Water For Fat Loss

"... water has a lipolytic effect (fat burning). I read this in
a number of papers that had studied it, and the data clearly showed that
those who took in a lot of water had increased lipolysis. I didn't deny
the data, but I couldn't figure out the mechanism (and apparently
neither could any of the authors because none described it). I thought
on it a while and finally came up with what I think is a plausible
scenario.

"When you drink water, especially cold water, you require some increase
in caloric burning to bring the water to body temperature, but that
increase doesn't amount to all that much (the authors did describe this
phenomenon), but you also dilute your blood for a bit until the water
equilibrates with the fluid in all the tissues, and effect that takes
some time. During this time, while the blood is more dilute, the
concentration of the various substances carried in the blood decreases.

"Which would mean that insulin levels would fall. The typical blood
volume is about 5 liters, so drinking a liter of water would increase
the blood volume temporarily by about 20 percent, which would mean the
concentration of insulin and other molecules in the blood would fall by
about 20 percent. A 20 percent drop in insulin levels would allow fat
to escape the fat cells and would facilitate its transfer into the
mitochondria for burning. At least that's my explanation for the
lipolytic effect seen in numerous studies of subjects increasing water
intake."
http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/saturated-fat/tips-tricks-for-startin
g-or-restarting-low-carb-pt-ii/

I love trailing after Mike Eades' thoughts, and since he can apparently
read about 100 times faster than I can, there's always fertile ground
for learning in his blog posts.

Thank you Mike!

A Clue About Insulin Sensitivity

In 1993, the New England Journal of Medicine Published a study demonstrating that highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFA; e.g., arachidonate and docosahexaenoate [DHA]) in muscle membrane phospholipids are tightly correlated with insulin sensitivity [38].  Specifically, this means that the more of these HUGAs there are in the muscle membrane, the more insulin sensitive the muscle.  This observation subsequently has been corroborated and extended by multiple other studies.  For example the significant correlation between muscle HUFA and insulin sensitivity was shown to be specific to the phosphatidylcholine phospholipids which predominate on the outer layer of the muscle membrane [39].  This is interesting from the perspective that it implies a role for the background fatty acid composition of the membrane, per se, rather than the protein components inserted into it (like insulin receptors or glucose transporters).  In other words, figuratively speaking, what the 'fabric' of the wall itself is made of is very important for glucose transport - it's not just about the number of switches (i.e. receptors and transporters) inserted in the wall.

How these HUFAs get into muscle membranes is a very complex process involving both diet composition and metabolism of the various essential fats after they are eaten.  

The above is an excerpt from this very engaging book:

The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Liv...

In all honesty I do not want to spend a bunch of time sorting out why the HUFAs get into cell membranes ... but I probably will.  

My guess is that where this is going is that inflammation is a contributor to insulin resistance by reducing either the contribution of HUFAs to cell membranes, or because in a high inflammation body (one in which the immune system is "on high alert" chronically) the HUFAs are oxidized too fast and thus lose their ability to serve as transport sites when commanded by the presence of insulin.  Or perhaps, a high insulin environment, in and of itself, damages the HUFAs. OR, as others have speculated, perhaps after some period of time of being stuffed full of sugars by the action of insulin, enough cell damage occurs that the cells develop a means to "defend themselves" from the sugar onslaught.  Or some combination of the above.  

In a way it does not matter.  If you are struggling to regain insulin sensitivity, you must eat a lot of fat, workout consistently, and probably practice fasting from time to time.  You must avoid fructose as much as possible.  And the fat you eat should include saturated fat, polyunsaturates from sources like nuts, and monounsaturates.  Lastly, you should ingest a balanced quantity of omega-3/6 fatty acids.

Eat meat, eggs, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, no sugar/wheat.

Hyperlipid Weighs In On Taubes/Guyanet "Dust Up"

Should we abandon the carbohydrate hypothesis of obesity?

Peter is a tough read - hope to summarize his post this week.  Highlights many of the critical issues wrt "Food/palatability" and weighs in on the side of "carbohydrate drives insulin drive fat accumulation".

William Davis - Ease Up On That Pancreas

If you’ve lived the life of most Americans, your pancreas has had a hard life. Starting as a child, it was forced into the equivalent of hard labor by your eating carbohydrate-rich foods like Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs, Hoho’s, Ding Dongs, Scooter Pies, and macaroni and cheese. Into adolescent years and college, it was whipped into subservient labor with pizza, beer, pretzels, and ramen noodles. As an adult, the USDA, Surgeon General’s office and other assorted purveyors of nutritional advice urged us to cut our fat, cholesterol, and eat more “healthy whole grains”; you complied, exposing your overworked pancreas to keep up its relentless work pace, spewing out insulin to accommodate the endless flow of carbohydrate-rich foods.  So here we are, middle aged or so, with pancreases that are beaten, worn, hobbling around with a walker, heaving and gasping due to having lost 50% or more of its insulin-producing beta cells.

Davis - Baby Your Pancreas

I really enjoy this man's writing  - it's a rare cardiologist that has this much creativity about his job.  

Type I Diabetic Experiment with The Zone

Take a look at this article posted by my friend, Kirez Reynolds.  Amongst his many talents, he has prior military experience, can lift some very large weights in the slow lifts, and delivers some of the fastest times I see on METCON WODs, even though he's laden down with and enviable amount of muscle mass and ... is an insulin dependent diabetic.  He's also as smart as anyone I know, which a shared passion for liberty, understanding human behavior from an economics perspective, and and feeds his family by leading others to elite fitness.
 
What's the BLUF on this article?  Kirez has been eating paleo, but decided to see for himself if some of the benefits of the Zone Diet (*description below) would be of benefit to him.  I was skeptical, but his discoveries were very interesting, especially if you are insulin dependent, or live with, train with or coach folks who are.  In particular, this article provides and example of how to conduct a 'self experiment.'

As will be illustrated in a post coming soon, glycemic control is a HUGE issue for diabetics and very, very controversial amongst the medical profession.  It is also literally a matter of life and death for all of us.  Diabetics on average age about ten years ahead of non-diabetics, and those who don't stay on top of their game don't just die sooner, they die in ways that are predictably unpleasant, as they die after losing sensation in extremities, with years of vascular issues, sometimes with loss of limbs from the vascular issues, and often loss of vision as well.  In short, they suffer aggravated versions of all of the diseases of the West, and have much less room for error.  You won't find many who are more aggressively treating their disease than is Kirez. 
http://hammercrossfit.com/2011/02/personal-experience-of-the-zone-diet/#comments

*What is the Zone Diet?  The primary distinction in the Zone Diet is the recommendation that you eat each meal according to a 40% carb, 30% protein, 30% fat macronutrient ratio (percentages based on kcal of each macronutrient).  The Zone provides a formula for establishing how much protein one needs based on lean body mass and activity level.  If, for example, I determined my lean body mass to be 180 pounds (which it is, roughly), and a moderate activity level, I could determine the needed amount of protein by mulitiplying 180 by .7 (conversion factor) which is 126.  I would eat 126 grams of protein, 168g of carbohydrate, and 56g of fat daily, divided into something like three meals and two snacks, ideally leaving no period of greater than 6 hours without eating.  I have utilized The Zone and it works, but I find I'm only willing to do the requisite weighing and measuring for a limited time.

Note:  The most likely cause of Type I diabetes is autoimmune based failure of pancreatic beta cells, whereas most Type II diabetics eat themselves into high carb hell, passing through metabolic syndrome on their way to glycemic control system failure.  This latter type is one of the most significant drivers of the increase in costs of the socialized parts of the US medical care system.   

Carbs, Insulin, Diabetes, Cancer

Evidence of an increased risk of cancer with diabetes and obesity from epidemiologic studies has led to great concern given the worldwide epidemic of obesity and diabetes. The intriguing data presented in this review suggest that this increased risk is related to higher levels of insulin and IGF-1. In vivo studies on animal models have been designed to tease apart the processes that explain these associations and to verify the credibility of the findings of epidemiologic studies. From these studies, we see that increased insulin, IGF-1, and IGF-2 signaling through the insulin receptor and IGF-1 receptor can in fact induce tumorigenesis by up-regulating the insulin receptor and IGF-1 receptor signaling pathways. In addition, disrupting these receptors or blocking their activity in animals prevents tumor growth and metastasis by inhibiting their downstream signaling.
http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10461&catid=1&Itemid=17

Interesting summary.  This is the line of reasoning Taubes presents in Good Calories Bad Calories also.  It is also aligned with the observations of paleolithic peoples - they don't get metabolic syndrome, which is the vanguard for diabetes, cancer, heart disease and/or other vascular diseases.  There's a good reason to believe this entire chain is caused by excess carbohydrate intake, and, for example, whether you treat skinny (type 2) diabetics or obese (type 2) diabetics, when you reduce their carb intake they respond with lower blood pressure, improved hyperglycemia, lowered triglycerides, increased HDL levels, and a lower A1c (and their LDL levels, which may get higher, will convert to large, fluffy LDL which are not associated with cardiovascular disease).  In other words, change one variable - carbohydrate intake - and all the symptoms improve.

In short, you can treat metabolic disorder and arrest its descent into diabetes and progression towards premature death and drastically reduced quality of life by restricting carbohydrate intake, whether the sick person is skinny or obese.  Makes a strong case to me that the carbohydrate is the causal factor in most of these cases.

Interestingly, the article leaps right into the possibility that metformin, a fairly mild drug used to help pre-diabetics with glucose regulation, would reduce the incidence of cancer by helping to retard diabetes and lower blood glucose and insulin levels.  And I hope that is true, because it's going to be a number of years before enough people realize they could also save themselves via carb restriction. (Edited 1 March 11)

More Help From Heartscan

Alert: this post is soaked in sarcasm.

Heartscan offers several helpful products, such as books, at home testing products, and the free blog.

Now, as a bonus, they offer a free guide on how to become a diabetic. 
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-to-become-diabetic-in-5-easy-steps.html
Highlights:
1) Cut your fat and eat healthy, whole grains--
2) Consume one or more servings of juice or soda per day--
3) Follow the Institute of Medicine's advice on vitamin D--
4) Have a bowl of oatmeal or oat cereal every morning--
5) Take a diuretic (like hydrochlorothiazide, or HCTZ) or beta blocker (like metoprolol or atenolol) for blood pressure

I suspect they'll have a do it yourself home kit available soon.  However, that would be a real conflict of interest since Dr. Davis is a cardiologist.  Selling a kit like this would possibly be perceived as deliberately boosting his patientload, as diabetes is well known as a precursor and most likely the largest cause of heart disease.  This would be nearly as questionable as the USDA recommending their dietary guidelines while the FDA approves statins for all.

Mercola/Rosedale, Part 6

"Full article available here:  http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2001/07/14/insulin-part-one.aspx

(Part 1 is here:  http://fireofthegodsfitness.blogspot.com/2010/11/mercolarosedale-home-run.html).  
"Aging is a Disease

"If there is a single marker for lifespan, as they are finding in the centenarian studies, it is insulin, specifically insulin sensitivity.  How sensitive are your cells to insulin? When they are not sensitive, the insulin levels go up. Who has heard of the term insulin resistance?  Insulin resistance is the basis of all of the chronic diseases of aging, because the disease itself is actually aging.

"We know now that aging is a disease. The other case studies that I mentioned, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, obesity, diabetes, cancer, all the so-called chronic diseases of aging and auto-immune diseases, those are symptoms.

"Now, the medical profession is continually segregating more and more symptoms into diseases--they call the symptoms diseases. Using ENT for example, a patient will walk out of the office with a diagnosis of Rhinitis, which is inflammation of the nose. Is there a reason why that patient has inflammation of the nose? I think so. Wouldn‘t that underlying cause be the disease as opposed to the descriptive term of Rhinitis or Pharyngitis?

"Someone can have the same virus and have Rhinitis, Pharyngitis or Sinusitis. They can have all sorts of "itis‘s," which is a descriptive term for inflammation. That is what the code will be, and that is what the disease will be. So they treat what they think is the disease, but which actually is just a symptom.

"The same thing happens with cholesterol. If you have high cholesterol it is called hypercholesterolemia. Hypercholesterolemia has become the code for the disease when it is only the symptom.  What you have to do if you are going to treat any disease is get to the root of the disease. If you keep pulling a dandelion out by its leaves, you are not going to get very far."

Mercola/Rosedale Part 5, Insulin

More from this jewell:
(Part 1 is here:  http://fireofthegodsfitness.blogspot.com/2010/11/mercolarosedale-home-run.html)"Humans tend to have an average life span of 76 years, and the maximum lifespan was this French lady at 122 years. In humans we feel this length of time is relatively fixed, but in lower forms of life it is very plastic. Lifespan is strictly a variable depending on the environment. Other species can live two weeks, two years or sometimes 20 years depending on what they want themselves to do, which depends very much on the environment.

"If there is a lot of food around they are going to reproduce quickly and die quickly, if not they will just bide their time until conditions are better. We know now that the variability in lifespan is regulated by insulin.

"Often it is thought that insulin’s role is strictly to lower blood sugar. I once had a patient list off about eight drugs she was on and not even mention insulin. Insulin is not treated as a drug. In fact, in some places you don‘t even need a prescription, you can just get it over the counter, it‘s treated like candy.

"Insulin is found in even single-celled organisms and has been around for several billion years. Its purpose, in some organisms, is to regulate lifespan. The way genetics works is that genes are not replaced, they are built upon. We have the same genes as everything that came before us--we just have more of them.

"We have added books to our genetic library, but our base is the same. What we are finding is that we can use insulin to regulate lifespan too."

 

Mercola/Rosedale Case Studies, Part 3

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2001/07/14/insulin-part-one.aspx


This is part 3 of this series (part 1 is here:  http://fireofthegodsfitness.blogspot.com/2010/11/mercolarosedale-home-run.html).  Dr. Rosedale continues with his illustrative case studies, all of which seem unrelated.  He brings these stray threads together after describing these next two cases.
"Claudication, that is, severe angina of the leg when you walk, is characterized by pain in the legs after walking a certain distance.

"My stepfather had extremely severe claudication. It was a typical case; he would walk about fifty yards and then get severe, crampy pain in his legs. He was going to see the best doctors in Chicago, but they couldn‘t figure out what was wrong with him initially.  For example, he went to a neurologist who thought it might be neurological pain or back pain. Finally, he went to a vascular surgeon who thought it was vascular disease, so they did an arthrogram--sure enough he had severe vascular disease. They wanted to do the by-pass surgery that is typically done for this, and he was considering it because he had a trip planned to Europe in two weeks, and he wanted to be able to walk around.

"Ten years prior he‘d had an angioplasty for heart disease. At the time I’d told him to change his diet, but of course he didn‘t. This time, however, he listened. I said that if he did exactly as I told him, he could avoid the by-pass and be walking just fine in two weeks. Modulating this one aspect of his disease--I have never seen it fail--works very quickly to open up the artery."


"(regarding a patient with a family history of cancer) This patient had a mother and sister who had both died of breast cancer. I put her on the exact same treatment as the other cases I just mentioned, because they all had the same thing wrong with them."

"What would be the typical treatment of cardiovascular disease? First they check the cholesterol. To treat high cholesterol (over 200) they put you on cholesterol lowering drugs, which shut off your CoQ10. What does CoQ10 do? It is involved in the energy production and protection of little energy furnaces in every cell, so energy production goes way down.

"A common side effect of people who are on all these HMG co-enzyme reductase inhibitors is that their arms feel heavy. Well, the heart is a muscle too, and it‘s going to feel heavy too.

"One of the best treatments for a weak heart is CoQ10 (for congestive heart failure). But doctors have no trouble shutting CoQ10 production off so that they can treat a number (editor's note:  in other words, they are happy to give statins, including their side effect of shutting down CoQ10 production, to lower the LDL measurement, which is meaningless).

"The common therapy for osteoporosis is drugs, and the common therapy for calaudication is surgery. For cancer reduction there is nothing.

"But all of these have a common cause--the same cause as three major avenues of research in aging, one of which is called caloric restriction."

Mercola/Rosedale Part 4, Causes

Dr. R moves from the case studies to the 'why' - why did they get sick, why his method helps them heal.


http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2001/07/14/insulin-part-one.aspx
"Researchers have tested caloric restriction on several dozen species, and the results are uniform throughout. They are doing it on primates now, and it seems to working with primates, though we won‘t know for sure for about another 10 years.
"Why do centenarians become centenarians? Why are they so lucky? Is it because they have low cholesterol, exercise a lot and live a healthy, clean life?  Well, the oldest person ever recorded was Jean Calumet of France who died last year at 122 years of age. She smoked all of her life and drank.  What researchers are finding from these major centenarian studies is that there is hardly anything in common among these people. They have high cholesterol and low cholesterol, some exercise and some don‘t, some smoke, some don‘t. Some are nasty as can be, some nice and calm and some are ornery.

"But, they all have relatively low sugar for their age, and they all have low triglycerides for their age.

"And, they all have relatively low insulin.

"Insulin is the common denominator in everything I‘ve just talked about. They way to treat cardiovascular disease and the way I treated my stepfather, the way I treated the high risk cancer patient, and the osteoporosis and high blood pressure. The way to treat virtually all of the so-called chronic diseases of aging is to treat insulin itself."

Rosedale/Mercola, Part 2

Dr. Rosedale continues (Part 1 is at http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=4536780072285442503&postID=8843800105946127371), discussing his next two case studies (which seem unconnected, but he will tie their causality together):
"Patient B is a 42-year-old man who was referred by patient A. He had a triglyceride level of 2200, a cholesterol level of 950 and was on maximum doses of all his medications. He was not fat at all; he was fairly thin.

"This man was told that he had familial hyperlipidema and that he had better get his affairs in order, because if that was what his lipids were despite the best medications with the highest doses, he was in trouble.

"Whenever I see a patient on any of those medications, they‘re off the very first visit. They have no place in medicine. He was taken off the medications and in six weeks his lipid levels, both his triglycerides and his cholesterol, were hovering around 220. After six more weeks, they were both under 200, off of the medications. As I said earlier, they have no place in medicine.

"I should mention that this patient had a CPK that was quite elevated. It was circled on the lab report that he had brought in initially with a question mark by it because they didn‘t know why. The reason why was because he was eating off his muscles--if you take (gemfibrozole) and any of the HMG co-enzyme reductase inhibitors together, this is a common side effect, which is in the PDR; they shouldn‘t be given together.

"So, he was chewing up his muscles, including his heart, which they were trying to treat. If indeed he were going to die, it would be that treatment that would kill him."

Severe Osteoporosis

"Let‘s go to something totally different--a lady with severe osteoporosis. This fairly young woman was almost three standard deviations below the norm in both the hip femeral neck and the cervical vertebrae and was very worried about getting a fracture. She was put on a high-carbohydrate diet and told that this would be of benefit. She was also placed on estrogen, which is a fairly typical treatment.

"They wanted to put her on some other medicines, but she wanted to know if there was an alternative. Although we didn‘t have as dramatic a turn around in this case, we did take her off the estrogen she was on and got her to one standard deviation below the norm in a year."
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2001/07/14/insulin-part-one.aspx

Mercola/Rosedale Home Run

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2001/07/14/insulin-part-one.aspx

This article is a gold mine of health information, a model which aligns very closely with what Taubes presents in "Good Calories Bad Calories."  First excerpt:

"This patient saw me one afternoon and said that he had literally just signed himself out of the hospital "AMA," or against medical advice. Like in the movies, he had ripped out his IVs.

The next day he was scheduled to have his second by-pass surgery. He had been told that if he did not follow through with this surgery, within two weeks he would be dead. He couldn‘t even walk from the car to the office without severe chest pain.

"He was on 102 units of insulin and his blood sugars were 300 plus. He was on eight different medications for various things. But his first by-pass surgery was such a miserable experience that he said he would rather die than go through the second one. He came to me because he had heard that I might be able to prevent this.

"To make a long story short, this gentleman right now is on no insulin. I first saw him three and a half years ago. He plays golf four or five times a week. He is on no medications whatsoever, he has no chest pain, and he has not had any surgery. He started an organization called "Heart Support of America" to educate people about the alternatives to by-pass surgery that have nothing to do with surgery or medication. That organization, as he last told me, had a mailing list of over a million people."

Just the Basics: Insulin

http://www.atkins.com/Science/ScienceArticlesLibrary/ArticleDetail394/Insulin-Made-Simple.aspx?articleId=394&utm_source=NL11162010&utm_medium=headernav&utm_campaign=article3
Insulin 101 from the Atkins 'science' site.