http://physrev.physiology.org/content/91/1/151.long



Spotted this bit on zonulin while doing homework assigned to me by Nancy.

And Dr. Hadjivasiliou finds Iga gluten created lesions on the brain of some individuals, on autopsy.

Nice work, Teaser. I hadn't seen that.

This was written by Dr. Hadjivasilou in the BMJ about his work and others.

Snippet


I believe this wouldn't happen if whatever the IgG antibodies weren't finding something to do battle with in the brain, i.e. gluten peptides.

Teaser and Nancy — thanks for finding these readable tidbits. I went to the linked sources and spent about 20 minutes on each before my eyes glazed

I see, Teaser, that the Fasano paper is dated 2008. Is it consistent with Fasano's 2006 paper in which he found that celiacs produce *30 times* as much zonulin as non-celiacs, even though the non-celiacs were not eating gluten-free diets while the celiacs had been off gluten for over two years? When Masterjohn wrote about this in 2011, he concluded that "This suggests that something besides gluten may be causing zonulin production in celiacs."

Perlmutter is going to be on Dr. Oz Monday.

http://www.doctoroz.com/episode/do-...ause-alzheimers

Oz had this on the book jacket reviews, so should be good show.

Oz is like a blade of grass, he bends whichever way the wind is blowing.

The completely "fruit-cake" demo of Dr. Oz on a carb ladder is still posted, not the whole episode (which should replace it soon). Oz gave Dr. Perlmutter enough time only to skim over the ideas in his book, and hammered on the fruit part.

http://www.doctoroz.com/episode/do-...ause-alzheimers

This article about Alzheimer's as diabetes of the brain is more helpful. http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/alzh...-diabetes-brain

Dr. Perlmutter will be Jimmy Moore's guest this Thursday. You can email in advance or phone your questions.
http://www.askthelowcarbexperts.com...-brain-ketones/

I heard Perlmutter on Robb Wolf's podcast and was disappointed. Perlmutter trod the same ground that many other LC converts have and really didn't focus on the effects of carbs on the brain (based on the work of Fasano and Hadjivasillou). Also, his POV seems extreme, perhaps due to the types of patients he sees.

Dr. Perlmutter was on Dr. Oz yesterday...I was impressed with his demeanor and what he said. He was very direct and clear, and did not mince words. He told Oz his nutritional beliefs to the contrary were flat out wrong, loved seeing that. You can probably find the episode online now. Meanwhile, I ordered the book yesterday but confess that it just helps to confirm a lot of things I've thought for several years (less about the neurological connections although I see that too). People just don't want to hear the message, though: no wheat, no fruit (or very little), eat green above-ground veggies, no starchy underground type veg as they store sugar (as starch), eat plenty of meat and lots of fat! He sees a lot of the problems as a deficiency of fat!

People are just incredibly resistant, they just don't want to give up their beloved foods.

And that's the bone I have to pick with him. For *his* patients, his advice is sound. But there are millions of people who can eventually have starches in the form of various tubers, e.g., sweet potatoes. There are even people for whom LC or VLC will be harmful, because they'll develop hypothyroidism due to a lack of glucose.

He really comes across as an inflexible zealot, and the state of nutrition research is such that it doesn't support that degree of certainty. That's why Taubes and Attia founded NuSi — to raise the bar on clinical nutrition studies. I support Dr. P in ripping the current nutrition recommendations to shreds based on their shoddy foundations, and I respect the results Dr. P's seen in his practice. But as a doctor, he needs to take positions consistent with the clinical research to avoid being painted as just another fad doctor trying to make a buck and massage his ego.

I'm not sure. But maybe that's where we should be on some of this stuff. It seems like there's some disagreement about just what constitutes hypothyroidism. But again... if we're dealing with damaged metabolisms, I don't think it's probably very predictable exactly how a metabolism will break down, so that regardless of what we might think the "natural" human diet is, sometimes assuming that a person will produce adequate glucose+ketones to function properly might not work out. But is this a special case that pops up again occasionally, or is it the norm? I just don't know--and I don't think the self-selected online low carb/paleo community constitutes a random enough sample to even guess.

I listened to the Jimmy Moore interview with Perlmutter first--that one was very basic, seemed like a "stock" interview--didn't seem to go much deeper than "carbs bad." His interview with Robb Wolf seemed a little less basic--after that I listed to an interview he did with Dr. Mercola. After the Jimmy Moore interview, I wasn't sure I wanted to buy the book after all--but after the Wolf and Mercola interviews, I think I do. It's hard to cover everything in a one-hour interview.

Perlmutter always seems to apologize when he's about to get at all technical... I think his publishers have pounded into his head the importance of not sounding too geeky to lay audiences, in fear that that will decrease the general appeal of his book.

When Robb made the point out that it might be a more secure position to hold that a ketogenic diet is therapeutic once a person's glucose/insulin metabolism is compromised, I was a little disappointed by Perlmutter's response. Robb did have a good point. I don't personally think our ancestor's diets were as carb-poor as many people argue. Our ancestors were really smart, sometimes brilliant--they would have found starch in places we wouldn't even think to look. At the same time--I think a good counter-argument is that while a ketogenic diet might or might not be everybody's ancestral diet--a diet that's therapeutic against alzheimer's, cancer etc., is unlikely to cause these--so that it seems reasonable to suppose that it might be preventative, for those it appeals to.

Trust me, they have.

Dr. Perlmutter is doing a lot of extrapolating, it's true. But he's advancing a theory and he's not watering it down, either.

My diabetic dad dutifully kept his blood sugars in the "good" range for decades, and wound up losing his brain and quality of life, because they were wrong about what the "good" range actually was.

Likewise, it can be that some people can "handle" eating dietary carbs more than others, but how can we ascertain that? I know slender and active people who ate low fat and high carb and dropped dead of heart attacks; three in as many years. Shocking and terrible and totally out of nowhere.

They had no clue they were stoking deadly inflammation with their "healthy whole grain diet" including nonfat yogurt with lots of sugar.

His info on the below ground veggies struck a note with me. I'm celiac, but have enormous issues with a lot of foods: starchy vegetables..potatoes in particular, corn kills me, legumes, and sugar type carbs including fruits. Even after eliminating gluten I had issues with these other things. I'm always looking for reasons why.

Hour and 20 minutes interview, good questions. He makes the point about tuber and fruit carbs that some can be included, but with all carbs, it is a matter of quantity. Also mentions a few times that LCHF can be consistent with vegetarian and vegan diets.

http://www.askthelowcarbexperts.com...-brain-ketones/

Janet,

I listed to the ATLCE podcast, and Dr. P. still sounds like a low-carb absolutist in the same camp as Dr. Rosedale. (If you remember, when Rosedale was on a panel with Paul Jaminet and Cate Shanahan on the Low-Carb Cruise, Rosedale came across like a rabid dog at the end.) Humans are simply too varied to recommend a single nutritional solution at this time. For example, even though Sweden's boffins reviewed 16,000 nutritional studies before recommending a LCHF diet as optimal, their recommendations must still be considered experimental. I'm all for the experiment, but it's unscientific to claim that the results are a foregone conclusion for everybody, as Dr. P. does.

Also related to the podcast, haven't we had the discussion here that low-carb is not consistent with vegetarian and vegan diets? I think I remember the virtual eye-rolling on this board when the "New Atkins for a New You" came out and suggested that tofu as a protein staple was OK. I might be mis-characterizing the discussion, so feel free to correct my impression.