It came to me when I was trying to go back to sleep at 4am this morning. A relatively inexpensive modification at supermarket checkouts could give scientists all the information they need to know about the effect of different food products on our physiology. Simply have a device at checkouts that weighs the shopper and measures their height. The information that the supermarket already knows about what is in the shopper's basket could be teamed up with the BMI of the shopper and we could finally tell if a low fat high carb diet is more effective than a low carb high fat one. Do shoppers with more bread in their basket have a bigger "bread-basket"? Sounds like a scheme to me!
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Well, after a couple of years I've finally had my operation. It was a mission! I had to get quite assertive at one stage in order to get a registrar to schedule an MRI. He only did so, under sufferance, hoping to prove that my problems were osteo-arthritic and not meniscus damage (as I had tried to contend). Thankfully my specialist, Grant Surtees, was on my side and felt he could see some damage. After seeking another opinion that concurred, I was scheduled for surgery. An additional complication was that my GP had only ever recorded my knee injuries, two of them, under the same ACC claim as my first one on the left knee. When the registrar scheduled the MRI, he asked me which knee and I said it didn't matter and that the one that was bothering me at the time was my right one. So the right one was MRI'd. When it got back to ACC that we wanted surgery on the right knee they baulked. Eventually Surtees corrected the paperwork and made the operation requirement for the left knee (and told me privately that while I was on the table he'd have a look at the right knee and scrape whatever needed to be scraped in a two for one.) Anyway after arriving home that day it was immediately apparent that I had no discomfort in either knee and had plenty of movement available. I can see it is going to be a great result! William Davis MD is a preventative cardiologist who has gone back to basics in the treatment of his patients - with outstanding results. Understanding that something in our modern diet must be responsible for our modern diseases, he has isolated wheat as being the overwhelming major player. Not only is our consumption of wheat what has been causing everything from cardiovascular disease to Alzheimers, from acne to psoriasis - eliminating it will reverse many of these disorders. Wheat once digested, releases exorphins that act on the brain in the same way as opiates. Once we are in the cycle of eating wheat it makes us powerless to stop. Just like smoking tobacco. And just like tobacco there are adverse health outcomes - only much more so. Bringing wheat into our diet is probably the biggest evolutionary mistake humankind has made. Fortunately we can fix this error, as many enlightened people are now doing. You need to realise, however, that there are some multi-billion dollar industries that are going to be resisting this change - an even bigger resistance than that of the nicotine pushers. Educate yourself and heal yourself, read the book. Having always been a person that adds salt to any meal until it 'tastes right', I had to have a laugh when I found out that reducing our salt intake to that of the recommended government guidelines, will actually reduce our life expectancy. It seems that science has been going in two different directions with this subject over the last 40 years. One school of thought that found a link between high salt intake and hypertension (you know - in the type of study where they feed rats 60 times more salt than humans would normally eat) as opposed to another school of thought that found heart disease patients had a higher mortality with reduced salt over time.
While more recent studies trying to link increased salt intake with poor health outcomes has proved "inconclusive" and "inconsistent", another set of studies trying to link the opposite ie. decreased salt with poor outcomes, seems to have found a much more consistent link. So, if your doctor has you on statins to reduce your cholesterol, low fat diets and reduced salt - what are you going to tell him on your next visit? If you don't believe me, Gary Taubes has written about it all here. WANTED - Medical Practitioner in the Taupo area. Applications are invited for the role of medical consultant to a fifty nine year old male. They would only be needed about once every five years for a medical check-up, or perhaps, on occasion, for a minor sporting mishap. Applicants should ideally have a good working knowledge of LCHF food requirements and not need to have it explained to them. They should, at the least, be as healthy and fit as I am - I would wish to avoid the irony of having to give them medical advice. During interview, applicants can expect to be tested on their knowledge of cholesterol and its role in nature, as well as the nature of statins and their role in society. Less than 100% in this test will disqualify the applicant. Please initiate your application in the comments section of this blog. (Medical practitioners reading this advertisement, who do not understand the requirements, are welcome to contact the writer for consultation - which can be provided at a modest cost, commensurate with their own charge-out rate.) Pictured at the right is an example medicine kit from someone on a post recently from Western Price Facebook page, asking, "What's in your home medical kit?" Well I had a quick browse through mine and produced this picture... Rubbish! I'm sick of hearing that mantra of "Eat less - Exercise more". We keep trying to find reasons that our modern western culture is overweight. Yet these reasons don't seem to help us provide the solution we are after. Many people seem to believe that our modern life is too sedentary compared to our forefathers. I even hear it that when I was a kid we got out more and had more activity and that is why we weren't fat then. Well the fact is, you will burn around 1500 calories a day just by staying in bed. If you don't compensate for those calories by eating less then you will lose weight. If you eat more calories, you will gain weight. It is evident that our modern civilisation is eating more calories than we burn and it is worth investigating why. If you exercise more, but don't change the composition of your diet, you are likely to keep gaining weight. The reason is that you are eating the wrong things. What has changed in our diet?
Eating carbohydrates at the rate we do now overrides our natural mechanisms and balances. Our biology cannot cope and we store more and more fat while craving more carbs. On top of that our high carb diets are creating insulin resistance in us. Two hundred years isn't enough time to for our species evolve to such a radical change in our eating habits. Eating fat, on the other hand, gives our body a more efficient way of getting the energy it needs and we feel satiated on less calories. So, is it necessary to exercise to stay lean? Not at all. We don't even have to starve ourselves if we eat the right food. The only reason our society is getting fat is because we have our food pyramid upside down. I'm losing weight without having changed my level of exercise. I've just stopped eating carbs. Note: I have started exercising more in the last month. But I need to emphasise that is as a result of having more energy and because, having already lost weight, I had a desire to get into even better shape. The weight loss came first, extra exercise came second. Georgia Ede has written excellent articles on the role of fats and carbohydrates in our diet. Click the links for an easy and informative read. Years ago I used to tell people that I could go all day on a single cup of tea in the morning and not bother eating until the evening meal. People would tell me that was bad for me and that I should have breakfast - that it was the most important meal of the day. In truth, I wasn't hungry at that time. If I got stuck into some sort of activity, like going skiing, I would be able to ski all day then have a meal in the evening. During the day I might have a coffee or not - depending on whether I felt like a break. In fact the drinking of coffee or tea seemed more like a social thing, or a habit, (in the case of the early morning one). I could certainly forego these drinks without being aware of any effects.
In more recent years I have tried to get into the habit of having a breakfast, partly because of what people had told me. I got into the groove of having some cereal, perhaps with fruit, but always with half cream and half milk, plus sugar sprinkled on top. I usually felt hungry by midday and would have some sort of meal like a pie and doughnut. In the evening I would have my normal meal. During those years I packed on the weight. About three years ago I watched the movie Fathead by Tom Naughton and decided to start a new habit. I began cooking a breakfast every morning consisting bacon, eggs, tomato and onion - all fried in dripping or lard. This was delicious. I began to lose weight - at least for a few months, until I injured my knees and could no longer walk for my three to four weekly games of golf. I also got tired of getting up and going to all the effort of cooking breakfast. I started putting on weight again. I got up to 89kg. I could no longer wear my good suit. That was a nuisance, since it was what I always wore to funerals. I decided to revisit Tom Naughton and along the way I found other people like Georgia Ede. The results of my research saw me take us on Our Journey. But the thing is - I don't worry about not having breakfast any more. I am quite content to have my coffee with full cream in it in the morning - maybe two, since it is quite "moreish". Then I head out for golf or some other activity and don't concern myself with food for the rest of the day. When I get home I prepare an evening meal, and that, plus another coffee later on, is enough for the day. I might have a snack of some nuts or a piece of cheese at some point or other. Anyway - the original subject - about breakfast being important... I think that is probably true if you eat carbohydrates. Eating carbs puts the blood sugar up and then the body needs to use it or, if it cannot use it, store it as fat. (Insulin takes care of this). When you have used up the supply of sugar, which you do fairly quickly, the body tells you to replenish it by making you hungry again. You eat more carbs and then the cycle continues, all the while your body stays in sugar burning mode - storing excess sugar as fat. It never goes into fat-burning mode. When you think about this in terms of our early evolution, it makes sense that our bodies be able to do this when food, including fruits, were plentiful during warmer weather. We could store our food as fat and then when the weather got colder or food became less plentiful, we could just use our reserves of fat. Problem is, in our modern western world, food is generally very plentiful. On top of that we have developed highly refined carbohydrates and sugars which are, oh, so convenient, to eat. Delicious too! They are making us fatter and fatter. Our switch from eating meats and whole foods to eating carbs over the last couple of centuries seems to have gone unnoticed. Meantime, misguided scientists, thinking fat must cause us to get fat, (seems logical doesn't it?), have created studies to try and show that fat is the cause of all our ills. In spite of the fact that there is not one reputable study that shows a causal link between eating fat and poor health, we have been persuaded to avoid fat and eat vegetables and grain. We are getting fatter! My meals, including caloric and nutritional data for the last 3 days, indicate that I eat low carbs and high fat. Most of my calories come from eating fat. I don't know for sure, (because I cannot measure it), but I think that I'm in a state of nutritional ketosis. This means that my blood sugar is likely to be fairly constant through the day. My body is in a mode that is burning fat for fuel rather than sugar. Because I'm directly accessing the plentiful supply of fat that I have, it is always available to supply my brain, (so I can concentrate on my golf swing) - and my muscles, (so I can execute it properly). In spite of me not having breakfast for the last 5 months, my golf has never been better - and I've lost 10kg to boot! (Normally my golf gets worse during the winter - going from a 12-13 handicap out to a 17. I was on a 14 handicap at the beginning (April) of this diet and I got down to 11 in August.) Do you think that fat people are that way because they are too lazy to exercise. That they eat more because they are greedy? That they basically become obese because calories in is greater than calories out and that it is within their control to do something about it? Have a listen to this guy and see if you still feel the same way afterward. |
Gregg SheehanProblem solver from way back. Currently working on the challenge of weight and health. Hence this website. Archives
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