Lex's Journal

[PaleoPhil]

Do you have any links to raw methods of gelatin extraction paleophil?

There was a brief thread on it somewhere. As I recall, it's basically meat/bones + water + acid (lemon juice, vinegar, etc.) + optional veggies or herbs, presumably stored in the fridge for extended periods.

And are you saying, or theorizing, that because people are depleting their iron levels with dairy and tea that bone broth is more needed due to high iron levels?

No, iron comes more from red meat and blood than bones. I'm just speculating that it's theoretically plausible that the enormous dairy and/or tea intakes of traditional pastoral peoples of today and the past (Celts, Scandinavians, Turkics, Mongolics, Tibetans, Altaics, Dinka, Massai, Bantu, Zulu, Scythians, Aryans, Maykops, Pazyryks, etc.) may help them (have helped them) to avoid iron overload.

If so, then it's also possible that people with pastoral ancestry and genetic predisposition to iron overload who eliminate all dairy, grains, teas, and potatoes (all foods that deplete iron and/or promote competing minerals like calcium and magnesium) because of a raw "Paleo" diet, and do not have helminths in today's antiseptic Western world, may put themselves at increased risk for iron overload. Interestingly, there are anecdotal reports of high iron levels amongst Paleo dieters on the Net and recent research suggesting that iron levels should be lower than the lab ranges suggest and that being in the upper parts of the "normal" range may actually contribute to insulin resistance (and physiological insulin resistance is another anecdotally common report in Paleo circles, but is largely dismissed as "normal" and assumed to be healthy). Some Paleoists even regularly give blood to reduce their iron levels. I find the idea of eating some dairy and teas/bitter herbs to be more appealing (if they don't cause problems) than regularly giving blood. For rawists, there are raw dairy foods and it's possible to make nearly raw tea. Some people heat their tea with just the sun, but I don't find even that is necessary to make tea. You can just soak the tea with no heat at all, it just takes more time (such as overnight). Teas are heated to varying degrees in production, so one can also seek out less-heated teas, such as green teas, if one wishes.

Another hypothesized factor in the genetic predisposition to iron overload in Westerners was that the gene(s) offered some protection from the bubonic plague, but it turns out "that patients with higher iron stores are actually more vulnerable to plague" (infection.http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/the-iron-in-our-blood-that-keeps-and-kills-us/266936/2), which leaves the dietary and helminth hypotheses even more plausible. The peoples of the British Isles have both some of the highest rates of lactase persistence in the world, long histories of pastoralism (dairy consumption) and tea drinking, presumably higher past rates of helminths given their close contact with cattle, and also some of the highest levels of hemachromatosis. Is it just coincidence, or something more?

It's just speculation on my part. I'm not saying that anything is proven. Just food for thought.

Maybe we've turned ourselves into the equivalent of hothouse plants that look robust but are actually rather fragile because we've been sheltered from our normal environmental cycles.

Fascinating analogy. Another one is zoo humans.

We heat our environments in the winter and cool them in the summer such that we can no longer tolerate wide temperature changes.

Yes, and I recently learned that some of the primitive people who lived at the cold Southern tip of South America did not wear clothes and instead just coated themselves in seal oil and heated themselves with fires when necessary (and had to go without added warmth when walking/running about).

Could this be a significant source of our modern day maladies?

I think so, and so does Wim Hof. Fascinating anecdote about the dog.

Anyway, the importance of exposure to natural environmental cycles is an interesting question that is not much discussed.

Indeed, and I suspect it's because even so-called Paleoists prefer coddled versions of "Paleo." You're one of the few exceptions who doesn't. It's fascinating that many people still insist that Wim Hof is crazy for enduring (and enjoying) cold despite the fact that scientists have already supported some of his claims with hard evidence. When people ask me isn't the cold weather "terrible," or why I'm not wearing a coat or going into a lake on a cold day and I try to explain that I actually like it and benefit from it, they insist that it is crazy despite my displaying no ill effects at all right in front of their eyes, while they in contrast are shivering or miserable.

As Wim Hof says, “The cold is my friend. Why wouldn't I go back to my friend? I will always go back to my friend.” And to that I add, the heat is also my friend.

[PaleoPhil]

Maybe we've turned ourselves into the equivalent of hothouse plants that look robust but are actually rather fragile because we've been sheltered from our normal environmental cycles.

Some more examples of the sort of "Paleo" approaches that keep us fragile, like hothouse plants, is people that use these fragilizing/coddling words to describe their foods, recipes, etc.:

"nom nom nom" / "yummy"
"Paleo comfort food"
pemmi-crack (thoroughly cooked pemmican)
sweet fruits
electric blanket
mittens
comfy/cushy/soft (ex: mattress, chair, shoes)

There are fewer people using these robustifying/hardening words:

bitter herbs/gentian/...
bitter fruits/bitter melon/...
sour fruits/lemon/...
cold plunge
nail bed
bee sting therapy
hard nature

The progression of soda pops and candies is an example of the decline of the robustifying approach. In the old days, people used bitter herbs like gentian root as medicinals. Then people took them with sweet soda pop or candy to make them more palatable. Then they dispensed with the bitter herbs entirely and just consumed the soda pop and candy and the remaining few that still contain the old medicinal herbs (like Moxie soda) are called "old people's candy/soda," and most people today think these old medicinals are crazy.

Of course, it's possible to go too far in the other extreme and become a masochist, but what's considered a masochist today probably would have been considered a wimp just a couple centuries ago. The farther back you go, the more hardened the people seemed to be.

This video says that some primitive South Americans near the cold southern tip of the continent wore no clothes and instead put seal oil on their skin and used fires for warmth:

Ancient Voices: 1/11 - Tracking The First Americans (BBC Documentary Series)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P0xzlToyNzA

[lex_rooker]

Well its been about 2 1/2 weeks since my TUMT procedure.  Unfortunately I didn't measure flow rate before the procedure but I did measure volume voided.

For the first several days after the catheter was removed I did measure flow rate as well as volume and everything seemed very close to what I was experiencing before the procedure so we'll just have to go with that. 

For several days after the catheter was removed (Monday 9/16/13) flow rate was between 5.5 and 6.25 ml/sec.  Average amount voided was around 100ml.  It's been about two weeks since the catheter was removed and I made flow rate and void volume measurements again yesterday.

Average flow rate has increased to between 8.5 and 10.1 ml/sec. about a 50% improvement.  Average volume voided has also increased from 100ml to around 150ml - again about a 50% improvement.  I'm getting up about 3 times per night rather than 5 so this is a nice 40% improvement as well.

Interesting observation:  When I wake up in the night to void, if I've been sleeping on my stomach, I void much less (about half the amount 75-90ml) as I would if I were sleeping on my side or back.  I also have to void again quickly, say within a half hour or so, and the second void brings the total volume up to the normal 150ml or maybe a little more.  After that I can go back to sleep for 2+ hours before having to get up again.

Very pleased that I have had no "retention" issues (where I just can't void at all) since the procedure.  I've been told that I can expect to see continuing improvement for 3 to 6 months before things level off.  Based on how things were before the procedure, I'm very happy with how things are now even if there is little further improvement.

The improvement has also been rather rapid compared to what I was told to expect.  The urologist said I should start to see some minor improvement starting at 3 to 4 weeks from the date of the procedure.  I'm seeing measurable improvement at 2 to 2 1/2 weeks.

No bad side effects that I can detect yet, but we're still early in the game.  Next appointment with the urologist is on Monday 10/14/13.  Will post further results once I've got feed back from the doc.

Lex

[Dr. D]

Awesome, Lex. Glad to hear of improvement.

I hate to be another one of those guys trying to give advice, so I won't give advice. I just want to know if you've ever looked into either cold therapy or incline bed therapy.

I'm reading through Jack Kruse's info on cold therapy right now and I've got to say, his thoughts are very compelling. From what I understand, diet is only a part of the whole puzzle of health and the reason we see kids with heart attacks and the reason cholesterol is even considered an issue is because of our warm environment, even though we descend from cold-adapted mammals. He claims (not me) that it is the missing puzzle in why so many people that do well with diet and exercise still have disease, yet those in cold environments are so healthy.

And I've only recently started IBT but it's helped my back and theoretically it may help you possibly by relieving prostate pressure...? No clue here either, you're a smart guy and I'm just wondering your take.

Just curious if you've ever looked into either and your experience with them. Take care.

[goodsamaritan]

I just want to know if you've ever looked into either cold therapy or incline bed therapy.

I didn’t try this specifically, but I can see nothing in the idea that would do anything to reduce prostate size or stop prostate growth.  It might alleviate symptoms for a while, but I’m way beyond that point.  Before the TUMT procedure, I couldn’t let any significant pressure build in the bladder or it would shut off urine flow completely. 

I'm reading through Jack Kruse's info on cold therapy right now and I've got to say, his thoughts are very compelling. From what I understand, diet is only a part of the whole puzzle of health and the reason we see kids with heart attacks and the reason cholesterol is even considered an issue is because of our warm environment, even though we descend from cold-adapted mammals. He claims (not me) that it is the missing puzzle in why so many people that do well with diet and exercise still have disease, yet those in cold environments are so healthy.

I’m not a believer in cold therapy alone as exposure to cold is only one aspect of our environment.  In a previous post I suggested that it may be exposure to environmental cycles that we miss in our modern society.  Natural environmental cycles include hot, cold, wet, dry, feast, famine, etc., etc.  We moderate almost all natural cycles to the point of non-existence.

I’m not willing to choose a specific thing like exposure to cold and hail it as the holy grail to health.  Like diet, I expect that it is just one more piece of the puzzle.  There are cycles within cycles.  Day and night not only cycle light and dark, but also temperature, usually warmer during the day and cooler at night.  There are then seasonal cycles that move the overall average temperature up and down creating the more extreme heat of summer day vs the cold of a winter night.  Who’s to say that these compound cycles are not just as important as any individual cycle.

The natural availability of food usually follows the seasonal cycle with less food available during the cold winter months than the warmer months.  So for those that try to emulate food cycles through intermittent fasting, is weekly, monthly, or quarterly fasting the thing to do,  or should they reduce food intake during the colder months rather than the warmer months following the annual progression of seasons?

For those that think diet alone is the answer, is there one food fits all like my current ZC adventure or should we change our diet to fit the foods most available during the seasons?  And of course, is diet alone enough or must it be coupled with famine in the winter months to be fully effective?

Lots of questions and possibilities with little hard data to point the way.  My guess is that it is the exposure to complex and constantly varying cycles in ALL aspects of our environment that contribute to robust health.  Notice I said health and not longevity.  I have no illusion that a good strong and robust life is necessarily an exceptionally long one.

Lex

[Dr. D]

Excellent answer. Thanks for your patience, I remember those previous posts now. Glad the procedure is helping.

[lex_rooker]

Somehow my reply to Dustin (two posts above this one) got posted as though it was from goodsamaritan.  Not sure how this happened.  Here's the header to the post:

Re: Lex's Journal
« Reply #1954 on: Yesterday at 09:02:26 AM »

The post is correct but I'm the one that made the post, not GS.  I guess Arthur C. Clarke was on to something when he said:  "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  It's clear some sort of magic happened here...

Lex

[TylerDurden]

Actually, there was a problem with the server at one point, so that some of the most recent posts at the time were lost. GS was obviously just re-adding the various posts in and had to do it via his own username. That`s all. Nothing sinister here.

[Dr. D]

We had a server crash and GS reloaded all the posts so they appear in his name. Thankfully you always sign your posts so I knew it was you.

[Iguana]

http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/infonews-items/reactivated-and-restored-posts-from-temporary-server/msg115291/#msg115291

[lex_rooker]

Never thought there was anything sinister.  I thought the server made the error and somehow put GS as the poster.  Would have been an interesting software error to find.

Glad to know that GS and/or moderators can recover posts when the server burps.  Also glad it wasn't some strange software bug that would be difficult to reproduce.

Lex

[Inger]

  I’m not a believer in cold therapy alone as exposure to cold is only one aspect of our environment.  In a previous post I suggested that it may be exposure to environmental cycles that we miss in our modern society.  Natural environmental cycles include hot, cold, wet, dry, feast, famine, etc., etc.  We moderate almost all natural cycles to the point of non-existence.

I’m not willing to choose a specific thing like exposure to cold and hail it as the holy grail to health.  Like diet, I expect that it is just one more piece of the puzzle.  There are cycles within cycles.  Day and night not only cycle light and dark, but also temperature, usually warmer during the day and cooler at night.  There are then seasonal cycles that move the overall average temperature up and down creating the more extreme heat of summer day vs the cold of a winter night.  Who’s to say that these compound cycles are not just as important as any individual cycle.

The natural availability of food usually follows the seasonal cycle with less food available during the cold winter months than the warmer months.  So for those that try to emulate food cycles through intermittent fasting, is weekly, monthly, or quarterly fasting the thing to do,  or should they reduce food intake during the colder months rather than the warmer months following the annual progression of seasons?

For those that think diet alone is the answer, is there one food fits all like my current ZC adventure or should we change our diet to fit the foods most available during the seasons?  And of course, is diet alone enough or must it be coupled with famine in the winter months to be fully effective?

Lots of questions and possibilities with little hard data to point the way.  My guess is that it is the exposure to complex and constantly varying cycles in ALL aspects of our environment that contribute to robust health.  Notice I said health and not longevity.  I have no illusion that a good strong and robust life is necessarily an exceptionally long one.

Lex

I think you speak wise words here Lex. We need the nature with all its aspects. I think it is a mistake to believe it is all about foods. It is about context though, seasons... the stuff you write about above.
I slept in a tent last 1,5 months... and I have never slept so well. Tells a lot to me.

[panacea]

I'm not a healthy person, but I'm a very in depth and objective researcher. I usually post more questions than advice because it takes me further, but I noticed you have clued into something I found very interesting in other places on the internet.

The reason health is so dynamic and puzzling is because a persons specific healthy diet/lifestyle/ambient temps not only depends on the standard genetics, life history, and specific environment, but drastically on what health state they are at right now. Someone who is extremely healthy can just about eat any bacteria/rancid food they want and only  suffer diarrhea or vomiting. Someone who is sick fares better on cooked soup than raw food, because the mechanical ease of digestion from heat becomes more beneficial than enzyme activity, which is suppressed even if enzymes are present in raw foods, in sickly people.

However, the interesting thing is regarding ambient temperatures. For an unhealthy person, hot or warm temperatures (above 72 degrees fahrenheit) are by far more beneficial for them. Even though this results in breathing more volume and therefore depleting oxygen supply to all of their organs, this is their normal state in being unhealthy anyway, and cold temperatures shocks their body and taxes it with energy to keep warm which it does not have - thus the resulting need for blankets/heavier clothing or shivering. Coldness is miserable for sick people.

For a healthy person, hot temperatures that are comfortable or tolerable for an unhealthy person become either slightly irritating, or imperceptibly detrimental to their temporary health. For an average healthy person, too warm/hot body temperatures (due to too much clothing, no wind, etc) results in sweating, if there is no wind or very little exposed skin, it will become intolerable to not mouth breathe. Mouth breathing (like how a dog pants but less extreme) also evaporates heat, but also causes great losses in bodily carbon dioxide, which is absolutely necessary for oxygen to be delivered to organs (this is why you pass out when you hyperventilate, your brain shuts down due to lack of oxygen delivered to it, all the oxygen on the planet being in your lungs gets you nowhere by itself). 

For an extremely healthy person however, they can actually slow down their metabolism in adaptation to very hot environments (or too much clothing, etc), or speed it up in very cold environments, and can tolerate extreme temperatures that seem remarkable to science. Some true monks (not the jokes on youtube) have demonstrated this before, again the reason for their health is always because they practice breathing techniques, live a relatively traditional lifestyle with very little polution, etc. Unfortunately, extremely healthy people like this can tolerate just about any kind of raw/cooked diet, so it's hard to use them as a gauge for what is the best diet. It is also impossible to use sickly/chronically allergic people as a gauge for the best diet, because their best diet is determined by what doesn't shock their body, not necessarily what is the most all-around nutritious/least toxic per pound. Animal studies such as on capuchin monkeys are not relevant for many reasons but the prime example being that they live in a nearly perfect environment free of pollutions like electrical devices, smog, synthetic fabrics, and get plentiful exercise, sleep in the outdoors, etc, they are, by all standards, living an opposite life from modern humans. Nuts/plants with high defense mechanisms would be easily digested by such powerful stomach acid from such fit animals, and there in lies the problem with translating to us.

We also don't know how important things like freshness / the diets of our lower food chain are, or other factors. Of course it is easy to deduce that these things are valuable, but how much so, we have no clue really.

[lex_rooker]

Panacea,
I enjoyed your well thought-out post.  I seldom give advice for the reasons you point out.  I have no idea of the health, condition, or environment factors affecting anyone other than myself.  To give advice to others under such conditions is sheer folly.  Therefore, I try to state plainly what I'm doing and the results I achieve and let others determine for themselves what action, if any, they wish to take.

I also enjoy pondering the unknowable and often post my thoughts and ideas for others to consider and comment on.  Your post should provide much food for thought as well.  You are in good company with Paleo Phil and others who post to my journal.

Lex

[PaleoPhil]

Thanks Lex.

I’m not a believer in cold therapy alone as exposure to cold is only one aspect of our environment.  In a previous post I suggested that it may be exposure to environmental cycles that we miss in our modern society.  Natural environmental cycles include hot, cold, wet, dry, feast, famine, etc., etc. 

That's my hunch too. I expose myself to all those things, not just cold. It's interesting that Dr. Kruse reported owning and using a hot tub.

I live in a Northern state, so I tend to focus more on cold therapy for practical reasons. I found that cold shock therapy improved my ability to tolerate high temperatures as well as cold. I'll bet it works in reverse too and presumably combining the two to maximize the range of temperature differences would be better than focusing on just one or the other (and Scandinavian and Roman bath therapies involve both heat and cold). Both summer and winter are more pleasant for me now. I still have room for improvement with temperature tolerance.

[lex_rooker]

@PaleoPhil,
I just finished John Durant's book "The Paleo Manifesto".  The book is a tour de force of all things paleo covering everything from history to diet to exercise to fasting and even daily and seasonal cycles.  He seems to embrace the hot/cold exposure theory much as you suggest in your post above.  It seems he's a member of the Polar Bear Club (folks that jump in the cold ocean in winter on purpose) and frequents saunas and Russian Banya's for the hot side of things.  Must be something to it....

Lex

[Daryl]

Hope all is well, Lex.

[PaleoPhil]

Thanks for the report from the book, Lex. It's a bit strange that the heat side of the scale has been removed and largely ignored in recent methods and discussions of the traditional ancient therapy. The same stress proteins are apparently triggered with both cold-shock and heat-shock, as well as with oxygen deprivation. Wim Hoff has famously demonstrated withstanding all three of these hormetic stressors (I suppose we could call them eustressors in the right doses) with remarkable antifragility and aplomb.

[chris_k]

Hi Lex. I came across your journal, read a little bit and was just about to leave, but then I read about your prostate problems.

So just in case you haven't tried it, this might help: squat when pooping and peeing (just like buddhist monks, btw). And I mean a full squat like the Chinese do. I say that because I've come across westerners who have no idea what to do in a squat toilet and attempt to sort of do a half squat where they keep their ass a foot above the toilet or something weird like that.

The modern toilet is just a silly invention, an attempt by western civilization to appear "civilized". You know, because sitting while crapping is civilized and squatting is what "primitive" cultures do.


http://www.jcrows.com/squatting.html

Google these:

prostate squat
prostate squat chinese

[PaleoPhil]

Lex, I hope you're doing well. Please check out my warning here:

http://www.rawpaleodietforum.com/general-discussion/gut-bacteria/msg118811/#msg118811

I think you are at risk, given that you've been doing VLC for longer than most. I know, you haven't been showing super-bad metrics or symptoms, and I think that's a near miracle. No, I don't have proof, but if you look into this I think you'll see the logic.

I hate to recommend specifics to others to do, but I have a new experiment to consider: test your gut microbiome, such as getting a practitioner to give you the GDX/Metametrix GI function stool test (http://drbganimalpharm.blogspot.com/2013/09/feeding-microbiota-non-starch.html), then add potato starch or foods rich in resistant starch and/or other prebiotics and later get tested again.

You're a near perfect candidate for the experiment, as you're so close to ZC and you track things meticulously.

[lex_rooker]

Phil,
The battle of the diet gurus is, if nothing else, amusing to watch.  They all claim they've found the dietary Holy Grail.  The next thing you know, there's a stampede in another direction towards a different cliff, again labeled "the dietary Holy Grail". Years ago it was Ehret, Walker, Bragg, Tobe, Sheldon, and Carrington.  Then came Wigmore, Kulvinskas, and Pritikin.  Shortly followed up by Atkins, Sears, and Diamond.  Then there's the new crop Asprey, Kresser, Moore, Cordain, Taubes, Durant, Sisson, Hunt, Wolf, Jaminet, Devany, and Peat, et al. each with their own biases and agendas.

Ehret championed the mucusless diet, Walker- raw juices, Bragg-apple cider vinegar and fasting, for Sheldon it was cherries, and Carrington thought the perfect food was chocolate.

For Wigmore and Kulvinskas it was wheatgrass juice, rejuvilac, and sprouts.   Pritikin was all about ultra low fat, high carb, moderate protein.

The current crop seems to be all over the map as well, though they seem to have more of a herd mentality.  They all shift direction like a school of fish - almost in unison - but with the occasional straggler that peddles hard to catch up with the pack.

Today's hot topic seems to be "resistant starch" (last week it was "safe starch") and so the drama continues.  Just as all the gurus of the past discovered about their pet beliefs, RS will soon be eclipsed by the next Holy Grail, and relegated to the ash heap of history.  Stay tuned.

Life is short, and I have determined to waste as little of it as possible, for death will overtake each of us soon enough, regardless of what we choose eat.  Dietary wars were waged long before I was born, (even the Bible weighs in on the subject), and will still be raging long after I'm gone.  Diet gurus will come and go as sure and as regularly as Paris fashions.

If you think agonizing over resistant starch (used to be called fiber in the olden days) is a good use of your time, then by all means have at it.  For me, other things are more important.  I think I'll continue to do what works well for me, and spend little of my precious time worrying over the constant hysteria churned up by the gurus.  What time I have left on this earth is better spent in my shop and with family and friends doing the things I love to do. 

Rest assured, if what I'm doing stops working or problems arise, I'll change in a heartbeat. Until then I'm going to burry my head in the dietary sand and ignore all the clatter from the gurus.

Lex

[PaleoPhil]

Thanks for the response, Lex. I figured you wouldn't be interested, but thought I'd give it a shot, as I'd want you to do the same for me.

I'm not a dietary guru and it was actually an unknown person here, Muhammad Sunshine, who tipped me off about RS, not a guru (or maybe you're aware of his huge popularity somewhere else? ). The important thing for me is that RS has helped, and more so than I expected. Like you, I was quite skeptical of it at first,  and expressed that in my comments to Muhammad. I try to stay open-minded and didn't dismiss RS entirely, and then I quickly realized that it fit with a lot of other things I had learned independently and could potentially explain a lot.

One of the things that improved for me was my fasting blood glucose, which I think you reported was above-average in your case as well. Somewhere around 100 mg/dl I think? Have you seen a report of any society having an avg FBG that high? If not, doesn't it strike you as a bit odd to assume that a high FBG should just be ignored, like VLC diet gurus suggest we should do? Even if physiological insulin resistance is not a problem in itself, it may suggest that something is not quite right--such as perhaps that the gut bacteria are not being properly fed.

Another indicator that your gut bacteria may be depleted is your low fecal volume. This may be a bad sign, rather than a good sign, as some VLCers have assumed. In other words, you may already have problems, and some of them may be hidden, and your physician does not even know what to look for, because physicians have never had to deal with people on extreme VLC diets before (even Dr. Atkins allowed some increased carb intake after his induction phase).

Resistant starch is not a recent fad, removing it from the diet is. The question isn't so much why add it back in, as why did we remove it in the first place. It seems to be one of the biggest holes in popular versions of "Paleo" diets. It and other prebiotics have been part of the human diet from the beginning. It's only since industrialization that it has been drastically reduced in the diet, especially in the USA recently.

One of the puzzles for VLCers was why multiple high-starch societies are faring so well, such as the Kitavans and Okinawans. The usual excuse is to blame it on exercise, but RS may be a better explanation.

In the past, the key component of "fiber" was thought to be the bran/husk of plants. Then when this was studied, it turned out that bran did more harm than good and scientists were perplexed. Some of them went back to the drawing board and re-examined the diets of healthy populations with high fiber intakes and discovered that it wasn't so much bran that they were eating as resistant starch.

Lots of people talk about the right diet for them, but few talk about the right diet for their beneficial gut bacteria, which is proving to be also quite important.

One fellow is looking into the possibility that liver and other organs may provide some of the benefit of RS, so if you don't expand your diet, then here's to hoping that your organ intake will be sufficient.

If you choose not to expand your diet at all, your gut microbiome results would still be particularly interesting. Maybe your physician would even prescribe the test, as it seemed like in the past he was worried about your diet (though perhaps less so since your colonoscopy).

Another change that has happened since the early days of your VLC experiment is that more and more VLCers have been reporting worse and worse problems. One whistle-blowing ex-VLC physician recently reported that things have gotten so bad, he is afraid of being sued for his past advice to eat VLC, and thus he wishes to remain anonymous. According to him, by the time people realize that there is a problem, it may be too late to save themselves.

There has also been more and more evidence coming out of higher starch consumption by Neanderthals, ancient H. sapiens sapiens, Eskimos and others than previously assumed. The completely novel modern VLC dietary approach is turning out to be more problematic and more rare than many expected, including me.

[lex_rooker]

Phil,
I don't disregard RS as important or unimportant any more than any other SINGLE fix-all.  What I find amusing is the constant search to discover the single Holy Grail nutrient, hormone, or whatever.

We are complex animals and no single food is going to meet our needs.  Our bodies require oxygen but we can't survive in a pure oxygen environment.  We need many things in proper balance.

I do believe that our nutrient intake needs to come from sources that would be available in our natural environment and without the need for modern processing.  This takes all the nutrient isolates off my radar as acceptable food.  I won't eat protein isolate powders so popular with body building crowd because these are not complete foods.  By the same token I'm not going to eat resistant starch isolates regardless if they are labeled all natural and organic and come from potatoes.  None of these things are available in nature in this isolated form.

Now a potato is a whole food.  If I read correctly, raw potato is high in RS, but cooked potato has almost none.  Reading further and from real world practical experience when I was a vegan, raw potato can cause some serious gastrointestinal upset, where cooked potato doesn't.

Then there's legumes - again a whole food.  Too cook, or not to cook, that is the question.  And of course there's sprouts full of monsacarides and other less than healthful compounds.

Oats have a good measure of RS but they fall into the category of grains which are a paleo no-no.

Fruits are loaded with fructose - horrors.

Green veggies are loaded with oxalic acid - Yuck.

Now I'm told that meat doesn't have RS and I'm going to get really sick if that is all I eat.

So what's a recovering vegetarian/vegan to do?  It's all so complicated.....

Lex

[Sorentus]

I think we evolved to get as many bacterias as we can in our gut and bacteria play a good role towards proper immunity. A person with a wide reaction of beneficial bacterias posses a healthy immune system. It's likely why most people with lower compromised gut microbiota develop autoimmune disease and other auto immune conditions such as allergies etc. I think we evolved to eat vegetable, starches and fruits otherwise we wouldn't be able to digest them, it's likely why some birds evolved to eat specific type of fruits that we can't eat.

So the more we feed our gut bacteria with a verse diversity of starches, the better we help our immune system to be strong and healthy. GCB'S wife died of cancer but I suspect maybe we wasn't having enough high meat or not enough good fermented vegetables and good fruits.

[PaleoPhil]

Gee, I was hoping you'd know me better than this by now, Lex.

I wouldn't waste your time with info on RS if I thought it was about any of the things you mentioned. I wouldn't even have bothered experimenting with RS foods myself if it were. I'm grateful to Muhammad Sunshine for tipping me off about it and thought I'd try to pay it forward.

RS doesn't require any modern processing at all, nor to be eaten purely in isolated form. Among whole foods, RS content is actually highest in raw unprocessed ones. RS is of particular interest in the LC/Paleo world because many Paleo dieters and LCers have been avoiding the foods that contain it for unproven reasons that get repeated over and over like holy doctrines, and more and more who do so have been reporting problems, and then reporting improvements when they stop avoiding these foods.

Raw potato is indeed high in RS. My grandfather ate small amounts of raw potato his whole life without any GI upset. Cooked potato reportedly regains a retrograde form of RS when it's allowed to cool for a good 8 hours or more. People have been reporting benefits even from this retrograde form. If raw or cooked potatoes and potato starch don't float your boat, there are other RS sources to choose from.

As for me, I'm less concerned about which foods are on gurus' Paleo no-no lists full of lots of simplistic assumptions that lots of evidence contradicts than I am about what works for me. Nature is indeed complex, infinitely so, and we will never fully comprehend it.

As always, I'm not telling you or anyone else what to do and wish you good luck with whatever you do.