Iceman's Teeth

"Although the Iceman did not lose a single tooth until the his death at an age of about 40 years, he had an advanced abrasion of his teeth, profound carious lesions, and a moderate to severe periodontitis," the researchers said.

In particular, the molars of the upper jaw showed loss of alveolar bone as a sign of periodontitis (inflammation of the ligaments and bones that support the teeth), while evidence of "mechanical trauma" was found on two teeth.

According to Seiler and colleagues, the most surprising find is the high frequency of cavities.

"These dental pathologies are a sign of change in the Neolithic diet," Albert Zink, head of the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman at EURAC in Bolzano, told Discovery News.

Zink hopes to find further clues for Ötzi's teeth problems as he conducts molecular analyses of the mummy's stomach material.

"We already know that he was eating grains, such as einkorn or emmer. The contained carbohydrates clearly increased the risk of developing dental diseases," Zink said.

http://news.discovery.com/history/oetzi-iceman-bad-teeth-110615.html

Why cavities from the wheat intake?  First, there's the phytates, which may block mineral absorption.  Then, there's the potential lack of minerals, and other nutrients such as vitamin K, in a neolithic diet.  Then, there's the potential gut irritation and even gut permeability from the gluten.  Lastly, there's the combination of all these factors leading to the misapplication of minerals within the body so that the arteries calcify but the bones and teeth do not.

Why did Neoman have bad teeth while many or most paleo men have remarkably good teeth?  It's not the difference in dental hygiene!  It's the food.

What You See, Conclusion

Conclusion (from this article):  But contrary to what many people believe, an increased intake of dairy products, whether low-fat (milk) or full-fat (milk and cheese), had a neutral effect on weight.  And despite conventional advice to eat less fat, weight loss was greatest among people who ate more yogurt and nuts, including peanut butter, over each four-year period.  But, consistent with the new study’s findings, metabolism takes a hit from refined carbohydrates — sugars and starches stripped of their fiber, like white flour. When Dr. David Ludwig of Children’s Hospital Boston compared the effects of refined carbohydrates with the effects of whole grains in both animals and people, he found that metabolism, which determines how many calories are used at rest, slowed with the consumption of refined grains but stayed the same after consumption of whole grains.

Well, that sure settles it.  Lot’s of fat and whole grains are great!  But how did they determine which of these narratives is true – nurses are part of the entire medical/government cabal which, like Ms. Brody, has been singing anthems to the holy grail of “whole grains” for ten to fifteen years, and those nurses more focused on obsessively doing what they preach are likely to have followed their own advice, and these nurses also do whatever else they have to in order to maintain a healthy body weights.  So did they lose weight from their whole grain consumption or were they the kind of folks (due to temperament or genetics or both) that can eat anything and maintain their weight, and also ate a lot of whole grains?   This is a great example of what observational studies can and cannot tell us.  It is a shame to me that that a professional health reporter cannot sort these simple truths about observational studies out.  Observational studies are very limited in what they can be used to determine - I often wonder why we keep doing them when they've all been done, and all they tell us is that we need to do bigger, better intervention studies - which will be exorbitantly expensive.

As has been suggested by previous smaller studies, how long people slept each night influenced their weight changes. In general, people who slept less than six hours or more than eight hours a night tended to gain the most. Among possible explanations are effects of short nights on satiety hormones, as well as an opportunity to eat more while awake, Dr. Hu said.

At least she/they didn’t pretend the study told them the causes for these sleep/weight gain/weight loss relationships.

He was not surprised by the finding that the more television people watched, the more weight they gained, most likely because they are influenced by a barrage of food ads and snack in front of the TV.

This is an interesting finding about which one could enjoy speculating – I suppose it could be a bunch of weak minded humans influenced by advertising.  It could also be the old “they are not active enough because they watch too much TV” argument that fits right in with the “bad fat people” narrative.   And it could also be the carbohydrate hypothesis:   people who over-eat carbs will feel less energetic and be less active because their metabolic derangement results in much of their food energy intake becoming sequestered as fat, resulting in a defacto “low energy” state.

Ms. Brody’s interpretation of this study is, generally speaking, “do what I’ve been telling you all of these years and you’ll lose weight.”  She’s long been an advocate of whole grains, vegetable proteins, and a low fat, lower animal product approach.  Do you think this study will help her help others to live better, feel better, look better and perform better? 

I doubt that it will, for a couple of reasons.  First, her approach does not put a clear enough focus on carbohydrate consumption, and folks who are struggling with fat accumulation have to give that element of their diets very clear attention.  Second, her approach is like giving a person a map of City A, which is labeled City B, and sending them on their way to City B.  They may reach their destination by accident, but they’d be more likely to get there with an accurate, complete model of the relationships in human health and diet.  

Now it is time for feedback from you - pls get to the comments link and let me know if this was a helpful way to break down Ms. Brody's article as a means of illustration - thanks!

What You See, Part 4

Part 4 (from this article):   On average, study participants gained a pound a year, which added up to 20 pounds in 20 years. Some gained much more, about four pounds a year, while a few managed to stay the same or even lose weight.  Participants who were overweight at the study’s start tended to gain the most weight, which seriously raised their risk of obesity-related diseases, Dr. Hu said.

This is an interesting finding.  It would be curious to study their diet questionnaires to see what the common factors are in their diets.  What I suspect may be true is that either:

-They were fatter because they already ate too many carbs for too long, and/or:

-They continued the pattern of eating that led to their initial weight gain, but as their body began to mal-adapt to the excessive carbohydrate intake, they gained weight even faster.

A third possibility is that this population is a group that had the most insulin sensitive fat cells, which could continue to respond to insulin and absorb excess carbohydrate as sequestered fat.

The foods that contributed to the greatest weight gain were not surprising. French fries led the list: Increased consumption of this food alone was linked to an average weight gain of 3.4 pounds in each four-year period. Other important contributors were potato chips (1.7 pounds), sugar-sweetened drinks (1 pound), red meats and processed meats (0.95 and 0.93 pound, respectively), other forms of potatoes (0.57 pound), sweets and desserts (0.41 pound), refined grains (0.39 pound), other fried foods (0.32 pound), 100-percent fruit juice (0.31 pound) and butter (0.3 pound).

This part of Ms. Brody’s reporting is pure fantasy.  All they could report is which foods correlated with the greatest weight gain.  They may have had high paid statisticians who assumed some numbers and attempted to determine causality – but to believe that such a thing could actually be done is to believe in voodoo and chicken bones.  These are great statistical equivalents of card tricks, and can be a heck of a lot of fun, but they do not and cannot determine what caused what.  What’s far more significant is what happens when well designed intervention studies are completed – and these studies consistently show a benefit for carb restriction with moderate protein intake and a high percentage of daily calories from fat consumption.

Also not too surprising were most of the foods that resulted in weight loss or no gain when consumed in greater amounts during the study: fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Compared with those who gained the most weight, participants in the Nurses’ Health Study who lost weight consumed 3.1 more servings of vegetables each day.

This is interesting, but it is meaningless to try and convert co-relation – people who lost weight ate 3 times as many vegetables – with causality; “people who eat more vegetables will lose weight.”    Part 5 tomorrow.

Colpo Has A Way With Words

Hopefully by now you can begin to see why I’m not a big fan of epidemiological research. It has its place (for example, determining the origin of  viral epidemics, and those most susceptible to them), but most epidemiological research conducted nowadays is largely useless money-wasting nonsense. It certainly keeps many researchers in paid employment, but its contribution to the betterment of public health is next to zero. In fact, looking back over the last several decades, one can see that it has produced/furthered several highly counterproductive falsehoods that have gone on to gain global acceptance (cholesterol and vegetarian myths, anyone?)

http://anthonycolpo.com/?p=1792

AC is not my favorite blogger, as he can be like a nasty little terrier gnawing a bone when he gets riled up about a topic (like low carb diets), in which he obsesses over some detail or another while sometimes seeming to miss the larger points.  But ... he does have a way with words!  And he's dead on the money in his assessment of the utility of epidemiological studies, aka observational studies.

What You See, Part 3

Part 3 (from this article):
But the researchers found that the kinds of foods people ate had a larger effect over all than changes in physical activity. “Both physical activity and diet are important to weight control, but if you are fairly active and ignore diet, you can still gain weight,” said Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health and a co-author of the study.  As Dr. Mozaffarian observed, “Physical activity in the United States is poor, but diet is even worse.”
Most good trainers will tell you that “you cannot out train a bad diet.”  In other words, exercise is great but it won’t save you from a bad diet, especially if you are already overweights.  So there’s nothing new here, and there’s really no way they could reach such a conclusion, even an obvious one, from this observational study.  They are either expressing an opinion they already held or gained from another source.
Even more important than its effect on looks and wardrobe, this gradual weight gain harms health. At least six prior studies have found that rising weight increases the risk in women of heart disease, diabetes, stroke and breast cancer, and the risk in men of heart disease, diabetes and colon cancer.
On this, there’s little argument.  There’s still an argument about whether it is the fat itself, or the food one ate to become fat, that causes the increases in mortality that are seen in obesity.  However, it’s even more complicated than “what causes what”.  There are healthy fat folk and sick fat folk.  It’s a matter of degree, as in really fat is still also always a condition with many symptoms of sickness.  But folks who gain 20 pounds and hold there can be relatively healthy.
The beauty of the new study is its ability to show, based on real-life experience, how small changes in eating, exercise and other habits can result in large changes in body weight over the years.
This is just not true, because an observational study can show no such thing.  All that is “shown” is “co-relations”.  The author is assuming she can determine causation, because several of the “co-relations” can be placed into her “fat people eat too much and work out too little” model of weight gain.   From where she's standing, that's all she can see. Part 4 tomorrow.  (Minor edits 28 Jul 11)

Glassman and Eades Agree

The surest road to failure in the first few days of low-carb dieting is to listen to your body.  The whole notion of listening to your body is one of my major pet peeves.  In fact, just hearing those words makes me want to puke.  

Listening to your body is giving the elephant free rein. If you’re three days into your stop-smoking program, and you listen to your body, you’re screwed.  If you’re in drug rehab, and you listen to your body, you’re screwed.  If you’re trying to give up booze, and you listen to your body, you’re screwed.  And if you’re a week into your low-carb diet, and you listen to your body, you’re screwed.  Actually, it’s okay to listen to it, I suppose, just don’t do what it’s telling you to do because if you do, you’re screwed.

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/ketones-and-ketosis/tips-tricks-for-starting-or-restarting-low-carb-pt-i/#more-4518

Another post I've read and re-read from Mike Eades' site - with a great point about what we should or shouldn't listen to.  Coach Greg Glassman made the same point in a video from crossfit.com, to wit, if you are training at a screaming heart rate, lifting heavy weights, doing pullups, and then running (like a classic CrossFit WOD, or any truly anaerobic workout), if you "listen to your body" you'll quit that nonsense workout - it hurts! - and go get a cold beer and a wet towel for your head.  

I've often wondered how to understand pain and/or discomfort.  I've a long history of sports, and years of learning how to workout, and years of trying to learn how to push myself harder.  Polish that off with a 13 year go of fairly intense martial arts training, throw in a pair of knee surgeries, and then wash that down with four years of CrossFit - I'm confident in saying I've  had a sincere relationship with both pain and discomfort.  

So my conclusion is - discomfort in exercise is a physiological question.  Your body is asking: "Do you REALLY want to do this?  If so, it will cost you."  And for a gozillion days of human experience, that feedback mechanism was enough to keep us from just up and running ourselves out of fuel.  Now that we get unlimited quantities of fuel (there are stores filled with the fruits of our agricultural bounty) for just a bit more than a song, I'm not sure that feedback system is totally necessary, but it is probably still largely functional.  I wouldn't say you should "listen to your body" but you should be aware of why you are doing what you are doing so you will have an answer when the body asks.

The curious thing is that if you REALLY want to exert yourself, it will hurt in the short term but feel so much better in the long term that you'll likely repeat the effort.  And as long as you continue to workout in ways that give you positive feedback (neither too hard or too easy, not too long, and not too destructive), you'll keep on engaging in pain, facing up to the question pain asks you, and living all the better for it.

Last night I dosed myself with some front squats, some weighted pullups, and then pushed a weighted sled up and down my driveway in 20s intervals with a 10s rest interval.  The heavy front squats sucked as much as they always do, but I did less than ten total reps.  The heavy pullups were kind of fun - no kidding, strapping a weight around your waist and putting your chin on the bar is a blast.  The sled - that was just one big dose of nasty as my body was fairly strident in asking me whether I really thought that was a great plan; but it was over after 4 minutes and a 400m walk was all that was needed to "recover" (except for the sweating).  

Go hard, go short, be ready for your body's question!
(minor edits, 28 July 11)

What You See, Part 2

Part 2 (from this article):
The study participants … were followed for 12 to 20 years. Every two years, they completed very detailed questionnaires about their eating and other habits and current weight.
In other words, this study relies on the memory of the participants over 2 year intervals.  I say we shouldn’t bet the farm on the “detailed” questionnaires.  But as expensive as it likely was to run this long term study, it was much cheaper than the intervention study, which if designed well and run for the same period of time, would have actually had the potential to show causality.

The average participant gained 3.35 pounds every four years, for a total weight gain of 16.8 pounds in 20 years.
To gain 17 pounds in 20 years, one must accumulate an excess of about 8 kcal/day.  Makes you wonder why they couldn’t just exercise a little bit more each day and therefore sustain their healthy weight, right?  That is the observation and question that has ruled the weight loss science for recent times.  It seems so simple, so common sense; why doesn’t it work?  The “experts” weigh in, the same ones that have shown such consistent support for the calorie is a calorie argument as the conventional wisdom:
“This study shows that conventional wisdom — to eat everything in moderation, eat fewer calories and avoid fatty foods — isn’t the best approach,” Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health and lead author of the study, said in an interview. “What you eat makes quite a difference. Just counting calories won’t matter much unless you look at the kinds of calories you’re eating.”  
“There are good foods and bad foods, and the advice should be to eat the good foods more and the bad foods less,” he said. “The notion that it’s O.K. to eat everything in moderation is just an excuse to eat whatever you want.”
I’ll be real curious to know what the good doctor classifies as “good” foods, or “bad”, and how he does so.
The study showed that physical activity had the expected benefits for weight control. Those who exercised less over the course of the study tended to gain weight, while those who increased their activity didn’t. Those with the greatest increase in physical activity gained 1.76 fewer pounds than the rest of the participants within each four-year period.
Here’s where they logic becomes treacherous.  In the “carbohydrate hypotheses” that Gary Taubes laid out in “Good Calories Bad Calories”, it became clear to me that the primary mis-perception in interpreting the first law of thermodynamics was the matter of causality.  It’s one thing to say that putting a pound of fat in a calorimeter, and measuring the change in heat in that contained system, shows that a pound of fat is equal to 3500 kilo calories of energy.  It’s another entirely to say that therefore “a calorie is a calorie” and thus we should just eat less and exercise more to control accumulation of body fat.  So – did those who exercised more reduce their rate of fat accumulation, or did those who ate fewer and/or better carbohydrates, and a higher percentage of protein and fat, exercise more?  And in any event, gaining a half pound a year is better than gaining 1 pound a year, but it’s still five pounds every ten years.  Is that really the best we can hope for?  Part 3 tomorrow. (edited for format 28 July 11)