A HCLF member of the Mark's Daily Apple forum has become so inundated with questions and pleas for help from chronic VLCers (granted, they aren't rawists) that she created a link to a spreadsheet of her diet. More and more people there, and even at the Low Carb Friends forum, are adding back carbs into their diets, including starchy plant foods. A Carnivore forum changed its name after more and more people started developing problems on VLC, including the forum owner, and the activity dwindled. The ZIOH forum dwindled from over a thousand members down to around 100, the last I checked some time ago. A moderator on a ketogenic diet forum reported improvements when he increased his intake of resistant starch:
http://freetheanimal.com/2014/08/australian-reaction-ketogenic.html#comment-645468 (see the comment at August 19, 2014 at 08:59).
It's more evidence that the problems we've seen here over the last few years are only the tip of the iceberg. If anyone is still unaware of them, I've already posted plenty about them in this forum. I predict that there will be lots more to come as more chronic VLCers experience serious longer-term problems, though with luck, maybe many will start adding back carbs and prebiotics in time to avoid the worst problems.
More and more info has been coming out that LC advocates don't talk about--such as that some cancer cells and fungi can feed off of ketones, not just glucose, and that not all cancers respond well to ketogenic diets.
There were early warning signs about the problems years ago when GCB's wife died of cancer and later when people doing the LCHF "Optimal Diet" started developing stomach and colon cancers, yet many LCers dismissed it.
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/category/diets/optimal-diet There were so many other clues too--Bear Stanley getting throat cancer (and blaming it on some broccoli his mother made him eat as a child
), Vilhjalmur Stefansson dying of his third stroke after 7 years of a meat-heavy diet, Stefansson himself reporting that traditional Eskimos aged rapidly, an autopsy of Dr. Atkins showing he had "a history of heart attack, congestive heart failure and hypertension,"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Atkins_(nutritionist), and on and on.
Part of the problem seems to be that many people do the lowest carb early versions of the OD or Atkins or Primal Blueprint that are intended to be temporary, until one gets relatively lean and calms down the immune system, and then instead of adding back foods rich in digestible and resistant carbs down the road, they stick with VLC, sometimes even zero starch or zero carb, for too long. They figure if LC is good, then VLC or even no carb must be better, and since they feel good, why not stick with it indefinitely. But then problems develop years down the road. Forewarned is forearmed.
Another part of the problem was that early Paleoanthropological research focused on evidence of meat eating, because the bones of animals were so easily found. Since then, more sophisticated technology is revealing that Stone Agers ate plenty of plant foods, including starchy plant foods, even Neanderthals, which Tyler posted some interesting articles about.
There's also the problem for some of the self-fulfilling prophecy that Tyler wrote about, which can become a vicious cycle (avoid carbs, which worsens carb tolerance, which seems to further justify avoiding carbs, ...):
It is a common characteristic of people that when they turn to ZC diets, that their whole body's digestive system changes in fundamental ways(re different enzymes/bacteria being needed etc.) so that they then lose their ability to digest carbs properly. The result is that they then claim that all carbs are evil. I had the same experience when I went VLC(hardly any carbs at all) for many months at a time. I would develop minor side-effects from eating carbs or not be able to properly digest them - of course, as soon as I went back to eating a diet slightly higher in carbs, those issues vanished quickly and completely.
Unfortunately, not everyone's issues vanish as quickly and completely as they did for Tyler when carbs are added back, which can mislead folks into thinking that they should avoid carbs forever and that maybe they just aren't genetically designed for them, instead of digging deeper and trying to figure out and fix the underlying problems that are causing the carb sensitivity.
I think eating plenty of raw foods may help reduce the risks from VLC, but not eliminate them. Plus, in the case of underweight and eating disorders, raw diets tend to be even harder for many people to get adequate calories from in this fast-paced age. FWIW, There's even one anecdote (which I'll share in the interests of open-minded examination--not likely to be popular here, sorry) in which a guy who has been tracking dietary effects on his microbiome found that including some cooked and cooled starchy foods in his diet provided better results than eating only raw starches. It's a whole new field of science, so who knows what we may learn.
There do seem to be some cases where VLC/ketogenic diets can be therapeutic, at least in the short run (ketogenic diets to treat epilepsy are typically not done for more than 3 years by Johns Hopkins, for example), and the new information about the microbiome and prebiotics seems to be leading to safer versions of it, but it's probably best to be monitored by a physician while doing it, and to be aware of the early signs and symptoms of problems.
