I don't know why you bother. Matt isn't interested in a debate. When challenged he either disappears or if the topic is CR he links a few of the same 10 irrelevant studies.

Matt is only interested in 2 things: CR, and yanking the chain of low carbers who are honestly trying to figure this metabolism thing out.

Still, I'd expect that even a small atheroma reducing effect would be being trumpeted by the manufacturers of aspirin and other NSAIDs.

A debate involves stating a theorem then backing it up with evidence. The best evidence will be peer-reviewed studies. Even then someone will carp that there's bias in the testing. The worst counter-argument comes from those with their own bias, and are often no better than insults. It's a low-carb website. What's lower carb than CR?

I guess, but there is a lot of crap that ends up in peer-reviewed journals. You don't have to take my word for it, ask anyone who has been researching and publishing in peer-reviewed journals.



Often great care is taken so that the method is sound, but problems arise. I'd guess most often what the researchers think is being measured isn't; e.g. problems with the technique, confounding unknowns, etc. I think most disagreements are with the conclusion rather that the data. (I said "most" ) As an example, data from the Framingham Study is now being shown to be supportive of low carb rather than negative from prior analysis.



This is kind of funny. Sure there is "bias" all around, but what we offer to many (most?) of Whoa's posts, the majority not being related to low-carb dieting, is criticism. I guess it is hard to fault him for posts with zero low-carb content as he hasn't bothered to read a single low-carb book. His response to criticism makes it clear he has not intrest in debate, he is a true CRONbie believer trying teach the great unwashed.

As for what is lower carb that CR? The great majority of low carb diets, that's what. Was that supposed to be a trick question? Wanna see my skinny monkey?

Kind regards

CR can be low carb, but most of the time it's actually fairly high carb as most of us think of carb levels.

And now we return you (hopefully) to the original topic of this thread. Have we been conned about cholesterol? IMO...absolutely.

This really will challenge your perspective of 'objectivity' in peer reviewed research Ubizmo, but I doubt wether anybody who even suggested it would get funding. So stifling is the cholesterol associative risk factor being somehow magically transformed into an assumed causative role that even the strong anti inflammatory effect of statins is not even investigated as the modus operandi of their atheroma reducing effect. It's cholesterol, cholesterol..... bad bad bad - it's a mantra that has been repeated so often over the last forty years, that it's really going to need very embarrassing reconsideration of how such an oversight could have occurred.

A lot of people will die prematurely before the tragic anti - cholesterol juggernaut grinds to a shuddering halt. And of course big pharma will continue to make mega bucks out of a susceptibility of the human metabolism to a carbohydrate rich macronutrient ratio.

And different anti inflammatories have different mechanisms anyway. NSAID's and aspirin may exert only a tiny atheroma reducing effect. Statins exert a very powerful antiinflammatory effect, but even they have a very slow atheroma shrinking power. The most powerful atheroma preventative as well as reducing approach is a low carb/high fat diet, and that's not even being investigated with any research vigour, because it is so contrary to the dietary and metabolic shibboleths our medical research community is steeped in.

There are certainly many mavericks challenging the dogma, but they continue to get a pounding from an entire community whose entire careers are predicated on a fundamental misconception about the role of saturated fat and cholesterol in human metabolism.

When you find yourself wondering why if anti inflammatories exert atheroma reducing effects, the news isn't 'all over town', the answer unfortunately is simple human hubris. Think of the ruckus Galileo, and Charles Darwin, and any other scientific genius who comes along and challenges the current paradigm suffers. Darwin was so troubled by the philosophical let alone scientific implications of what he was suggesting that he didn't even publish his ideas for fifteen years (and if Alfred Wallace wasn't threatening to pip him at the post, he might have left it till he died). In fact Darwin is still getting a caning even today. Human intellectual pride and arrogance is very suffocating to the progress of human knowledge about the world (and the Universe beyond) - precisely because the intellectual forces that will fight so desperately to defend the prevailing dogma continue to believe that they , not the potential usurpers to their intellectual thrones are the repositories of truth, rather than the redundant dogma it is.

Kaypeeoh's point about the peer review process in science being the best arbiter of truth in the quest for knowledge that we have is no doubt true. But the 'best' we have doesn't mean it's going to actually work even part of the time at putting dogma to bed at the appropriate time. This is because unfortunately, intellectual dogma has a way of corrupting even most of the 'peer' community. If most of your peers are in on the lie, then the overwhelming majority of human ego's in the game stand to suffer mightily if they all have to admit that for the last forty years they've all been completely misunderstanding the role of saturated fat and cholesterol in human metabolism.

Human arrogance Ubizmo. Being a 'scientist' doesn't immunize anyone from its intellectually stultifying effects.

Well while this is most possibly true, the fact is that you can't make any statement that low carb/hi fat diet IS the most atheroma preventative...for the very reason that you have no research evidence to back it up either. It certainly needs doing...total agreement on that point. Like you say, not much funding money to show that diet trumps statins.

Fair enough. I should rephrase that to 'low carb hi fat diet probably is the most atheroma preventative intervention - based on evolutionary common sense

Which probably doesn't cut the mustard nearly as much as a forest of anti cholesterol biased and thoroughly peer reviewed (not just peer reviewed either, positively peer sycophanted ) to the likes of our Matt, or any other anti- cholesterol apologist for that matter. Remember, he couldn't care less what his paleolithic ancestors ate

Anyway, even though the research confirming that cholesterol is not a problem per se (although the types and sizes of different kinds of cholesterol are definitely canaries in the coalmine!) has not yet been done, there is an increasing amount of published analysis of anti cholesterol research convincingly establishing IMHO that the conclusions reached are incorrect.

One thing I think stands out clearly from the existing (peer reviewed) research
is that Statins are a pretty dangerous way to go about reducing the size and frequency of atheromas. Yet the positive spin big pharma (and by extension, their minions the Medical Profession) manages to put on them, ensures their ubiquity and profitability.

No argument from me on what you say above..

However, I do think it is important every once in a while to question the whole emphasis on looking for ONE factor for something that is possibly muti-factorial. Our paleolithic ancestors probably ate whatever came to hand and also did not live in a universe of chemicals and plastics, they exercised at least half the day on average searching for food, and in all probability did not live as long as we do for CHD to be a huge problem anyway. We are organic systemic beings, not made of titanium, and there are a huge number of variables that impinge on our cardiovascular and other systems. Our sedentary lifestyles may be just as important as what food we eat when it comes to inflammation/insulin resistance/whatever for one example.

Especially considering that one baby aspirin a day would probably exert a similar anti-inflammatory effect for a fraction of the cost and a lot less side effects.

I think it's always instructive to look at the people like me and Anthony Colpo who have never needed to lose bodyfat, have never been sedentary, and have cared and been obsessive enough about our health that we never eat junk food, to see just how critical the influence of macronutrient ratio is promoting optimum health. Anthony's book is the best account I've read (and it mirrors my own experience) of following all the prevailing recommendations about diet and lifestyle and still only even beginning to discover what good health was when he adopted a low carb/highfat/mod prot diet. Note we're not talking about the relative efficacy or otherwise of various bodyfat loss protocols. Just health indicators (although obviously bodyfat levels are usually considered a health indicator). I think it's unhelpful to argue that diet is more or less important in being as healthy as you can be.

I think it's far more important to recognize that stress diet sleep and activity llevels are equally important in attaining optimum health. Nevertheless once you have recognized that if you don't get the diet right, you'll never be as healthy as you can be, you have to ask the question what that ideal diet is.

My take on the supremacy of low carb/high fat/ mod protein diets for human health is based on the reading I have done that clearly establishes that for all but a tiny fraction of our evolution, there just wasn't much carbohydrate around, and the stuff that was regularly available (leafy greens) was completely off even the low end of the contempory glycemic index scale, and thus represented an almost infinitesimal glycemic load. So often, people get stuck debating the furphy about wether or not we have a vegetarian or carnivorous digestive tract, when it is beyond all shadow of a doubt omnivorous. Of far more signifigance to me is the size of our carbohydrate processing machinery. The relative size of the human pancreas is the clearest indication that carbohydrate was not a big part of the human energy equation. Wild fruits are demonstrably low in carbs. Wild tubers are mostly fibre and low in carbohydrate anyway. Fat is the most energy dense macronutrient and easily digestible without any processing. Even tubers had to be cooked. Even when hunting for game was poor, high fat insects were always around, and are still a primary part of hunter gatherer diets. I've eaten bogong moths and witchety grubs (indigenous insect fare for all you non Australians) and theyre primarily fat. There was always some insect species going through its fat rich stage of development. The reason we became human at all is that we got clever at finding lots of fat and protein and kissed our gorilla like vegetation munching cousins goodbye for ever.

And we don't store energy as carbohydrate (glycogen stores are not a big part of our energy storage design and we only there at all for the initial sprint away from the pursuing predator or invader), we store both excess carbohydrate and and fat as .... FAT (predominantly saturated)

This macronutrient availability was reinforced over the millenia of our evolution in the structure of our metabolic machinery.

So saying that health (and longevity for that matter) are multifactorial and therefore singling diet out for special attention is unwise is missing the point IMHO. Optimizing health includes optimizing dietary macronutrient ratio. In my experience, in the experience of this forum (a few dissenters notwithstanding ) and increasingly in the considered opinion of the researchers who are busy reviewing the methods and conclusions of the architects of the recommended Food Pyramid paradigm, that optimum macronutrient ratio is high fat/ low carb/ mod protein.

And the apparent fact that departing from that evolutionarily determined low carb diet certainly makes it more likely that we'll have to at some stage sample the wares of the pill pushers, is simply grist for the commercial mill. Why not make a pharmaceutical mega industry out of transgressing our low carb evolutionary blueprint. Creates jobs, after all

I've no doubt that human health is not just about sticking to a low carb diet. But if you don't get that right, you're starting the race with a huge handicap. There are so many ways of dealing with that handicap. You might decide to become a stick insect like Matt, or try to take up the slack with massive amounts of exercise, or trying to minimize the damage done by spending a fortune on supplements.

In my experience, getting the diet right makes the potential benefit of getting everything else right (low stress, positive attitude [which sort of negates stress anyway] sleep , activity levels , clean air .....etc.) that much more wonderful

Statins are history!!

A Swedish beer that is said to lower cholesterol is being launched in the United States. The brand was formulated by chemists at Sweden's Lund University, and was developed by a company called Aventure. It will be marketed in the United States by Beverage Marketing U.S.A.

Aventure says the patented brewing process uses oats rather than barley and employs a special enzyme technology results in a product rich in beta-glucans, fibres shown in research to have a beneficial effect on cholesterol levels. "The normal beer brewing procedure takes away the good stuff from cereals," project leader Arne Berge told nutraingredients.com.

But I didn't say nor mean that. I just said it was multi-factorial and that I see a problem in reductionist thinking about causes of CHD. You are really talking about overall health in your post and the importance of diet is clear to me, but as I said it is probably not MORE important than exercise.

I would also remind you that Anthony uses glucose around his endurance workouts (cycling I believe). My comment was aimed at the tendency to generalize to all situations and all genetic makeups.

And while I think one can take guidance from the Paleo diet, I don't think they lived long enough to make huge generalisations with respect to clogged arteries. If confronted with a large, ripe tree of fruit, they would have pigged out. That is certainly true of Aboriginals who would travel annually to favorite places where wild fruits would ripen at certain times of year. Even today they can take you to their favorite quandong tree grove (I was taken to one by some Aboriginal gals near Mossman in NQ for example). And they adored bunya nuts which are high carb and plentiful. But these forms of carbs are unprocessed and higher in fiber. Since introduced to processed carbs, our Aboriginal folk are dying like flies from diabetes and other diseases.

Trust the Swedes! Yes, beta-glucans are the current buzz in the nutrient industry...just got a bunch of stuff from the Life Enhancement (I think it was) folks about their product.

Yes I agree, they are both critical. But I don't necessarily see any disjuncture between optimal health and avoiding degenerative disease, including CHD.



I don't think AC uses post WO carbs for health. He uses it to boost his WO effectiveness. If it's not in that 30 min post WO glycogen repletion window the carbs revert to being a metabolic downer (pro bodyfat gain, pro inflammatory etc.- all the reasons low carbers avoid carbs for health).
I actually think the many differences in the human gene pool are too often used to obscure the fact that humans are metabolically pretty identical. Some may cope with excess carbs worse than others and be even more susceptible to degenerative disease. But as I said, take a look at the size of the human pancreas. We are fat burners by design with a carbohydrate back up when we occasionally hit the honey pot. The 'everybody's different' card is too often played IMHO. Men and women are more different metabolically within cultures than the greatest differences between say males of any culture, yet you never hear different macronutrient ratios being suggested for men and women.



Quandong are only mildly sweet and about the same carb levels as a commercial strawberry ie. very low. All wild fruits are, eg wild mangoes, sandpaper fig bush tomato. In fact 'bush tucker' restaurants routinely sweeten native wild fruit dishes because they are not nearly sweet enough for the western palate. Bunya Nuts are indeed very high in carbs, but they only fruit (enmasse) every four years. The reason aboriginal communities succumb to western degenerative disease so quickly has little to do with the 'processed' or unprocessed factor. A good parallel is ancient Egyptian culture where the diet was very unprocessed, but carb rich. They experienced similar levels of degenerative disease as aborigines do today. The only difference is that most of the Egyptians died from tooth decay long before diabetes and CHD could get them. At least we treat the symptons of too much carbohydrate with all the bells and whistles 2000 years of technology can produce. Aborigines who return to a native diet are certainly better off for the tiny amount of metabolizable carbohydrate in their averaged daily calorie intake being unprocessed. But it's not the major reason they suffer less degenerative disease. Which IMO is getting most of their energy from fat, not carbohydrate. This is not just wishful thinking Val, I've experienced exactly the same improvement in health (as has Anthony, notwithstanding his post WO targeted carbs) by changing from a high carb unprocessed dietary approach to highfat/low carb/mod protein.