Low-carbing pros and cons

[freemotion]

I am not a full-fledged "low-carber" but do severely limit carbs for my health. I rarely eat sugar in any form and we do not have white flour or products containing it in the house.

I repaired my slowing metabolism and have experienced many other health benefits. My hubby lowered his cholesterol by 100 pts (it was a bit high although I do not subscribe to the same charts and graphs that Big Pharma has given to the medical community) and got his blood pressure to healthy levels within a few DAYS of going no sugar-no white flour-no hydrogenated fats.

We eat more along the lines of traditional diets based on the research of Dr. Weston A. Price found here in many, many scholarly and notated articles: www.westonaprice.org.

The book that helped the most, which I've read cover to cover 3 times and flip through on a regular basis for several years now is Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions. I also like her book with Dr. Mary Enig, Eat Fat, Lose Fat, although it is a bit heavy in coconut oil. I'm not one for having my diet too heavy in any one item...ok, maybe bacon....

The carbs we eat here are usually prepared in a traditional way, although often a bit quicker...traditional ways called for a two week fermentation of all grains. I will do a 12-24 hour fermentation, sometimes 48 hours, using whey to speed the process up. For other carbs, we tend to eat beans (cooked the long method, including a 24 hour ferment with whey), yams, squash, whole grains, etc. We combine the principles of Dr. Shari Lieberman's research on low glycemic lifestyle, (not to be confused with what you can readily find on the internet!!!) after my own doctor participated in the research and my dh was in the study.

ETA: Found it! Whew. Only two places, one wants $29 to look at it! This one is free: www.bltmarketing.com/pdfpptfiles/lieberman_information.pdf My dh is PT in the study.

 

[AnnaRaven]

I would love to have all the links gathered into one place so that they can be compared side by side. That way everyone can see what's going on.

Exactly!!!! My other computer has all my links and I'm about to go sprawl in hot water for an hour but I know Auntie has oodles.

I have copies of several pdf of the books used most. Anyone feel free to PM me for them.

I have Good Calories, Bad Calories by Taubes
Traditional Diets
Eat Fat, Get Thin
Dr Atkins Diet Revolution (I HATE Atkins, for the record)
The China Study

Sugar: The Bitter Truth More about fructose than low carb but it still applies because you DO lower carbs when you cut all HFCS lol.

For the record, I hate HFCS.

 

[AnnaRaven]

Not directly low-carb, but on the whole "evolutionary" aspects of eating, I highly recommend the book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.

 

[abifae]

Oh!! I love that book Raven!!!!

 

[Wifezilla]

Good Doctor blogs and sites to check out...
http://www.diabetes-book.com/
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/
http://www.drbriffa.com/blog/
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.drjaywortman.com/blog/wordpress/my-big-fat-diet-faqs/

 

[AnnaRaven]

Good Doctor blogs and sites to check out...
http://www.diabetes-book.com/
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/
http://www.drbriffa.com/blog/
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.drjaywortman.com/blog/wordpress/my-big-fat-diet-faqs/

You mentioned evolutionary reasons for low-carbing. Do you have any particular sites/links that back that up? I'd like to read about why it's believed that low-carb is what we've evolved to, that addresses issue like that hunter/gatherer societies mostly survived on the gathering part for regular nutrition, with occasional boosts of meat from the hunters.

I'd also love to see a particular link or two that addresses brain issues - the brain and CNS in general lives on ATP and uses a *LOT* of blood glucose to generate ATP. (ATP is necessary for maintaining the proper level of Potassium and Sodium on either side of the cellular membrane to provide for our nerves' ability to "fire". ) How is the brain provided the appropriate fuel for generating ATP if one is low-carbing? Most sources I've seen claim that blood glucose from carbs is where the brain gets most of its fuel.

 

[freemotion]

Ooooo, I like this one, especially the part on cholesterol and fats.... www.westonaprice.org/.../2004sep27-dietaryguidelinesreport-comments.pdf

Shoot, can't get the link to work... Nerdzilla....er....I mean, Wifezilla....help?

 

[FarmerChick]

I am a somewhat a "low carb" eater....but I also call it a "lower calorie" eater because I limit the foods that contain more carbs and more calories.

I eat everything. Absolutely everything and anything I want.

In limited portions and limited on the higher carb foods like pastas, breads, etc. and junk foods like Cheetos, Doritos and tons more.

You do not have to adopt the attitude of I can never eat a potatoe or pasta again, or I can not eat bread again because it is not true to lose weight or to maintain your health.

I lost 70 lbs eating every single thing I wanted. I maintain that loss the say way I lost it, I portion control, eat less junk carbs and gear towards better fresh foods.

I tried Akins. I could not give up foods for life. It wasn't happening.
I think alot of people feel this way.

If you go with the "traditional" aspect down cut calories and bad carbs, cut down on sugar intake, but portion control everything you eat, then I did have a better chance of maintaining that weight loss. Only because if you are disciplined enough to limit your portions of every food out there to eat, you can be satisfied more.

MANY millions of people can eat bread, pasta, potatoes, corn, and other higher carb foods in their diets and lose weight and keep that weight off. Along with treats in the junky category. I am one of them.

SOME people have medical situations that does effect how foods process in your body and will have to tweak special ways to lose weight and maintain heathly weight.

It is very personal to every physical body. So try what you want to lose weight and maintain that weight loss. Many things work for many people for many reasons.

And I am going off to have my cheese omlete, biscuit with butter, homefries and bacon. Yup that is what I ate for breakfast when "dieting" and I lost lose 70 lbs. If I can eat carbs and lose weight, then bleh, a million of other people can do it haha

being healthier is not always about the food we put into our mouths, althought it is a huge part. It is also maintaining that lower body fat because when fat accumlates on the body, your health lowers. It affects blood pressure, sleep apnea, diabetic situations, heart related problems, and tons more. The fat is the issue on the body.

Don't get me wrong here. Thin people have these medical conditions obviously lol---but many people WOULD not have these issues thrust onto them if they did not have a load of fat on their bodies. And at way younger ages seen now.

And I sure agree, one thread, ONE, discussing this is so much better than throwing link after link in threads that aren't truly discussing this issue, but have the word "food" in them LOL

 

[Wifezilla]

There are only a few organs that can only use glucose to run. Part of your eye, part of your kidney, etc... If you aren't ingesting glucose, your liver converts just enough protein to glucose to cover what those organs need. The rest of your body runs on ketone bodies instead of glucose.

"Mitochondria are the power plants of our cells, where all the energy is produced (as ATP). Now, when I was taught about biochemical fuel-burning, I was taught that glucose was "clean" and ketones were "smokey." That glucose was clearly the preferred fuel for our muscles for exercise and definitely the key fuel for the brain. Except here's the dirty little secret about glucose - when you look at the amount of garbage leftover in the mitochondria, it is actually less efficient to make ATP from glucose than it is to make ATP from ketone bodies! A more efficient energy supply makes it easier to restore membranes in the brain to their normal states after a depolarizing electrical energy spike occurs, and means that energy is produced with fewer destructive free radicals leftover.

Umph. What does it all mean? Well, in the brain, energy is everything. The brain needs a crapload of energy to keep all those membrane potentials maintained - to keep pushing sodium out of the cells and pulling potassium into the cells. In fact, the brain, which is only 2% of our body weight, uses 20% of our oxygen and 10% of our glucose stores just to keep running. Some cells in our brain are actually too small (or have tendrils that are too small) to accommodate mitochondria (the power plants). In those places, we must use glucose itself (via glycolysis) to create ATP.) When we change the main fuel of the brain from glucose to ketones, we change amino acid handling. And that means we change the ratios of glutamate and GABA. The best responders to a ketogenic diet for epilepsy end up with the highest amount of GABA in the central nervous system.

One of the things the brain has to keep a tight rein on is the amount of glutamate hanging out in the synapse. Lots of glutamate in the synapse means brain injury, or seizures, or low level ongoing damaging excitotoxicity as you might see in depression. The brain is humming along, using energy like a madman. Even a little bit more efficient use of the energy makes it easier for the brain to pull the glutamate back into the cells. And that, my friends, is a good thing.

Let me put it this way. Breastmilk is high in fat. Newborns (should) spend a lot of time in ketosis, and are therefore ketoadapted. Being ketoadapted means that babies can more easily turn ketone bodies into acetyl-coA and into myelin. Ketosis helps babies construct and grow their brains. (Update - looked more into this specifically and it seems that babies are in mild ketosis, but very young babies seem to utilize lactate as a fuel in lieu of glucose also - some of these were rat studies, though - and the utilization of lactate also promotes the same use of acetyl-CoA and gives the neonates some of the advantages of ketoadaptation without being in heavy ketosis.)

We know (more or less) what all this means for epilepsy (and babies!). We don't precisely know what it means for everyone else, at least brain-wise. Ketosis occurs with carbohydrate restriction, MCT oil use, or fasting. Some people believe that being ketoadapted is the ideal - others will suggest that we can be more relaxed, and eat a mostly low sugar diet with a bit of intermittent fasting thrown in to give us periods of ketosis (though in general I don't recommend intermittent fasting for anyone with an eating disorder). Ketosis for the body means fat-burning (hip hip hooray!). For the brain, it means a lower seizure risk and a better environment for neuronal recovery and repair. "
http://evolutionarypsychiatry.blogspot.com/2010/08/your-brain-on-ketones.html

"The most dramatic alterations in human diets in the past two million years, unequivocally, are (1) the transition from carbohydrate-poor to carbohydrate-rich diets that came with the invention of agriculturethe addition of grains and easily digestible starches to the diets of hunter-gatherers; (2) the increasing refinement of those carbohydrates over the past few hundred years; and (3) the dramatic increases in fructose consumption that came as the per-capita consumption of sugarssucrose and now high-fructose corn syrup increased from less than ten or twenty pounds a year in the mid-eighteenth century to the nearly 150 pounds it is today. Why would a diet that excludes these foods specifically be expected to do anything other than return us to biological normality?
It is not the case, despite public-health recommendations to the contrary, that carbohydrates are required in a healthy human diet. Most nutritionists still insist that a diet requires 120 to 130 grams of carbohydrates, because this is the amount of glucose that the brain and central nervous system will metabolize when the diet is carbohydrate-rich. But what the brain uses and what it requires are two different things. Without carbohydrates in the diet, as we discussed earlier (see Chapter 19), the brain and central nervous system will run on ketone bodies, converted from dietary fat and from the fatty acids released by the adipose tissue; on glycerol, also released from the fat tissue with the breakdown of triglycerides into free fatty acids; and on glucose, converted from the protein in the diet. Since a carbohydrate-restricted diet, unrestricted in calories, will, by definition, include considerable fat and protein, there will be no shortage of fuel for the brain. Indeed, this is likely to be the fuel mixture that our brains evolved to use, and our brains seem to run more efficiently on this fuel mixture than they do on glucose alone. (A good discussion of the rationale for a minimal amount of carbohydrates in the diet can be found in the 2002 Institute of Medicine [IOM] report, Dietary Reference Intakes. The IOM sets an estimated average requirement of a hundred grams of carbohydrates a day for adults, so that the brain can run exclusively on glucose, without having to rely on a partial replacement of glucose by [ketone bodies]. It then sets the recommended dietary allowance at 130 grams to allow margin for error. But the IOM report also acknowledges that the brain will be fine without these carbohydrates, because it runs perfectly well on ketone bodies, glycerol, and the protein-derived glucose.)"

"ketones act as a stand in for sugar in the brain. Although ketones cant totally replace all the sugar required by the brain, they can replace a pretty good chunk of it. By reducing the bodys need for sugar, less protein is required, allowing the muscle mass (the protein reservoir) to last a lot longer before it is depleted. And ketones are the preferred fuel for the heart, making that organ operate at about 28 percent greater efficiency.

Fat is the perfect fuel. Part of it provides energy to the liver so that the liver can convert protein to glucose. The unusable part of the fat then converts to ketones, which reduce the need for glucose and spare the muscle in the process.
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/ketones-and-ketosis/metabolism-and-ketosis/

 

[Wifezilla]

A great post on brain evolution...

"Becoming a Brain

During recent human evolutionary history (about 1.5 million years ago), the human brain increased in size by 33% in less than a million years. For this extraordinary expansion to occur required exceptionally favorable circumstances. By any measure, the modern human brain is large. Brains generally increase in size as body size increases. However, the human brain is about 3.5 times larger than that of chimpanzees which, as adults, have a lean body weight not very different from ours.

This massive expansion is even more remarkable when the nutritional demands it places on the body are considered. In adult humans the brain weighs 1400 grams, or approximately 2.3% of the body weight. However, it consumes almost one quarter of the bodys daily energy requirement. In infants this disparity is even greater. At birth, the brain weighs 400 grams and constitutes 11% of the body weight yet consumes almost three quarters of the energy intake! Thus,
any theory of human brain evolution must account for the environmental circumstances that would allow our ancestors to commit a large, disproportionate and continuous nutrient supply to the brain, especially early in life.

Most theories are plagued by the chicken or the egg dilemma.
This refers to the fact that hunting, tool use and other more cerebral pursuits have
been considered as being forces that drove this rapid brain expansion. However,
for these to exist in the first place, a large brain would have been a prerequisite.
So how did improvements in brain anatomy and wiring develop before a larger
brain existed that would have facilitated the formulation of higher brain functions?
And how could this have happened over such a brief period of evolutionary time?
Moreover, the main period of brain expansion was during late fetal and early post-natal
development. At this stage a bigger brain would not have conferred any survival
value.

Recent clues have suggested the role of a nutrient dense diet. This meant a diet higher in meat and fat with a lower plant content. As a possible means of procuring such a diet, hunting would have exceeded the mental capacity at this stage of development and brain size. A likely solution for attaining a high quality diet without the necessity for a sophisticated procurement system appears to be a shore-based diet. This meant exploiting the abundant, sustained, and easily accessible food supply at the waters edge. It probably involved harvesting bird eggs, mollusks, and crustaceans which were nutrient and energy rich. This diet could have been easily harvested by humans of all ages, both genders and required no special skills or bodily strength.

Because of the incessant demands for a nutrient and calorie dense diet, especially during the most rapid period of brain growth perinatally, during a time of absolute dependency, it was vital to prevent periods of nutrient deprivation. This is of interest in light of the fact that although the brains of newborn humans and chimps are similar in size, human infants have about one pound of body fat. Body fat is almost nonexistent in chimp newborns. This fat store provided calories that could last for three weeks and thus constituted a formidable buffer against environmental variability. Fat deposition in the human fetus accounts for 90% of the weight gain leading up to delivery. This represents an exceptional metabolic commitment and suggests that it somehow facilitates the survival of the infant.

From a caloric perspective, the brain is able to utilize glucose but
cant tap into fat or protein sources to any degree. It does posses the metabolic machinery to generate energy from ketone bodies, which are compounds that occur due to partial fat combustion. These are efficiently burned in the brain and can provide 30% of its caloric demands during the newborn period. Ketones are also a source of carbon for the synthesis of brain lipids and cholesterol that comprise a large fraction of neuronal cell membranes. Neurons work by being active electrically. Most cells manifesting high electrical activity (such as neurons, photoreceptor cells and cardiac cells) have a high concentration of DHA (docosahexanoic acid-a long chain omega 3 fatty acid that provides membrane flexibility and function). The DHA concentration in the fat stores at birth is higher than it is at any other time. A shore-based diet provides a continuous supply of this vital nutrient for the synthesis and recycling of neuronal membranes and synaptic connections.

These dietary demands are vital at birth, but are no less important for
the aging brain. High energy requirements and the demand for a nutrient dense diet with abundant long-chain omega 3 fatty acids are critical for optimal brain function and act to slow brain aging. The efficiency with which the brain metabolizes glucose declines as we age. If energetic demands are to be successfully met
as we age, ketone bodies are an ideal fuel source because they generate energy with lower oxygen use and are delivered to the brain via a different transporter than glucose uses. For these reasons current dietary choices should more closely mirror the shore-based diet responsible for the rapid evolution of the flexible thinking machine
we call our brain. "

http://www.drmccleary.com/2007/12/21/becoming-a-brain/

I need his Brain Trust book.