I acknowledge that a low carb diet seems to have helped some people. This article strikes me as reasonable:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/this-is-your-brain-on-gluten/282550/ Parts that struck me: Chris Kresser <http://chriskresser.com/clinic/about/> is an integrative medicine practitioner and author of *Your Personal Paleo Code*. "Integrative" is an increasingly popular adjective that usually means focusing not just on pills and procedures but on lifestyle, diet, and prevention. The idea of medicine being integrative was once implicit; that practitioners now feel the need to explicitly state it is probably telling. Kresser has seen a flood of patients who have read *Grain Brain* and came to him asking what to make of it. He wrote recently on his website <http://chriskresser.com/do-carbs-kill-your-brain> about how he responds. Kresser tells his patients that initial studies on low-carb diets and mental health have shown promise. He notes scientific articles that look at why low-carb diets are sometimes effective in managing epilepsy <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2367001/%20>, rat models that have shown positive effects in Parkinson’s <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19559687?dopt=AbstractPlus>, and a small study that showed some cognitive improvement in patients with dementia <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19664276?dopt=AbstractPlus>. “It’s important to realize,” Kresser says, “that just because a low-carb diet can help treat neurological disorders, doesn’t mean the carbs caused the disorder in the first place.” Kresser also tells concerned patients about cultures that do just fine on carbohydrate-based diets. “The Hadza of north-central Tanzania and the Kuna of Panama obtain a high percentage of their total calories from foods that are high in natural sugars, such as fruit, starchy tubers and honey, yet they are remarkably lean, fit and free of modern disease <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19350623>.” He also mentions the Kitava <http://f3.tiera.ru/2/B_Biology/Lindeberg%20S.%20Food%20and%20western%20disease..%20Health%20and%20nutrition%20from%20an%20evolutionary%20perspective%20%28Wiley,%202010%29%28ISBN%201405197714%29%28O%29%28370s%29_B_.pdf>in the Pacific Islands, whose diet heavy in yams, banana, and papaya is 69 percent carbohydrate; the Tukisenta <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1196/annals.1396.037/abstract;jsessionid=B5F9B4A2ABFB74342D9E64013A6610F6.f03t01?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false>in the Papua New Guinea highlands, whose diet is over 90 percent carbs; and the Okinawans <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07315724.2009.10718117#preview>, whose diet is “mostly from sweet potato.” Better-known still are the Greeks, in particular from the islands like Crete, and other Mediterranean diets that are grain-centric. “All of these cultures,” Kresser notes, citing Swedish researcher Staffan Lindeberg’s book *Food and Western Disease* <http://f3.tiera.ru/2/B_Biology/Lindeberg%20S.%20Food%20and%20western%20disease..%20Health%20and%20nutrition%20from%20an%20evolutionary%20perspective%20%28Wiley,%202010%29%28ISBN%201405197714%29%28O%29%28370s%29_B_.pdf>(and, I would add, Dan Buettner’s*The Blue Zones* <http://www.amazon.com/The-Blue-Zones-Lessons-Longest/dp/1426207557>) “are fit and lean with practically non-existent rates of neurological disorders and other modern chronic disease.” ************ “Of course,” Katz added, “Everything about the Paleolithic Era is subject to debate. Most of us don’t know what we had for breakfast yesterday, let alone what people were doing 100,000 years ago. Yeah, I’ve read the same thing that the average life expectancy was between 20 and 40 and, consequently, the diseases of old age didn’t happen because old age didn’t happen. There’s nothing about their diet that we know to be protective against things like Alzheimer’s. That’s just silly.” Perlmutter has estimated that the Stone Age diet was 75 percent fat, a claim Katz finds “wildly preposterous.” Anthropological research, he pointed out the work of Loren Cordain <http://www.hes.chhs.colostate.edu/faculty-staff/cordain.aspx>, suggests that in the age before cooking oil, humans ate mostly plants with a scattering of seeds and nuts. “Virtually nothing in the natural world is that concentrated of a fat source, except maybe for the brain. Maybe if they just ate the brains of animals? They didn’t have oil. They only started adding oil to the diet after the Dawn of Agriculture. What the hell could they possibly have eaten that would be that fatty?'" ********************** “Government doctrine in 1992 indicated that we need to be on a low-fat diet. That’s saying in the same breath, high carb. Immediately, within 10 years, the rate of diabetes in America went up three-fold.” *********************** Having talked to all of these people and read their work, here is how I walk away from this. Oxidative stress will increasingly be the target of medical treatments and preventive diets. We’ll hear more about the role of blood sugar in Alzheimer’s and continue to focus on moderating intake of refined carbohydrates. The consensus remains that too much LDL is bad for you. We do not have reason to believe that gluten is bad for most people. It does cause reactive symptoms in some people. Peanuts can kill some people, but that does not mean they are bad for everyone. I agree with Katz that the diets consistently shown to have good long-term health outcomes—both mental and physical—include whole grains and fruits, and are not nearly as high in fat as what Perlmutter proposes. When a person advocates radical change on the order of eliminating one of the three macronutrient groups from our diets, the burden of proof should be enormous. -- Resumes, LinkedIn profiles, and letters that get interviews. By-the-hour resume and LinkedIn coaching. Other professional writing services. http://www.resumespecialties.com/ Patrick Moore Albuquerque, Nouvelle Mexique, Etats Unis ************************************* * "Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place.* * "Nothing outside you can give you any place," he said. "You needn't to look at the sky because it's not going to open up and show no place behind it. You needn't to search for any hole in the ground to look through into somewhere else. You can't go neither forwards nor backwards into your daddy's time nor your children's if you have them. In yourself right now is all the place you've got. If there was any Fall, look there, if there was any Redemption, look there, and if you expect any Judgment, look there, because they all three will have to be in your time and your body and where in your time and your body can they be?* * "Where in your time and your body has Jesus redeemed you?" he cried. "Show me where because I don't see the place. If there was a place where Jesus had redeemed you that would be the place for you to be, but which of you can find it?” -- Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood * -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
