PaleoPhil's Journal

[PaleoPhil]

thanks

[PaleoPhil]

Good call on the MTHFR, Daboss. I plugged my 23andme data into geneticgenie.org for free and it reported that I have the MTHFR A1298C CC mutation and recommended L-methylfolate. Some of the same info was in the promethease report I already had, but it was harder to understand and much less focused, so I didn't get the gist of it. There was some other interesting stuff in the promethease report, though, so it was still useful too.

If this helps, that 23andme test will have been well worth the money.

[LePatron7]

Good call on the MTHFR, Daboss. I plugged my 23andme data into geneticgenie.org for free and it reported that I have the MTHFR A1298C CC mutation and recommended L-methylfolate. Some of the same info was in the promethease report I already had, but it was harder to understand and much less focused, so I didn't get the gist of it. There was some other interesting stuff in the promethease report, though, so it was still useful too.

If this helps, that 23andme test will have been well worth the money.

Nice. I'm planning to go to the doctor today and get a slurry of tests done, including the MTHFR genetic mutation to see if I have it. Either way I should be getting a 10 mg bottle of methyl folate (Quatrefolic) from Metabolic Maintenance today. I've built up from about 1,000 mcg daily (been taking that from my MV and b complex for a while) and added in maybe 1,600 mcg daily and built up to where I am now (3,000 mcg 3x daily).

I'm definitely noticing some detox effects. But the improvement in cognitive capacity is noticeable, and well worth the small amount of detox I'm experiencing. The detox from methyl folate is nothing compared to the detox I got from the iodine protocol originally.

It's important to note the detox effect though. Methylfolate can cause all kinds of detox symptoms, and it's important to start low and slow. Eliminating all sources of synthetic folic acid is important too. I personally use GI Pro Health's B Complex which has the active forms of various b vitamins (B12 methylcobalamin, folate methylfolate).

I also recently added in folinic acid. Methyl folate is the final form of folate, while folinic acid is the version before methyl folate. Dr. Lynch recommends taking both. He also recommends the active forms of B6 (P5P) and B12 (Methylcobalamin), which are two vitamins commonly mentioned for pyroluria.

What genetic mutations does the 23 and me test look for?

[PaleoPhil]

I'm definitely noticing some detox effects. But the improvement in cognitive capacity is noticeable, and well worth the small amount of detox I'm experiencing. The detox from methyl folate is nothing compared to the detox I got from the iodine protocol originally.

Thanks for the reminder to report that I've been experimenting with Lugol's iodine too. I didn't get any detox effects. Early on it seemed like it was having a small positive effect, but it's rather difficult to tell.

One day I was in a rush and mixed the iodine in potato starch and noticed that the PS neutralized the bad taste of the iodine. I read that resistant starch is an anti-toxin and iodine was described as technically a toxin that is theorized to help via hormesis and that RS detoxifies the iodine, neutralizing it and forming potassium iodide. This allegedly negates the benefit of the iodine, so it was not recommended. Sure made it easier to ingest though, LOL.

Thanks for the detox effect warning--sounds like what a friend of mine called a Herxheimer effect (aka "Jarisch-Herxheimer reaction")--and the tips.

What genetic mutations does the 23 and me test look for?

Lots. Most of my report was pretty boring, but there were some interesting tidbits and it also provides haplogroup info that did greatly help explain where my father's side of the family likely came from. Here's the website: https://www.23andme.com/

Here's the Promethease website:
http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Promethease

If the geneticgenie.org and promethease reports are accurate, then they may prove to be useful tools for me. Ray Peat, whose advice sometimes correlates rather interestingly with my experience and research, said that the methyl supplements can help, but in the longer run he appears to favor trying to get the nutrients from foods, which is my hope as well.

I think that the "old friends" (the beneficial critters in our microbiome) are likely also a major factor. The instant I saw one article say that sufficient methyl folate cannot ever be obtained from foods by people with one or both of the MTHFR mutations, and that I am therefore doomed forever to take supplements, I thought of the old friends. I looked into it and, sure enough, the beneficial gut bacteria generate bioavailable folate. And what did the research say those beneficial gut bacteria like to eat? Why, RS of course.

Warning--TMI stuff:

For the first time that I can remember, I've been recently noticing that my urine consistently has the "straw" color that people talk about being optimal. The first time I saw it it I had the instinctive feeling that it was a healthy color, which made me think that RS might be the cause of it, especially when it hit me that I'd been needing less P5P to get the same benefit recently. I looked into that too and found that, sure enough, RS-eating bacteria also generate B vitamins that create the healthy straw color. In the past my urine would tend to vary in color from totally clear to dark yellow, orangish, or even brownish. Of course, there's no guarantee that my speculations are correct. Time will tell I suppose.

In recent times the urine was usually yellow, but at times it would be darker and the color would collect at the bottom of the toilet, suggesting some sort of particulate matter. I wonder if that might in part be the pyroles that the pyroluria experts talk about?

Good luck with your tests and treatments.

[PaleoPhil]

My friends, curiousity and experimentation have paid off for me again. Some time ago I found another fruit I seem to handle rather well, which the knowledgeable worker at City Market praised and explained, and now I love them and can't get enough - medlars. Once again, it's a fermented carby food. That is, it's semi-fermented--the precise term is bletted. I seem to handle fermented versions of carby foods better than unfermented, with some other examples being raw fermented honey and bletted custard apple. The taste and texture of properly bletted medlars is similar to bletted custard apple, except with none of the banana or pineapple notes, stronger apple notes, and sometimes a bit of cinnamon (how did nature know to give it that perfect flavor combo?). It tastes something like apple butter and the inside of apple pie.

Watch out for the seeds, though, and have a bucky handy to spit into.

City Market is brave to sell near their store entrance a food that most Americans would probably regard as a disgusting "rotting" fruit and refuse to try. Many of the fruits were already nicely softened in the market, to the point where they squish when handled roughly--sure to turn off the squeamish among Americans.

[TylerDurden]

I used to love medlars but can't get them any more where I live.

[PaleoPhil]

Sorry to hear that.    When I see the medlars getting very soft and mushy in the market, like many of them were yesterday, I get concerned that the store manager will think they are not viable. I like the soft ones myself, because it means I don't have to wait for them to soften at home, but it can make a mess in the fruit bin. 

I should add that there are still limits to how much of even the fermented carby foods I can handle OK and for some reason the more ripened that plantains are, the worse it is for me. The only explanation I can come up with for that is because ripe plantains are super-high in glucose (they start out very starchy and then the starch is converted to glucose as they ripen) and low in balancing fructose. Glucose seems to be my most problematic carb.

[PaleoPhil]

The Yin/Yang of the Internet - some random thoughts on how critics can help

A nice PM from someone brought this to mind. I have found these two similar quotes from Tenzin Gyatso (Dalai Lama XIV) helpful to bear in mind in dealing with the Internet. Maybe someone else will find them useful:

"Our enemies provide us with a precious opportunity to practice patience and love.” (The Heart of Compassion: A Dalai Lama Reader, Full Circle, 1997, p. 88)

“If you can cultivate the right attitude, your enemies are your best spiritual teachers because their presence provides you with the opportunity to enhance and develop tolerance, patience and understanding.” (The Good Heart: A Buddhist Perspective on the Teachings of Jesus, p. 49)

I came across the first one first, and then found the second, even better, one.

A dedicated Internet critic can be helpful to bounce one's speculations off of, especially if they do some of the info-digging for you! The most unhelpful Internet critics are the ones who don't respond at all.

There is a downside too, of course, as the bits of juicy info tend to be hidden within husks of irrelevant insults and negative assumptions that waste both the insultee's and the insulter's time. Sometimes it's worth the digging and perhaps even the chaff serves a purpose, as the politest forums seem to more quickly go extinct than those with a modicum of flame wars.

It can go too far. Like attracts like. When trolls get out of hand, they can drive away more constructive people and attract more trolls.

The Internet promotes brief attention spans. Arguing facts reasonably and supporting them with evidence takes more effort than flippantly flaming someone.

If one puts learning and sharing truths ahead of popularity, critics are inevitable.

"I never trust a man who doesn't have enemies." - Nassim Taleb, https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10151792558173375&id=13012333374

Plus an enemy might even develop into a good friend:

"An enemy who becomes a friend will always be a friend; a friend turned enemy will remain so forever." - NT, https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=10150521103573375&id=13012333374

One common proverb is, "Better a good enemy than a bad friend."

I don't agree with Tenzin Gyatso on everything, and like all aphorisms, this one on enemies can be taken too far, but it seems to be helpful to see the opportunity side of critics.

[PaleoPhil]

The Hard thing vs the Easy thing

There were things like “the right thing” and “the wrong thing” on The Sopranos, but they more often broke down as “the hard thing” and “the easy thing.” The series’ argument was always that the vast majority of us choose “the easy thing” every day of our lives, even if that’s as basic as eating a burger instead of a salad for lunch. Tony Soprano’s easy things may have been many degrees of latitude worse than our own, but we were at least somewhat in concert with who he was. In contrast, choosing the hard thing is ultimately rewarding but rarely so in the moment. The only way a human being can truly change is to do so, but few of us want to engage with the work necessary.
 
- Todd VanDerWerff, Breaking Bad ended the anti-hero genre by introducing good and evil, Sep 30, 2013, http://www.avclub.com/article/ibreaking-badi-ended-the-anti-hero-genre-by-introd-103483

"I never had a teacher, and I never had lessons, other than hard Nature itself. If you do it wrong, it hurts and you take some knocks, and if you do it right, then you really learn." - Wim Hof, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/22/wim-hof-dutch-iceman-cont_n_865203.html

[PaleoPhil]

Ah Phil! I meant to get back to you earlier on this but I tried some jicama! I ate about half the root and even though I was/am zero-carb, I noticed no ill effects or decrease in ketosis. It had a light almost green bean flavor to it. Very fresh and enjoyable. It seemed to digest well even though it was the first starch I had eaten in months and I doubt there was any bacteria to help digest it. I may have to add some in over the winter as it seems "practical" that tubers would be a winter food.

I never did well with starches in the past, potatoes and plantains and bananas (yes the fake cultivated ones) didn't really ever digest well, giving me gas and tiredness. Maybe it was the small amount of jicama I had but it seemed okay. What sort of benefits have you noticed eating RS foods long term?

I gave jicama another chance, and this time it was delectable and digested well, with no noticeable symptoms. I ended up quickly eating the whole thing. How odd. The main differences are that it was smaller than the ones I had tried in the past and I've been eating resistant starch. I'll try some more and see if I still like it, maybe a larger one.

[PaleoPhil]

There doesn't seem to be any word for bad progress (which is very telling about society), at least not in English, so I'll try to come up with one. How about malprogress? Definition: technological change that has worse negative effects than benefits.

[PaleoPhil]

I've been drinking mineral water more regularly recently and noticed after the first few bottles that my saliva started tasting sweet, like when I've been eating a lot of fat, but I wasn't eating any more fat at the time.

Don't know how accurate it is, but I found a claim that the minerals in mineral water can make it taste sweet:

There can be several reasons why water may taste sweet at times. Not all water is the same, which means it could be due to the mineral content.
http://www.ask.com/question/why-does-water-taste-sweet

[eveheart]

There doesn't seem to be any word for bad progress (which is very telling about society), at least not in English, so I'll try to come up with one. How about malprogress? Definition: technological change that has worse negative effects than benefits.

From an etymological point of view, malprogress would work. I get "bad" + "forward" + "to walk"; hence, "bad forward movement."

From a connotative point of view, a pair of words like euprogress and dysprogress might be useful.

It's hard to preserve the "going forward" aspect of the word progress, which we associate with a good thing, and put a negative outcome in the same word, but it's a good idea.

[PaleoPhil]

Interesting, like eustress and distress.

Turns out there's a minor hardcore rock band with the name disprogress.

Funny unhelpful search result:

http://ninjawords.com/Disprogress: "Disprogress" is not in the dictionary.

"euprogress" brings up lots of hits about the European Union. Talk about a contradiction.

There's also no positive terms/meanings for going back to undo bad progress, just terms with negative connotations, like retrograde, archaic, reactionary. It's as though everyone has subconsciously agreed that we are going to keep the petal to the metal and to heck with the consequences (or if you're a conspiracy theorist, then we have all been brainwashed ).

[nummi]

Degradation seems to fit, at least somewhat, as opposed to progress.

[Projectile Vomit]

There doesn't seem to be any word for bad progress...

What's wrong with 'mistake'?

[PaleoPhil]

Degredation and mistake are terms I have used in the context, but they don't seem specific enough. When you hear "mistake" or "degredation," do you think "problems resulting from technological innovation/progress"?

[nummi]

I regard degradation as something getting worse compared to a previous state. Dictionary says basically the same.
But it's true it's not exactly what you want, degradation has this other "flavor" to it.
Mistake is just one instance, degradation can include many mistakes.

I've noticed myself as well that for many notions there simply are no words made for. Language fails the mind, so have to play with context, and perhaps add some further sentences to make the point clearer, or give a rough direction and hope for comprehension.

[Projectile Vomit]

I was being fairly facetious. I know that 'mistake' doesn't capture what you're trying to discuss. What's wrong with Price's term physical degeneration, or degeneration more generally?

[eveheart]

Here's a good one: outcome bias: an error made in evaluating the quality of a decision when the outcome of that decision is already known. Specifically, the outcome effect occurs when the same “behavior produces more ethical condemnation when it happens to produce bad rather than good outcome, even if the outcome is determined by chance.”

This word would come from the study of ethics and decision-making. It's not quite on the mark, but I think you could find other good descriptive words if you needed to find a word that has some recognition value in some field of study.

[nummi]

"Decadence" fits as well, somewhat at least.

[PaleoPhil]

Thanks for the additional suggestions. Another that Nassim Taleb uses that I remembered is fragility, from which I could extract fragilization.

Re: degeneration - like degredation, I do use it, but it doesn't quite capture the specific meaning I was thinking of. With those terms, people tend to think of things like machines rusting and wearing down, rather than brand new machines causing new problems.

[PaleoPhil]

For years I've had poor S-T memory and identified with the character Forgetful on Sesame Street. I now think that VLC with very low resistant starch intakes was worsening it. I'm hoping I'll get lucky and resistant starch will bring some of my S-T memory and mental clarity back.

This is a re-post of something I wrote in DaBoss' thread:

I thought I was listening to my body and didn't connect the problem to VLC early on, because I had memory problems and mental fog before VLC, and it helped greatly at first, but I realized how much of a connection there probably was last week when I skipped a day of potato starch (it supposedly helps to skip a day now and then) and had already been taking less B6 (because the RS seemed to be helping), but that combo was going too far and I was in a fog for much of Thursday (including forgetting to start taking the PS again) and by the afternoon I forgot what day it was. I also got a couple bits of shocking news that threw me for a loop (such as that lots of folks are being seriously harmed by VLC that's low in RS). I unintentionally missed work Friday because I thought it was Saturday and the idea stuck and I didn't snap out of it until a friend told me what day it was on Saturday afternoon. LOL

This reminded me to start taking more potato starch and B6 again and the contrasting improvement drove home the importance to me again. My foibles and the news I saw about VLC also motivated me to get set up as a new patient at a medical practice (talk about red tape) that does gut biome tests. Ironically, when something's working decently, it's easy to get complacent and not stick well enough to the program.

Like Brady the honey guy, in retrospect it seems that in the longer run VLC has been one of the worst things I've done to my health, although limited-budget SAD is up there. If I can recover quickly from VLC, then maybe it will turn out to have not been so bad. Either way, I hope my mistakes will be a warning to others, and I'm bound to make more. 

[van]

Phil I'm still looking for you to show me where lots of people on vlc are being hurt??  You're certainly in the minority here on this forum, if your troubles are due to vlc.

[Iguana]

I've been drinking mineral water more regularly recently and noticed after the first few bottles that my saliva started tasting sweet, like when I've been eating a lot of fat, but I wasn't eating any more fat at the time.

Don't know how accurate it is, but I found a claim that the minerals in mineral water can make it taste sweet:

Yes, when you drink a water which mineral content is particularly well suited to your current needs, it tastes sweet.