We are back

(Polly) #1

Thank goodness. I have missed you all.

(bulkbiker) #2

I’ve missed most of us…

(Bacon for the Win) #3

so frustrating.

(Bob M) #4

Yeah, can we get back to arguing about whether resistant starch is or is not useless? :wink:

Edited: for grammar.

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #5

I hope the multi-day down time means the forum has a new server that can handle the load.

(Polly) #6

Hey Bob. Do you have any opinion on resistant starch?

#7

Yes! Very thankful this forum is back!!!

(Bob M) #8

Do I?

I have done so many tests on myself. So many. One of them was resistant starch, back when the world was going crazy about it. Anyone remember tiger nuts? (If you don’t, they were supposedly high fiber, resistant starch. I ate them.)

I gave resistant starch a good go. I ate potato starch, plantain flour (gave me an allergic reaction), tiger nuts, heated and cooled and then reheated (or just kept cool) potatoes and/or rice, plantains, green bananas, raw potatoes, you name it. I tried fermented foods (kimchi, pickle, sauerkraut as examples), various probiotics (including those supposedly magical “soil-based” probiotics and l-reuteri yogurt from Wheat Belly).

Heated and cooled (with/without reheating) potatoes and rice just caused my blood sugar to go through the roof.

Potato starch was better, and I could stay in ketosis with this. I also did not seem to get an allergic reaction to it. Just work up very slowly, or it wreaks havoc on your system.

I personally found no benefits. My blood sugar did not seem to change, or if it did, I couldn’t find it. Note, back then I was using pin-prick meters, and one which wasn’t the best or most accurate. But that was 4 years ago.

In fact, I had just negative results. I feel much better now eating more meat and less fiber. I’ve come to the conclusion that fiber is bad for us. I know, radical.

Now, if you try resistant starch/probiotics, and it helps you, I have no problem with that.

But if you want some fun and have multiple days to kill, go look at the research in this area. The idea is that we can adjust our bacteria to be “good” by doing the “correct” things. Then, you realize the tests to determine whether you’re actually doing this are really bad. Sample from two different locations in the same “poop” and get two different results. Send the same sample to two different labs, get two different results. Swallow a device that actually measures bacteria content in your gut, and it’s completely different than what’s in your poop. Try to figure out which bacteria is “good” and which is “bad”.

I could go on…

(Michael - When reality fails to meet expectations, the problem is not reality.) #9

I think ketosis feeds gut bacteria quite adequately, presuming it ‘needs to be fed’, which I doubt. We’ve been in a symbiotic relationship a very long time and I suspect the bacteria, in the absence of specific disease, knows how to take care of itself.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #10

Interestingly, I looked up “resistant starch” online and discovered that while the term includes all natural fibre, it is used mainly to describe industrial products used to bulk up processed food. There are five types of resistant starch, and which category a given resistant starch falls into depends on whether and how it was manufactured.

While rice and potato starches can be encouraged to cross link by a process of heating and cooling, it doesn’t sound as though the quantity of resistant starch that can made from this process is significant.

Within each of the five categories or types, the resistant starches fall into two main groups, based on the speed at which they can be metabolised (i.e., before the intestinal bacteria get their hands on it and ferment it). If I understood the explanation correctly, there are resistant starches that can be metabolised by the body, albeit slowly enough that most of the starch reaches the colon, and starches that are metabolised so slowly they are considered effectively indigestible.

It also appears—though I may have this wrong, so don’t quote me—that the manufactured resistant starches, for what it’s worth, fall into the category of soluble fibre. (Dr. Robert Lustig claims we need both soluble and insoluble fibre for eating fibre to be useful.)

Given how many people on these forums report having trouble with any form of fibre after going ketogenic, and how fine they are without it anyway, I would suspect that many people have no need of resistant starch in their diet. Of course, I have a bias against processed foods to begin with, but I don’t understand why, when fibre is naturally available in whole foods, anyone would feel the need to consume a manufactured fibre in its place.

(Bob M) #11

I think the idea was that we could (somehow) determine “good” and “bad” bacteria, and then by resistant starch plus certain probiotics, we could encourage the “good” bacteria to proliferate and the “bad” bacteria to die or become less prevalent.

I THINK if you’re eating a high carb diet, resistant starch + probiotics MIGHT be a benefit. This guy:

https://www.freetheanimal.com/

At one time had lots of evidence about this, again for high carb people. I stopped reading this a while ago, though, when he kept attacking low carb folks (including me) who said they didn’t seem to be getting the same results.

Also, once you start looking into the evidence, the picture becomes murky, even for those high carb folks. Really murky. See this for instance:

Nonetheless, there is some evidence that probiotics do some good. There are tests with less colds, better response to flu vaccines, etc. It’s just unclear to me whether these apply to low carb people.

I personally just eat mainly meat and some vegetables. The amount of veggies I eat goes up and down, daily. From zero to some. The type I eat also varies. And I have ceased eating any that cause me issues, except sometimes. (Had hot sauce last night, for instance, even though it causes me instant allergic reactions. Will eat uncooked cabbage in coleslaw, for instance, at times, even though it causes me issues. Etc.)

And people like Siobhan Huggins (carnivore), who have gotten their bacteria tested, say they have a wide variety of bacteria, and “good” ones at that. (Let’s ignore that I think these tests are useless.)

So, I don’t worry about probiotics or prebiotics. Though if people want to be concerned about these, so be it.

(Bob M) #12

And, while we’re at it, the amount of fat I eat varies. I’ve done super high fat (a la Jimmy Moore), super low fat (a la Ted Naiman), super high saturated fat (a la Fire in a Bottle), etc. I now just eat fat whenever I want (usually trying to eat high saturated fat), and low fat whenever I want, and I don’t freak one way or the other.

I still want to try a PKD, but sadly the beef fat I bought went rancid. And it’s hard to get now.

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

Prof. Bikman has speculated that fasting for several days might be a good way to kill off any unwanted intestinal flora. Then some care when we start eating again, should allow diet-appropriate bacteria to return. I’m not sure how this is even supposed to work, since the appendix is apparently a reservoir of intestinal bacteria, and I’m not sure how the “weeding” process would work.

I also wonder whether the bacteria that are “good” on a high carbohydrate diet are also good on a ketogenic diet. Perhaps when we are in ketosis we need a different set? Has anyone seen any research on this?

Another thought I had is that, given how our ancestors were eating carnivore over most of the two million years of our evolution, it stands to reason that they would have lost most of the bacteria that still digest all those leaves and twigs for our gorilla cousins. I wonder whether the bacteria that started growing in the intestines of the people who switched from hunting to agriculture could possibly be at the root of some of the health problems that are apparent in archaeological digs looking at early agricultural societies.

#14

Be careful, the gatekeepers will come for you! :rofl:

(Polly) #15

The site seems to be going down for 16 ish out of every 24 hours. Is the problem with the server? Or, is there something more sinister at work?

(Bob M) #16

I’ve often wondered about fasting and the biome. I’ve done many 4.5-5.5 day fasts (usually 4.5 day), and there must be some change to the biome. Would that be a “good” or “bad” change? I’m not sure.

I think they originally thought that our biome changed slowly. But I’ve seen some recent info showing our biome changes much faster than originally thought. To me, this makes sense: the biome would have to change quickly through famine, good times, summer, winter, etc. I’m sure in summer, if we found fruits or veggies or nuts we could eat, we would. But in winter, except for something that stored a long time, we’re basically eating meat.

There is some research in the low carb area. Here’s one study:

https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30490-6.pdf