In GCBC, Taubes refers to one researcher who discovered accidentally that insulin was directly atherogenic, i.e. caused atherosclerosis, by injecting insulin in dogs. This would constitute vascular and tissue damage, wouldn't it?

Carbohydrate drives insulin. Atkins is low carb. Thus, Atkins would mitigate tissue and vascular damage, not exacerbate it.

The below quote and link is from the e-mail received regarding the methylglyoxal study.

“Martin says that it's blood sugar that causes lots of problems. Well maybe he'd like to see this study. Methylglyoxal is 40,000x more reactive than blood sugar which would cause plenty of AGEing.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanc...tion_endproduct

Bo

That's a misquote. I did not say it's blood sugar that causes lots of problems. I wrote, and I quote:


Carbohydrate drives insulin but it's the insulin that causes atherosclerosis. Note that the researcher discovered this effect of insulin by injecting insulin, not by administering a diet full of carbohydrate.

I never get these arguments. Don't you have to burn fat to lose fat - on ANY diet?

Even the most educated scientists, biochemists and nutritionists know about a pinch about what the hell is going on with chemicals, food, and our bodies, and much more research is required for almost everything in the field.

Now tell me, how much of this research was based on a human being who has a different body chemistry - ketosis? Things work differently in ketosis land - like triglyceride levels going down despite the consumption of fat since there is no carbohydrate interference, for example - so why nutritionists and the like are automatically assuming that those same laws that apply to carbland apply to ketosisland is ridiculous!

Taking that into consideration, doesn't it make sense that everything they previously learned of beta-hydroxybutyrate, acetoacetate, and
glycotoxin methylglyoxa were studied and learned from in the body chemistry exclusively of someone who eats a 'normal', 'healthy' carb-filled diet? They understand that these chemicals are bad for us, but they know that from research in a completely different body chemistry than ours.

We're in ketosis. All they've determined through ketosis is that those chemicles escalate slightly. Big whoop. Prove that it does anything like it does in a 'normal' person vs a person in ketosis. Who knows if these chemicals behave in the same way in ketosis land or not? That's a whole lot of 'more research is needed' up our butts.

But wait, they're not that smart, or self-interest groups like Kellog's and Nestly were donating funds for that research, too.

Sorry, egghead carb-pushing scientists... just like every other nutrition study released... "more research is needed."

Maybe that's why people have such a hard time losing fat on other diets?

Metformin is the greatest drug EVER.
This is just another example.

People should take it as soon as they can ... dont wait for diabetes !



You definitely would.


LOL.

I think it's different now - with our thinning ozone layer, melanomas are becoming much more common. Doesn't matter to me either way, though - I'm a fair skinned red head. I look at the sun and I burn.

I was really lucky...My mom who was overweight discovered Atkins 40 years ago...I followed her lead and basically have been on Atkins for 40 years...Im 62 now...I have beautiful skin...People are always surprised to find out my age...It happened again tonight I was seeing a young patient and his dad...I said my grand children are waiting for my I have to go...He was shocked...Not to mention I am healthy thank you God and Dr. Atkins. I notice I look younger when my weight is around 177...I was the only daughter out of three who had the weight problem...and had to struggle and diet all the time...my mother use to say to me when I would be struggling...God gave you that body to keep you humble...I didn't like that ...my sisters havent had to diet and they are both healthy...I guess we had good jeans just a overweight mother who loved us dearly...

My mom use to yell at us to get out of the sun. We would all lay their with baby oil all over us. I agree with the sun being hotter now and I now stay out of the sun for fear of skin cancer...I was in Las Vegas and my friend told me to get out of the sun because you will have a third degree burn...I felt my skin tingling on my chest after coming home for a good two weeks...I discovered that my chest was really dry and the more I moisturized the less tingling it was...that scared me...

That ozone layer is thinning mostly at the poles. Most people live closer to the equator where the layer is pretty much full thickness. Therefore, it's unlikely that this is a major cause, if at all, of any particular skin disorder for most of us. On the other hand, cancer of all forms (indeed, diseases of all forms), including skin cancers, has increased in parallel to our collective adoption of a high-carb diet all over the world.

It's important to keep in mind that cancer doesn't just need an initial trigger, it also needs a continuous favorable environment for its growth. This is not a fire-and-forget kind of thing, like a homing missile or something like that, where merely pulling the trigger is it. Anyways, this is achieved mostly by two agents - glucose and insulin (glucose is the fuel, insulin is the growth signaling just as growth hormone is the growth signaling for normal growth in kids for example) - both of which can be done simultaneously just by eating a high-carb diet. Cancerous cells are said to have as much as 10x the number of insulin receptors (not sure on the exact number, but the principle is the same, there's more insulin receptors).

Even without an initial trigger, if we establish this favorable environment a priori, then the initial trigger will be that much more effective at creating cancer. Conversely, the absence of this favorable environment will not allow any trigger to eventually turn single cancerous cells into tumors - there is no growth. For our purpose, the Atkins diet should be effective enough to create an environment most unfavorable for cancer growth.

Additionally, it's possible that certain causes of cancer, in and of themselves, act positively to cause both glucose and insulin to remain higher, if these causes are living things like bacteria or virus for example, as they would have evolved to make their preferred environment more favorable, just as we have evolved to make ours more favorable to us. And thus, this makes the Atkins diet a diagnostic tool to discover the presence of such an active agent. I.e., if the diet works, then the high-carb diet was the only thing keeping cancer growing, but if the diet doesn't work as it should, then there must be something else going on.

For the latter, Richard Feinman et al did an experiment with a ketogenic diet and cancer. They found that not all subjects responded equally. There's a bunch of hypotheses to explain this, but the most likely, in my opinion, is that in those that did not respond, there still remains an active agent that diet alone cannot fix. Link to discussion on the experiment: http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=447278

As for the topic of skin disorders caused by the Atkins diet via methylglyoxal (and then through glycation of skin tissue), this is very unlikely. Ketones stimulate the process chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA), the recycling of glycated protein inside cells. From the drop in HbA1c, ketones must obviously also stimulate this process elsewhere in the body outside cells. Mike Eades of Protein Power wrote about this here: https://proteinpower.com/drmike/200...eans-our-cells/

Glycation is a normal process, but then CMA is also a normal process to take care of the normal glycation that occurs. But as soon as we eat a high-carb diet, CMA can't keep up (in fact CMA is shut down because insulin shuts down ketogenesis in the liver, so no ketones to stimulate CMA), glycation accumulates above and beyond what we can handle otherwise, disease takes over. For example, HbA1c is noted as being associated with - as being a marker for - diabetes type 2. In conjuction with CMA, a low-carb diet contains few(er) carbohydrates, so little fuel and little insulin for cancer growth. This is a double whammy for cancer, either way, whether we eat a high-carb diet or a low-carb diet, respectively.

My own experiend fits this exactly. When i was very sick, i could not go into ketosis no matter how low my carbs went. When I am feling better, it works like a charm.