help? questions about food...

[lynette914]

Hello ~

My doc told me a month ago that I my C-Reactive Protein level is 10 ~ not good ~ so I have this inflammation thing. He wanted me to go on one of the statins, even though they've always caused extreme muscle pain. I don't want to do that, but my cholesterol is very high ~ 265 and low whatever the good one is ~ and I have to do something.

I got a book on inflammation and instituted some of those dietary changes, also added the suggested supplements. I've been eating this way now for about three weeks and notice some significant differences:
1. I no longer wake up in severe pain;
2. I don't toss and turn all night because I hurt all over;
3. I am way less hungry and many of my carb cravings have diminished.
4. I've lost a little bit of weight.

I'm pretty excited about it :-) yay! But here's my confusion:

1. Some paleo/caveman/neanderwhatever people conflict on fatty meats;
2. Milk is not okay why? It causes me ZERO problems. I miss it.
3. Absent milk, coconut milk is fine with some of them, not with others.
4. Coconut oil is banned by some, not by others.
5. Soy milk is fine? Not fine? Sigh.

I eat a really big dark leafy green salad at least once a day with chopped veggies, flax seeds, walnuts, sometimes raisins, sometimes some grapes, olive oil and flax seed oil and (banned) vinegar because I can't eat a vinegar-less salad. Why don't I want to eat vinegar?

What I'm eating is pretty low carb in general, compared to my typical loaf-o-bread-a-day pound-of-M&Ms diet, though the quantity of vegetables and the 1-2 fruits each day obviously have carbs in them.

I'm avoiding starchy carbs, any grains, potatoes, etc.

Which brings up carrots ~ some say yes, some no. And tomatoes ~ I adore tomatoes, some say yes, some no.

And then there's bacon. No! Yes! (if it's uncured) Which??

I am CONFUSED!* :help: :help: :help: :help:

*But I'm encouraged by the changes thus far, so I think something's going right.

THANKS ~ lynette

[Nancy LC]

Well, I doubt there's a single person on this forum who is 100% paleo every day. I also wouldn't give up vinegar, some people are sensitive to fermented foods and things like yeast in them.

Dairy products do cause a lot of health issues in many people. We didn't evolve on dairy products, they're new to the human race. I would avoid them, but probably an occassional indulgence won't hurt much. Grains are evil and should be avoided, IMHO.

Loren Cordain publishes a newsletter and goes over a lot of the reasons why we avoid certain things. You might want to give those a read. They're at http://thepaleodiet.com

[PlaneCrazy]

The easy one is, Bacon? Yes!!!!!!!! Especially if you can get nitrite free bacon.

The rest are matters of contention. I'm one of the least orthodox paleo followers. Dairy works for me, so I'm not afraid to eat it. It gives me a great source of fat. I know it doesn't work for everyone, and so you should see for yourself. Don't eat it for a while, then slowly add it in and see what your body does.

Carrots and tomatoes in small amounts, I don't think will hurt a great deal. Carrots especially are pretty rich in carbs, but they're not nearly so destructive as the bread and MM's you mentioned. :)

The area around which I disagree the most with several of the paleo authors is the subject of fat. I am a big believer in the value of fat in your diet, including lots of animal fat. I've been reading Gary Taubes' new book Good Calories Bad Calories and find it very powerful. I've started a thread (http://forum.lowcarber.org/showpost.php?p=7067069&postcount=1) over in the research section on my favorite quotes from the book. For those on this forum, I recommend reading the sections of his book on the "Diseases of Civilization." The evidence is extremely strong that when populations move from their traditional diets to a modern western one, they all at once develop diabetes, heart disease, cancer, appendicitis, ...

The interesting information I've learned from the book is that while there are populations that have incorporated a fair amount of carbs in their diets traditionally, there seem to be two factors that keep these carbs from having the same detrimental effect as the ones our civilization eats.
1. They are unrefined. Brown rice instead of white, no refined sugar, whole grains
2. They live in a calorie-poor environment where hard work is also common.

Those, even in these traditional societies who get plenty of food and do not have to do hard work, such as the social or religious elite, get fat and have these diseases. Those who move to an area where western diets are common yet still work hard and don't eat a lot of calories, but they are eating refined carbs, they get fat and suffer from the diseases.

So, if you're going to eat a carb-rich diet, then you'd better not eat refined carbs, and not a whole lot of them, and work really hard. Any of these factors without the others leads to the "diseases of civilization."

Let's see, you can eat brown rice, be always hungry and work really hard, or you can eat a steak with butter until you're full.

Hmmmm. Which sounds like a better life?

Plane

[Nancy LC]

I think if you grind grain, you might as well eat white bread. When you cook grains whole they're tough and indigestible still, grinding them releases all those starches and makes them accessible to the body. That's how I think rice eaters managed to get away with eating rice, versus bread eaters.

Also as Taubes points out, the Japanese had a low calorie diet with lots of physical labor traditionally, another factor that let them eat carbohydrates without getting DOC (diseases of civilization).

Lynette, it almost sounds like you could have ankylosing spondylitis. I have that. One of the biggest symptoms is that I would hurt laying in bed for any length of time. Getting up and being active would alleviate much of the pain. Anyway, a lot of folks over at the AS (kickas.org) forum have adopted diets that are very similar to paleo and found it helps very much. The core part of their regime is avoiding starches but most eat a paleo diet.

Anyway, I think this diet is great due to the health issues I was having. The better I follow the diet, the less I hurt.

I found that dairy does quite a few different things to me. It makes my muscles spasm, it makes me get very mucous-y, it gives me acne and I think I get a bit depressed when I'm having dairy. I also found out that I'm intolerant of gluten (found in wheat, oats, barley, rye and a few other grains). Eliminating that got rid of painful IBS. I believe my food intolerances caused my issues with autoimmune diseases (thyroid and ankylosing spondylitis).

Anyway, there's a TON of great information out there on the Internet.

[lynette914]

I appreciate the guidance. I have had several long periods of time in my life during which I was sugar/starch/grain free and the results were always marvelous. Felt energetic, no cravings, calm, no brain fog.

I know grains and sugar are poison for me and this period of a couple of weeks of being almost 100% clean has reminded me that I know that. So easy to forget it, though, and slip into bad habits of eating what's handy and easy.

The really striking thing about eating this way is that I get full and stay full for long periods of time. That is so different from how I feel when I eat starches.

Thanks for taking the time to write back. lynette

[lynette914]

:wave: oops! i almost forgot, Nancy! Thanks for that info on AS ~ i'm off to check it out . . .

[Kskline]

Hello ~

I eat a really big dark leafy green salad at least once a day with chopped veggies, flax seeds, walnuts, sometimes raisins, sometimes some grapes, olive oil and flax seed oil and (banned) vinegar because I can't eat a vinegar-less salad. Why don't I want to eat vinegar?

Have you tried lemon or lime juice in place of the vinegar? This was written by someone (can't remember who) about vinegar:

"Vinegar is diluted acetic acid, commonly known to be a poison in its pure form. Acetic acid stimulates the thyroid gland to pull phosphorous from the adrenal glands to negate the effects of acetic acid in the system. Depleted phosphorous results in impaired function of the adrenal glands and thus the entire endocrine system. The outcome of all this can include body odor, pains in the heart, rapid pulse, increased mucous production, and headaches. Repetitive use will also result in hardening of the liver."

Kim

[ProteusOne]

I think if you grind grain, you might as well eat white bread.
I would have to take this one step further, and say that if you "grind" anything before eating it, it's probably not the best choice one could make to eat it (i.e., coconut flour, ground nuts, etc).

Foods, when ingested in their whole state, tend to release their nutrients (and toxins) in a manner in which the body can absorb or eliminate more readily. We can easily be fooled into thinking "Well, I was going to chew that food up anyway, why not just let this machine do it for me...?"

I believe that the body knows how to deal with the natural toxins and nutrients in foods if we give it a chance. The body takes what it needs, and the fiber helps push out what it doesn't. Grinding foods into powders, in my belief, confuses the body, resulting in a toxic state, diarrhea, constipation, hangovers, "dis"-ease, and eventually a slow and horrible death that hospitals $love.

[Nancy LC]

You've misunderstood why I said that.

Grain is composed of a hard outer shell that surrounds the starchy interior. If you eat it whole but cooked you probably can't break down all the stuff inside the grain. Some of it will escape through you undigested. Whereas coconut meat is coconut meat, you can't eat it if you can't open the coconut and dig it out. It doesn't have a bunch of starches stuffed inside somewhere that is difficult to extract by simple digestion, it is the same thing throughout.

Anyway, that's why I said if you're going to grind up grains, you might as well just eat the white bread. You'll be getting a big dose of starch than if you at it intact.

[ProteusOne]

No, I didn't misunderstand you. But I wasn't picking on you, either. That's just the way I look at grinding things up -- it is my belief that doing so changes how the body reacts to it.

I just gave away my hand blender, which I used to LOVE. No more "creamy" soups for me.

[PlaneCrazy]

I would have to take this one step further, and say that if you "grind" anything before eating it, it's probably not the best choice one could make to eat it (i.e., coconut flour, ground nuts, etc).

Foods, when ingested in their whole state, tend to release their nutrients (and toxins) in a manner in which the body can absorb or eliminate more readily.

Not sure what the evidence for this is, but there is one exception to this that I know has been proven in scientific studies, and that is meat. I just read an interesting article in Science magazine my co-worker lent me. It's from earlier this year (April?) and it talks about the various theories on when humans began to cook food. One scientist posits that it happened much earlier than is normally thought to happen. He says the discovery of cooking helped old homo erectus grow his big brain, while conventional paleontology holds that it's much later, more like 200,000 years ago with the rise of modern humans.

One thing they talk about in the article were studies to look at efficiency of absorption of nutrients from meat. The theory on cooking is that cooked meat allows us to get more fuel more efficiently which lead to bigger brains. So, some scientists did some tests comparing raw whole, raw ground, cooked whole and cooked ground meat and found that ground meat allowed for easier and more efficient absorption of nutrients over the whole version (raw or cooked), but cooked definitely was much better than raw for efficiency in getting the nutrients out. Whole cooked meat was more efficient than ground raw, and ground cooked was the most efficient.

Other primates have longer digestive systems, for their size, which allows them to get more nutrients out of raw meat. We no longer have those longer primate guts, and the theory proposes that this change was possible when we started cooking food. We no longer needed the larger digestive tract, and instead developed larger brains.

I'm sure I'm simplifying things, but the relevant data was around the ground vs. whole meat. So, hamburgers for everyone! Meatballs, kufta, whatever your taste!

Plane

[ProteusOne]

I'm all for meat you don't have to chew. :D

[lynette914]

and then there's raw hamburger, yum. i know it's supposed to be deadly, but it's irresistible to me. just a little chunk as i'm making patties or whatever.

it seems like if i read long enough, i'll find that everything that's supposed to be good for us is contradicted by a study saying it's not.

example is vinegar: supposed to be a miracle cure for everything from arthritis to cancer, but the post above cites information which paints it as a deadly toxin.

so confusing. i'm using less vinegar, but i'm not ready to give that up. take my bread, oatmeal, all of that, but leave my balsamic vinegar alone!

you all are a great help. thanks so much!