The Inuit and the Masai are the lowcarber's "go to" examples of healthy lowcarb societies.

I just came across THIS STUDY today. What gives?

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/95/1/26

One would need to read the whole study to draw any conculsions. The journal of epidemiology isn't one that I'm subscribed to. This makes me miss my college days of being able to access any journal for free!

The thing is, their plaques don't rupture and their arteries expand, so essentially they don't die of heart attacks. I think Dr. Davis wrote about this quite some time ago.

Also...


http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.c...osclerosis.html

Not that this negates the findings, but the study is from 1971. Perhaps there have been some studies regarding this matter since then that delve further into it. And, of course, outside of the abstract, very little is known about the study and its finding regarding heart disease itself.

Thanks for this link, Nancy. Good info.

Yes... almost as if carb counts were the only difference between us Emulating the Masai diet is definitely more popular than emulating their exercise levels.

http://www.ajcn.org/content/24/11/1291.full.pdf





If we accept the above, exercise might explain why the Masai had less plaque during the warrior period... but not why their atherosclerosis in later years didn't come with life-shortening heart disease.

Perhaps early atherosclerosis (warrior age) is particularly bad for the artery remodelling needed to properly sustain the adult body? Wild speculation here.

From http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/44/2/121.abstract

"Conclusion The potentially atherogenic diet among the Masai was not reflected in serum lipids and was offset probably by very high energy expenditure levels and low body weight."

I've noticed, even before this Masai subject, that more and more research is pointing to exercise being more significant to health than previously thought. We've known sedentary is no bueno for a long time. I'd bet my bottom dollar that as time goes on, we'll see that higher energy expenditure = better health long-term.

These Masai - 2,595 daily calories burned in addition to their basal needs! That's a heck of a lot. They must be on their feet, walking, and more, every waking hour. No TV or computer for these guys!

If it's all about spending energy, we can do this without exercise, we can just eat more. So that's not it.

The view that atherosclerosis is a disease, and that people should suffer from it, is refuted here with that study. They have the disease, but no not suffer from it. Therefore it's not a disease, therefore it must be something else.

I propose that atherosclerosis is merely the telltale of repairs. When skin is injured and repaired for example, there is a clear indication of that injury and repair. We call it a scar. As arteries are injured and repaired, there will also be something similar left over from the injury and the repair. Tissue injuries and repairs are not invisible.

That we consider it a disease today could be due to our belief that what kills us is an injury, on which a repair is attempted upon, and that repair attempt results in a blood clot, which then blocks the artery, and heart failure follows. The problem here is that this study tells us that there has been injury and repair, but no blood clot, and no heart failure. This further refutes the idea that atherosclerosis is a disease, and further confirms the idea that it is merely the telltale of injury and repair.

The real culprit is probably an agent which accelerates the rate of injury, and another or the same agent which accelerates the clotting process. I put my money on carbs and insulin. Insulin acts to push glucose inside cells. Glucose binds with proteins to produce AGEs, inside cells and in the bloodstream. Insulin also works to increase plasma lipids thereby making the blood more viscous, thereby hampering blood flow, and perhaps allowing the clotting process to occur quicker or longer locally.

If proteins are glycated, they don't work as well, this may decrease the rate of repair, and allow more foreign agents to enter the injury site before it is repaired. This would result in a larger injury. A more viscous blood would reduce blood flow, and allow larger clots to form, and increase the chance of blockage.

The study also points out that arteries grow wider to accommodate the atherosclerosis. It's possible that this growth is inhibited by the same agent I'm talking about. If that's true, then it further refutes the idea that atherosclerosis is a disease. Scars are not a disease, but if you keep cutting on the same spot for fifty years, something's going to fail.

This.

It's not simply about "energy expenditure" though. There's a conditioning of the body that goes along with tiring physical activity. As M Levac pointed out, a series of injuries and repairs, all leading to scars of one type or another.

For a totally unsupportable example, consider an ankle injury that is painful but not immobilizing. In the modern world, we favor the ankle - we purposefully immobilize it, we take drugs to counter the body's natural inflammatory process, we force a type of "scar free" healing. Then we're perpetually more likely to reinjure the ankle. Maybe allowing it heal with a scar would make it stronger and less susceptible to easy reinjury - I'm thinking of the hard bodies who cause repeated breaks to strengthen the bones.

There's also the constant turnover of body juices. Some doctors hypothesize that gallbladder disease is actually caused by excessively low-fat diets, which encourage the bile to sit around and thicken in the organ. Sure, the Masai experienced coronary damage, but their blood moves so quickly and freely because their hearts are so conditioned, there's no time for anything to stick.

Humans are designed (like other animals) to move, get damaged, bleed, and recover from the above while maintaining some kind of motion. Focusing on diet alone is great, but IMO we lost a lot more in the transition to modern life than just natural foods. We live in worry free bubbles where a scratch down the arm sends us to the ER for stitches and most people are offended by the "stench" of sweat. We really just softened ourselves up all around, no wonder we're dying of these diseases when our predecessors saw none of them, with the same markers.

This.

The data actually suggests that it's the introduction of industrialized food that causes the lesions to occur. The atherosclerosis starts at age 40 - after they go off the meat, milk, and blood only diet at the end of the Muran. Even at age 10, fibrosis is higher. Muran doesn't start until age 14. During the whole period of eating nothing but milk, meat , and blood, fibrosis is at the lowest.