CNN news - Monday March 6, 2023

link to article

25% carbs is not keto-like and just marginally low-carb.

I've been on keto since it was called Atkins.

Note: I'm just one case, so it's not a scientific study.

A few years ago, I was having some heartbeat irregularity. My doc sent me to a heart specialist who did every test from the blood going to my heart, to the blood going to my toes, to the blood going to my lungs, to treadmill tests.

The results? My entire circulation system was that of an extremely healthy man, 20 years my junior. The doc and the people testing were amazed at how good everything was.

So why the irregularity? Temporary stress.

I was having trouble with my part-time online business. A big company bought the shopping cart company I used, and someone figured out how to "buy" my products for free. The big company didn't import all the safety requirements.

It took the technicians 4 days to figure out what the problem was. The cure was for me to rewrite the cgi code for over 550 products from the old shopping cart way, to the new shopping cart method. That took about a half hour per product.

With the stress I was having Premature Ventricular Contractions, and after the stress was over, it never happened again.

So as far as I'm concerned, eating fewer than 20 carbs per day results in me having a circulatory system so good it actually amazed the heard doctor.

Bob

Note: Whenever you read an article, whether it agrees with what you are like, or disagrees with what you like, it could contain a hidden agenda.

The article that says sugar substitutes are bad for you, might be covertly financed by big sugar.

The article that says grapefruit is good for you might be financed by the Florida Citrus growers.

The articles could be true, or could be false. Take them all with the proverbial grain of salt, and do your own research.

I tend to put more weight on peer-reviewed articles published in respected journals. You can find them at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ but they aren't that easy to find, and sometimes not that easy to understand. It's worth the work though.

Excuse me, I’m sneaking in here to steal that line! Will use it.




Hand to heart, I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for Pub Med. Even if I couldn’t pull much from the tech side, I had folks like Teaser who were dissecting it. Now, there’s DietDoctor and tons of podcasts who explain their take on studies.

I would read an article and get excited. We learn the weasel words. Like anti-oxidants. We all know they are good for us, right?

I’m starting to rethink that. I found an article which soothed people about pesticides because “plants have more pesticides naturally than the stuff we put in there! And plants haven’t killed us yet.”

This started as a “satire or not?” tone puzzle and turned into conformation that there are articles out there on Pub Med explaining that there is no scientific confirmation of their theorized advantage to our health.

Here I was doing autoimmune keto, which led me to lots of nuts and chocolate. I didn’t gain weight, but I would mysteriously go on and off the nuts. Chocolate is turning out to be a pry-it-away from me situation

It was a pattern. Eat seeds, eat salad, and now, eat nuts. But I had searched all known toxin patterns to choose my nuts! Macadamias win every time, BTW, and low oxalate content, so my investment in the bag I keep in the fridge was safe.

But of course they are expensive so I was eating lots of walnuts. Which I shouldn’t have. I didn’t, unless I reminded myself that they are “good for me.” Turns out, they aren’t.

Here’s another conundrum: I bught some organic cocoa, but wound up using dutch cocoa. This is the Special Dark Hershey’s puts out that I can get at the grocery store. It’s less bitter, because the process loses antioxidants. Now, I’m avoiding too much plants and I’ll be low on antioxidants.

But it’s an unsupported theory. And they’ve tried.

But it turns out I can lower my ratio, add the right herbal teas, and cocoa extract (which is not available in a 150 mile radius of me so I’m tracking the brown truck because I’M OUT,) which has no oxalates. And I get decaff coffee back!

I can mocha my way to good health anytime, anywhere.

When I stumbled on carnivore for my autoimmune, and had great success, which faltered, I could not figure out how to get it back on track. Granted, we’ve all been dealing with high stress levels, which is enough all by itself

But I need enough information to put into Pub Med. Once I was thinking about plant phenols and had them called pesticides, I knew the right words to put into the search function. I also know where to go to help me interpret it.

Like if I put in “nitrites” and find an abstract which points out celery has more than cold cuts. That’s easy for me to find support for, or stumble on a meta-study that looks solid.

We don’t have to believe the influencer, the blogger, or the magazine name. We can see just how tenuous the actual evidence is, and most of the time, this information would not get the criminals off, it would send them to jail.

Also, “keto-like” means what? It means we get more clicks because the word keto is hot right now. I should change the name of my site to Keto Cats. Which they are, actually.

But that would be misleading. Headline writers don’t care.

25% carbs is nothing like my keto 5%. As Dr. Atkins intended, and named Induction. I always got as far as fruit when climbing the carb ladder, and then, got into trouble. At least I learned that

But keto as most people will learn it, from Instagram and Youtube, is the glam version with lots of spinach, nuts, and chocolate. Likely to soothe any fears about all that meat, which will be be terrible for our health, we are told. In my case, less and less because I’ve been low carbing for two decades.

Except my problems were from the plant foods. Full stop. But if we have a buildup of oxalates and never drop to low oxalate, as our pre-agriculture ancestors did every winter, our body can’t purge this known toxin, and who knows how many others, I’m thinking now.

Apart from the ill-defined variables (keto like and low carb), unreliable data (self reports) and unrepresentative subjects (small sample size for one) plus a questionable outcome variable (risk factor), this is a great study. And to think, people get paid to carry out these kinds of non-scientific studies.

Really not worth the paper or time it took to write this "study." I'm not going to bother, but I'm sure if I investigated the funding sources for this "study," I'd find evidence of an agenda, conflicts, and bias. I've gotten to the point where I no longer believe in simple Cholesterol and LDL levels as valid heart health markers as pharma wants us to. I'll take Apo B and favor TG/HDL ratio along with hsCRP to reveal the true cardio health of an individual, as the claims of the "study" are things that don't register with me. Then to really top it off, the author at CNN adds in a comment from David Katz who was not involved in the study, but he's a barometer for identifying those diets that are currently in vogue but not effective, especially if they are not plant based or vegan.

My final observation is the constant claim that keto or low carb or paleo or whatever WOE that favors whole foods and limits unhealthy carbs is unsustainable. So, those who have been doing this well over 12 years should be concerned? When will I get to the point I can no longer sustain this WOE??? Maybe when I hit 15 years, a plate of pancakes and maple syrup will appear when I sit down to breakfast and make me realize I just can't go on . . . .

...to their profits.

Is the part that was redacted.

I am pleased that, at least in outlets who are seriously tackling our food crisis, the subject of junk food addiction is getting serious discussion.

“Our study found that regular consumption of a self-reported diet low in carbohydrates and high in fat was associated with increased levels of LDL cholesterol – or “bad” cholesterol – and a higher risk of heart disease,” lead study author Dr. Iulia Iatan [QUOTE]

Self reported is a crap study. A hint, not cause and effect.

And what kind of fats??? Corn oil, trans fats, rapeseed oil?? Or olive oil, suet and avocado oil??

I'm having more and more sympathy for "normies" who don't pay close attention. I know far more than average and I'm still confused.

Some of the ideas of people who are dutifully listening to health authorities:

• Any food has "some" protein. You'll be fine.
• Haven't a clue what a seed oil is.
• Believe very much in those complex carbs.
• I take a multivitamin. What do you mean, what's in it? Stuff. Stuff so I don't worry about malnutrition.
• Healthy? I'm like 90% plant-based now.

I don't know if this is true or not, because it came from a site that sounded good (don't they all) but I didn't take the time to look through the tons of pubmed articles to see if it is verifiable.

The article stated that the reason the nitrites in celery don't harm you is because the vitamin C in celery renders them harmless. Since I take a multivitamin with my meals, if that's true, any nitrites in the bacon won't hurt me.

I love bacon, but only eat it once a week or less, because the salt makes me hold water.

I eat a small square of chocolate almost every day. Ghirardelli 86% is my choice because it isn't Dutched, and that brand has very low lead and cadmium content. And it tastes good, too.

I have it with a cup of organic black tea.

I don't eat much ultra-processed food as it has too many ingredients that aren't food. I try to eat organic whenever I can. My beef is 100% grass fed and finished. I also eat a lot of dairy. DW is A1 intolerant, so the cheese comes from Europe or Australia, where most of the cows are A2 cows.

I'm not keto-like. but keto, and for me that's fewer than 20 net carbs per day. It's restricing, but I'm down to a normal BMI instead of obese, and I'm healthy. Without good health, you have nothing.

Bob

Everyone has to work out how their body works. You are doing great. And why doesn't the vitamin C work for meat?

I'm now quite attuned to "animal food prejudice" by now. The irony is that I seem to be a natural carnivore.

I didn't need plants. My body doesn't want it. Unless it's fruit, where the plant wants me to eat it🤣

Bob, we have started making our own bacon and sausages. And generally skip salami and the like, because of the added nitrates. We particularly like the homemade bacon. 🥓

For me, having a minor obsession with fine Italian cold cuts, finding out it's fermented meat made all the difference.

Celery is far worse for nitrites if they were really worried. Celery and carrots, which I grazed on back in the low fat days, are loaded with oxalate.

That's the substance with the biggest impact on my health right now. Cold cuts have NONE, with protein, thiamine, fat, and the ability to tempt my appetite no matter how low I am. So I don't care about the nitrites. They haven't proved their case. It's all about how they interpret beyond those ridiculous food memory questionnaires. It's China Study all over again.

It's not even viable epidemiology, much less proper nutrition advice. It's all to scare us away from meat!

Vegetarianism has always been a religious crusade, and now, in classic fundamentalist toxicology, they've doubled down to veganism and cheating. (If they are alive, they are cheating on veganism OR dying in denial.)

Once we have a grip on that ridiculous yet salient fact, much more about how I eat, and how I should, has become clear.

But everyone has to do what works for them. And making our food better, in any way, gives us real time feedback on how that's going.

I have had such dramatic improvement in my serious burnout from diet only once before, when I started carnivore. I get the same sense of relief from my body signals now.

Which is why I'm so excited and hopeful. And you don't need to follow my reasoning. I'm only saying I have some.

I was so carb conscious I went for dutched, it's less bitter. No antioxidants, but then... I'm wondering if that's not just another buzzword.

I did find several studies that admitted the whole antioxidant/plant phenols are good for you thing?

I'm deeply skeptical about that. Antioxidants were something I tried to build in... but they didn't make me better. In fact, plants were, once again, MY big problem.

And even I'm not immune to the incessant "health" articles pushing plants. That's where I kept hurting myself under the guise of "needing" plants when it's for pleasure. Now I can make better choices.