...I was about to concur earlier that I had diminished yawning, as I know for certain that when I yawn in front of the GF speaking that she gets rather miffed. But I yawned just earlier and I don't really consume many carbs.
I didn't mean to imply there's necessarily absolute zero yawning on ZC. I still occasionally yawn, but it's pretty rare (probably less than once a week, actually, but I haven't been tracking it carefully, so I was being conservative and granting the possibility of once a week)--I used the term "no-yawning" for simplicity (just like "zero carb", which is not literally zero carb) and hoped it wouldn't cause confusion. It's more of a mouthful to say "near-zero-yawning on ZC," but if the latter term will make things clearer, I'll use it.
how exactly due you see the yawning being a factor, do you think see it allowing for greater uptake of oxygen as with deeper breath?
That's what I remember being told as a youth by some teachers (who have loads of experience with yawning youths
). When I noticed not long ago that I was rarely yawning and was no longer yawning in contagious response to other people doing so, I remembered being told about yawning being due to oxygen deficiency (though I wasn't completely convinced of it at the time) and I also remembered that anaerobic bacteria are the deadly ones, and
Warburg on cancer cells being anaerobic and getting their fuel from anaerobic respiration (aka
anaerobic fermentation), and wondered if there could be connections between it all.
There seems to be a general principle of oxygen = good, no oxygen = bad. Here are some more examples of no oxygen = bad:
> Anaerobic fermentation of sugars from grapes, grains, etc. produces alcohol, an addictive toxin (
http://www.eckraus.com/wine-making-101.html).
> Anaerobic digestion produces methane, an asphyxiating, oxygen-displacing gas (asphyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane#Potential_health_effects). Cattle that eat feeds heavy in poorly digested carbs like cereal grains and soy emit higher levels of methane gas in their flatulence. Humans who eat poorly digested carbs also tend to flatulate more (I rarely flatulate any more, BTW, believe it or not).
> Anaerobic respiration/fermentation in fast twitch muscle fibers that rely on quick spurts of anaerobic fuel produces "lactic acid that accumulates within the cells [and] eventually leads to muscle fatigue and cramp." (
http://science.jrank.org/pages/322/Anaerobic-Fermentation.html)
There appears to be at least one exception to this general principle: improved health benefits of foods treated with lactic acid fermentation, such as sauerkraut (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauerkraut#Health_benefits), yogurt (
http://www.griffined.com/pages/Resp_yogurt.pdf) and kimchi, although part of the process of fermenting these foods and alcohol is aerobic. I don't do well on yogurt and I don't care for the taste of sauerkraut or any other vinegared food, so I haven't experimented with these foods myself, but others here have reported benefits from them. Interestingly, the foods that can be fermented purely aerobically (high meat and stink fish) and without producing vinegar appear to be the most healthful of all the fermented foods.
Don't dog's yawn alot -c commercially fed at least - maybe monitoring carnivorous dogs is a better control than humans who might have other issues at play?
Big cats that are obligate carnivores also yawn, and yawning among wild carnivores is the only thing that doesn't fit so far. Big cats are big organ eaters, but whether there's enough carbs in the organs they eat to cause yawning, I don't know. However, yawning cats don't answer the question of why I and some others yawn less on ZC, and why my yawning increases when I eat carbs.
it does list Insufficient oxygen in blood as a possible cause as also opioid withdrawal,
Interesting, can you share some links? It makes sense that oxygen-starved blood could be the main link between oxygen deprivation at the cellular level and at the systemic level.
It is true that cereal grains produce opioids in the body, but I wasn't aware that fruits did. Alcohol produced by anaerobic fermentation of fruits (and other carbs) does have similar effects on humans as opioids ("Alcohol and opioids: possible interactions of clinical importance,"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2821747).
so perhaps it is linked to detox on an all raw diet.
I'm not a big fan of the term "detox," as it is very vague and used in multiple and even contradictory ways by different people and is frequently used by vegans/vegetarians to explain away all sorts of nasty side effects of their diets and people selling questionable products, so I don't have much interest in that avenue of exploration, but you are of course free to explore that if you wish.
I do know the Primals think berries can trigger certain kinds of detox.
I've noticed yawning is produced by all fruits I've tried, not just berries. Berries actually seem to produce less yawning than some other fruits I've tried.
Funny that you thought of yawning paleophil.
now that you mention it I realize I don't remember the last time I yawned...
Yes, as I recall, the first time I noticed I wasn't yawning much on ZC was when one co-worker yawned and then another yawned in the usual contagious fashion, but I didn't. It was one of the rare times in my life when I didn't yawn contagiously and didn't even have to stifle a yawn. I thought that was odd, then I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I had yawned. I wondered if it could be related to my ZC diet of the time. Later on when I cheated and ate some carbs I yawned quite a bit, adding some confirmation. Each time I've had significant carbs since then I've yawned gapingly within a day of eating them, while rarely yawning gapingly at any other times.