anti-lipolysis.”

That last part seems complicated to me. Okay - lipolysis (fat-burning) is what a lot of us are after. So, “anti-lipolysis” would be a bad thing, in that context, and higher levels of insulin are known to reduce fat burning/block off our fat stores. If eating keto decreases the amount that insulin causes anti-lipolysis, then good, right?

Ilana, same question - what do you think is happening at the cellular level, there? Feeling like a ‘walking zombie’ sounds like a low energy level to me - and it makes sense that the cells need more energy, but would they really “reject” glucose in the relative absence of ketones? I’m not disagreeing with your experience, just wondering. Once fat-adapted, it’s easy for me to go to fasting or eating strict keto, and also to eat carbs, going the other way. I can definitely eat myself into a “food coma,” just like the bad old days, but the next day don’t feel bad.


#87

Pleistocene flora in North America or Europe?

Europe has an abundance of wild edible nuts and seafood.

I haven’t seen a single piece of neuroscience that indicates that eating land animals increases neurogenesis. Eating their brains perhaps?

People on this forum needing magnesium supplements indicates that meat lacks magnesium but I am open to any research which indicates wild meat contains magnesium comparable to seafood and nuts.


(mole person) #88

Phinney distinguishes between two types of insulin resistance. One that is bad, the one related to full fat cells he calls ‘pathologic insulin resistance’. This is a serious medical condition.

However, when people on a keto diet become fat adapted part of the adaptation is that the cells in their body that don’t need the glucose (which is now far less available) start to reject it so as to preserve it for the cells that do need it. This is ‘physiological insulin resistance’. It’s not a bad thing, it’s an adaptation to a low glucose environment and is important. But it has consequences for short term metabolic flexibility.

Apparently it takes several days for the cells to return to their faster glucose uptake. This doesn’t only mean that you feel terrible though, it also means that the blood glucose spikes are much steeper and we know that those are unhealthy. There is no problem however as long as you don’t go from deeply fat adapted to ice cream and cake. I think reintroducing carbohydrates in a deeply fat adapted person just needs to be done gradually over a few days to avoid any issues.

It definitely doesn’t hit everyone the same. My husband gets none of the big highs or lows that I get on keto. When I’m deeply ketotic I’m so happy and full of energy that it’s basically better than any drug I’ve ever taken. My husband feels nothing different on the same diet. But when I eat ice cream for a couple of days in a row I will become a walking zombie. My husband has complete flexibility and goes in and out without a single issue.


(mole person) #89

I don’t think meat is the issue. For the two years that I was on a regular ketogenic diet with plenty of plant foods I supplemented magnesium, potassium, and sodium. If I didn’t I got leg cramps, restless leg, bouts of nausea, and feelings of weakness. For the last year I have been on strict carnivore and I don’t seem to require any of it anymore. I still salt my meat, but I don’t take any extra.


#90

Interesting. Does your spinal cord ever feel like a steel rod on your carnivore diet?

Out of curiosity. Which plants were you eating?


(mole person) #91

No, I feel great actually.

Avocado, lettuce greens, tomato, cucumber, broccoli, cauliflower, that sort of stuff. Basically I like all vegetables and ate plenty of the more keto friendly ones.


(PJ) #92

Before I went low-carb, I had a lot of medical conditions. Severe asthma, allergies, acid reflux, and a ton of smaller but constant things. But I did not attribute them to my eating at all. They were just health issues.

I went lowcarb and keto (for induction that I kept on for a long time), and lost all my medical symptoms like some kind of miracle.

Then when I would eat offplan, things I had not eaten because they’re carby (mostly any kind of grain-based food), suddenly shazam, I have asthma again (for example). Some time later, another special meal out on a birthday and shazam, there’s the asthma again. Eventually I realized, hey: wheat gives me asthma. If I was 100% off it for awhile, and ate some canned chili that had gluten in it, I’d wake up miserably bloated inflamed and with a little bit of asthma. If I ate a lot and continued doing so daily, it became a LOT of asthma. ‘Severe’ according to diagnosis. Like I could hardly breathe sometimes. Like chronic bronchitis.

I was only able to begin to understand how my body reacted to certain foods because I’d cleaned up my diet so well that finally, asthma could be tracked down to a ‘food reaction’ and not just to some health issue that fell on me out of the stars (and cost me a fortune in inhalers every month).

I suppose an onlooker could say gee, not until she started eating lowcarb did she “discover” food intolerances (my response to rice is horrible too, though a little different). This would be true, I did not discover it until then. That wasn’t because it was not present until then.

It was because I never realized how chronically suckey I felt all the time until I finally was eating well enough, long enough, to feel good.

And then I started to realize, now that I was paying attention to my food finally, and to how I felt, the “connection” between a given food and my body.

I suspect our whole population has a lot more food reactions than we realize. Force them to really pay attention to their food, and only eat ‘real food,’ and it will start to become more clear to them.

I don’t think it can be attributed to some fad or social psychology that just because people start eating keto, they start imagining (and/or actually experiencing, perhaps due to defects in the diet) more problems. :smiley:


(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #93

I agree 100%. I haven’t had a cold, virus, sinus infection or chest infection since strict keto. I used to get them 4 or more times a year. I might start to display cold symptoms and them a few hours later all better.