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  #76   ^
Old Mon, Apr-27-20, 04:54
WereBear's Avatar
WereBear WereBear is offline
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One thing I see, over and over, in news reports: how the people who died are so often described as "health conscious/exerciser/in good health."

Yes, except for the last part. Almost the entire decade of the 1990s it could have been said of ME. And I was wrong about that. I had my weight "under control" and I was "eating healthy" but now I know that was wrong; as wrong as it can be.

One statistic which gets quoted fairly often among articles which do recognize the concept of metabolic health: only 12% of the young adult population of the US is actually metabolically healthy by such important markers as AIC, waist size, C-reactive protein, etc.

Are these 12% NOT dying of the virus? We don't know. It's no guarantee, certainly: we all need to follow public health guidelines, regardless. But with a stat like that: what are the odds that survival does hinge on insulin resistance which is hobbling the body's immune response? When you consider what the scientist says in the article I quoted:

Quote:
The real reason, Wen says, is that they cannot use glucose effectively—and thus cannot initiate a proper antiviral response.


it looks like a giant clue.
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  #77   ^
Old Mon, Apr-27-20, 07:11
Calianna's Avatar
Calianna Calianna is online now
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Plan: Atkins-ish (hypoglycemia)
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Did someone edit Dr Maholtra's article to intentionally word it like this?

Quote:
Metabolic syndrome, which is caused by excess body fat, is defined as any three of a cluster of five conditions; increased blood pressure, excess body fat around the waist, high blood sugar and abnormal cholesterol levels.


Maybe he's actually of the opinion that allowing yourself to gain any excess body fat is what causes metabolic syndrome, no matter what causes the weight gain. We've all had experience that weight gain is not unusual on a high carb diet, but we know it is still possible to gain weight on a LC diet too, and even on a keto diet, if you're consistently eating way, way, far too many calories. That's the whole point behind "You don't need to count calories on LC, but calories DO count".



For a long time here, we've put the primary blame for metabolic syndrome on excess starch and sugar consumption, resulting in insulin resistance, leading to weight gain, diabetes, and all the other conditions associated with metabolic syndrome. The rest of the article certainly supports the idea that it's the junky sugar and starch laden foods so readily available which leads to the cluster of conditions that are the hallmark of metabolic syndrome.


Now if it had said that "one of the first indications of developing metabolic syndrome is excess body fat", that wouldn't have set off the alarm bells. But coming right out and saying that excess body fat causes metabolic syndrome... I was so taken aback by that one statement that I had to read it a couple of times to be sure I read it right.
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  #78   ^
Old Mon, Apr-27-20, 08:05
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bevangel bevangel is offline
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Plan: modified adkins (sort of)
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I started reading the comments to the article quoting Dr. Malhotra that Demi just posted. Sadly, once again the vast majority of posters are blaming the obese for becoming/staying obese.

Fat-shamers choose not to see/care that manufacturers have made sugar-enhanced foods overwhelmingly ubiquitous, super-flavorful, and CHEAP compared with healthy non-sugar enhanced alternatives and that the vast majority of people are now "hooked" on these sugar-enhanced foods by the time they enter kindergarden.

My guess is that many, if not most, fat-shamers are equally hooked on unhealthy foods. They were just genetically gifted with a more robust metabolism so that the ill effects haven't yet caught up with them. Gotta wonder just how many 20 something or 20 something fat-shamers find THEMSELVES losing the battle of the bulge in their 40s or 50s.


P.S. Calianna, I suspect you're right that someone edited Dr. Malhotra's words. I don't recall him ever before saying that excess weight causes metabolic syndrome. He's usually very careful to distinguish between cause/effect relationships and correlations. Since, to the best of my knowledge, no one has designed and carried out any sort of controlled scientific experiment to establish that excess weight CAUSES metabolic syndrome, I rather doubt Dr. Malhotra would have made such a statement.

Last edited by bevangel : Mon, Apr-27-20 at 08:10.
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  #79   ^
Old Mon, Apr-27-20, 08:06
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Calianna Calianna is online now
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Quote:
Originally Posted by WereBear
One thing I see, over and over, in news reports: how the people who died are so often described as "health conscious/exerciser/in good health."

Yes, except for the last part. Almost the entire decade of the 1990s it could have been said of ME. And I was wrong about that. I had my weight "under control" and I was "eating healthy" but now I know that was wrong; as wrong as it can be.

One statistic which gets quoted fairly often among articles which do recognize the concept of metabolic health: only 12% of the young adult population of the US is actually metabolically healthy by such important markers as AIC, waist size, C-reactive protein, etc.

Are these 12% NOT dying of the virus? We don't know. It's no guarantee, certainly: we all need to follow public health guidelines, regardless. But with a stat like that: what are the odds that survival does hinge on insulin resistance which is hobbling the body's immune response? When you consider what the scientist says in the article I quoted:



it looks like a giant clue.



DD2 is a paramedic in Richmond, Va, and has seen plenty of covid cases over the last several weeks. At first she was of the opinion that covid-19 should be considered like a year when the flu vaccine didn't match the flu strain that year - bad, but no worse than that.



Then the 30-something husband of a former co-worker came down with covid more than a month ago. He started to get sick over a weekend, was in the hospital by thatThursday morning, and had just been put on a ventilator a few hours earlier when he died that Thursday night. That's five or six days from being perfectly healthy to the morgue. What disturbed DD2 the most though (and changed her opinion on just how dangerous this virus is) was that by all indicators, he was perfectly healthy, no physical problems at all, until he started to get sick that weekend.



Was his case an anomaly? I don't know, and with no obvious markers of metabolic syndrome, I have no idea whether they even bothered to check his A1C - that could have been an indicator of an underlying condition, but may not have ever been tested, since by all other indicators, he seemed perfectly healthy.


The statistics still indicate that the highest rate of mortality is among senior citizens who catch it, even though the vast majority of those who are diagnosed with the virus are under 60. The very elderly and frail in long term care facilities are particularly vulnerable. Is it because their immune system is old, and not working as it did when they were younger? Or is the high carb (with seed oils being the only fats allowed) diet they're fed in those facilities compromising the function of their immune system? Those are questions I'm not sure we'll ever have answered.
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  #80   ^
Old Mon, Apr-27-20, 09:32
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cotonpal cotonpal is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Calianna
Was his case an anomaly? I don't know, and with no obvious markers of metabolic syndrome, I have no idea whether they even bothered to check his A1C - that could have been an indicator of an underlying condition, but may not have ever been tested, since by all other indicators, he seemed perfectly healthy.


Perhaps it would be more accurate to say someone had no obvious indications of underlying health problems rather than saying that they were healthy. Do we even know in any precise way what healthy means? Plus I believe that fitness is often used as as marker for health but they can be two different things. One can be fit but not truly healthy. People die running marathons. Finally it is a kind of medical arrogance to assume that we know how to measure accurately disease and/or health. We know some indicators of both but the human body is more complex than our current knowledge understands. We can say definitively that some people are sick but we probably miss a lot of people because they appear "healthy" but aren't. We assume more than we know.
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  #81   ^
Old Mon, Apr-27-20, 13:18
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Nancy LC Nancy LC is online now
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It could be genetic, it could be something like low vit. D3, it could be underlying metabolic syndrome (not everyone is fat). It could be that the poison is in the dose (more virus = worse disease). It could be a mix of many things.

It is definitely not like the flu. People are getting their hearts, lungs, brains, kidneys messed up and some are throwing tons of blood clots. This is a weird disease.
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  #82   ^
Old Mon, Apr-27-20, 13:27
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deirdra deirdra is offline
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Recently another doctor referred to extra bodyfat affecting the hormones secreted (which is true) and causing metabolic syndrome. But I think it is the food choices (sugar, grains, seed oils & processed junk) that caused both the fat and the metabolic syndrome.

I agree with you Werebear; I too was eating healthywholegrains and mostly vegetarian & vegan foods in the early 1990s, but caught more colds that ever. Since I switched to VLC in 1999, I've never had a bad cold or flu, so hopefully my immune system will be able to fight C-19 too. A laughed when a local vegan & marathon runner went on the news to tell his Covid story. Overexercising also depresses the immune system, Mr 'Healthy'.

The blood clots are a weird twist, but in the olden days people with fevers were given aspirin (a blood thinner), whereas now they are told to avoid NSAIDs and take Tylenol instead.

Last edited by deirdra : Mon, Apr-27-20 at 13:33.
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  #83   ^
Old Mon, Apr-27-20, 13:47
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Merpig Merpig is offline
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Plan: EF/Fung IDM/keto
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This depresses me so much since, despite 14 years of pretty faithful LCHF, I'm still morbidly obese and stalled for 11 years now despite trying basically every "hack" that's come across the posts here during the 11 years I've been a member of these forums. Current hack is a nearly carnivore diet and keeping carbs below 20g daily, but even doing that my weight has been stalled for about 6 weeks now, bouncing up and down over about a 3-5 pound range. The story of my life including when I first tried LCHF/Atkins back in the 1997-2003 time frame. That time around I gave up and fell face down into the carbs after about 3 years stalled at around the same weight I'm currently stalled at, despite trying every recommended trick in the alt-support-diet.lowcarb usenet group that I was then a member of. Fell face down into the carbs in despair and as is typically the case I quickly gained it all back "and then some". Took me about 18 months to lose the 85 pounds I initially lost, but gained it all back in less than 6 months - and many many more pounds to boot.

So I vowed that would never happen again once I went back on LC in 2006, and indeed it hasn't. Ive lost 100+ pounds (took me about 3 years to lose it) but since 2009 I've still been stalled ever since. If I could even lose 10 more pounds I would be in the "obese" category rather than "morbidly obsese" but it just doesn't want to happen. I'm pretty convinced I'll die if I get Covid so I'm very stressed and totally self-isolating.

But a local woman got Covid even though, because she has multiple underlying health conditions, she had not been out of her house for 6 weeks. Staying home alone, getting all her groceries and goods delivered. But she got a food delivery one day and the following day the person who delivered the food came down with Covid.

So I do my best to stay under 20g of carbs (A few times it's popped up above that but not a lot above, still very low carb by usual standards.) My typical carb/protein/fat percentages typically run roughly 5/25/70. I don't specifically count calories but I track my foods here on MYPLAN and it gives you calories, so my calories in generally run in the 1300-2300 range. I normally fast 16-20 hours every day. I do some light exercise every day here at home. But as usual my weight just won't budge.

I suspect I still have a crummy immune system though I take my vitamin D3, K2, C, also magnesium, a specific multivitamin my doctor loves, various other things. But I still get nasty colds 2-3 times every year, and even had a bad case of pneumonia once during my strict low carb initial timeframe in the late 90s.

I just had my first meal of the day at 2:30 PM today - a cheese omelet with crispy baked bacon. That puts me at 1.9g of carbs, 52.8g of protein, 61.2g of fat, 776 calories. I may have a similar meal a bit later on. Each time I'm TOTALLY CONVINCED that this is the time I'll lose weight. You think I'd have given up on that sort of hope after 11 years.

Last edited by Merpig : Mon, Apr-27-20 at 13:53.
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  #84   ^
Old Mon, Apr-27-20, 14:49
JEY100's Avatar
JEY100 JEY100 is online now
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Plan: P:E/DDF
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These blood clots leading to stroke in younger people, dead with little warning, is it underlying “metabolic syndrome “ ? Still too many unknowns.
Through Ivor Cummins, a clip of Dr Malhotra on the BBC about his Telegraph front page. https://youtu.be/tkW2qD6gjzI

He corrects the impression that only the obese have metabolic syndrome..."even if you are normal weight"...you can have the complications.

Last edited by JEY100 : Mon, Apr-27-20 at 16:15.
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  #85   ^
Old Mon, Apr-27-20, 15:27
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GRB5111 GRB5111 is offline
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Plan: Very LC, Higher Protein
Stats: 227/186/185 Male 6' 0"
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Calianna
Did someone edit Dr Maholtra's article to intentionally word it like this?



Maybe he's actually of the opinion that allowing yourself to gain any excess body fat is what causes metabolic syndrome, no matter what causes the weight gain. We've all had experience that weight gain is not unusual on a high carb diet, but we know it is still possible to gain weight on a LC diet too, and even on a keto diet, if you're consistently eating way, way, far too many calories. That's the whole point behind "You don't need to count calories on LC, but calories DO count".



For a long time here, we've put the primary blame for metabolic syndrome on excess starch and sugar consumption, resulting in insulin resistance, leading to weight gain, diabetes, and all the other conditions associated with metabolic syndrome. The rest of the article certainly supports the idea that it's the junky sugar and starch laden foods so readily available which leads to the cluster of conditions that are the hallmark of metabolic syndrome.


Now if it had said that "one of the first indications of developing metabolic syndrome is excess body fat", that wouldn't have set off the alarm bells. But coming right out and saying that excess body fat causes metabolic syndrome... I was so taken aback by that one statement that I had to read it a couple of times to be sure I read it right.

This is a good observation, as I would hope that Malhotra didn't write this. Unfortunately, this is a strong belief, and it will take time to correct public understanding of the role of obesity. As many have stated, obesity is a symptom of an underlying cause, it is a warning sign that something is wrong and not a cause in and of itself.
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  #86   ^
Old Mon, Apr-27-20, 15:36
teaser's Avatar
teaser teaser is offline
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Plan: mostly milkfat
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Depends what you mean by "excess body fat." Just being fatter than someone else--no. Being fatter relative to your body's ability to efficiently sequester fat in subcutaneous fat--yes. Just as Tofi--thin outside, fat inside is not healthy, fat outside, thin inside is probably fine from a metabolic syndrome perspective.
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  #87   ^
Old Mon, Apr-27-20, 16:45
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Meme#1 Meme#1 is offline
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Plan: Atkins DANDR
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Merpig
This depresses me so much since, despite 14 years of pretty faithful LCHF, I'm still morbidly obese and stalled for 11 years now despite trying basically every "hack" that's come across the posts here during the 11 years I've been a member of these forums. Current hack is a nearly carnivore diet and keeping carbs below 20g daily, but even doing that my weight has been stalled for about 6 weeks now, bouncing up and down over about a 3-5 pound range. The story of my life including when I first tried LCHF/Atkins back in the 1997-2003 time frame. That time around I gave up and fell face down into the carbs after about 3 years stalled at around the same weight I'm currently stalled at, despite trying every recommended trick in the alt-support-diet.lowcarb usenet group that I was then a member of. Fell face down into the carbs in despair and as is typically the case I quickly gained it all back "and then some". Took me about 18 months to lose the 85 pounds I initially lost, but gained it all back in less than 6 months - and many many more pounds to boot.

So I vowed that would never happen again once I went back on LC in 2006, and indeed it hasn't. Ive lost 100+ pounds (took me about 3 years to lose it) but since 2009 I've still been stalled ever since. If I could even lose 10 more pounds I would be in the "obese" category rather than "morbidly obsese" but it just doesn't want to happen. I'm pretty convinced I'll die if I get Covid so I'm very stressed and totally self-isolating.

But a local woman got Covid even though, because she has multiple underlying health conditions, she had not been out of her house for 6 weeks. Staying home alone, getting all her groceries and goods delivered. But she got a food delivery one day and the following day the person who delivered the food came down with Covid.

So I do my best to stay under 20g of carbs (A few times it's popped up above that but not a lot above, still very low carb by usual standards.) My typical carb/protein/fat percentages typically run roughly 5/25/70. I don't specifically count calories but I track my foods here on MYPLAN and it gives you calories, so my calories in generally run in the 1300-2300 range. I normally fast 16-20 hours every day. I do some light exercise every day here at home. But as usual my weight just won't budge.

I suspect I still have a crummy immune system though I take my vitamin D3, K2, C, also magnesium, a specific multivitamin my doctor loves, various other things. But I still get nasty colds 2-3 times every year, and even had a bad case of pneumonia once during my strict low carb initial timeframe in the late 90s.

I just had my first meal of the day at 2:30 PM today - a cheese omelet with crispy baked bacon. That puts me at 1.9g of carbs, 52.8g of protein, 61.2g of fat, 776 calories. I may have a similar meal a bit later on. Each time I'm TOTALLY CONVINCED that this is the time I'll lose weight. You think I'd have given up on that sort of hope after 11 years.


Debbie, I am right with you on concerns and there is one thing to remember, the effects of LC are not always visible on the outside but I do know it is making a big difference on our overall health.
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  #88   ^
Old Tue, Apr-28-20, 05:02
WereBear's Avatar
WereBear WereBear is offline
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Plan: EpiPaleo/Primal/LowOx
Stats: 220/125/150 Female 67
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Quote:
But coming right out and saying that excess body fat causes metabolic syndrome... I was so taken aback by that one statement that I had to read it a couple of times to be sure I read it right.


I agree that this is putting the cart ahead of the horse.

In addition, it was only last year that I considered bigger impacts on my weight than just carb counting.

Same carb level - foods with lectin and soy and gluten = 25 less pounds.

I went gluten free years ago and my pants fit looser, without any change to the carb count OR calories. Pursuing plant toxins and eliminated them took me further. Bloating? Endocrine interference? Intestinal permeability? I don't know.

I agree body fat is a symptom of an underlying issue.
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  #89   ^
Old Tue, Apr-28-20, 08:40
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Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is offline
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Plan: atkins, carnivore 2023
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re Dr Malhotra and the article above, did anyone notice there are FOUR factors listed, NOT five. That makes me more suspitious there was unauthorized editing.
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  #90   ^
Old Tue, Apr-28-20, 09:03
JEY100's Avatar
JEY100 JEY100 is online now
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Plan: P:E/DDF
Stats: 225/150/169 Female 5' 9"
BF:45%/28%/25%
Progress: 134%
Location: NC
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Yes, combined high Trigs and low HDL into one “abnormal cholesterol” so readers can think Dr Malhotra means total or LDL.

Last edited by JEY100 : Tue, Apr-28-20 at 10:31.
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