PaleoPhil's Journal

[PaleoPhil]

People say not to criticize things unless you've tried them. I'm also a curious sort. So after seeing many posts on the supposed benefits of foods I haven't tried before I tend to get curious about trying them. Some claim that dairy sensitive folks like me should be able to handle ghee, so I tried homemade ghee but got mildly ill. It's possible that the bad results were due to poor processing on my part, so I tried some high-quality ghee sold in my local healthfood market. Like the homemade it tasted good--like butterscotch. After 2 tbsp I started feeling the same nausea I felt after eating the homemade ghee, so I stopped (I normally eat much more fat than this when eating suet). The next morning I had a splitting headache, worsened constipation, dry lips, and mild flank pain. Both bad experiences could have been coincidences, but I don't have enough of a reason to eat dairy products to bother experimenting any more with ghee.

This still leaves raw cultured butter untried, which I may try in the future. I actually handled pasteurized cultured butter better than ghee, but it still was a net negative. Raw cultured butter is inconvenient to acquire and expensive, so I would have to do very well on it to bother with buying it regularly, but some experience with it will better inform my discussions with others on dairy and put the various points of view on dairy to the test (at least as they apply to me).

[Inger]

PaleoPhil,

after reading about the oxycholesterins in Ghee, I loosed all my interest in trying it. All. It have huge amounts of oxycholesterin, much much more than butter!
That might be why you got sick.. 

Inger

[PaleoPhil]

This article - "Does ghee contain oxidized cholesterol?" http://freeradicalfederation.com/GheeLowersCholesterol - cites a study that claims that only "oxidized ghee" was found to contain substantial oxydized cholesterol, whereas "native ghee" did not. Do you know the difference?


BTW, the headache and hangover feeling I had the morning after eating ghee was fairly quickly eliminated after I ate raw beef and suet.

[TylerDurden]

I would like to add a note of caution:- One of the worst things that I encountered were Primal Dieters repeatedly telling me to try a dozen different quack remedies in order to "get used to" raw dairy. I was told to try raw butter(I was told that it was physically impossible for anyone to be allergic/have problems with raw butter); I was told to drink raw milk only at room-temperature, to eat raw  cheese as aged as possible, to put raw honey into any raw milk I drank, to only drink A2-protein-derived milk, or only drink fermented raw milk. When I tried all of the above methods(among others I can't recall) and told people online that none of the above methods worked re resolving my raw dairy allergy, I was basically blamed as being responsible with some rubbish WAPF-derived claims being made re  leaky gut and that, eventually, as I healed, I was told  I would become able to handle raw dairy with ease. That was another lie as when I last did a raw-dairy experiment 6 years later, several years after resolving the various health-problems, I again had problems with it.

In other words, I wasted a whole 6 months of my life trying out those ridiculous "methods" purely on the dubious say-so of people who assured me(likely falsely in most cases given the extreme nature of their posts) that they did fine on raw dairy. It's a generally logical assumption that if one does badly with 1 type of a raw food, then however differently it may be processed, then that food is not likely suitable for one, healthwise, in the long-term. Sure, eliminating most or all of specific toxins may resolve some immediate problems, but it's a sure bet that if you react to just 1 type of that food, that with the other types of that food you will experience, in the long-term, some nasty side-effects which creep up on you slowly without being noticed. At least, I've often had people corresponding with me re raw diets who assured me they actually did fine with raw butter but not other raw dairy, but who eventually admitted to me, years later, that their health suffered a bit as a result.

[klowcarb]

I am very glad I dropped the ghee and lard.  I just really love eating only raw ZC foods. I not only feel and look my best, but I have a sense of well-being of eating as close to nature as possible. I really believe raw allows us to get undisturbed the protein, fat, minerals and vitamins that are altered or destroyed in cooking. I do not fear a seared, super rare steak on occasion, but anything beyond that, I only eat cooked meat and fat if I have to, which is rare!

[PaleoPhil]

Yeah, thanks. Don't worry, I don't plan on doing a 6 month experiment. It will probably be a one-time thing with a small amount of raw butter that I'm hoping a friend will share with me. I'm mainly curious as to whether the negative effects will be any less than with pasteurized cultured pastured butter/ghee and raw milk. Raw cultured butter would seem to be the least problematic dairy product possible, so if I try that I think I can say I've tried the best dairy has to offer. Of course, the raw dairy advocates will say that I didn't try it long enough or make some other excuse, like they did with Tyler, but I won't let that sway me into longer term experiments.

One other interesting thing I noted was that the ghee, while overall tasting pleasantly like butterscotch (and, surprisingly, both the homemade and market-bought had a bit of sweetness to it), had a little bit of an unpleasant burnt taste to me--even the high-quality, expensive stuff from the market. I remember noticing that in my youth when eating butterscotch candies too, except now it seemed to be a little more pronounced--possibly due to my raw eating. It also seemed like the last couple times I ate tallow I liked it less than I used to. I also noticed at the gourmet brunch buffet I ate from recently that I only liked the raw/smoked foods (like lox) and still-juicy cooked foods, and the thoroughly cooked foods seemed to be more unpleasant than usual and bloated my stomach pretty badly. So I think I may be getting to the point where I may not like cooked foods that much any more. I know a lot of rawists, such as Tyler and Lex, have reported this happening. I would prefer to be able to continue eating cooked foods at social occasions and when nothing else is available. Lex seems to be able to handle that, so I'm hoping I will be able to continue handling it as well.

One classy and encouraging thing about the brunch buffett was that there were no bagels or cream cheese with the lox--just capers and chopped red onions. Years ago I would only eat the bagels and cream cheese when served with lox. Now I eat the lox and skip the bagels and cream cheese. The raw texture of the smoked salmon lox, as well as sushi/sashimi, used to bother me, but not any more. Now the thought of lox or sashimi makes me salivate a little. It also makes me wish I had fat (other than cream cheese) to go with it. They didn't have much fat at the brunch (just some bacon and a thin white sauce on a skinless chicken dish) which was the main downside along with the overcooking.

One thing I'm curious about is, while I like the taste of sweet butterscotch somewhat, the idea of eating it with meat doesn't thrill me. So I'm a bit puzzled as to why some carnivore-heavy dieters love eating ghee with their meat, though I know some folks here love raw honey with meat. I guess I should try the honey with meat thing to see if I like that at all. I've had too much of a mental block with it to try it up to this point. I have tried eating fat with honey, though, which makes sense to me because it's like eating the fatty grubcomb with the honey comb. I guess I could think of the meat as being like the protein portion of the grubs.

[PaleoPhil]

I found a partial answer to my question at http://freeradicalfederation.com/GheeLowersCholesterol ...

from the full text of the above cited study ["Hypocholesterolemic effect of anhydrous milk fat ghee is mediated by increasing the secretion of biliary lipids."]:

The unheated ghee contained 0.16% cholesterol, of which 1.0% of total sterols were oxysterols ; the corresponding values in oxidized ghee were 0.051% and 17.2%, respectively.

However, I've never heard of "unheated ghee." Have any of you? I'm guessing that it actually was lower-heated ghee, but I don't have access to the full text of the study.

[klowcarb]

Phil, I have also found that I'm increasingly not enjoying cooked meat. I went to a Brazilian steakhouse on a date, and could only eat the super rare meat. The meat cooked beyond that was not palatable.

I also share your experience with ghee. At first, I enjoyed the buttery flavor. Then it started making me feel sick, and putting it on my ground beef was repulsive. The same happened with lard. Both started tasting too sweet and I was not wanting them like I wanted raw fats.

[TylerDurden]

I suppose the addictive hormones in dairy are still active in ghee which would explain them being favoured by cooked ZCers.

 I've tried mixing raw honey and raw honeycomb with raw meats but I loathed the taste.There's just too much of a clash of tastes involved.

[klowcarb]

I love the subtle, not at all sweet taste of raw bone marrow. I was thinking of getting raw back fat as well. This would be pork fat that is raw and not at all rendered.

[PaleoPhil]

The grainfed marrow at the supermarket seems to always be too moist and musty when I buy it, possibly because it is stored in plastic and not vacuum-packed. I air-dried it for a day this time and that seemed to improve the flavor.

[cherimoya_kid]

I love the subtle, not at all sweet taste of raw bone marrow.

I've had some bone marrow that was literally as sweet as sugar.  The first time it happened I kept looking at the knife I was digging it out of the bone with, thinking maybe it the knife had somehow gotten some sugar on it.

That's rare, though.  I've only gotten that super-sweet marrow twice, out of hundreds of times.

[PaleoPhil]

Hypodipsia - thirst signals alone are not enough for me

One of my stubborn remaining symptoms is dry, flaky skin in the scalp, eyebrows and bridge of the nose and it sometimes extends to my forehead and nose. Based on my multistix I'm still a little dehydrated, so I think that's a factor. Presumably the dry flakes in the scalp are dandruff, except that much of it looks exactly like the dry skin that sometimes appears on my forehead, so I'm not sure what the difference is, if any.

My body has difficulty staying hydrated and I don't get much in the way of thirst signals to drink. I've learned that this is called hypodipsia and one thing it has been connected to is laxity of smooth muscle tissue in the stomach and back of the throat (http://www.drugs.com/news/lack-strong-thirst-signals-leads-elderly-drink-little-10383.html#ixzz0ocFQIcg8), which is not surprising, since I have laxity in smooth muscle tissue and ligaments in multiple areas of my body. This is common in connective tissue disorders, most of which I have a history of (http://www.ctds.info). So it looks like I’ve learned a bit more about the source of one of my remaining unresolved issues. I guess I’ll need to continue indefinitely trying to force myself to drink more water than my thirst dictates. I’ve learned that for some people—including many of the elderly (who have been damaged by SAD for many years)--it’s dangerous to rely solely on thirst to determine how much water you drink.

Hypodipsia can also be “related to dysfunction of the thirst osmoreceptor in the anterior hypothalamus.” (Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 8th edition. © 2009, Elsevier.)

[klowcarb]

I don't care about thirst or hunger signals, to be honest. I drinks TONS of water and tea all day as I fast, sometimes 3 8oz. cups per half an hour. I must average over 100-120 oz. of water/green tea/herbal teas a day.

[PaleoPhil]

Heated honey spikes my sugar a bit further than raw, based on a test I did today.

12:08pm fasting glucose after 14 hours 89 mg/dl
12:12pm  ate 2 tbsps McLure's of New England Clover Honey (slight burning of tongue, mild nausea)
1:12pm postprandial glucose 1 hour after eating 210 mg/dl

I forgot to do the 2 hour test until about 2.75 hours after eating the honey. The reading was down to 113 mg/dl, but that's not a fair comparison to the 2 hour test of the raw.

There does appear to be less effect on insulin by raw honey than heated, but raw honey spiked my sugar much more than one would expect if the claims of some rawists that raw honey doesn't spike blood sugar (because of some mysterious unknown "enzymes" or such in the raw honey) were correct for all.

It looks like I should severely limit or avoid all honey in my case.

[actionhero]

It looks like I should severely limit or avoid all honey in my case.

That's just how honey is. I get no blood sugar problems from any amount of fruit but honey even in small amounts starts the highs and lows like SAD candy. I think everybody experiences this on honey. Also it tastes way too strong, not pleasant at all.

[PaleoPhil]

I'm planning on testing my blood sugar response to some fruits too--at least berries.

Raw honey does taste far, far better to me than heated honey. I wish it had much less impact on my blood sugar, as raw honey is one of the best tasting foods I've tried, though it can cause some unpleasant burning feeling on my tongue even in small amounts and can cause a little bit of nausea if eaten excessively, though not nearly as much nausea as heated honey causes.

Heated honey also tends to give me an unpleasant scratchy feeling on the back of my throat. It always used to puzzle me when people claimed that honey soothed a scratchy throat and I found the opposite.

[TylerDurden]

That's just how honey is. I get no blood sugar problems from any amount of fruit but honey even in small amounts starts the highs and lows like SAD candy. I think everybody experiences this on honey. Also it tastes way too strong, not pleasant at all.

  Actually, quite a number of RVAFers have no such issues with raw honey.

[PaleoPhil]

  Actually, quite a number of RVAFers have no such issues with raw honey.

Has anyone else measured their blood glucose after eating it? I'm curious about what results they got and whether anyone else experienced a spike in BG.

[RawZi]

Has anyone else measured their blood glucose after eating it? I'm curious about what results they got and whether anyone else experienced a spike in BG.

    I've drank a bottle of glucose syrup (when I was vegan) and my bg didn't spike at all.

[ys]

Isn't it normal for BG to spike every time you eat anything loaded with sucrose/glucose?

[PaleoPhil]

    I've drank a bottle of glucose syrup (when I was vegan) and my bg didn't spike at all.

Wow, that's unusual. Do you have any idea of what accounts for that?


After a couple weeks of trying sauerkraut, including eating as much as a bowlful at once, I didn't notice any benefits, didn't like the taste, and it causes belching and minor stomach discomfort in me, so I discarded the remainder.

[klowcarb]

Hey, Phil! I hope you don't find this hostile--you KNOW me--but I find your constant attempts to experiment with adding carbs--berries, honey, greens--baffling. Why bother? What possible benefit? If you are eating meat and organs, why would you want to add inferior sources of energy/nutrients to your diet, especially when they cause you distress, and you feel good on raw ZC?

[PaleoPhil]

I'm finding that raw ground beef doesn't air-dry well in the current warm and humid weather, so I'm back to storing it in glass containers in the fridge.

Hey, Phil! I hope you don't find this hostile--you KNOW me--but I find your constant attempts to experiment with adding carbs--berries, honey, greens--baffling. Why bother? What possible benefit? If you are eating meat and organs, why would you want to add inferior sources of energy/nutrients to your diet, especially when they cause you distress, and you feel good on raw ZC?

It doesn't bother me, Katelyn, no, and yes I know you and knew you wouldn't like it, and I know that Tyler and a good friend of mine think the exact opposite--that I'm too pro ZC/VLC and too anti fruits and other plant foods. My idea all along was to get down to a base that didn't cause me problems--nondairy ZC--and then see if I'm able to add back any foods to it from there, and if none of them worked out then I would be fine with ZC including some organs. I'm not yet a fan of most organs, though I'm handling liver a bit better, and while my nutrient deficiencies are much improved, some have not resolved completely, so I think it might be beneficial to include some nutrient-rich plant foods also. Some foods I added, such as young greens and herbs, don't appear to be causing me any problems and I seem to be handling berries somewhat better, though it's still too early to tell.

I also wanted to put some of the dietary claims to the test and see what works and what doesn't, at least for me. For example, I was skeptical of the claim that raw honey doesn't spike blood sugar. I put it to the test and it spiked mine. I always try to keep an open mind, so I'll do so as regards other people and I'll listen to anyone else who has tested their blood sugar after eating raw honey, but my skepticism was warranted in my own case. It is interesting that raw honey doesn't spike my blood sugar quite as much as heated, so I'm glad I did the test and found out that interesting tidbit, but it definitely is not going to become a regular food for me. By doing that test, I also think I may have discovered that I'm more insulin resistant than either I or my physicians realized (which Dr. Harris suspects why people like me and you and Lex seem to do better on ZC instead of 5% carbs like him), so that's an even more important bit of information I've learned. I'll test berries the next time I buy them and if they spike my blood sugar badly too then I'll probably be finished with fruits for the foreseeable future, unless someone can give me a good reason why I should eat something that spikes my blood sugar.

You provide a helpful counterpoint to Tyler, so I getting a fairly wide range of perspectives. I'm curious as to whether you see any problem with seaweeds which are protists (sort of in-between plants and animals), rather than plants. They apparently do contain high levels of bromine that may be a problem for people with high TSH levels, but I don't think I eat enough for that to be a problem and they don't contain antinutrients. Plus they provide some salt which might be useful given that I don't consume much blood. Satya made a pretty good case for them. Plus, it turns out that some peoples that have been eating seaweeds for a long time have incorporated the genes of some marine bactertia into their intestines, resulting in superior digestion of seaweeds (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7290/full/464837a.html) and since seaweeds are native to the coastal areas of the lands of my ancestors (http://www.eufic.org/article/en/artid/Seaweed-exploring-its-dietary-value/), it's possible that I may be one of the people who digests them better. I enjoy the variety they offer a little bit, but they are expensive and I could live without them.

[klowcarb]

I am so glad we are friends, Phil, and we can discuss this. I have much respect for both you and Tyler, so enjoy this debate. Is it distaste for liver that is your problem, or digestion? I'd like you to elaborate on this. What makes you think you are not getting all you need from raw ZC?

I admit to my ignorance on protocists. Honestly, I think seaweed eating would have been rare, even for Eskimos. Is there much research in this area? That said, seaweeds do appear very low in carbs and high in perhaps iodine. Why is bromine needed?

My preference is to stick to ZC animal foods. That said, I have no issues with energy (if I eat enough) or digestion. I don't see any value to adding carby modern fruits.